Art & Creativity Quote by Matthew Ashford

There’s a particular kind of diplomacy that only long-running TV breeds, and Matthew Ashford nails it here: praise with just enough ambiguity to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes. “I don’t know if Jim was a major part of that or not” is the classic soap-opera survival skill in sentence form. It acknowledges backstage politics without naming them, offering plausible deniability while signaling that yes, something shifted behind the curtain.

Then comes the real message: Ashford draws a line between content that merely fills airtime and writing that actually builds myth. Calling Jim “one of a small group of real storytellers” isn’t casual flattery; it’s a soft critique of an industry (and a genre) often run by committees, network notes, and rotating head writers. The phrase “real storytellers” implies an endangered species: people who can sustain character logic over years, deliver plot propulsion, and still make it feel emotionally inevitable rather than mechanically twisty.

The subtext is about trust. “Enormous imagination and ability to write” frames Jim’s return not as nostalgia, but as a correction course - a promise of coherence for viewers who’ve felt the show drifting. “I’m glad he’s coming back” also positions Ashford as aligned with the audience’s hunger for stronger narrative, while remaining a company man.

And that last line - “It’s going to be good for the show” - is both promotional and protective. In soap culture, “the show” is bigger than any actor, any storyline, any regime. Ashford is selling a reboot of confidence: the idea that the engine is back in the hands of someone who knows how to make people tune in tomorrow.