Interview with Tom Casiello

[Rakesh]

FrenchFan is on a roll! Thanks for sharing. Great interview, btw!

[rhinohide]

Great interview. I always appreciate Tom's love of the genre and his insightful commentary.

[All My Shadows]

Thanks, FrenchFan!!

It hurt the show. It was Hogan's ridiculous vision of ATWT, and it hurt the show.

[rangethatrover]

Hi Mark. Sorry, I felt bad after I realized he was quoting you. No offense!! (Everyone here feels that way about Y&R. Well except me and the beautiful, attractive, and intelligent Sylph!

I. just. don't. get. it. It is not a Bergman film and he is not writing Shakespeare.

[Adam]

Thanks FrenchFan! Great interview, keep up the good work! I am excited to see what Tom brings in his scripts to Y&R. Sounds like he is really enjoying it there, where is last time when he was writing for that hack bitch from the depths of hell LML.... he had said he didn't quite connect.

Any soap would be lucky to have this guy. He is new, fresh and gets the genre.

[P.J.]

I've never read an interview where Jen Landon looked back fondly on creating Cleo.

And while I understand it's hard for a writer to hear criticism about a particular storyline they liked, I definitely recall ATWT fans praising the actual episodes written around Bryant's death, even if they hated the idea, and thought it was short-sighted move on the HW's part. It was the fall-out that failed, not the episodes themselves.

[jfung79]

He was there for a couple years under Laiman and Sheffer, his first writing job after being a production assistant at Another World. He actually left before Jen Landon (who I like) got there, I think. He just mentions her in the interview because he has continued following the show.

[Ann_SS]

The decision to kill off Bryant was a horrific idea. To this day, I get furious just thinking about it. It was a shitty thing to do. Like Guza killing off Emily and Georgie, young legacy characters for no good reason. It is part of soaps' determination to self-destruct.

Hunt Block, Elizabeth Hubard, Mary Beth Evans and Maura West sold Bryant's loss and made the immediate aftermath good, but the story fell flat. Worse of all for years, I have had to suffer through the often repeated lie that Craig caused Bryant's death while Jennifer Munson's role in sending Bryant in a rage into that car has been ignored. Bryant didn't die because of Craig, in fact, at his most distraught he called his father reaching out in desperation. Everytime I hear that lie, I get furious all over again and change the channel.

Forget what I said about the fans being too hard on soap headwriters, most of them are terrible and their bad ideas have contributed to the decline of the genre. They deserve to be berated and deserve all the scorn heaped upon them.

[Soapsuds]

Tom is full of hot air.

[Khan]

I don't know if he's that, but it does disappoint me to think he considers Bryant's death one of his finest achievements as a writer. Personally, I found the whole storyline rather hollow.

[Soapsuds]

Oh that doesnt bother me. What bothers me about him is who he liked to write for on ATWT. He mentioned it in his interview with Ryan and left a sour taste in my mind. He was liking the wrong characters IMO. He doesnt get soaps at all to me. He just says what we want to hear as fans.

[P.J.]

Who? I don't get what characters could be so offensive to like writing for. Unless, of course, he was responsible for writing the Oakdum Three tour.

[Soapsuds]

Well for one he mentioned your all time favorite Katie.

[DRW50]

Hogan's idea of modernizing ATWT seemed to be taking away any sense of family, turning many of the characters extremely dark without any attempt to make people empathize with them, telling stories which didn't have a strong resolution, but did have plenty of character rewrites and ignorance of history.

I never understood why Bryant was killed. I didn't even think the grief episodes were that great, mostly because I didn't think Hunt Block sold the grief and they seemed to care more about killing his son to make him sympathetic (and justify Carly having sex with him) than about truly exploring the consequences. Then even this was for nothing, because the story became about Jennifer having tantrums and Bryant's death became just another of the laundry list of excuses the so-called good characters gave for Craig's evil ways, even though Jennifer was just as much to blame as Craig.

[Ann_SS]

I thought Hogan was great when he first started. I loved his ATWT. He was great at casting and making Craig the anti-hero was good stuff. The ratings actually steadily rose under Hogan which suggested that he was able to hold onto more B&B's viewers than the previous regime. It didn't last long as Hogan rapidly ran out of steam.