B&B: The Martha Byrne Episode

I watched today's episode of THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL live because it was the first script written by two-time Emmy winning actress Martha Byrne (ex-Lily, AS THE WORLD TURNS). I have long thought Byrne could have a successful career behind the scenes on a soap as an executive producer.

As the script writer for the day, Byrne's responsibility was to write the dialogue for storylines she didn't create and characters she didn't invent. The show started in a rather ho hum way but improved over the half hour.

The best dialogue of the day was spoken by Rick, who had some nice jabs at Ridge including one about meeting Steffy in the steam room. I also liked some of the writing for Stephanie, like when she was talking with Pam about working at Jackie M.

But for the most part the dialogue was rather unremarkable. Byrne, as an actress, has taken some of the most mundane scripts over the years and made them interesting. But most of the cast of B&B (Susan Flannery excluded) is not in her league acting-wise, so the dialogue on this show really needs to sparkle to avoid the show from becoming boring. The actors generally aren't going to make the script better than it is. Unfortunately the script didn't shine today. I was particularly disappointed in the Stephanie and Pam lunch as that was an opportunity for another fun conversation. Most of their talk fell flat.

It's way too early to grade Byrne as a script writer, but my dream still remains that she will be in charge of a daytime soap and making the decisions one day and not just writing the dialogue.

On a side note, the product placement for Macys.com was very annoying on today's episode. There are good and bad ways to work products into a show and this one was poorly constructed.