Y&R: New Head Writer

[titan1978]

MAB cannot be forgiven for having two crappy Doppelganger stories running at the same time.

[titan1978]

It's kind of pathetic and I'm sad about having a conversation about which of four terrible consecutive writing teams was worse when the new one coming looks to be dreadful.

Young and the Restless has loyal fans, no other soap has survived 10 years of turmoil in TPTB. The fact they haven't lost more viewers is amazing.

[John]

Sony needs to fire JFP & Hire Wendy Riche

[JONNYSBRO]

Wendy would be a great choice for Y and R and on her twitter she states she loves the show. SONY won't replace JFP considering all this power she is getting. I swear JFP is the hardest bitch to kill in daytime

[EricMontreal22]

I'd believe it. She's not all thatyoung anymore, and I gather it's a lot more work (especially on an hour show,) than the position she is in. She's older than Lorraine Broderick who apparently has made it clear she's happy being a AHW from now on (coming back to AMC as a favour to Agnes, notwithstanding.)

[EricMontreal22]

As did Agnes Nixon, as I said. As for AMC and EPs, by 2007-2008 they could have used basically any EP and it wouldn't have mattered--Brian was EP.

[EricMontreal22]

Briefly, at first.

[cassadine1991]

I do wonder about how Kay Alden would've done with AMC

[YRBB]

No sane, talented writer would want to be a HW and deal with insane micromanaging and purposeful destroying of quality in these times. No big surprise.

[EricMontreal22]

I did like some of his early stuff on AMC as I've said (and I agree with Marceline there.) Granted, the show under McTavish's last year or so was a mess, and then Brown/Esenstein's show was focused on one (not very good) story and had a dire pace--so when he came on (and I'm not even sure how much credit he gets for this,) the early months had a lot more diverse canvas, bits of humour (like Petey's fantasies,) that felt fitting for classic AMC, some topical storylines, and an at first welcome faster pace. Of course Agnes Nixon has said it was a few months in that she was locked out of story meetings, and suddenly it was like he was trying to write a daytime Melrose Place. Seriously. He was only on for 18 months or so, but the last 12 were pretty awful, and the last 6 (if not more) really did make the show unrecognizable in a way I don't remember it being before-- even during some McTavish years or Passanante's crappy time. When Broderick came back as an interim writer for the anniversary the change was so quickly apparent.

Back then, it was said that (probably due to his primetime credit -- remember he also for some reason had exec consultant credits on Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty,) he was VERY expensive which was one reason he was dropped from GH and why Frons did allow him to be replaced at AMC (ratings had tumbled by then, after their initial spike, anyway.)

[cassadine1991]

Wasn't the transition from Pratt to Broderick around the time AMC went to LA

[EricMontreal22]

Darren Star essentially left as show runner right after Season 3 of Melrose I believe and that's when Pratt replaced him (he had written episodes before, and I may have the timeline wrong,) but, if you like Melrose, he did some fun stuff. Hell, I even enjoyed in a guilty way his Models Inc, Hell I even liked the very short lived Dynasty update, Titans. But they were trashy, primetime soaps and after that Pratt seemed to think daytime soaps should be written and even paced the same way which does NOT work (particularly for a show like AMC.) Despite primetime soaps taking much of their inspiration from daytime, and then upping the anti by 110%, they're such different beasts. (Didn't Pratt co-create Sunset Beach but never HW?)

[EricMontreal22]

Right and while you do a lot to fill in the details (depending more or less on the writer,) you really don't get much say as a script writer (compared to even a breakdown writer,) in even suggesting story direction or ideas.

[cassadine1991]

IIRC, Pratt DID co-create Sunset Beach

[YRBB]

I thought Frank South was the showrunner for seasons 4 to sometime in season 6?