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

[Vee]

The problem is the show's values and some of its internal rhythms seem stuck in what would be a cutting-edge model for the '70s or '80s, IMO. It's part of why I could never get into it, despite all the good things about it in the past. And certainly some of those old rhythms for telling daytime story are classic tenets of soap opera, and should be preserved more on other shows than they are. But they seem to have discarded most of the correct 'tempos' and are left with the out of date ones, which is why the gay stuff with Rafe, Adam and Phillip plays like Steven Carrington or Dirk Bogarde in Victim.

It's an old school mentality of how you can present gay material "without upsetting Peoria or our biggest sponsor, Clorox;" a hold-over from the Bell dynasty. But when OLTL, and AMC, and other shows were shattering those boundaries in the 90s and 00s they're just way, way behind. The scenes come off quaint and antiquated, like a queer studies lesson in how TV had to handle gay stories with kid gloves in the past; at worse, they come off borderline offensive, as Adam 'forces himself' to [!@#$%^&*] an attractive young man in the fade-to-black; "what desperate lengths will this madman go to," etc etc. It's a shame, because I think Y&R's immense black canvas in the '90s is a huge boon for its ratings still and a lesson to other soaps, but they're lost in the past on this issue.

I will agree that I don't think Sheffer or Rauch help the situation. Rauch is a bigot and a very old-school, tacky guy; his methods worked on AW, but that was back in the '70s - I think everything he's done has been mostly crap since. His OLTL worked in its day, but would be silly now, and for all the good in that decade, the ways he warped the show are also very bad. Hogan Sheffer's a talented writer but in a pinch he goes for camp and sheer dark opera; he has no experience writing GLBT material, and is probably as hamfisted and clumsy with it as he was with EJ and Sami and the rape issue.

[koos]

I'm afraid she'll be there forever since she's a Bell.

[bellcurve]

Ew. Please, don't flatter yourself.

[bellcurve]

Keep the faith. It happened to Bridget Dobson.

[Vee]

If it helps us reach harmony, bellcurve, I just want you to know I think you are a sheer triumph as a man, and possibly a mineral.

[DRW50]

Does the new Adam, in looks, remind you of Austin Buchanan?

I was watching some of those old clips from the late Rauch era and you have men like Austin and Michael Grande just BEATING on women. It's so obviously fake that you can't get too upset (although the guy who plays Austin is very scary), but there's such blatant woman hate there. Current Y&R reminds me so much of that era of OLTL, a cheaper, more deflated version.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

But the Bell's don't own controlling interesting in Y&R and nor do they have the money to buy it back from Sony.

I think if Sony and CBS got together and forced Maria, Hogan, and Scott off this show, it could happen. They just have to try, and since Sony is the one paying for production costs and both national and international distribution, they have a lot of leverage.

Someone needs to force change on this show. Y&R needs a complete overhaul, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera.

[Vee]

My experience with Rauch OLTL is years later, through YouTube and WOST and so on, but yes, Adam does resemble many of those interchangeable white villains. Maybe Jamie Sanders. And Mary Jane could be Ursula Blackwell or Tracy James. It's also a Sheffer thing, though, I think, these high-camp, dark baddies. And while I think Sheffer can do it well sometimes, I don't think his style is really a good fit for Y&R. I mean, the show has always done some crazy [!@#$%^&*], but his work just seems too current for Y&R, even when he's bad.

I also think they inadvertently stumbled into a narrative plus for them, or that is, a dubious plus for the unfortunate way they've chosen to tell this story, due to how Chris Engen walked out over queer fear. If CE had remained in the role, well - he was a cute guy. So is Yani Gellman. At the first sign of Adam and Rafe getting it on, the fangirls would've flocked and ovulated and then Y&R would have been beset by a gay shipper base just like ATWT and GL and OLTL, and every other show that does gay storylines. That's clearly not what they wanted for Adam and Rafe, so instead they have an older, more sinister fellow in the role, very talented, but very clearly not someone the slash-loving girls are going to latch onto. All the better for him to rape Heather or Ashley and lock them in, say, an abandoned nuclear missile silo with a sadistic clown during November sweeps.

[DRW50]

The weird thing about Mary Jane is the total lack of humor. Sheffer tried to give Julia humor (even though I thought it was just an offensive story), and many of Rauch's crazy ladies had humor. Like Ursula and Maria. I don't know that much about Tracy James. I wonder if the lack of camp is something they have been told not to do, because they set up these weird situations with MJ and the cat and raping Jack and all the rest, and since they aren't played for camp, but they also are hard to take seriously, viewers are left not knowing how to react.

