The creators' thread.

Co-executive producer/writer Craig Wright previous wrote for Brothers & Sisters and Six Feet Under. Co-executive producer Greg Berlanti previously produced Brothers & Sisters, Jack & Bobby, and Everwood. I liked Brothers & Sisters, Jack & Bobby, and Everwood, and Six Feet Under is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. Based on pedigree, I'm looking forward to this one.

I agree Six Feet Under is also one of my favorite shows of all time and Craig Wright's episodes were kick ass except for the one where Nate killed the bird. That one was just...liked it but a little overdone. My favorite Craig Wright SFU eppy is a toss up between "Falling into Place" or "Static" both directed by the great Michael Cuesta of Dexter, I felt like Craig really understood the characters as well as Alan Ball and I think he's gonna do really well writing his own series.

Plus with Greg Berlanti, Peter Horton and Bryan Singer behind the project, I'm sure this is gonna be good! Don't let me down, Craig.

From a Sept. 9 interview with Berlanti in the Lower Hudson news:



Lower Hudson News also has a TV feature called Remote Access. They did their own separate Sept. 4 interview with Berlanti, which includes a tiny audio clip answering the question of what he'd buy if he could buy anything.

I forgot he was behind Jack And Bobby (a show I did love). There are almost two many good names behind this that even though the trailer didn't excite me, I will tune in for a few episodes. I'm more likely to enjoy this than Private Practice.

Six Feet Under is my favourite show of all time and having Peter Krause, Carig Wright back on my screen will be great.

USA Today article about Berlanti

CanMag interviews Craig Wright on his view of the show.



(I might add that this view does not seem to be shared by anyone else connected with the show, including Berlanti and ABC, who are instead going with the "people you love to hate" direction.)

Sept. 18 Boston Heral article talks to a number of showrunners aboutht anxieties leading up to a new season. Craig Wright has a snippet:



Edited to add:

Finally, someone does a long interview with Craig Wright, including photo. Playbill (Wright's first successes came in stage plays) delivers on Sept. 23. Also includes a long interview with Jill Clayburgh.

Deadline Hollywood Daily and United Hollywood (the WGA strike site) have been running a series of essays by writers on the theme of Why We Write. They all have been interesting reads and are worth checking out.

The latest installment is by Greg Berlanti Why We Write: # 5 .

This bit made me laugh:



and made me think of the struggle with every creative effort I've ever undertaken. And it reminded me of the discussion that came up at the DSM USC panel when the writer (Craig Wright, I think) said he wasn't thrilled with the first version of the last couple of DSM scripts (but Seth Gabel, who read one of the early drafts, did not share the negative opinion) I imagine Craig Wright is one of the writers Mr. Berlanti refers to here:



Also, who would have guessed that Dirty Sexy Money was home to so many people with Puppet Theater backgrounds. First Peter Krause and now Greg Berlanti. (I wonder if there are others who just haven't fessed up yet.)

Daniel Cerone is DSM's new showrunner. From Variety

I don't know if I like this news. Good for the show, but I like Cerone on Dexter. Hopefully he's going to do both shows simultaneously since I really can't imagine him without writing for Dexter. I'm just glad the show's coming back so I'll take this as a positive rather than a negative.

There is a bit in the Hollywood Reporter with some quotes:

Cerone says there won't be anything 'significantly change[d]' but also says this:



...which will be interesting to follow. A relaunch to me indicates a fair amount of shaking up. Please make firing Blair Underwood part of the change!

That quote gives me hope too, tribema. I only hope I still remember this show in September! Just kidding...kind of.

Let this happen!

I'd also be okay with the character of Juliet Darling, as well as the actress who plays her, being written off the show somehow. I know the twin bond with Jeremy is supposed to be cute, and sometimes it is, but more often than not, I find myself wanting to strangle her. The character needs to be done away with or revamped, IMO.

The whole Simon Elder set of plotlines seems ridiculous to me from start to finish. I kinda think there was enough there just with Nick's interactions with the Darlings.

Count me in with those hoping that the Simon Elder story is not long for this world when the show is "relaunched".

Juliet, however, I hope is with the show for the long haul. There were moments with her character, especially in the first couple of episodes that I found really captivating (when she was opening up to Tish about wanting to be a person, when she confessed to Nick that the sex tape couldn't possibly be hers, and many of her scenes with Jeremy).

