That was the contract and the rumors at the time were that he tried to get out of it and stay at GH. Nobody was happy, and the show used his outlines deep into the fall after he was gone.
I still give ABC, Riche, and Labine a lot of credit for finishing the Stone/Robin story even when the ratings were dropping because it was hard to watch and some viewers were turned off by the show doing any story about HIV. The rest of the show did suffer during the last few months of Stone being alive, but they were rebuilding before Guza got there and he did bring the ratings back up.
After he stepped down but was still credited as EP at Y&R, Bell gave an interview where he said he thought they could take those first two years of Y&R scripts and update the way the characters speak, but mostly just film them intact with a new cast and have a hit all over again. I remember comments at the time saying he basically already did that with B&B.
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titan1978 ·
