Planet Soap

The mob stuff has never been top quality but the Guza & Labine eras definately handled it better. Sonny as the "most powerful crime lord on the eastern seabord" was always a joke to me. He always got frequently spoken down to and disrespected by people like Monica, Rick, Scott, Jax etc... And if Sonny was as powerful as the show makes him out to be, Nelle and Shiloh would have been smoked a loooong time ago. Frank Smith definitely had more of an intimidating presence than Sonny, even early Sonny was more intimidating than his current self.

this has been a great few months for uploads! also great seeing another episode close to the farmhouse scenes, imo one of the best moments of the show in the 90s.

Y&R the classic years

I reached out to Brandon Denson who had the late 90s early 2000s clips on YouTube, who had his channel removed. He's a member of the y&r Facebook group and hopefully he'd be willing to post some content to this thread.

Cool!!!

I would have rather seen a classic episode than the generic blandness they aired on Christmas and New Years. Y&R never takes a day off . B&B aired a rerun but it would have been a treat to see them dig deeper in the vault than 2018.

I guess its a plus though that it's 2020 and the Soaps are still with us but..they could do better.

I was hoping to see a classic episode on Christmas and Thanksgiving like they did last year At least GH did release classic episodes online in the past, compared to the zilch we get from CBS

On 12/14/2019 at 4:01 AM, beebs said:

I've been saying this for awhile. I honestly think the main reason B&B has been sustaining/gaining in the ratings is less to do with their storytelling (because we all know how consistent THAT is) and more to do with the fact it's aired in relatively bite-sized chunks so it's easier to get sucked in than an hour-long show (I also think this is why no soap that's debuted as an hour has ever been truly successful in the ratings).

GH honestly needs to do a big blowout story where someone who has hated the mob for the past few decades (I always figured Monica would be the best person to head this up) brings the mob down and then we jail the worst ones (Sonny/Jason etc.) and move on with actual doctors and medical stories.

Y&R is my favorite soap but for the life of me I cannot understand why its still #1. Since Bill Bell died in 2005 the show hasn't been the same. B&B has been past prime quality since about 2002 yet it still beats GH? Perhaps one of the main reasons is that they have not back backburnered most of their veteran casts,  and they can still appeal to an older audience, compared to ABC's youth craze. 

Dont get me wrong the mob drama could have its place. It gives Gh that urban crime edge element. It can be a portion of the show, limited to 2 or 3 characters, but not the entire show. I think the Bill Levinson era in 93/94ish did this well. It was more serious and impactful than the mob trash that came afterwards. The Gloria Monty era had a good balance with mob story lines as well. The 90s also did attempt to keep some focus on the hospital which was good.

I liked GH, OLTL, and ATWT especially because they attempted to introduce a variety of story lines with their plots rather than sticking to one formula. (It wasn't good when they tried extreme plots).

On 12/13/2019 at 4:09 PM, Khan said:

Nah, I don't wanna Jason killed off.  Recast?  Yes.  Killed off?  No.

Steve Burton is the only person that can play Jason IMO, even if he's not doing it well right now.

In addition to cast slimming I think cutting the show 30 minutes (and all other hour-long soaps for that matter) would do it a whole lot of good.

LOL, GH is bad right now, but in its defence....CBS may bring in the numbers but its soaps are currenly in  crap  quality where storyline is concerned. Y&R has been dull for so many years now, meanwhile The Bold and the Beautiful just keeps recycling romance plots. At least GH gets relatively creative with their lackluster stories.

15 hours ago, Khan said:

I say hit 'em hard three ways: first, a hurricane (bigger than the one in the '70's, far more destructive); second, a serial killer (escapes during the hurricane, kills a bunch more people); and third, hazardous conditions post-hurricane cause another outbreak of Lassa Fever (and this time, it's resistant to Steve Hardy's vaccine, killing the last of the bunch before a new vaccine/antidote is found).

That would be perfectly acceptable.

l second that  it would it be great to have Tracy and Lesley back. It'd be even better if they used some dumb science fiction plot to say Helena had Allan frozen somewhere all these years, and brought him back to life, making him and Monica endgame. (God forbid) when General Hospital ends it would be nice if Luke and Laura were endgame! 

On 12/6/2019 at 7:46 PM, YRBB said:

 

Whoa, you weren't kidding. Great episode all around and I was not expecting Todd to kill both himself and Angela. Those shots of their bodies were quite scary -- never thought they'd do something like that!

