Alan’s Soap Box: The Case Against Y&R’s Josh Griffith

It has now been five years since Josh Griffith rejoined Y&R as head writer and executive producer in 2019. It is the longest head writer tenure we’ve had on the show since Kay Alden from 1998 to 2006. It is quite unusual for the show to not fire a head writer for this long. I think it is time for a change in leadership and here are the reasons why it is time to fire Josh Griffith.

Bad Business

Business stories under Josh Griffith’s Y&R are either about companies merging or people changing jobs every six months. That’s it. It is either Jabot acquiring a company that sounds like an Italian restaurant or the upteenth job change for half the canvas. It is so boring. I don’t care if Jabot or Newman Enterprises acquires a company because I know it won’t matter at all. I also don’t care about a job change for the same reason. How many times have we seen Sally and Chloe bouncing from job to job in between talking about Sally’s love life? They could work offscreen at a Pizza Hut and it would have the same impact as them being interior decorators.

This is a far cry from the business stories told by Bill Bell. In the ’90s, when the Abbotts lost control of Jabot to Victor after going public, it wasn’t really about the business. It was a story about foolhardy Jack disappointing his father John. The businesses were used to drive the drama and it trained the fans to care about the business stories. Now we’re expected to care about some streaming service that we never see and has zero impact on anything.

If Y&R wanted to tell a story about the media business, there’s ways they could do that. They could have had Newman Media doing a docuseries about famously crushed to death David Kimble that revealed he had a son. They could have Leanna Love adapt her book about Victor, Ruthless, into a miniseries. Claire could write a book about her life of abuse and being turned against her family. They won’t do any of that though. They’ll just keep throwing around corporate buzzwords and nothing will matter at all.

Old White Guys Who Do Nothing

Josh has a bad habit of bringing on an old white guy who is heralded as a big bad who does nothing until it is time for his exit. The first one was Ashland who just hung around until it was revealed he faked his cancer and then he fell and died. Then there was Jeremy who did nothing until he helped Phyllis fake her death, then randomly got threatening with her and she stabbed him to death with scissors.

We still have Tucker who just exists to look bored and bang Audra. He doesn’t enhance his son Devon’s story because they don’t have father/son chemistry and they aren’t often in scenes together. His relationship with Audra has been an albatross on a promising vixen. When Tucker was with Ashley, it started out well, but nosedived. What exactly is the point of Tucker McCall? Does Josh Griffith know?

I’m just tired of Josh hiring veteran soap actors and wasting their time like this. Getting Robert Newman to replace Richard Burgi as Ashland was so exciting since he hadn’t been on soaps since 2009 when Guiding Light ended. Now, I don’t think any soap is going to be able to get him back. He’s happier in Michigan doing productions of Love Letters. James Hyde and Trevor St. John also returned to soaps only to get subpar material. I don’t have much sympathy for Trevor given how often he phones in his performances, but James deserved better even for a short stint.

Navel Gazing

A hallmark of Josh’s Y&R is tedious introspection. We’ve had two dream episodes this year so far and Easter hasn’t even happened yet! Not to mention all the other dream episodes we’ve had under Josh’s third head writer tenure. Who could forget Abby teleporting around Genoa City or Adam’s chess dream? I don’t hate dream episodes, but they should be used sparingly. It has become Josh’s crutch when he needs to fill an episode on the cheap.

The navel gazing isn’t limited to lazy dream episodes. Remember Billy podcasting? That alone could have been justification to fire Josh. All the scenes of just Billy whining about his man pain in a tiny set were not what fans wanted to see. I can kind of understand the idea of wanting to do something involving podcasts if you are having media businesses. However, CBS and Sony should have told him that no one is watching a soap opera to see a middle-aged man prattle on about his feelings alone. If a person wants to listen to a podcast, they’ll just listen to a podcast.

Wasted Potential

I am never going to forget Josh firing Loren Lott in 2019 and claiming that he couldn’t think of stories for Ana. It was absurdly stupid. Ana is the daughter of a drug addict and the sister of a billionaire and a singer. A writer with zero knowledge of Y&R could think of 10 stories for Ana based on that description. Yet Josh can write a story about a 12 year old having OCD that is played with the seriousness of a cancer diagnosis.

Josh has even dropped the ball with characters he created like Allie. Fans were so excited to finally address Keemo’s absence and have his daughter on the canvas. The Abbotts desperately needed a young woman in the family and Asian characters on soaps are fairly rare. It wasn’t long until Josh got bored and Allie was banished to Europe, where soap characters go when a show is done with them.

