here is a list of talented past head writers that are now being overlooked........



lorraine broderick
she dramatically improved atwt from the jessica klein disaster and could have been able to make the show better with cg as ep had he not fired her. though i think felicia mineh behr(then ep of atwt) had more to do with atwt's problems. she just wasnt cut out for cbs style of storytelling and always went after past oltl and amc actors under her reign. lb knew how to bring out stories and made every one of them stand out. she shared duties with tomlin at oltl though i dont think she had more of a say than him. her formula was family and romance, not mob, danger, and supernatural crap like that brief stint she had with dool in 99.

claire labine
rh and gh were her biggest milestones, but she didnt do a good job at gl however. so if she could be the hw of the former work she did and not the most recent, she could turn any soap around.

ellen weston
she had a brief tenure at gl, but she maybe didnt get a fair shot. gl did not do a good job in the casting department and she wasnt the one who was infatuated with eden or teresa hill, unlike john conboy, then ep. she did a good job with alan/olivia/philip and reunited michelle and danny quickly after the previous hw broke them up and was going for bill and michelle. but bad casting(not her doing) of people like marty west and teresa hill and firing of favorites like matthew bomber at the expense of propping up west himself and aubrey dollar didnt make things much easy for her.

sally sussman-morina
she had a two year stint at dool, but there she had to write a lot of supernatural stuff(though i must admit i would love for gina to come back). however, she was a story consultant during the highly praised era of john smith, but during the highly criticized one of lml as well. i dont think she has been given a real opportunity to show what she can do on a soap other than dool.

john smith
his work at y&r says it all. he has been nowhere near a hw pen since then and its a shame. he really brought out the female characters at y&r and was the one who made phyllis alive again. if it wasnt for sheila's return and terrible tom he probably would still be here. he was better than mab herself, no offense, except for the jill being kay's daughter stuff.

When I saw the title of this thread, I immediately thought of Sally Sussman-Morina. Looking back on it, I really liked the way she handled DAYS coming off the Jim Reilly era. She didn't try to imitate his work and had a good and fresh perspective on things.

The thing about these great writers is that they are passed over for hacks that are a friend of a friend of someone. Case and pt. Sally Sussman-Morina. Even though she said she and LML weren't competing for the job as HW, Babs Bloom gave it to LML, b/c they are girls. And not only did she not have a bible of her planned stories, but from what I have gathered from various blind items, she fired Eileen Davidson not b/c of "she didn't get the character of Ashley Abbott", but b/c I guess Eileen was messing w/Babs husband or something like that. Once again I could be way off base, but that is what I gathered from the blind items I've read.

Lorranine Broaderick is the first name that came into my head when i saw this thread. I feel that she could do wonders with any soap that she gets the chance to work on. She is a great writer.

I agree that Claire Labaine has a lot of talent and should get herself back on a soap ASAP.

I would also love to see what Michele Val Jean could do for GH without being under the thumb of Pratt or Frons. I think she has a lot of talent and could make GH interesting again.

boidiva i had almost included mvj, but i didnt like her direction too much when she had that three month stint in 01 as hw after guza left. she seemed to want to focus the show on liz, jy's lucky, and jason and give more airtime to roy and melissa bedford and tried to backburner sarah brown's carly and the s&c romance. the ratings also seemed to go down when she wrote carly less.

Megan McTavish's tenure on GH. I enjoyed it. She wrote for everyone, and while people complained about its darkness, it was Rainbow Brite compared to today's GH.

Conboy and Weston had the potential to be a great team, but she needed a cowriter who knew the history of the show.

I'm with Crystal, McTavish's reign at GH was to me a bright spot and is definetly much better than anything on the show at this point. and daytimeemmyfan, i enjoyed the work you mentioned by MVJ, i don't think she was given enough time to develop her style as a headwriter and had a lot working against her. For one The Melissa Bedford story was doomed from the start because of Jensen Buchanan's contract scandal with CBS and the characters ill-defined connection to anyone on the canvas. Also by 01 it was clear that Sarah Brown was no longer interested in playing Carly and so if she was featured any less i would imagine part of it was SB's own doing, didn't she leave GH in 01 anyway? and to be fair at the time Carly was so popular i imagine any head writer that tried to expand the show beyond her would have gotten flack, but a show needs balance and probrally focusing on some characters other than Sonny and Carly would be a good thing. Look at how Sonny and Carly have been run into the ground since.

What i loved about McTavish's regin was the inclusion of all generations of characters---you have the Quatermains, you had Alexis and Ned, Rick and Sonny and Carly, but you also got stories with Elizabeth and Lucky and Luke and so many others. It wasn't as centerally focused on the mob as it is now.

one writer i've always felt didn't get as much praise as she deserves is Carolyn Culliton who has done fine work on a number of soaps, including "Port Charles" and "One Life To Live".

Count me in as someone who liked Sally Sussman-Morina's work on Days. Loved the Killing Pool and the Mike-Carrie romance.

I stopped watching Days for the most part after her tenure.

You know who else I thought was actually fantastic on DAYS? Peter Brash and Paula Cwikley. I loved the show for the short time they were in charge of it, and it just killed me that they were fired and replaced with Dena Higley.

i liked them too, but what i think they didnt do right was slow the stories down, and some of the stories were fast paced and there were some cheesy dialogue with what the characters were saying. the acting wasnt more downplayed but that might be of corday's doing. though they were tons better than higley, who i give no credit for the recent turnaround.