Can you post the link to those scenes, I'm having trouble finding them.

8 hours ago, carolineg said:

  I don't think VM leaving would have effected Carly's airtime or story.  She could have had a legendary love/hate relationship with AJ for years.   In fact , thinking about it, Vanessa staying would have probably helped the show stay on track.  Sonny/Brenda/Jax and AJ/Carly/Jason seemed to be the more appropriate triangles and losing both VM and KMc at nearly the same time sorta left SB's Carly as the only viable younger leading lady so she got all the story instead of just leading her own story which probably indirectly caused  Carly to become the lead she is today.

LOL! I'd support a major cast purging via Lassa Fever or Ryan ASAP!

AJ and Sarah Brown's Carly did have that bickering Alan and Monica chemistry, perhaps that could have played well for years. 

In regards to Sonny Corinthos. I grew up with Sonny on GH. I don't hate him or Jason, but I dislike how they warped the morality of the show and consumed the show. I think the characters could exist but not take over the show, and not be portrayed as 'nice' criminals. So many characters eager to make excuses for them (Emily, Robin, Elizabeth etc..). It's almost insane! Even worse is that Carly is complicit in destroying so many lives (AJ & TONY) both of whom never recovered. Now they've made Bobbie, who used to call Carly on her crap, a background party to it. At least Ava suffers! But Nelle Benson is Carly's just desserts!

I also think Sonny and Jason being so close to Robin and multiple other friends and family kind of weakened Mac as a police commissioner. I found him to be softer on Sonny and Jason in comparison to Scott Baldwin and Taggert who were no holds barred on organized crime. The same is happening with Laura as mayor. She's friends with Sonny and Jason despite the obvious. 

@victoria foxton Thanks for the clip. In sheer coincidence, I just decided to watch Brenda's breakdown storyline from around this same time period.

I find it interesting that Sonny left Brenda at the altar to protect her from his lifestyle, yet a few years later he moves Carly and Michael into his penthouse. I do recognize however, they only had Sonny do so because Maurice was going to leave the show temporarily.

I wonder what would have became of Sonny and Brenda had Vanessa not left the show that year. ( Sonny and Carly may have never happened, if they didn't pair Carly with Jason, Carly might have run out of storyline and been off the canvas when Sarah Brown left).

I do enjoy Sonny and Brenda as a couple but I must recognize that Jax, though he has his ways about him, is probably better for Brenda than Sonny. Sonny seems to consume Brenda's entire being. With Jax, yes she has a degree of dependence on him , but she appears stronger and more of her own person. 

Though I prefer Brenda to Carly as Sonny's woman, Carly is admittedly more capable of handling the mob drama.

Finally, there were several missed opportunities with a Brenda/Jason pairing. They had a lot of chemistry during the high school years, in 1998, way more in 2002 during their fake marriage plot, and there was still a lot there in 2010. 

Lol, from the time I heard a psycho was after Alexis I knew it was a family member of Keefer's. At least the crash finally resolved the damn baby switch.

2 hours ago, NeilDru4ever said:

 I can’t get myself to watch the show now. It’s cringeworthy.

(intended to be combined with my post above)

Another y&r channel, casey gibeaut, has surfaced on youtube, this one with disguised titles. Im seeing alot of content from 2012 when Sharon married Victor and took over Newman Enterprises, and Phyllis Tim Reid 2.0. I remember when those scenes aired, cannot believe it's been 7 going on 8 years already!

In seeing those clips, I'd say again that 2012 was Y&R's last barely palatable year. In thinking of the show as the Titanic (pardon the cheesy metaphor), it went off course but still afloat somewhere around 2005. Lynn Marie Latham was the iceberg, Maria Bell was the sinking, and Jill Farren Phelps was the cap size. Anything after 2013 has just been  Mal Young was just insult to injury.

Hopefully this channel doesn't get shut down as quickly as the other ill fated ones have. There are a couple of scenes on YouTube from y&r that have thankfully evaded Sony. 

Awesome 1988!!! Lol, Those Leanna & Victor fantasy scenes were awfully Days of our Livesish. 

Michael and Lauren are boring to me. It seems like they dont know what to do with Ms.Fenmore other than have a psyco chase after her. Michael and Phyliss, being bad together however....I could get behind that! I do like Phyliss' friends with sexual tension dynamic with both Michael Baldwin & Malcolm. 

