Writers in all mediums have plots, themes, and character types they reuse. If you pick up a Jodi Picoult novel, you usually expect to find a trial focused on a morally dicey issue. If you watch a Ryan Murphy show, you expect to see a white man with dark hair who looks like he can play Superman and an iconic actress over 50 years old playing a bitch. Soap writers are no different. They all have habits and writing tics, so let’s explore that.
Brad Bell, The Bold & The Beautiful
I Own 51% Of This Penis
In this fictionalized version of Los Angeles, the key to happiness isn’t a fulfilling work life or your family. It is a penis, and not just any dong hanging around in LA. The dick has to be coveted by another woman for it to have value. That’s because it isn’t really about the man. It is about the other woman losing. The man is just a plot device in the battle between the two women.
Brad Bell doesn’t limit the Dong War to just the active participants. The whole canvas has to discuss which woman is the rightful owner of the fickle phallus. Thomas and Steffy are grown and have kids of their own and they still want mommy and daddy together. It is pathetic, and they shouldn’t want their mother entangled in such a toxic situation, but it is about winning. They just want to be able to say to Brooke, “Hey, slut! My Daddy loves my Mommy more than you! Neener, neener, neener! Enjoy that empty bed!”
What makes stories like this even worse is the plot device – I mean, a man enjoying the validation of two women fighting over him. Love triangles are a staple of the genre, but is it romantic to never be secure in your relationship? To constantly wonder when he’ll leave you? It isn’t romantic, but Brad is going to keep telling stories like this because he lacks the creativity to ever really move away from it.
That’s Not The Truth, Bradley
Soaps mess up history all the time, but it is just embarrassing to mess up the history of stories you wrote. If you are a B&B fan, surely you’ve noticed the show getting the history of past stories very wrong. For example, dialogue that says that Brooke cheated on Ridge with Thorne when they weren’t even together when Brooke was with Thorne. The show completely ignores that Brooke was there for Thomas, Steffy, and Phoebe after Taylor’s “death” when they were children and acts like they always hated her. Hope used to call Ridge dad, but now he declares she isn’t his favorite person or that he loves her depending on the day.
The big advantage of a daytime soap opera is you have all this history and fans that are attached to it. They don’t enjoy B&B getting shit that they saw with their own eyeballs wrong. The only question is if this is incompetence or if the show intentionally does it. I think it is incompetence, given that they named Taylor’s grandson after her abusive first husband Hayes. They need to do better because fans shouldn’t be the only ones embarrassed by this.
Respect My Marriage
The catchphrase of B&B is “Respect my marriage!” That line of dialogue has been in most characters’ mouths. You could do a whole montage of characters demanding that someone respect their marriage. It is comical because almost none of these people respect anyone’s marriage. They are all slutty hypocrites with the exception of Finn, who isn’t promiscuous and doesn’t butt into other people’s relationships. I’d just like for the show to be self-aware for once and have someone point out that almost everyone disrespects marriage on this show.
Turning On A Dime
One of Brad’s good habits is the ability to drop something when it isn’t working. A good example was Paris randomly having fantasies about kissing Finn, but that was dropped very quickly. Brad can be myopic and stubborn about certain things like his beloved triangles, but to his credit, he can recognize a forthcoming stinker and kill it before it gets out of hand. I wish other head writers could see that a story is terrible at the start of it, but alas Brad is the only one who ends a bad story before it is too late.
Location, Location, Location
B&B is the only soap that still does real location shoots. Not going out to film at a dingy bench like GH does. B&B is the most watched soap in the world, and Brad takes advantage of that to give us glamorous location shoots. They couldn’t do it for two years because of COVID, but this year we got Steffy and Finn’s reunion in Monaco, which fans were thrilled with. He also gave us Li’s car exploding after a chase with Sheila, which was shot in LA. None of the other soaps are giving us this, but Brad does deliver in this regard as a head writer and executive producer.
