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Comment by justinclift | Hacker News Reader

One of my friends is a writer, and his take on the problem is that the seasoned writers Netflix used to have (a few years ago) are now all getting fairly "old". Aka around their 50's.

So, they were let go, and a new generation of young, unseasoned writers has been doing the writing.

But unlike previous generations though (heh), many of them are not even slightly interested in learning from the previous (seasoned) writers, whom they view as inferior for some reason.

Thus, the extremely low quality (idiot level) of writing in recent years.

No idea how accurate that is, but it seems like a reasonable take at first glance.

Mind you, I don't really watch US origin tv/movies any more myself due to their crappiness. :)

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Certainly I would agree that letting go a lot of experience folks would have an effect on the product.

However, I think this comment could use some more justification:

> But unlike previous generations though (heh), many of them are not even slightly interested in learning from the previous (seasoned) writers, whom they view as inferior for some reason.

Claiming that a particular generation is really different from another in this sort of way is something I'd need to see a lot of evidence to be convinced of. Kids trying to do their own thing and middle aged folks lamenting "kids these days" is a tale as old as time.

Thus the "(heh)" in my post. I recognise the same thing, and found it ironic.

> Kids trying to do their own thing and middle aged folks lamenting "kids these days" is a tale as old as time.

Yeah, agreed. From my point of view, it's not totally the new writers fault.

It's the fault of the management chain that got rid of the old writers and also didn't tell the new ones "Look, just humour the old fogies for a while, you might learn something...".

Barely on-topic, but this is sort of the plot of Reboot, and I remember watching this show seeing the dynamic between the elder writer played by Paul Reiser) and the much younger writer played by Rachel Bloom.

The gist of the (relevant) bit of plot is that the younger writer wants to take an old classic series (ala Full House) but do a gritty reboot of it, but the studio brings in the original writers on to help, and there is unsurprisingly a culture clash.

I remember thinking (of the younger generation) how sad it was that they were so eager to dismiss all the experience of the elders, and how glad I was that this was just a TV show and probably not at all what was happening in the real world. I was safe in that ignorance right up until I read your comment.

This was a great show I can't say enough about. It really mad me laugh out loud far more than any other show in recent memory. (And in the end, if I recall, both groups of writers learned that the other was actually pretty decent at their jobs and had a lot of good ideas.) Unfortunately, it didn't do spectacularly in the ratings and was immediately canceled. I seriously hope someone else picks it up, but I don't know how likely that is.

I've never seen the show but it sounds good and reviews were decent. Given that it was killed off after one season, is it still worth the watch? Does it end well?

I think it's worth it, but I just like watching TV. It ends with a sort-of cliffhanger (a relationship cliffhanger), but it's not a surprising one.

> I was safe in that ignorance right up until I read your comment.

Oops, sorry. ;)

> No idea how accurate that is, but it seems like a reasonable take at first glance.

I mean that's what every generation of skilled workers has always said about the generation following them, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

I wonder if some of that is TV writers growing up on ubiquitous TV writing, like how anime is increasingly made by people who just like anime and weren't as interested in a wide variety of media as the older generation.

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