Y&R: Potpourri Thread 2

[dm.]

Well I was about the way she comes off in the interviews. All MAB.

[Juliajms]

Yeah, I would love to know who is really calling the shots over there. If anything I think Maria has let this get out of her control, which is her own fault.

[Sylph]

Oh, she is writing this. It's not the network.

The fault is all on her.

[Juliajms]

Is she? A lot of people seem to think a lot of this is HS's stuff, which doesn't make her less responsible for it ultimately. But I wonder if she has basically handed over the reigns to him, since when she was on her own, things were pretty dismal.

[Sylph]

She is lazy, Hogan is a work horse. Draw your own conclusions.

[MarkH]

Yes, Sylph, I do not believe she is exerting the control she claims to.

That, I intuit, is the most accurate summary. Now, I don't think MAB has the "absolute" control she claims to, despite her unfortunate "my show, my vision" (yes, I now see she really used that appalling turn of phrase) claim. Although she makes the editorial decisions, she clearly has a powerful customer (CBS) and a powerful majority partner (SONY) to keep happy. In addition to their notes/corporate interference (because, let's face it, she could go all Bill Bell and say 'damn the torpedos, I'm writing what I want to'), I think there seems to be a secondary problem which is that she is abdicating some of the control that she does have to others (e.g., Rauch on the production end, Sheffer and Hamner on the writing end).

I agree with these statements, except... If you have powerful customers that keep telling you what they want (e.g., make it younger, make it cheaper, play the vets less, move the plots faster, etc. etc.), you disregard them at your peril. Soaps are not an "auteur's medium". They are a commercial product (Bill Bell and Paul Rauch, themselves, were ad men back in the day, and Irna Phillips was an entrepreneur who devised co-branded entertainments for soap companies to deliver desired audience types). So, if she bends to the will of powerful corporate stakeholders...she could refuse...but I suspect she would be quite unwise to do so. In the modern era, the smart show-runner finds a balance between the creative impulses and pleasing the suits.

So, if anything, I suspect MAB's failure is in her inability to balance what the suits want with her own creative vision.

Why would that happen?

Maybe because her own creative vision is weak? Uninspired? Not strongly held? A weak tree trunk is easier to bend.

But then she also has the problem from within. She has these overwhelming, outrageous, plot focused, death-rape-divorce-angst internal forces (HS)...she finds them funny and inspiring in ways that her own internal creative processes are unable to achieve...and so she also bends too much to them.

The ultimate indictment of MAB may be her weakness. But there is one other thing...

I think she is also distracted. I think she has taken on too many things to be an effective show runner.

We have seen her, in the last two weeks, at at least two functions for which she is on the Board of Directors (LA Museum of Modern Art; PSArts for Schools). I believe she runs one of these boards.

It is laudable, that she so supports the arts with philanthropy and leadership.

But she has a more-than-full-time job of running a show...and that clearly seems to suffer.

I wish that she would be more honest about her role. It is NOT "my show, my vision". It is "I am the recipient of pitches, I deliver them to the network/Sony, I take their notes, I bring the notes back to my team in the form of top-down mandates, and then I'm home by 4 to greet my kids from school and do my philanthropy".

That's probably not true, exactly. She probably works more than that on the show. But in the end I believe she is more of a "watchful eye to preserve Bell family interests" (which I believe she is doing with only mixed success).

SAY WHAT YOU WANT -- I have serious issues with him myself!! -- but I intuit that Brad Bell would have been much stronger in this role. With all the writing team variations since he took over the show, B&B has been remarkably consistent in what it is (and is not). That bespeaks (I think) I strong leader who asserts a consistent vision. In fact, if Bell had any weakness, it almost seems he does not bend enough to his talented team.

[Sylph]

God, when I read those posts of mine all in a row, it all sounds so confusing!

Let's get one thing straight first: Maria is the HW. She has the creative control and network isn't mandating that she write this or that.

However, Maria is terribly lazy and she has the control to hire or fire whoever she wants. Here comes Hogan, who by writing a massive amount of cr*p so easily, it's unbelievable, is saving her a*s and covering her shortcomings. At first, when she came on board, you remember how she hired the entourage the size of Denmark, don't you? All those writers were there to cover up for her, although they didn't know it nor was it said explicitly. Hogan can thump up pages and pages and pages... When he was writing ATWT, didn't he say in one interview that he wrote about 12,000 pages a year?