The Worst Soap When It Comes To Diversity
You can’t write a column about the habits of head writers without bringing up how B&B is the least diverse soap. The show exists in a universe where only straight men design clothes. There isn’t a stereotypical gay man to play an assistant who says things like “Yasss, Brooke. Have sex with your sister’s man. You are so fierce. I’m obsessed. You are Mother.” Yet a twink running around stanning Brooke would simply be too progressive for B&B.
The show does have Black characters, but they aren’t treated well. Carter was in that racist outsourced cock story and we can’t even be happy he reunited with Quinn since Rena Sofer fled the show. Paris can never seem to find her footing as a character, despite Diamond White being a talented actress. Zende is just there. The last time Black characters were an actual presence on B&B was when the Avant family was there and Brad got rid of them so we could have more screen time spent on debating which white woman is going to wield the chosen white penis of the moment.
Li is there, and I like that the show has an Asian character who is a doctor and a fiercely protective mother, but will she last? Brad famously has a short attention span with new characters and it is even worse when they aren’t white. She’s been one of the highlights of the show this year, and I’m not sure that matters to Brad at all.
Ron Carlivati, Days of Our Lives
The Predatory Gay and His Sociopathic Bestie
Ron has a habit of creating a horny gay man who hits on every semi-attractive man they see and even tries to blackmail straight men into sex, who is friends with an amoral woman who is desperate to keep a man. He did it on GH with Brad and Britt and now he has Leo and Gwen on Days. The difference is Brad and Britt were much more well-received and fans want Leo and Gwen to fall into a sinkhole every time they have the same damn conversation.
History Lover
Out of the five current men writing soaps, I feel confident in saying that Ron loves soaps the most. There’s a genuine love and affection for soaps in his writing. He’ll use the history of the show in good stories and bad stories. In the latter category, he brought up Sami shooting her rapist Alan in the crotch during the story of Allie’s rape in the fall of 2020. It was terrible, but I appreciated that use of history. It was such a pivotal moment for Sami that it was right to use it for a story about her daughter’s rape.
Ron will also use villains from the past. He’s the one who brought Jan Spears back from her extended coma to terrorize Shawn and Belle again. He used 80’s villain Orpheus and his kids. Under his regime, we finally got a recast of EJ so we could have a head of the DiMera family since diabetes took Stefano. He also was the one to suggest Stacy Haiduk when it came time to recast Kristen since he remembered her as Patty on Y&R.
Everyone Is Getting Put In The Corner, Baby
Ron has a bad habit of writing characters into corners. He did it on One Life to Live when Todd (who would later turn out to be Victor in a convoluted retcon) had sex with amnesiac Marty. This was egregious because Todd raped Marty in 1992 with his frat brothers Zach and Powell. He wrote Ava on GH murdering Connie, being complicit in AJ’s murder, and he had her and Sonny make a baby in the Quartermaine crypt. If Ava were played by anyone that wasn’t Maura West, she would have ended up in a paint-by-number soap murder mystery by 2014.
Ron has continued his trend of putting characters into corners on Days. Gwen was clearly supposed to be a character that fits into the Kendall Hart archetype. The bitter long lost child of a veteran character who comes to town to shake shit up. Ron forgot that the Kendall Hart archetype should be at least a little bit sympathetic, even when they are being heinous. After everything Gwen has done, from drugging Abigail and Sarah to ordering Leo to kill Abigail over a shattered mug, if Gwen ended up dead in a Jigsaw from Saw trap, fans would join hands and start singing “Miracles Happen” by Myra.
I just wish Ron had a co-head writer or an executive producer who would tell him that he doesn’t need to go to extremes all the time. Save that for characters that are expendable or designed to be short-term. Don’t dig a hole for characters you might not be able to get them out of. He is just making the job harder for himself.
All Hail The Queen
Ron respects the matriarch of a soap. He had consistent stories for Erika Slezak on OLTL. His first big story as a head writer was Viki moving to Paris, moving to Texas, and finding love. He’s continued that on Days with Deidre Hall. From the double doppelgangers swap at the start of his tenure, to putting the Devil back in Marlena, Ron has made sure the lead of the series is taken care of. Soaps are an ensemble, but when people think Days, they think of Dr. Marlena Evans. She’s the face of the show.
