Y&R Fires Entire Breakdown Writing Staff

[Soapsuds]

Reminds of Florence Johnston saying it after George retired.

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I've had it up to here with him.

[Paul Raven]

The time has come for them to bite the bullet on dumping some of those vets.

Billy/Chelsea could leave tomorrow.

Nick/Chelsea/Phyllis/Adam etc

Trouble is they have all been saddled with young children so having them leave town is a little more difficult

If only EB would retire or agree to go recurring.

[Soapsuds]

The show needs a massive exodus!

Billy, Victoria, Nick, Chelsea, Mariah, Jack(recast him), Tessa, Phyliss, Summer, Kyle......

[Paul Raven]

Harsh!

[Broderick]

I think it's a step in the right direction.  Yes, Josh Griffith is a horrible writer, and he'll fall flat on his face.  Then he'll be replaced with a better writer (hopefully), and we'll likely see a big improvement in the cohesiveness of the show.

Kay Alden said in the 1970s, she and Bill Bell wrote all the scripts by themselves.  Their "breakdown" was done first thing in the morning while the two of them sat at Bill's dining room table on Lakeshore Drive.  Bill took out a scrap piece of paper -- such as the back of the envelope the utility bill had come in -- and jotted down the names of several characters he wanted to feature in the day's episode.  He and Kay would spend a few minutes chatting about what each character on the envelope would be accomplishing in that particular episode and how the episode would end.  Then they would sit down at their typewriters.  Bill would write three of the five acts, and Kay would write the other two acts.  They would then collate their pages, call the overnight delivery service, and ship the script by airmail to Television City in Hollywood.  The next morning, they would breakdown a new script and start again. 

To me, that's the sensible way to write an intelligent script.  With the show now being an hour instead of thirty minutes, you'd likely need three (or possibly four) individuals on the team to complete the script.  (Two people could possibly still do it, as there's no longer a 5:00 pm deadline for an overnight mailing service; you just hit "send" in your email.)

The current breakdown writers and script writers are, for the most part, lazy as hell.  We saw that with our own eyes in 2020.  Television production was curtailed for several months due to the pandemic.  Several scripts had already been written but hadn't been taped yet.  If YOU were one of the writers, what would YOU have done during the shutdown?  I know what I would've done.  I would've taken every single script I'd written that hadn't been taped yet and re-written it to make it BETTER.  There was no time constraint whatsoever; you had literally WEEKS to polish each script and make each line of dialogue sharper, cleverer, and filled with subtext.  It was a writer's dream -- to have all those "bonus weeks" to polish his scripts and make them perfect.  I fully expected that when production resumed, we would see on our screens the smartest, best-written episodes in the show's history.  What did we get instead?  Complete crap.  These writers didn't bother to revise one word.  They just left the garbage they'd completed before the pandemic sitting on a table somewhere, and when production resumed, the actors picked up those dusty, cliché-riddled scripts and started spouting the drab dialogue that had been written months ago.  

If the writers are THAT lazy, better off without them, in my opinion.  Hopefully this (drastic) step will encourage the dialogue writers to do a better job.         

 

[Vee]

That is a very big assumption in this day and age.

I don't actually think this strike is the death knell for GH or DAYS at least. I suspect they have planned for the strike and will muddle through one way or another. Y&R is another story.

They are never recasting Jack again and most likely never firing Nick lol. I also think Griffith would rather cut off his arm than dump Thompson, MCE and several other played out people.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Vee

[dragonflies]

 

[Broderick]

Probably so.  Who knows what kind of ghoul will follow Griffith after his eventual collapse. 

Griffith is obviously suffering from a severe lack of creativity.  I realize a lot of his staleness is the result of CBS (and SONY) interfering in the headwriter's work, and that's likely to continue.

But with the ratings being as dismal as they are, you'd think someone at SONY, at CBS, at Y&R, would say, "Hey, this ain't working," throw out the model entirely, and try something completely different. 

I see this move as at least TRYING something different (cutting out the middle tier of writers), even if the motivation is strictly financial.  

Right now, the show seems to have about a dozen (not-so-talented) individuals churning out garbage that three or four talented individuals should theoretically be able to do more creatively and more efficiently.   

[Chris B]

This is pretty insane and not sustainable. Days already attempted this and it didn't work. There is no way he can handle being sole EP, HW and do the job of 5 seasoned breakdown writers when he couldn't do the job of HW. I also find it shocking when you think about the budget. How poorly are you managing your budget that you consider something like this? OR, if the overall budget is being cut, this could be a sign of things to come with actor exits coming next.

No matter how you look at it, this is a bad thing. The show is already not good, moves slow and most of the action happens off screen. That is only going to increase now. This makes them look so bad as well. Just shocking all around.

[dragonflies]

 

[Cat]

 

I was just coming on here to say the Y&R writing team has been replaced with Josh + ChatGPT. 

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I find this heart-breaking. Soaps need a writing team, even a small one, so a HW can bounce off ideas, or bring in different writing approaches, champion different characters and SLs.

I know the budget is nil and asphyxiating the show, but that's when you need the writing to deliver on the character level. It needs to be compelling despite the slashed budget. But I'm not sure any soap, let alone JG's Y&R, has the kind of 1970s creative ingenuity, where Daytime EPs, HWs and crew seemed to make silk purses from sows' ears almost daily. 

Whatever my personal view of soaps these days and Y&R, I feel awful for breakdown writers like Sara Bibel, Simone Hawthorne, Susan Banks, Natalie Minardi Slater, et al, all for whom Y&R was a labor of love -- at a time when my own belief in the genre has fallen off a cliff. Their dreams of turning the show around and giving it life have been irrevocably dashed. They likely will never return to Daytime/Y&R as they pivot to more viable other genres. 

This is a no-turning-back point for Y&R IMO. It has been largely unrecognisable the past 10-15 years, but now it is going to be worked into the ground. I'm wondering if, in a copycat move, it will be reduced to a 20-30 minute show and moved to CBS's streaming service.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Cat

[dragonflies]

No offense Donna but what does that have to with this thread? 

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[Vee]

A question for the ages, and one Donna can rarely answer.

Anyway, as to changing up the show: I just don't know. I do think streaming is the only real future soaps have, but Y&R is in no way equipped for it now, probably the least equipped soap left on air ironically; they have been comfortable at #1 by default and have done little to nothing to update or adapt. Their star paychecks even after what I'm sure are many pay cuts still have to be large. You could absolutely go back to the show's sensual, stylized roots, strip the cast down to a smaller guard, add new beautiful young people like the original cast and go back to 30 minutes on streaming, but what would that look like, and who in the current audience would watch it in large enough numbers?

[dragonflies]

YR skews older, I dunno if it would survive on streaming. GH, BOLD could though. BOLD does pretty well with they upload on YT, so I think it would be okay streaming

[AbcNbc247]

All these unemployed writers…

Maybe one of them wants a head writing job *hint hint* Ken Corday

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