hahaha is that really an excuse though? we all know the hack kirwood was but when he was working with santer's leftovers the show had a pulse.It was only his mishandling of the conclusion to these s/ls did we find out how incompetent BK was.What hints of brilliance have we seen from lorraine? what storyline or new character has been gold under her tenure?

Amy Mitchell has been great under Newman's tenure, she has mimed all her lines and done great emotionless expressions . Other than her, I can't think of no one . In short, I agree with you.

that would only make sense as a rebuttal or as an answer to my concern if the only thing an EP did was sanction storylines but that isnt all they do because if it was Lorraine Newman has done very little work of any kind until say September 6 months since the previous EP left when her storylines would be getting okayed at meetings.

I actually think you do the role of EP a diservice by seeking to describe it only in the narrow terms of storylines.

Oh god, how long can people keep saying this ? Newman's name is on the credits . People will still be blaming BK at Xmas.

looking forward to seeing Lucy/Lauren/Whitney scenes used to love their little group, just a shame it invloves snoozefest Joey

I agree very much with you.The outlines of a handful of big plots like Dereks exit in December are a result of longterm planning but at 7 months on since Lorraine Newman became captain there will be only a few or a minority of storylines that are"down to" Kirkwood and how their executed onscreen now is down to Lorraine.
Gavins post actually diminishes the role of EP to the level of just dreaming up storylines in meetings with colleagues and nothing more.The EP does and is responsible for a lot more than that.