This respect Ron has for the matriarch of a soap goes back to him being a soap fan. Not all head writers would have older women leading stories like this. Another head writer might just have them as a comforting presence for younger characters, one who gives out tea and advice. Ron knows characters like this are a valuable asset to a show and utilizes them. It is a very good habit.
Natural Drama? Nah. Hijinks!
Ron has a tendency to favor hijinks over natural drama. Justin marrying the doppelganger of his dead wife Adrienne had great soap story potential. It would have been natural drama for his sons to oppose him marrying the woman who once had their mother spend months in prison. Instead, we got Calista Lockhart showing up so they could make jokes about Calista being married to a dead man named Harrison Lord, and then she died and nothing came of it. It was a big waste of our time.
I’ve wondered why Ron does this type of thing. It is likely he just enjoys wacky hijinks. He could think playing the natural drama of a story is too expected and tries to subvert it with humor. If that is his point of view, I’d say playing something straight would be the most subversive thing he could do now. People expect wacky writing from Ron. If he leaned into the natural conflict of a story, it would be a welcome surprise.
Let Me Put A Band-Aid Over This Gaping Wound
Ron’s habit that he’s developed at Days is putting a couple through hell and then getting them back together quickly. He had Chad and Abigail in pieces over him cheating with her British half-sister, but then they had off-screen marriage counseling and they were all good until Clyde stabbed her to death. Shawn and Belle were in a bad place over Jan’s baby and Belle banging EJ, like her sister Sami did, but that’s all over with like it never happened.
If you are going to put a couple through a conflict like that, either have them stay broken up for a bit or show us how they get through it. It is so lazy to have them just get over it. It would make the reunion much more satisfying and it would be good soap opera to write that. You’re on five days a week. You have a bit of space to take your time with a story.
Chris Van Etten & Dan O’Connor, General Hospital
Dangling Threads
GH has an absurd amount of dangling plot threads. Trina still doesn’t know she was drugged, we don’t know where Hayden is, Luke’s death, etc. The list goes on and they’ve just started resolving stuff like Jordan and Curtis not being divorced, which started a year ago, and Trina’s paternity as well. Part of the problem has to be the cast size since all you have to do is text Frank Valentini to get a job. That has to be a factor in how stories play out because you have a finite amount of episodes and actors with guarantees you have to adhere to.
I’m not letting Chris and Dan off the hook for this problem. So much of the storytelling on GH is just spinning their wheels to the point that when they finally do get around to moving it forward, you no longer care. Trina’s trial should have happened sooner. They spent way too much time having Carly and Sonny have the same “Stranger In My House (Thunderpuss Remix)” conversation for months. It took them months to get Chase and Brook Lynn together when there were literally no obstacles between them.
There have been positive developments lately. It didn’t take Ava months to learn that Nikolas had dicked down a 19-year-old sociopath. The Hook serial killer story is moving fairly quickly and it just began. I just need stories to keep moving at a steady pace. I don’t want the Y&R thing where stories only last two weeks. I just ask for movement.
The Vets Are Pets
Chris and Dan are by no means perfect and have made some highly questionable creative decisions, but they are using the veteran characters. We’ve seen more of Lucy and Felicia than we have in many years. Anna is a lead and she’s getting her back blown out by Valentin. Laura is positioned as the respected matriarch of the show. Ned is the patriarch of the Quartermaine family. Chris and Dan are making use of these beloved characters.
Kiss, Kiss, No Bang, Bang
While we were thrilled with Anna and Valentin getting a hot love scene, the fan consensus is there’s been a lack of humping on GH. Love in the afternoon is part of the appeal of soaps. Instead of playing dress-up with old Eddie Maine costumes, Chase should be plowing Brook Lynn into the mattress. Tajh Bellow has a body you usually have to pay to see on Onlyfans. Why isn’t TJ having sex in the hospital elevator with Willow? Romance and hot illicit sex are important to soaps. Give it to us.
