Article on Hogan Sheffer

[soapfan770]

Another fascinating filled with insight on Sheffer's madness and filled with eerie things to come--note his like of Amber on B&B....

[YRBB]

He appears to write his "tales" in the bathroom, so why not read this there as well? :lol:

[DeeeDee]

You don't want to know how he recycles his scripts.

[YRBB]

LMAO!!!

[DRW50]

Now I remember that comment claiming they had no complaints about Hunt Block. I have some major doubts about that -- the character was a huge departure from Scott Bryce's Craig and even if the soap press and some fans adored him, not everyone did. I thought Block was jarringly wrong for the part from the getgo, and they destroyed Craig, forever, with their sociopathic writing.

This popped up at DAYS too. Oh, Hogan would love to write for the older characters, it's just the budget! Funny how Gary Tomlin has managed to put vets onscreen quite a bit, in far greater roles than Sheffer has done on any of his shows. I think he has contempt for older characters. I never felt that he liked Kim, and he turned Barbara into a sick joke.

All that love for Katie, and yet he wrote AWFUL story after AWFUL story for her and totally wasted any potential Simon/Katie ever had as a couple.

I'm glad that he doesn't do interviews now, although at least if he did we might get some insight into how many of his old flop stories he has recycled in Genoa City.

[Bright Eyes]

Hunt Block is an insufferable "actor." I'd rather watch Alison Sweeney cry like a retarded banshee. At least I can laugh at her horribleness.

[Mitch]

Some people don't like my tall hunk of burning love HB???I lurved him, even though he was playing Ben Warren on ATWT..(why did they kill him off GL, he was great being the pain in the ass to everyone.)

I too hate it when the blame the budget on not writing for the vets. Hey, it costs you as much to bring them in for a day to say two lines as it does to give them something of substance to do. That was really apparent on GL when they would trot poor Marj Dusay out to flutter over Alan, lick her lips, laugh and disappear into the Spaulding broom closet. This is the great Alexandra Spaulding???Thats all you can have her do...you still have to pay her, make her do something you idiots!!!

I lurved Katie and Simon and that hot scene when they were trying to get the key off of Katie. They were cute, fun, sexy...and then..nothing! They should have been on adventures, solving mysteries with Simon finding himself shirtless at every turn!

[catsmeouch]

If Hogan loves Amber so much, why did he have Deacon rape her?

[DRW50]

He seems to like those types of stories. He wrote endlessly for Sami (although he ruined the character) and he gave her one of those rape stories. I think Amber was also supposed to get the is it/is it not rape story, like Sami did, but something curtailed it.

[NorrthCafe]

Why do daytime writers 1 - admit their lack of imagination? 2 - need to tell us about their bathrooms. Didn't Brad Bell do some interview where he talked about a storyline he thought up for a character while in the shower? TMI, dudes. So all Sheffer can think about is Carly in conflict? If you're married, you can't be exciting? WEAK!

[P.J.]

That simpleton rat bastard's interview! Ugh....yes, I was a Carjacker offended by his dumbass comments, but not because I believed "Carly would never be happy" (shows what a friggin' idiot I was...) but because they show a complete ignorance of what makes soap viewers tick. So what if Todd Rotondi's Bryant was "boring" (IA on that)...write something interesting for him! He was "boring" based on a horrific teen romance with Jennifer. Instead of realizing that, and REMEMBERING he was Craig's son and Lucinda's "heir apparent", they killed off a legacy character without thinking, to drive TWO weeks' worth of story. And so much for "one last" go-round with Annie Parisse's Julia---Hogan wrote Jack's rape by that bitch, and refused to call it that or punish her for it.

Interesting how he's praising Scott Hoylrod's Paul...only to [!@#$%^&*] can him in favor of Howarth. And I refuse to believe there was no dissatisfaction with Block's casting. I know a lot of posters who couldn't stand his version of Craig.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I wish Sheffer would be neutered and banished from ever writing anything ever again.

When you fail at three soaps in a row with the same disastrous ways of telling stories, you know something isn't right there.

He had one good year at ATWT, and even then, there was nothing brilliant about the show. He's been coasting off that one decent year for far too long.

[nightstar]

why in the hell do people kept giving jobs to hacks like hogan it is really freakin stupid.

[Vee]

It helps when there's only (I think) three over fifty left, and then only two who are white. For older vets you have Bo, Hope, Stefano, Kate, Maggie, Abe and Lexie, and if you want to get Carly and Vivian, fine - who's left? Roman doesn't count. That's it.

I liked a lot of Sheffer's ATWT and hated other parts. Despite the negative effects on some characters I think he did wonders with Barbara, for example. That singlehandedly revitalized Colleen Zenk-Pinter on that show. Hogan's problem has always been excess and at ATWT there was also an exaggerated willingness to jettison the past for a new vision of a character.

ETA: Okay, I forgot Victor. And so does Days, most of the time.

[DRW50]

I guess Anna might be a vet (I don't know whether they're still vets if they were gone for that many years), and there's also Victor and Caroline.

I don't remember Sheffer using any of the veterans that much, so it didn't seem like the budget so much as lack of interest. I remember evil Andre and a two second return for Anna, Hope having a few moments with Bo and then calling out Belle, and John being in a coma, and some stuff for Patch/Kayla, but otherwise it was just people sitting in the Brady pub reading letters. It wouldn't have bothered me as much if he actually knew how to write for younger characters, but instead he said stuff like Stefano and Victor were too old and it was time to build up EJ and Phillip, and he had EJ as a sadistic torturer/rapist and Phillip as a rageaholic who dangled a pregnant woman over a boat. So I thought it was the worst of both worlds.

It was the same at ATWT, generally -- he would use the vets to try to make the younger characters look better but couldn't write for the younger characters that well, so I thought it was all cancelled out.

Now he's at Y&R and Victor suffocates the show more than he ever has before, and we also see a lot of Katherine, in spite of budget cuts. So I think it's less about budget with Sheffer and more about just only wanting to write for a specific type of older person. Victor is the typical man Sheffer likes to write for on a soap, so we get to see him crush people and degrade women day in and day out.