In my essay on Season 10, I noted that Lechowick and Latham -- the series' longest serving, but most erratic headwriters -- never seemed to be able to sustain excellence for more than twenty episodes at a time. Season 9 starts strong, as the show gets back to basics after a couple of unrecognizable years -- then the mobsters move in, and the younger cast members migrate to Santa Tecla, and things start to fall apart. Season 10 extends the Jill-Val story-line for nineteen impressive episodes -- quite a feat -- but then we get Mack and Paula, and Sally's friend, and a few other misfires that threaten to drag the season down. And finally there's the team's last gasp of greatness, a string of 22 episodes cutting across two seasons. It begins when former story editor Dianne Messina returns to the fold twenty episodes into Season 11 to carry out a late-season overhaul alongside Lechowick, Latham and (her eventual husband) James Stanley. The foursome manage a successful course correction, and their energy and creativity continue a dozen episodes into Season 12. And then -- as ever -- it all goes to pot: this time not because of a lack of ideas, but because of a distressing lack of attention from the four writers, who were consumed with readying their new ABC period soap Homefront.