I worry the same fate could await Claire. She has tremendous potential with her backstory. A woman who was stolen at birth and raised to hate her family is so soapy. The problem is most of the Newman family has accepted her too fast and she hasn’t met any of her siblings. Now they are going to have Claire working as a nanny. She was just in the mental ward in the hospital and she’s going to be fetching Harrison apple juice? That’s insipid.

The veterans are not getting any younger. Eric Braeden is going to be 83 years old soon. They need to start setting up the younger generations for success. That means investing in them and not throwing them away after five minutes so you can hire a fifty something actor who will add no value to the show.

What The Fuck?

Josh has written Phyllis in character for this tenure. She is an insecure mess who only cares about herself. The problem is the stories have all been dumb as fuck. From planting dinosaur bones at a construction site to throwing herself at Danny while almost naked at the GCAC, all the stories have just been bad. When Diane returned, I thought maybe it would be good, but all we got from that is just rants and a fake death story that went nowhere.

It doesn’t help that Michelle Stafford is acting like she’s in a RuPaul’s Drag Race acting challenge parody of a soap and not an actual soap. Michelle is a good actress, but Josh’s material clearly does not inspire her to do her best. It makes me question the need for Phyllis on the canvas. This is truly jarring because when Gina Tognoni was playing the role, Phyllis was arguably the female lead of the show. Now, Phyllis just leads in giving fans secondhand embarrassment.

Pouring Coffee In Prada

Josh treating Sharon poorly isn’t a new problem. In January 2023, I had a whole column about how badly she is treated. Now, it is worse than it was back then. Sharon was only in two episodes in February. That’s the kind of episode count you expect for Esther. Not the episode count of one of the most popular characters on the show.

Every time we think Josh is going to do right by Sharon, the rug gets pulled out from under us. The Cameron story gave Sharon a good month of material, but after that it fell off a cliff. Sharon inheriting Cameron’s company did nothing for her. The company doesn’t have a set! How are we supposed to take a company seriously if they just have meetings at Crimson Lights? If he didn’t want Sharon in the business world, he should have just had her become a fulltime therapist and not given her an offscreen company.

In Josh’s Defense

I can’t read Josh for filth without pointing out that not everything is the head writer or executive producer’s fault. They answer to higher ups who can tell them no even if it is a great idea. Josh allegedly wanted to write an affair between Jack and Lauren in 2019, but CBS nixed it. Sometimes you have a studio executive who just wants a soap to be staid and boring.

I also don’t think Josh is totally talentless. I think he should be proud of the work he did at One Life to Live. He contributed to some of the best years that show ever had. He’s also given strong material to Melody Thomas Scott recently which I think could finally get her a Daytime Emmy. Having Nikki being forced off the wagon was a great idea and got her away from boring business stories where the character doesn’t belong. If nothing else, he can be proud of that.

Time For Change

Soap fans always worry the replacement will be worse than what we currently have. It is a valid fear. There are lots of unemployed hacks who would be worse than Josh. The show has certainly hired people who have had destructive reigns like Lynn Marie Latham and Maria Arena Bell. I just reject the idea that Josh should stay just because someone could be hypothetically worse than him.

We’ve seen what Josh has to offer, both good and bad. It has been five years of this, and now it is time for a change. Someone who can tell a business story that isn’t about a merger or musical chair job titles. Someone who can write compelling romance. Someone who can write story beats like Victoria talking with her ex-husband Billy about Claire. Someone who can successfully integrate young characters onto the canvas with a purpose and a personality. Someone with a vision that can take Y&R beyond the four year renewal it just got.

Y&R can’t afford to be complacent. The media landscape is ever changing. If the show still wants to be around in a decade, it needs to be set up for success now. Josh got the show through the Covid era and he hasn’t been a totally destructive mess, but I don’t think he should get more time than he’s already been given. It is time to move on and place the show in other people’s hands.

Dispatches From Soap Land

*I am liking the new material on GH thus far. We are getting longer scenes and it feels much more family driven. It feels more classic soap than what we got during the Chris and Dan era. Jake and Danny having conflict over their father Jason is a good idea.

*B&B continues acting like it is 1950 and people have to get married after dating for five minutes. It just shows how out of touch Brad Bell is with real life.

*The scab writing of Days has been a slog to get through. It isn’t surprising given the fired executive producer was the one supervising it. We have to wait until likely next month to see the material that he had no hand in.