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<blockquote data-quote="Daniel Avery" data-source="post: 182192" data-attributes="member: 27">As sorry as I was to see Steve&#039;s tenure cut short, we should all heave a sigh of relief that the writing team that took over in season 13 did not get hold of that character and attempt to understand Steve&#039;s impact on the Sumner Group and the inheritances issue, since that team showcased how little they understood Greg and his motivations during their tenure.&nbsp; They would have screwed up a promising Galveston/Sumner/Whittaker character, and soiled all the related characters in the process while trying to elaborate upon the show&#039;s mythology surrounding Greg and Claudia&#039;s formative years.&nbsp; These writers were not up to such a challenge, so I&#039;m glad they didn&#039;t take it up. I always felt Steve was the Lechowicks&#039; &quot;Parting Gift&quot; character.&nbsp; Daytime soap fans coined the &quot;parting gift&quot; term to describe a character or (usually) a plot point the writer tosses in as they depart, something they typically write as a &quot;F-U&quot; to the producers who fired them.&nbsp; It&#039;s something nearly impossible to write around, something that opens up such a can of worms, story-wise that the incoming writers can&#039;t do justice to it.&nbsp; Instead they end up screwing up the show trying to deal with it and are not able to write their own stories.&nbsp; The outgoing writer sets up a story and basically says &quot;Have fun writing yourself out of that one.&quot;&nbsp; Steve doesn&#039;t fully fit this term since L&amp;L gave them an &#039;out&#039; in the cliffhanger, but he could have survived; I think that if L&amp;L had not been on their way out, they probably would have expanded his character and done justice to the twist, since they wrote practically all of Greg and Claudia&#039;s back-story and &quot;knew&quot; them better than anyone.&nbsp; The incoming writers didn&#039;t seem to know their ass from their elbow.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Daniel Avery, post: 182192, member: 27"] As sorry as I was to see Steve's tenure cut short, we should all heave a sigh of relief that the writing team that took over in season 13 did not get hold of that character and attempt to understand Steve's impact on the Sumner Group and the inheritances issue, since that team showcased how little they understood Greg and his motivations during their tenure. They would have screwed up a promising Galveston/Sumner/Whittaker character, and soiled all the related characters in the process while trying to elaborate upon the show's mythology surrounding Greg and Claudia's formative years. These writers were not up to such a challenge, so I'm glad they didn't take it up. I always felt Steve was the Lechowicks' "Parting Gift" character. Daytime soap fans coined the "parting gift" term to describe a character or (usually) a plot point the writer tosses in as they depart, something they typically write as a "F-U" to the producers who fired them. It's something nearly impossible to write around, something that opens up such a can of worms, story-wise that the incoming writers can't do justice to it. Instead they end up screwing up the show trying to deal with it and are not able to write their own stories. The outgoing writer sets up a story and basically says "Have fun writing yourself out of that one." Steve doesn't fully fit this term since L&L gave them an 'out' in the cliffhanger, but he could have survived; I think that if L&L had not been on their way out, they probably would have expanded his character and done justice to the twist, since they wrote practically all of Greg and Claudia's back-story and "knew" them better than anyone. The incoming writers didn't seem to know their ass from their elbow. [/QUOTE]

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