Planet Soap

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!!!

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).

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.

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!

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

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.

(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.

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).

@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:

Yeah, confirmed it:

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.

Some of the 1998 videos he posted, I saw on archive.org before his channel launched such as the two October episodes where Sharon's arm was broken.

He responded to my comment to hide his videos, i was willing to email him the link to DTS t(not post it in the youtube comments). Hopefully he/she reaches out. SONY! Never showed classic episodes of DAYS, B&B or Y&R on SOAPnet, hardly ever shows classic reruns in daytime, and wont release its soaps on streaming...because they'd rather a century's worth of television sit in a basement vault somewhere. P&G and ABC soap fans have it good!

Looks like firehawk just got taken down (as predicted). At least most of his content is on archive.org. Literally just watched one of the channels videos this morning.

I commented on one of firehawk's videos that they should disguise the video titles. At least a few of his videos are already up on archive.org. Would hate to see a repeat of that Brandon channel where all the 98-01 videos got deleted.

With you on that one. The Kay/Jill/ Phillip triangle is the draw factor from the 70s for me. Anything 89-02ish on streaming would be GOLD. That's when Y&R got its look and story line down to a solid formula. In watching 90s episodes it really seems like they didn't know where to go with Nina after David Kimble died. The Ryan/Cole/Victoria stuff went on a while! Kind of like Sammy, Austin, Carrie etc.. on DAYS. Similarly after Marge (and the breast cancer scare which I never saw) I'm glad they finally got around to giving Kay and actual story line in '98 where she fought Jill for the house. I've said this before, but It's amazing how she obsessed over Phillip for years when Rex was a far better husband----never heard her mention him much in years prior. When it comes to Nikki, some might not agree, but I liked when they got her involved in business plots. It gave the character something else to do other than being at the ranch all day and seeking fulfillment from her man of the moment. It's annoying how she and Victor just can't settle down after almost 40 years...it's time they use another plot device other than relationship problems between the two. (The same goes for Nick and Sharon).

Wow! Strasser called her out by name! If JFP is clearly an issue, why does she keep getting hired🤔

I didnt mind that plot, but the Manning last name thing was indeed convoluted. Considering how deranged Todd was he fits as post 90s rewritten Victor Lord's son. LOL, they just kept re-writing things when it came to Victor Lord Sr. First he's an overbearing dad, then he's a sex addict, then he's a child molester, he has a plethora of ilegitimate children (Todd, Victor Jr, Tina), Dorian killed him, no Viki killed him, no he's alive...wait was that actually him in 2003? He was basically OLTL's Phillip Chancellor, a long dead charachter that had bigger historical impact post mortem than alive.