Scott Hamner Says Y&R Is NOT Doing A Gay Story

[lovely_m]

sorry double post

[All My Shadows]

[ian]

This is to appease the trailer trash hypochristians from the CBS message board that had such disgusting things to say.

[alphanguy74]

I hate to say this, Ian... but you may have a REALLY big point there.

[alphanguy74]

Ok... I tried to get the SOW where Hamner's quotes are, and I can't find it. I saw the Aug. 25 issue, it has JT and snoreboria on the cover. Which issue is this interview in? I need to see the magazine for myself so I can make a judgement as to whether these people are really jerking us around, or people who hate the show right now are reading things into quotes that aren't there.

[Cat]

Sigh. This show. Is a hot tranny mess that has managed to outstrip the dysfunction on these here Y&R threads. Congratulations, everybody.

I swear, I don't think I have even seen GH's IIC backtrack so fast and so horribly. They were always the "gold standard" in Daytime as far as this sort of manipulation, spin and hack writing was concerned. But this makes Lucas's blink-and-you'll-miss-it coming-out and subsequent removal from the canvas appear positively Oscar-worthy (in fact, I think that GH coming-out scene won some national GLBT association award for daytime or summink. LOL. Money talks?).

At first I wondered what all the fuss was about, given that it was obvious that NuAdam=Da EVUL and he was never going to be seen carving "Adam *hearts* Rafe" on the front lawn oak. However, Vee's post about "hot" Chris Engen and Yani Gellman bringing in the "ovulating" fangurls made me realise -- yeah, a CE/YG kiss would have been totally hot to see. Y&R probably would have "gone there" if CE had kept shtum.

MAB and HSx2 need to go. But I am worried that if they are replaced, EVERYBODY on staff will be replaced. The way Lynn Marie Troll cleaned house once she became EP. I'm talking the valued Natalie Minardi Slaters, the Beth Millsteins, Tom Casiellos, Noel Maxims, all those guys who break it down and sweat it out to try and produce something viable to air.

[Sylph]

They are here now. How are they contributing to making this show better?

Obviously, this kind of showed they aren't really needed.

Or, better, we need to set a criterion on who stays and who goes. This gargantuan, Byzantine writing team is a beast from Hell in itself. It doesn't work. It sucks.

[bellcurve]

A.) Noel Maxam sold out ages ago when he opted to stay with Days instead of leaving when his mentor, Ed Scott left. He doesn't have anything to do with Y&R now.

B.) And we don't know that for SURE. A strong EP/writer will always keep the team players and the stronger links as they forge ahead. And I'm not impressed with the cliche, day-to-day dialogue of Y&R anyway.

It could get worse than what we have, but I'm willing to take the chance.

[Sylph]

Bellcurve, that did you think about Milstein's interim reign on Days?

[Cat]

My bad. I knew I'd been seeing his directing credited somewhere on Daytime.

And I'm not Bellcurve but based on Millstein's interim Days work (and her contribution to Sunset Beach -- she made the final week's episodes stand out), I liked the coherency and clarity she gave to the show. And the balance. JER, God rest his soul, had written Days into an almightly tangle by then.

[MarkH]

What you say is clearly true. The show is, now, circling the drain.

But even in that, many of us find much of merit in individual episodes, performances, stories, scenes. I realize this does not make for a good show, but I'm saying the bones of Y&R, cast and crew, still are decent.

I would very much hope that if there were regime change, the new leaders would use the approach that MAB herself did...don't throw everyone away...evaluate what is working on a person-by-person basis.

That said, some of MAB's choices confused me. Like, why did she so quickly ditch Thom Racina?

If I accept your premise that the writing team is Byzantine (and I sort of do...because SOMETHING IS NOT WORKING....all those people, but none of them seems sufficiently empowered to stop the sh!t from continuing to flow from uphill) and huge, I would hope that under regime change the new people would "cherry pick" the best of the current bunch, and not just replace them all.

That said, I'm very disappointed in Natalie Minardi Slater. She was present when MAB/JG forgot TGVN's two previous vasectomies. That is appalling. How could she not have spoken up and prevented that travesty?? It really says terrible things about the power dynamics among the writers on that show...that they are either afraid to speak up...or that if they speak up they are ignored.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

It's in the September 1st issue, which may or may not be available in your area as of yet...

[Sylph]

The crème of Y&R's writing staff refused to work for Lynn Latham first and then for Maria. Turns out: they did the right thing. Nothing on this team works (for me). I wouldn't keep a single person. Not a single one.

I want to know that, too.

OK, here's the thing: forget history. The constant clamoring for history and historic references and obscure characters who someone remembered from year 1974 will do nothing for this show. You only believe it would, but it wouldn't. The dictatorship and unrelenting exercising of the power this history has ruined all these shows. They are history's hostages.

Whereas other TV subgroups, like primetime, evolved, this one has deteriorated and instead of turning into a butterfly or a frog it turned back into a larva or frogspawn.

It only brings them doom because people fear it, it looms above them like an ancient malefic prophecy. Turns out: the curse fulfills itself. Or like a cloud of poisonous gas which ends up killing everyone eventually.

I'd rather see natural, flowing, realistic, appropriate dialogue than this travesty of writing I'm seeing.

[MarkH]

I could agree with you here...except for the vasectomy.

Let's say there is a story where a character loses a leg. Then, suddenly, he appears with two legs. (Oops! DOOL did that!). It damages the story to suddenly "forget" the lost leg.

Forgetting "history" in some broad sense could work (you know I differ somewhat on that, but could agree). But forgetting that a character lost an organ (or procreational ability) is quite different, don' t you think?

At the very least, in choosing to reverse TGVN's infertility, it would not at ALL have hurt anything to throw in one or two sentences right at the time of Sabrina's pregnancy, in which Victor said "I'm so glad I had my vasectomy reversed when I was out of town last year".

Same on DOOL. Couldn't Phillip just have said, "Yes, this new prosthesis is amazingly lifelike!". (LOL).

[Sylph]

Oh, I agree with that.