I always say, if the “The Young and the Restless” put their backstage mishegos on screen they’d have higher ratings than they do now. And they’re the number 1 soap. CBS just renewed them for three years. But it’s koo koo for Cocoa Puffs over there.
To wit: head writers Sally Sussman Morina and Kay Alden are out, abruptly fired, after being brought back to save the show from low ratings and tangled storylines. Now executive producer Mal Young is head writer, doing both jobs, which never works.
Sussman (as she’s known) and Alden are “Y&R” vets who actually did what they were supposed to. But now there’s some internet gibberish about Sussman trying to get her son hired as a writer on the show, fighting with Alden (who was there for years when soaps were popular), and so on. I’m hearing Sony stepped in and took them both out.
Meantime, actor Michael Muhney twists in the wind. Fired a couple of years ago he’s still campaigning to get his job back as character Adam Newman. He’s very popular. There’s a really crazy back story here about CBS Daytime chief Angelica McDaniel, an actress named Hunter King, and the show’s nominal star Eric Braeden. Muhney’s fans are vocal on social media. The show’s ratings would be helped by his return. But I think Braeden still stands in the way.
Braeden may be lurking behind all of this. Since Sussman and Alden came in, his airtime has diminished, I’m told, in favor of younger actors (he’s 75). Really, they should just turn the cameras around and make it a reality show. It’s not like the old days with Procter & Gamble’s soaps. They fired people, killed off characters, no one spoke. It was like the Kremlin. Fear abounded. It was ‘another world’ to borrow a phrase!
