ShareThisBy ROB OWEN
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Daytime soap operas may be on the wane _ ratings are down for the genre as a whole _ but CBS's "The Young and the Restless" (12:30 p.m. EDT weekdays, check local listings) has maintained its lead as daytime's No. 1-rated soap for more than 900 weeks since it reached that plateau in December 1988.
Still, with any series there will be turnover both on-camera and behind the scenes. For viewers, when faces they see daily disappear it may be the surest sign of something unusual going on, but some can also sense when the show's head writer changes.
Lynn Marie Latham, who previously led daytime's "Port Charles" and the prime-time series "Homefront" (with husband Bernard Lechowick) and "That's Life," was brought in earlier this year as head writer on "Y&R." She's since added an "executive producer" title as well. But she did not clean house, as many daytime show runners are apt to do. Instead, she relied heavily on the show's well-established cast, taking them to lunch to discuss their characters.
"That's not something you'll come across with every head writer," noted actor Don Diamont, who plays Brad Carlton, at a July press conference. "That's a rarity."
Latham did, however, make changes to the series, most notably quickening the pace and adding movement to scenes. In the past, she said too many scenes ended with characters staring at one another. No more.
"Now we just cut out of the scene and go to the next scene," she said. "Part of the reason we're doing that is as we watch movies, as we watch television, everything is faster now. And we feel that we need to address those issues, too."
Peter Bergman, who plays Jack Abbot, said it's been fun for the cast.
"Lynn has decided we're not going to work by the old rules," he said. "I'm not going to stand in front of the set in my office and pour water while I'm talking to somebody about something. I'm going to stop and pick up things at my desk to see if I have any messages, go to my office. It's picked up the pace of the show."
Latham said it's not a matter of re-inventing the wheel, but sticking to the roots of good storytelling.
"Drama is the same from a storytelling perspective, whether you're talking about theater, film, prime-time, daytime," she said. "It all goes back to Aristotle's 'Poetics.' You have setup, complication and resolution. I think it was William Goldman who said, 'You put somebody up in a tree, you throw rocks at them and then you take them down.' What happens in daytime is you have a much bigger pile of rocks _ setup, complication, complication ... complication. And then if you have resolution on a story, you better have another story in place as you're doing that."
Daytime TV gets knocked for stories that seem ridiculous _ characters trapped in a cage, demonic possession, etc. _ but daytime stars aren't sure it's a rap that's deserved.
"Does it really sound much different than turning on your evening news or an 'Oprah' episode?" Diamont asked. The problem comes when the stories are all mentioned in the same breath. Perhaps stories from anyone's life would sound unbelievable if presented in rapid succession.
"If we just lined them all up as if they had happened in a week, your life might sound a little silly, too," Bergman said.
Latham has brought some of her former co-workers onto "Y&R" for guest spots, including Ted Shackelford from "Knots Landing" (Latham and Lechowick wrote for that series) and Mimi Kennedy and Tammy Lauren from "Homefront."
But viewers did not see "Y&R" turn into a high school-set series in the summer as some daytime soaps do to attract more younger viewers who are home from school.
"I don't do that. I don't believe in it," Latham said. "I have always found throughout any series I've worked on that the audience is hooked in by multi-generational storytelling. If you isolate the young people, if you isolate the older cast, the storytelling is not as good because that's not real life."
(Rob Owen can be reached at rowen(at)post-gazette.com)