[MarkH]

As long as you understand, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you.

The only word I'm not sure I buy is "lazy". As I tried to lay out, I think "weak" works or "distracted" works -- and they all lead to the same outcome and conclusion. The captain is not at the wheel--and even if she were, she may not be the best person to be there.

[Sylph]

Understand what?

But, Mark!!!

This post and your previous one would mean that something is wrong with these people! Are all of them deluded? Who would request a fetus burning story? Who would request a molester doc examining Ashley? Not to say anything about "gay" stories, doppelgangers... Is this a work or a request of a mentally sane person?

[classicmoment]

Hogan's style of writing suggests to me he clearly wants to stamp everything with his own mark on it even though it manytimes is at the expense of respectable legacies. The way these characters have changed in the past year was clearly to benefit TPTB agendas, short term &momentary plots, and shock value as opposed to character driven stories leading to classic story arcs or longer term viewership entertainment & intrigue. To disrespect the vision for these characters and the shows model for character development is disrespect the audiences perception of the characters and the show.

[DRW50]

Hogan has a lot of open contempt for the shows he writes for. I would say he has them for soaps in general. He didn't bother to hide it when he was at ATWT, either in his writing or his press. Apparently he doesn't say as much to the press now.

I would be less bothered by it if he weren't such a lousy writer, pushing the same lame ideas everywhere he goes.

[DeeeDee]

Yep.

[JimTolkien]

I just wanted to say how much I totally believe that this is most likely what is happening.

[classicmoment]

I agree because to say otherwise would be blaming anyone and anything else besides the people at the helm. It's like we blame the audience for not getting it when convenient or we blame the story theme for being wrong, or we blame business politics for being wrongly suited. No lets place the blame here, the stories were just badly done. These stories COULD have worked with the correct characterization and pacing but those two key elements are all kinds of wrong. The show needs oeverall better management because the management team falls short. We can't blame everybody else and everything else BUT them. The person in charge has clearly shown that they cannot handle what the job calls for: a fulltime VISIONARY and an EXECUTIONER. This needs to be handled

[MarkH]

My thought is this: Sony and CBS want plot. They want action, adventure, crime, mystery. They think this will provoke "tune in tomorrow", and especially among a younger audience.

I think Sheffer and Hamner pitch that. I don't know how pitches work, but I imagine the pitches are in broad strokes (Ashley gets pregnant, Adam gaslights her, as she has before Ashley loses her sanity and her baby; Adam does a baby switch)...something like that. Then, as the individual weeks get broken down, it turns into horrific stuff (Adam in a dress shocks Ashley; she falls down the stairs; Adam cleans up the blood mess with a rag and burns it in the fireplace)...that nobody initially clamored for or would have wanted.

You'll notice I keep MAB out of this. Why? Because I have this image of her over at the LA Museum of Modern Art board meetings, or at the PSArts board meetings, or picking her kids up from school. I feel what we're seeing is not laziness, but absenteeism and a lack of intrinsic inspiration.

Take a story that I _do_ think she pitched: Lily's cancer. I suspect that she pitched just that: Lily has cancer; it reunites her with Cane, and leads to a surrogacy story. Period. We all know how uninspired this has been. I don't think she has that "oomph" needed to plot an emotionally compelling story from beginning to end. Even her "triumph" (the return of Kay/Marge) fizzled at the end, when Hogan added in the Silver Chipmunk.

We actually agree on placing the blame at MAB. The only place I disagreed was the reason. I don't think it is laziness. I think it is weakness and lack of inspiration and distractedness. But does it matter? The captain is steering for the iceberg. That's all that really matters.

I keep getting accused of being some MAB defender. Over at Usenet, we've been navel-gazing about why there is so little discussion about Y&R these days. It is a long discussion of disillusionment.

For me, I detailed my specific trajectory of disillusionment with Y&R since 2006. Each episode built on the last. I am not happy with the show today. I have been pleased with brief periods since 2006, but overall, I believe the show's quality has actually been on about the same trajectory as its ratings (although I do not think these are actually correlated). Don't look to me to be a defender of the regime or its leadership.

Probably the only place I differ from some of you is my hope--for what the show could be, or what even this team could be capable of. I'm not saying it will happen--I doubt that. I'm saying it could happen. [Cue: "And donkeys might fly out of my butt"].