I don't know much about Daniel Cerone, but it seems as though he's done a wonderful job running Dexter, so that gives me hope. He also worked on Charmed, however, so who knows.

Yeah, I liked Juliet's scenes with Jeremy. They were really good together.

I do, too, and I have no idea where she stands with show after her real life goings on but I hope they keep her around. I was very down on Samaire Armstrong at first, because her acting and her speech -- it takes some getting used to! But now I think she's an effective counterpoint to the much drier Simon storyline and perhaps a few others too. She has a fizzy presence that I think the show needs.

For anyone in the Chicago area, the world premiere of Better Late, a play Craig Wright wrote with Larry Gelbart, is having its world premiere at the Northlight Theatre in Skokie.

While some studios/networks used the WGA strike as cover to end deals with writers, Craig Wright seems to be someone ABC Studios wants to keep around. He just signed a new 2-year deal. info here



So I guess if you hire someone from Dexter, nail polish stains can suddenly be blood stains?

Actually, I think Cerone will be an interesting addition. I just can't figure out what the "tonal changes" will bring. What will next year be like? I hope they don't lose the things I like about the show - the characters, the situations, etc.

Like, for example, how one show can move me with scenes like Tripp and Nick collaborating to open Dutch's briefcase here (though I wished the clip kept going) or Brian and Gustav having pancakes A Special Syrup Distribution Method, or Nick quizzing the Darling "kids" about a possible sex tape: How do you live with yourself? ?

I still think Juliet's revelation, and Nick's reaction to it, was one of the things that distinguished the show and gave it depth for me. In that last clip, the creators turned the public's expectations on its ears. We expected/thought one thing of Juliet, but she was someone very different. And the fact that Nick was not dismissive of her, but instead was accepting and asked her about her posturing, told us something about him, too, as the show's moral center. It's moments like all these that that give the show depth IMHO, and raise it above Dynasty or other wealth-based soapy-dramas. Craig Wright seems to be able to write these characters well, and not in a formulaic tv way. Hopefully his 2-year deal will give him the power/confidence to continue doing that with DSM.

I agree witrh your concerns about "tonal changes"--I always liked how the show was a soap opera, but with a heart, not the slick superficiality that past nighttime soaps have had. I like the paradox of having this luxe setting and family, with with "real" human vulnerabilities. I just hope that we don't get all flash and melodrama and lose the great small moments. I think that style of storytelling really helped make Karen and Brian, two charcters that so easily could have been campy stereotypes, into great, multifacted characters.

That last YouTube you linked to reminded me of how much I liked Juliet when the writers knew what to do with her. Near the end, they just seemed to loose sight of how to write/portray that character. I think a lot of it had to do with whatever Samaire was going through and how they feared that would impact the show.

Well, Cerone didn't last long.

Wow! You're right.

Not sure what I think of the changes; given that the new showrunner was involved with Big Shots, which wasn't particularly deep or subtle, or much of a good soap IMHO, I really hope the best parts of DSM don't get completely lost.

I guess I just want our show back, and for it to be as good as it can be.

This change even got mentioned up on Deadline Hollywood here.

ABC has extended Greg Berlanti's contract - details of a new 5-year $10M+ deal are here.

Hopefully this is another vote of confidence for him...and that that support will spread to DSM before and after its return this fall.

I've pretty much reconciled myself to the fact that the writers are only writing for "new viewers" now. How else to explain the fact of the S1 backstory they totally ignore now? I now it's petty, but I just can't get back the whole missing-Brian's-wife-and-twins thing. For the love of Mike, at least have him give them a passing mention, or otherwise, to those of us who watched S1, Brian just seems kinda douchy. (And I adore Brian, he can't be douchy!)

From the 2-05 thread:

Here's what I don't get: that August 2007 retooling _worked_. The show got a lot more right than it got wrong in S1. So why another change of direction? I know the top brass at ABC made noises about taking out the 'indie film' aspect -- did ABC have a personnel change up top?

I think the network/studio got nervous about the last 3 episodes of S1 dipping well below 8 million viewers after the show averaged about 8.5 million for episodes 3-7 (the first two were higher than 9 million because there was obviously a lot of sampling in the beginning).

