I really don't like this new head writer, Charles Pratt Jr. He seems so plucky and annoying in interviews in Soap Opera Weekly, and his writing is average at best. I miss the snappy quips of Megan McTavish...she could be outrageous, but she knew the characters and wrote them well. Everyone had his or her own voice. Now, everyone has Charles Pratt Jr's voice.
Soap operas have a reputation for being boring and trite...in the last few years (late 90s to mid 00s), there have been fresh storylines, great dialogue, truly moving monologues...even if the stories were way overdone (baby-switching...), they were written well, so nobody cared. Lately, I've rolled my eyes so many times at the boring crap we're supposed to "identify with". I don't feel anything for Randi, who has the personality of a soggy tampon. Icky analogy, but she's a hooker...she's supposed to be icky, but with all the humanising and personal journeying the writers want, we should be able to see her as a good person. It's not working. There's nothing original, interesting, or inspiring about her.
Brot shared a memory of a traditional Thanksgiving, with turkey and stuffing and cranberries and pumpkin pie! Yawn. Giving such a bad actor such a trite story was horribly painful to watch. Why go with the same old boringass crap that everyone's heard (and experienced) a million times already? They're writers! Make up something interesting, some unusual experience from Brot's past.
Annie falling into the psychosis of believing she's Emma is the biggest eye-roller of every episode. Melissa Claire Egan always gives neat, polished performances and convincingly delivers inane lines, never going to over-the-top, but this whole story is so drippy!!
Today, we met Reese's ex-fiance. He told us all about their meeting at work and falling in love. The monologue was so choppy and the actor playing Simon was so wooden that they might as well have just had the whole boring speech up like a title card in old silent movies. Who else kept yawning? On a show like 24, where the plots are so complicated and convoluted that viewers' heads would explode trying to process even more information, boring, simple character stories are good. But on a SOAP OPERA, a genre that is not truly about plots and stories, but about relationships and characters, we need to see originality, special things about characters' pasts, NEW and novel ideas that people aren't used to. If Chuck can't find his characters' voices, hearts, and true personalities (and give us interesting ones for new characters), then perhaps he should seek a new day job. And not in daytime!!!
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