Backstage Shake-Up at "Brothers & Sisters"

For his part, Baitz admits in his blog post to feeling increasingly out of control on his own show. “I could be found nervously trying to retain a voice in the making of our show, and gently trying to keep moving forward the political discourse in it, along with a mildly candid discussion of sexuality in American life today.”

Baitz makes it clear that ABC had been “unfailingly enthusiastic” about the gay storylines on B&S, a sentiment echoed by Greg Berlanti in our interview with him last March. What the network seemed less enthusiastic about was serious political debate and storylines that centered on the older cast members. In Baitz’s words, the “guardians” of the show “grew less patient with my efforts to sew in storylines that were more serious than funny.”

Executive producer Greg Berlanti (r) & Baitz (l)

The way Baitz characterizes it, he was encouraged to disengage himself from active involvement in the show he created and instead spend his time thinking about new projects for ABC.

The plan was for him to return to B&S as a writer for the sophomore season, but only pen four episodes as opposed to the fourteen he had written or co-written in the first season.

The plan also had Berlanti stepping down as show runner for Brothers & Sisters in order to focus on two other projects picked up by ABC, Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone.

Though Berlanti still exercises substantial oversight on Brothers & Sisters, producer Mark B. Perry, who’s credits include The Wonder Years and One Tree Hill, was brought in to run things. Baitz’s post seems to indicate he did not have a hand in choosing Perry for the job. “The first few weeks of production were an exercise in diplomacy, politeness and tact.”

From left to right: Rob Lowe, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ken Olin, and Baitz

It now appears as though Baitz was effectively sidelined from the series as far back as August of 2007, and, surprisingly, his benching came at the request of a cast member.

From the December 25^th blog post: “A storyline I had NOT written in a script with my name on it [presumably episode 203], was greeted by the despair of one of our stars.” Even though this storyline was “vetted and probed by all execs… as well as the producer in charge of the transition [here Baitz most likely refers to Berlanti], I was instantly and inexplicably asked to step back entirely…”

In October of this year, Baitz signed a two-year, seven figure development deal with ABC. According to Variety, as part of that deal he would “remain as exec producer on B&S as well as develop other projects for the studio.”

Unfortunately the writer’s strike, or more specifically Baitz's musings on The Huffington Post about said strike, seem to have soured his relationship with ABC and thrown a monkey wrench into the development deal.

His first post addressing the walkout, titled “Strike Me Out,” had him voicing deep ambivalence about the strike and his belief that there were far more important issues to focus on, chief among them the war in Iraq. He took some heavy criticism from other writers, and a few days later wrote another post, “Strike Me In” in which he apologized for his earlier ambivalence and came out whole-heartedly in favor of the strike.