An Absurd Amount Of Paternity/Maternity Drama
It is a soap staple to find out a character has a long-lost child. No one would bat an eyelash if we just had one of these stories going on right now. Yet Chris and Dan have given us multiple paternity/maternity stories. Curtis might be Trina’s father, Willow is Nina’s daughter and the only one who knows is Carly, Esme is Ryan’s daughter with an unknown mother and now there’s Cody, the son of long-dead Dominique and an unknown father. Is this the only type of story they know how to tell?
I know network notes can fuck fans over, but this is the time for ABC to step in and tell them that this is too much of the same type of story. You need variety on a soap opera. I don’t need to feel like I’m watching stories that are all in the same damn wheelhouse.
Fuck Off Already
What is it with Chris and Dan writing men like pushy assholes? Finn has disregarded Elizabeth’s boundaries to the point where if she pushed him down a flight of stairs, Soap Twitter would start twerking. Cody has been acting like a used car salesman in his pursuit of Britt. You have Gregory negging Alexis in Chris and Dan’s piss poor attempt at an enemies-to-lovers story. I shouldn’t want the woman to throat punch the man in a love story.
Josh Griffith, The Young and the Restless
Man Pain For Them And Pain For Us
In the three years since Josh Griffith regretfully returned to Y&R, we’ve been subjected to the woes of men often. Whether it was Adam lamenting about killing a rando who was terrorizing his blind mother or Billy podcasting about his dead daughter who has been in the ground for nine years, Josh sure loves writing it. If a man can do a monologue about his tortured feelings, Josh will write it and it will be so tedious that you’ll regret watching the show in the first place.
Do women get the same level of attention for their pain? Not really. You don’t see Chloe doing podcasts about Delia. She’s stopped trying to murder Adam and now spends her days telling Sally to stay away from Adam and his cursed dong. Sharon did get some great scenes after Rey died, but now she’s relegated to pouring coffee and listening to other people’s drama. Josh can be blissfully unaware of the target audience of the show, which is women. Not emotionally stunted middle-aged men.
Long Story? The Best He Can Give You Is Two Weeks
I’ll never forget Mariah cheating on Tessa and then them making up a week later. Affairs are supposed to cause at least a few months of drama, but Josh deemed Mariah getting a taste of a blonde bartender to be no biggie. Fans were bamboozled into thinking this popular pairing was getting real angst but got nothing. It was terrible soap writing.
I know CBS, who allegedly meddles in stories to a wild degree, is a factor in this. CBS squashed the Jack and Lauren affair story that he wanted to tell in 2019. Yet I have heard from sources that Josh allegedly struggles with writing long stories now, so we can’t just blame CBS. The hasty Ashland death story is more evidence that stories with a beginning, middle, and ending are just something that doesn’t happen on this show anymore.
Is There Only Going To Be One Company In Genoa City?
The only business stories Josh seems to want to write are mergers. He just smashes companies together with no real vision of where this is going. Newman Enterprises merged with Locke Industries, there was Chancellor/Winters, and Jabot bought Marchetti. Now Victoria and Nate are plotting to take over Chancellor/Winters when that company goes public, adding it to Newman Enterprises. It is the “you put your chocolate in my peanut butter!” of business stories.
Can Josh watch CNBC or pick up a Wall Street Journal? Mergers aren’t the only type of business story. There could be an Elizabeth Holmes type who comes to town and swindles the rich old men into her bullshit scam. Chancellor/Winters could put on a music festival that becomes a Fyre Fest level disaster. I don’t think it would be that expensive to get some tents and shoot a few people outside eating cheese sandwiches. Let’s tell a story that isn’t Company A merging with Company B.
Dispatches From Soap Land
*I’m so happy the Abigail murder mystery is over at Days. It was the worst murder mystery in soap history and I’d like to leave it in the past until Abigail inevitably scoots out of her coffin.
*Casting Trevor St. John as Tucker on Y&R is ridiculous because he’s 20 years younger than Stephen Nichols who last played the role. Although Trevor does look a bit older than he is in the face, so I’ll go along with it. I’m more worried about how quickly it will take him to start phoning it in because when Trevor doesn’t like a story, he checks out quickly.
*GH is making wise choices thus far in this serial killer story. I am on guard because soaps have a habit of killing off important legacy characters during serial killer stories.