52 minutes ago, soapfan770 said:

I forgot to address the Brad equation @ironlion @YRfan23 haha weren't Victoria and Nikki interested in him at the same time in the fall of 1999? It made sense that Nikki was interested when he came back since he had left town right after their aborted 1996 wedding and had been accused of shooting Victor. HT Victoria was actually intriguing with Brad, I wonder if Thudley had that in mind when he paired Bill and Katie on B&B a decade later. 

Excited to see these 1988 episodes!!

I'd like to see both Diamont and Tom back on Y&R today. I liked the Brad & Nikki storyline aswell as his friends with benefits dynamic with Lauren in the early 90s. (Im still mad over how they played Scott Sr. though. He didnt deserve that). As for Diamont on B&B,  I cannot stand Bill Spencer. Lol, he's often so poorly written at times.

I do agree that Diane's anger was extreemly justified. She basically broke off her engagement to Jack for Victor, only for Victor to return to Nikki (which didn't last). 

18 hours ago, Dion said:

@ironlion

 

The clips with Dru, Malcolm and Christel Khalil's Lily took place first in 2005. In those clips we see them with a paternity test that says that Malcolm isn't Lily's father. But Phyllis was already suspicious and learned that there were two tests.

 

Jump forward a year or so to your clip. Here Davetta Sherwood's Lily has eavesdropped on Phyllis and Dru and learned that Malcolm was her father after all.

 

(Christel Khalil later returned to playing Lily later on in 2006)

@Dion Got u! I found Davetta Sherwood to be much better than than Christel Khalil as Lilly. I felt annnoyed when CK started screaming at Malcom. Sherwood would have been a great replacement for Khalil since Lilly went to prison.

Great clips. I'm confused though. I thought Lilly already learned of her paternity from eavesdropping on Dru and Phyllis, and confronted Dru here:

Watching  those flashback scenes really reminded me of how much I miss when soaps utilized close-up shots, and when the show moved the camera artfully. Today it appears everything on daytime is just shot at a wide angle, and the camera barely moves. It was really nice to hear the old school music scores again. The episode was well done. It would have been interesting to have seen some scenes regarding Luan, Keemo, and the drama around Diane Jenkins and Kyle's birth. Overall though any chance to see old y&r on screen makes it an enjoyable episode.

On 11/16/2019 at 5:48 AM, Chris B said:

 

People talk about ratings negatively only when it relates to soaps. All four soaps have better ratings and more loyal audiences than pretty much everything on the CW and pretty much every cable network. If the networks stopped treating them like it was a time filler and invested in promoting these shows (and gave them a budget) they'd benefit. Also the lack of streaming support for them with their libraries is insane, even if you just focus on what is on the air. For ABC, they own their soaps so why not throw them on Hulu or Disney Plus?

Facts, Mad Men used to average around 2 milion viewers whereas Y&R usually doubles that. So many big budget cable/streaming shows pull in only about 1 million. Hollywood Reporter said that 'Power' and ' Big Little Lies' pulled in about 1.4 million viewers each....too much content is out there so it seems only big draws like Rosanne, Stranger Things, etc are getting the huge numbers.

I agree, soaps could totally survive if they were better promoted, better budgeted, and better written. Modern soaps don't have to be esoteric to long time viewers. What isnt cooler than stories that stretch back 50+ years! If Marvel fans can can enjoy newly released movies based on comics from umpteen years ago, and U.S. anime fans are now catching onto 'Fullmetal Alchemist' which came out in 2003, there's definitely a market for new viewership in soaps. 

1 hour ago, SoapDope said:

She was hit by a car if I remember correctly. 

Yeah, confirmed it:

7 hours ago, DRW50 said:

 

Didn't she also get plastic surgery? I can't remember.

I believe she did.

That was perhaps my favorite Y&R storyline of the late 90s. Nikki looking so pale and lifeless in hospital scenes was so grim, serious, and realistic. Soaps couldn't pull off something so unsettling like that today effectively.

The best part was that it lead to vilianess Diane which fueled years of animosity between Nikki and Diane, and later Diane vs. Phyliss which was gold! The biggest joke had to be Victor and Nikki "remarrying" after 10 years only for Nikki to sleep with Brad (lol, who didnt Brad sleep with) the next year.