[Vee]

I believe Tracy James had a doberman, and was obsessed with an oldies song or something.

Hogan Sheffer is usually caught between his camp impulse and his darker ones, so the conflict doesn't entirely surprise me. For whatever reason they don't seem to really gel at this show. I thought when he came on and they said they were going to do a dark story where a woman was literally found dismembered - on daytime! - like, parts, just splayed everywhere like a frickin' scavenger hunt - that that was both shocking and keeping with Y&R's tradition of some shocking scenes, like Phil Morris turning white or the masked lady terrorizing Jamie Lyn Bauer (I think), or Kimball(?) getting his forehead tattoo and then dying in a trash compactor(?). But as I understand it, that story never really got resolved, and now, am I to assume Eileen Davidson is yet again married to Victor and cuddling up with Adam at the same time? And no one noticed Nikki got run over?

[Paul Raven]

Rauch has been getting a lot of the blame here,but how much influence does he have over the writing??

Didn't we read somewhere that he works the production side only and 'delivers Maria's vision'?

Yes Y&R was the 'racy' soap when it began,by focusing on younger characters exclusively and showing a lot of flesh.

Also,the stories were sexually charged and the was a focus on 'issues' eg breast cancer,alcoholism,rape

Bell told those stories so well.He did try out the lesbian angle with Kay/Joanne but back pedalled.

So he was at the forefront in a lot of ways.

It did take a long time for black characters to be integrated,but it was done.

He tried interracial partners(Neil/Vicky) but again there seemed to be a backlash-although a lot of that was also due to the characters involved and the poor plotting/pacing.

He also updated the show in the 80's by going with the crime angle and business stories.

So,Bill Bell kept his finger on the pulse and adapted the show to suit the times-something the current execs are not doing.

[Vee]

That's why I'm looking at Sheffer more. There may be some Rauch influence (like the black canvas turning into Hairspray's "Negro Day", as someone from Daytime Confidential said), but he is not supposed to be heavily involved with the writing here.

I think Bell's sexual freedoms were advanced at the time, and maybe even into the '90s, but the fact that they would've backed off of Neil and Victoria as recently as the late '90s/early '00s (right?) shows how much the program is still entrenched in a certain mindset, where they seem to be operating off an '80s primetime/TV movie model of "risque subjects."

[Sylph]

Alphan!!! Stop the madness!!! Wake up!

There will be no gay story on this show! Of any kind! You have to calm down a bit 'cause a bunch of people will be infected with this unhealthy optimism and we're going to have lots of trouble in the near future when this doesn't materialise. For your own sake, you have to start being a little more realistic.

Pretty much every single die-hard Y&R fan who defended everything Maria wrote up to about two weeks now has realised this regime is up to no good and is systematically neutralising, to put it clinically, this show. This is the worst thing that can happen to any show and is even more frightening when it happens to a soap that was always in a class of its own.

So, hating Scott Hamner and anti-Hamner backlash are silly and hilarious. You can hate him because of what he did with Lethal, because what he's doing now, because of his pathetic murder mysteries, but not because of this interview. The guy is just telling it like it is.

Maria, on the other hand, is a different story. And do not forget a certain TV Guide columnist where all the misinformation came from in the first place.

[Sylph]

Which reminds me: Maria & the courtiers is Carlivati Story v2.0. Almost exact copy.

People were hyping this at best mediocre writer, weekly threads reached fifty gazillion pages of absolute drooling and salivation while a smaller bunch of people were like WTH?, the HW was presented as this great fan (Finally! A fan of the show is writing it!) who loves the show's history and is honouring it, blah, blah. Flash forward two months or so: this same writer is giving hysterical, maddening, annoying, unbelievable interviews in the soap press defending bullsh!t, offensive stories.

Voila.

This thing goes in cycles. Who knows which show will be next.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I think Y&R needs the same type of reinvention that Wendy Riche et al gave GH after the Gloria Monty era.

A new approach that's still respectful to the show's roots and keeps up with the times, while still feeling like its old self. And, of course, a strong Head Writer talented enough to carry out that transition and one that knows and respects the basic principles of the genre, like Claire Labine did for GH during that era.