I always say, if the “The Young and the Restless” put their backstage mishegos on screen they’d have higher ratings than they do now. And they’re the number 1 soap. CBS just renewed them for three years. But it’s koo koo for Cocoa Puffs over there.

To wit: head writers Sally Sussman Morina and Kay Alden are out, abruptly fired, after being brought back to save the show from low ratings and tangled storylines. Now executive producer Mal Young is head writer, doing both jobs, which never works.

Sussman (as she’s known) and Alden are “Y&R” vets who actually did what they were supposed to. But now there’s some internet gibberish about Sussman trying to get her son hired as a writer on the show, fighting with Alden (who was there for years when soaps were popular), and so on. I’m hearing Sony stepped in and took them both out.

Meantime, actor Michael Muhney twists in the wind. Fired a couple of years ago he’s still campaigning to get his job back as character Adam Newman. He’s very popular. There’s a really crazy back story here about CBS Daytime chief Angelica McDaniel, an actress named Hunter King, and the show’s nominal star Eric Braeden. Muhney’s fans are vocal on social media. The show’s ratings would be helped by his return. But I think Braeden still stands in the way.

Braeden may be lurking behind all of this. Since Sussman and Alden came in, his airtime has diminished, I’m told, in favor of younger actors (he’s 75). Really, they should just turn the cameras around and make it a reality show. It’s not like the old days with Procter & Gamble’s soaps. They fired people, killed off characters, no one spoke. It was like the Kremlin. Fear abounded. It was ‘another world’ to borrow a phrase!

Showtime is moving “Twin Peaks” to 8pm for its last six Sundays. The reason is pretty clear. This week, “Twin Peaks” had 240,000 viewers at 9pm. HBO’s “Game of Thrones” had 9.2 million viewers. I may have been the only person who watched “Twin Peaks” live at its right hour.

But it’s even worse than that. “Twin Peaks” only ran 53 minutes this week. “Game of Thrones” was 10 minutes longer. Anyone who was interested was able to switch over to the HBO show and catch about 15 minutes of it– and that’s because the last five or six minutes of “Twin Peaks” is a throwaway anyway.

This week, especially, “Twin Peaks” could barely make 45 minutes. Do they just run out of steam and say, Oh the hell with it? We don’t understand the show either.

I’m still thinking of Sherilyn Fenn as our beloved Audrey, sweater girl, now in her 40s and screaming at that strange little man about why she was wearing her coat. Meanwhile, Emilia Clarke was explaining her dragons’ names to Jon Snow. Audrey should have flown in on a dragon.

Will the 8pm move mean anything? I don’t know. I long for “Billions” and “Homeland” to return.

PS “Twin Peaks” finished 148th out of 150 cable shows on Sunday night.

EXCLUSIVE The “Roseanne” reboot is under way, with new characters being added– the children of Darlene (Sarah Gilbert) and David (Johnny Galecki).

I’m told they will have two kids– a son and a daughter. The daughter, named Harris, is supposed to be 14 or 15 years old and aspirational and upwardly mobile– she’s determined to do better than her parents but she’s not snotty about it, says a source. “She has a big heart.”

More controversial will be a casting call for Darlene and David’s son, named Mark, who will be named for daughter Becky’s late husband. In real life, the actor who played Mark–daughter Becky’s boyfriend, then husband– on the original show, Glenn Quinn, died in 2002 from an opioid overdose.

But there’s a twist. The new 9 year old Mark will be “gender creative.” According to my spies, the casting call asks for a kid who can play “sensitive and effeminate” and “displays qualities of both young female and male traits.”

This would be a first for network TV as the “Roseanne” reboot is on ABC and not cable– Showtime or HBO. “Roseanne” was known for its groundbreaking material when it originally aired, notably a lesbian kiss between Roseanne and Mariel Hemingway. There was a huge uproar at the time, but that episode– like all “controversial” episodes of TV shows– airs in syndication without a peep of protest.

A gender fluid child, however, will likely get a lot of attention– for its bravery in telling what seems like a more common story in recent years and from the usual detractors. The “Roseanne” reboot is obviously out to give a jolt to what is a fairly snoozy sitcom world.