I'm not sure if they took into account valid reasons why those 3 episodes did worse (108 aired on Thanksgiving Eve when the whole line-up bombed; 109 aired after Pushing Daisies which moved to 9pm to make way for Shrek X-mas special and PP was preempted; and 110 aired in December during the holiday season when viewing levels tend to go down, plus there was a repeat of PD so some viewers may have thought the whole line-up was in reruns that night). Then the strike took the show off air for 10 months, so that certainly kills your momentum.

I think they should have continued in the same tone that they had in S1. Sure, the storylines' progression should have eventually accelerated and they should have become dirtier and sexier, but that should have happened more naturally, the sudden shift in 201 seemed a little forced. And I don't think it helped that they announced that they were going to get soapier.

As I mentioned in the other thread, there are rumors of behind the scenes battle for creative control with different sides wanting to take the show in different directions. But that always happens whenever the network allows the flips in the ratings to dictate creative choices.

It was a mistake not to bring the show back in the spring for 5-6 episodes, it was a mistake to replace Josh Reims with Jon Harmon Feldman (although Reims was actually replaced with "Dexter's" Daniel Cerone and then Cerone with Feldman) and it was a mistake to tamper with the show's original flavor which I think worked very well. The viewers who loved the old DSM reeeaaally loved it and they would have been back.

My concerns about Jon Harmon Feldman are that he seems to have absolutely no idea of why rich is sexy. His rich people are always soppy, lack self-confidence, and whine a lot. That was the problem with Big Shots, and it's the problem with DSM right now.

Rich people tend to be sexy because they have a huge sense of entitlement from all the people around them who are continually trying to do them favours and get their attention. They have undeserved self-confidence. Jeremy had it in S1. Karen had it vis a vis Lisa in S1. They honestly believe that they will always be forgiven because, well, they always have been.

Granted, there are those with self-doubt, and it can be crushing (S1 Juliet did that very well). And Brian was a brilliant example of someone trying to escape those two extremes, and failing (as in his S1 interviews with the school headmaster). But the whole concept of "the Beautiful People," to use a dated term, is their understanding that the world is conspiring to help them get what they want. And anyone who isn't is simply out of step.

Feldman's rich characters become the inverse of that, desperately needy people constantly fearing rejection. It's, to be honest, boring.

I don't know that anyone could have saved this particular show in this particular season. But I'm pretty sure a different showrunner could at least have seen it out with more success.

How nicely put, Marty118. I couldn't really put my finger on what was wrong with the Darlings this year, but that most certainly makes a lot of sense. I loved (and in some cases, loved to hate) the Darlings last year and now I know one of the reasons why I no longer do.

By the way, I just realized that last week's atrocious episode "The Injured Party" was co-written by Paul Redford (who worked on "The West Wing" as well as NBC's dud "LAX" and FOX's flop "Vanished") and someone called Sallie Patrick who was a part of DSM production staff last year, and this episode of DSM was her first and so far the only writing job in her career.

So they're responsible for Letitia singing like a moron, the pointless addition of Wrenn, the creepy love triangle with her, Tripp and Nick, the silly catfight, Lisa sleeping with Jeremy after breaking up with Nick, people listening in behind walls and windows and other soapy cliches and low points for the once-smart show.

Is that really the case? I'm much more of a comedy fan, and AIUI in comedies, the stories are usually broken by the entire staff -- and the big plot points can come straight from the EPs -- before a writer or duo go off to write the teleplay.

Also, I kinda liked "LAX".

I suspect I am writing this as a eulogy...but at least Tripp (aka Donald Sutherland's acting) was back to season one tonight in the scene where he told Nick he did not cause the death of Nick's father.

I felt his fear, remorse, humiliation...and I also still wondered if he was lying.
Brilliant.

Perfect.

Whoever finally let somebody out of jail for even just that one scene is to be profoundly praised.

I looked at the credits and I cannot tell who was different enough to have done it.

Craig Wright, I know likes that stuff. Michael Grossman, the director, might have had some influence, or maybe Donald threw a colossal fit and demanded a real one for the first time in season two.

Whoever(s) did it, I am very happy they did.