DAYS: Tomlin/Whitesell OUT! Higley/Griffith IN!

[Michael]

I'm sure a big part of it is that Higley will write what Corday, Meng, and Decazotte (sp?) want her to. Maybe Tomlin and Whitesell were pushing back too much.

[cassadine1991]

You think so?

[Sindacco]

Higley came up with the idea of having Nicole switch Sami's baby. TomSell turned it into an actual storyline.

TomSell were the ones running the ship in 2009. Corday was busy writing his book. Then in 2010-2011 it was like a back and forth between Higley and TomSell.

Higley's stints as head writer can be broken down to this:
March 2003 - August 2003
February 2008 - October 2008
October 2008 - June 2011 (with TomSell)
June 2011 - August 2011 (with just Tomlin as EP)

[titan1978]

So I looked at Dena's credits on Wiki. She was on the Days writing team from 1985 to 2003? How long was she associate head writer and what other positions did she hold before getting her shot at HW? I'm just shocked. She was present for many Days classics, but was just awful as HW.

I admit I didn't watch the show daily after Melaswen, but I did watch occasionally, and was unimpressed. She drove me off OLTL though, after watching with my grandmother when Jenny Wolek was still on the show.

[juppiter]

Days:Tina::Dena:Ike.

[Skin]

I don't understand this constant recycling of head writers. It's like there is a limited pool of people that you can hire by soap mandate or something.

I actually liked the current head writers we had when they took over for Mardar, 2013 was amazing -- and even 2014 was more or less passable. But once they lost EJ and Sami it seemed like the show just fell apart, and Eileen's last return fell on deaf ears mostly.

[quartermainefan]

I really think it is having the job once means you can do the job, and that's a safer bet than taking a chance on a talented newcomer. They are not looking to create art here and it is a dying genre they just hope to milk a few extra years out of, is this seriously where they are going to place their unknown geniuses? It would be great but seems unlikely.

[RavenWhitney]

Thurs and Friday episodes are two reasons Tomsell needed to be let go. The elephant, Clyde, the ridiculous cabin scenes, awful! Uninspired, drivel. Why do they think the audience wants to sit through that. The Hope plot is really turning out to suck. Why would they go down this road with Aiden instead of connecting him to other Salem citizens and bringing Hope back into the main stories. I'm not optimistic about the new writers but Tomsell just needed to go.

[JONNYSBRO]

They seem to be a writing team that just lost steam or ran out of ideas.

[RavenWhitney]

After watching this week, here's another word for this writing team: stodgy. They try to be hip and contemporary at times but the writers can't sustain that. I think part of the problem is too many esteemed seniors on the writing staff. They do need some younger, hip creative energy and not just in the writers room. Corday keeps hiring friends who should be on the employment lines, can anyone say Richard Bloore costume designer. And the set designers too. You can be low budget and not be tacky. The set designers just throw one pattern after another and stuff everywhere. Sonny coffee house is a like being on LSD. HA.

[KMan101]

I agree. The show is lacking in so many areas. Costuming, set design ...

[Michael]

Yup. They're definitely hiring people whom they know can crank stuff out under the current model, not people who can do it with flair or bring a new viewpoint.

[KMan101]

Exactly.

I'm sure the show is broke. That's obvious. From the awful six month ahead taping schedule, the horrible sets, the butchering of larger sets, the awful episode guarantees that everyone not named Daniel or Melanie have .... but the fact is, NBC couldn't have tossed the show a few bucks after it won it's Emmy?

Cheap can be cheap without it LOOKING cheap. Days LOOKS cheap and I say that with such a heavy heart. It's 100% on the same path as ATWT, GL .... Y&R won't be far behind at this point, they're just lucky they're on CBS and #1. CBS has been trying to butcher the show for at least a decade now. A DECADE. Latham started that downward spiral in 2005 and it continues with Pratt. I guess at least it doesn't look cheap. Yet. Anywho ....

Meanwhile, B&B should teach all the soaps left how to run a show and IMO, all the soaps should be a half hour. They never should have been inflated to an hour in the 1970s.

[Michael]

It looks and feels embarrassingly cheap.

NBC is never going to up the show's license fee. The only reason it's still on is because Corday/Sony found a way to budget it so that they aren't taking a humongous loss on the small license fee NBC pays to air the show. So we have limitations, and that's fine. But now is the time to be creative about it instead of just slapping crap up on the screen.

Honestly, if the writing were stronger, I'd just laugh at how ugly the new Kiriakis 'study' is and move on with my day. But it's hard not to feel screwed-over when the stories aren't even engaging. I laughed at that dumb pier set in 2009-11, but for a good chunk of that, the writing was so engaging that I barely cared.

[RavenWhitney]

Agree. Take a look at Edge of Night episodes from 1980 and 81 on Youtube. The sets were serviceable and unassuming, but it rarely mattered until Henry Slesar was fired in 1983 and Lee Sheldon's drivel started to air. All the same sets but without the writing I would cringe watching the show and notice Geraldine's curtains in her hotel room. If it aint on the page....