Mark would not be TV’s first gender fluid person, however. That distinction goes to actor Asia Kate Dillon, playing Taylor on Showtime’s “Billions.” I’m actually still completely perplexed how “Billions” was ignored by the Emmys, Dillon especially. But that’s for another day.

I am literally hate watching “Twin Peaks: The Return” hoping something will happen. So far, nothing has happened. Outside of that surreal cinematic experiment in Episode 8, “Twin Peaks” seems like it might be a long running prank that David Lynch is playing on Showtime. The executives must be out of their minds. Last Sunday they had 219,000 viewers. On Tuesday we’ll if there were more than 8 people watching tonight’s episode.

Tonight: Part 12 of 18. No appearance by Kyle MacLachlan, the star of the show, star billed as Agent Dale Cooper and Dougie Jones, a semi-catatonic who might be Cooper but no one knows. Or cares. He barely makes a sound or emits emotion unless stimulated by coffee or cherry pie, Agent Cooper’s favorite things 25 years ago. He’s married to a cunning idiot played by Naomi Watts, has a kid, and works for Don Murray, who is 88 years old in real life. We should all look so good at 78.

“Twin Peaks” is mostly filler. It has more filler than a non Kosher hot dog. Scenes are long for no reason, there are incredible pauses. They’re supposed to be meaningful. They are not. Something seems like it might be happening, and then doesn’t. Sometimes conversations take place between people you’ve never seen before, or about people you’ve never heard of. There’s no continuity.

Director David Lynch is still playing G man Gordon Cole. He continues to make Cole a running deaf joke. I don’t care, but I don’t know why either. Cole wears large hearing aids, can’t hear a thing, hears the wrong thing. and is like Mr. Magoo. In Part 11 he witnessed a lot of extra-terrestrial things in the desert. In Part 12, he explained to a new FBI agent that they’re part of a team hunting E.T’s. They are the “X Files.” “Twin Peaks ” has become the “X Files,” kind of. (In Episode 8 there were direct references.) The “Twin Peaks” team doesn’t know what they’re doing, so they moved into UFOS and aliens.

Tonight we saw more of the old “Twin Peaks” characters than we have since the beginning: Sarah Palmer, Det. Hawk, Nadine Hurley, Richard and Jerry Horne. None of it made any sense or went anywhere. Robert Forster returned as Sheriff Frank Truman, brother of original character Sheriff Harry Truman, who was played by Michael Ontkean in the original series. Ontkean is retired (in Hawaii) so Lynch thought this up. Harry was referred to tonight as “kicking something.” It’s a waste of time. Forster is so good, though, you don’t mind.

Also tonight we finally saw Audrey Horne, played by Sherilyn Fenn. It took 12 episodes. Audrey was the slutty sweetheart of “Twin Peaks,” a high school girl obsessed with Agent Cooper. Audrey is likely the mother of a sinister young man who’s killed a child with his truck and brutalized his grandmother. But when Audrey finally arrived, this was not addressed. Instead she spent an interminable scene yelling at Charlie, the man she apparently married since we last saw her 25 years ago. He is put upon and odd looking, a typical Lynch character. We gather he’s rich. But their appearance meant nothing, went nowhere, was about nothing, and just pfffed to a close.

The episode sort of faded out, with a conversation between two young women who have nothing to do with anything. Then Lynch, as usual, filled up the empty space with music. I turned to “Game of Thrones” with enough time to see the stunning revelation that Diana Rigg’s Olenna Tyrell, Queen of Thorns, killed the Lannister baby. She revealed it after she drank poison delivered by Jamie Lannister. It was quite an ending.

(PS If you’re young, go back and see the real “Avengers” starring Diana Rigg and Patrick McNee.)

I’m sure David Lynch thinks “Game of Thrones” is contrived and silly because it has a plot and moves forward (it’s fantasy, but so is “Twin Peaks”). Three months in to “The Return” he might give it a try.

Kudos as usual to Laura Dern and Miguel Ferrer.