Broderick

KT Stevens was from the most unfortunate generation of Hollywood starlets -- girls born before 1920. As we know, roles for actresses from that generation dried-up completely by about 1960. Even the very biggest names of that generation (Joan Crawford and Bette Davis) were reduced to participating in the so-called "Psycho Biddy" or "Hagsploitation" genre, if they wanted to continue working. It became all the rage after 1960 to take an aging pin-up girl/glamour-puss from the Golden Age of Hollywood and cast her as a crazed, mentally unstable crone terrorizing others. And it caused many of those actresses to throw in the towel and retire (or semi-retire). Bill Bell was guilty of hagsploiting KT Stevens in the role of Vanessa Prentiss, and I believe that was about the last straw for her acting-wise. [Tennessee Williams wrote a play in 1959 called Sweet Bird of Youth about an aging actress trying to dig her way out of that morass of lousy roles for older leading ladies. Geraldine Page picked up a Tony award nomination in 1960 for the play and an Academy Award nomination in 1962 for the movie. (Miss Page was born about 1924 and was younger than Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, and KT Stevens. Had Miss Page actually been their age, she would've likely been considered too old for the part, lol.) Another old Golden Age actress (Lauren Bacall) played the role to great acclaim in the late 1980s when the play was revived.] I got a kick out of y'all's comments about John McCook essentially being a parody of a soap actor. I always thought of him as being a second-rate musical comedy star erroneously elevated to a serious, dramatic actor. I could scarcely believe my eyes when Bill Bell dusted-off his tired ass and cast him as yet another suave, well-dressed, spineless wimp of a leading man in The Bold & the Beautiful. Mister Bell seemed to pin a tremendous amount of hope that a "riveting triangle" would emerge involving this pseudo-Ralph Lauren designer, his long-lost love (Beth Logan), and his shrewish witch-wife, the aging crone Stephanie Forrester. And as we all know, the actress playing Stephanie was a downright fierce performer, and she basically ground Eric and Beth into the dust from Day One, just as Eric Braeden had finished-off Dennis Cole in about five minutes on Y&R. Bill Bell attempted to "rectify" the B&B situation by recasting Beth right off the bat, believing that Beth was the problem. She wasn't. The real problem was that John McCook is a foppish weenie who couldn't hold his own against the Stephanie Forrester actress, and the whole storyline imploded. It's very hard to believe that John McCook has remained employed for almost 40 years in that role, but c'est la vie.

Vanessa Prentiss was 100% cardboard (the perpetual Wicked Old Witch), and I always felt it was a disservice to KT Stevens, who was obviously capable of playing a more complicated character than she was given. Vanessa was nothing more than a "plot device" to make Lorie Brooks more sympathetic to the audience, as Lorie had previously been a fairly horrid girl. (Bell dusted-off the same trope about 1985, creating the cardboard character of Shawn Garrett to make the previously horrid Lauren Fenmore more sympathetic. Just as Vanessa had swan-dived off the penthouse balcony to make us tolerate the hateful Lorie Brooks, Shawn Garrett dug a grave in San Francisco to make us tolerate the hateful Lauren Fenmore.) Vanessa's most "wicked" act prior to her suicide mission had been attempting to shoot Lorie Brooks and then pretend she'd mistaken Lorie Brooks for an armed intruder. Of course the plan backfired, and Vanessa accidentally shot Lackluster Lance instead. Lorie covered for the crone by asking Snapper to come treat Lance's wounds, and that kept a police report from having to be filed. Again, Lorie did the "nice" thing ("aww, what a sweetheart!") while Vanessa did the "terrible" thing ("what a wicked old witch!") It was all straight from the Bill Bell playbook of how to create sympathy for a flawed ingenue.

Well, to make Dennis Cole's Lance look "good", Mister Bell & Miss Alden took the strange route of having Lucas portray a complete prick during Lorie's trial. But for me, even THAT didn't work out well. I still sympathized with Lucas. Lucas was THERE when Vanessa died, and he heard Vanessa screaming, and then he saw her body on the street below. Although we (the audience) knew exactly what had happened -- Vanessa's fatal swan dive off the terrace -- Luke had no way of knowing that information, and I felt like he was completely justified in believing Lorie had knocked-off the old crone.

Dennis Cole was plumb horrible (even worse than John McCook). To my young eyes, the Lance character was ALWAYS a drip. I never could understand what Lorie and Leslie saw in him. They were constantly pulling each other's hair out over him, and I always thought Lucas Prentiss was kinder, more down to earth, more relatable, and more handsome than Lance. Plus Lucas wasn't tied to Vanessa's apron strings the way Lance was. The storyline would've made better sense to me if they'd been fighting over Lucas, and Lance had been the "consolation prize". Mercifully, Victor Newman gobbled-up Lance Prentiss and spat him out, which was about the best thing that could've happened to Y&R during that weird transition period from 1980 to 1982. I imagine some of those "young actors" John Conboy was jizzing his pants over during the transition to the hour format were the Abbott siblings, Danny Romalotti, & Andy Richards. With the exception of Jack Abbott, none of them actually appeared in 1980, but the stage had been set for all of them long before they finally began popping up in 1981 and 1982. I feel sure the actress Brian Kerwin mentioned who was "overjoyed with illness" was either Jaime Lyn Bauer (who missed a lot) or Brenda Dickson, who was always primed up for a good UTI, hysterectomy, or something.

(The World Turns writers had obviously run out of fresh, original material for Barbara Ryan. So they lifted that entire storyline, scene for scene, from a 1970s film called On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Barbara Ryan became Daisy Gamble from the movie, and Gunnar took the role of Marc Chabot. My mama was watching World Turns daily back then, and she referred to Barbara & Gunnar's storyline as "On a Clear Day You Can See Desperation". 😅)

I was praying to the Lord above that Ashley would accompany Derek to the warehouse on that fateful night, and they'd take Tomas with them as their legal counsel. 😅

My own guess -- which is likely completely wrong! -- is that Grayson gets the immunity deal he was promised. Lia -- probably not. She instructed someone to knife one man & to beat the daylights out of another man. She created a situation in which an employee of a highly-touted free clinic was murdered in cold blood. I would imagine any immunity she's offered will be "reduced jail time" and not a free walk. Ren -- he can probably just give it up entirely. He could (theoretically) provide some valuable state's evidence, if he actually knows who the Impaler is, and he claims he DOES have that knowledge. But I betcha Joey Armstrong and Randy/Sammy figure out who the Impaler is before Ren has a chance to talk, reducing Ren's contribution to zero. As for Doug McBride and Nicole -- I've got no guesses. But they sure made a big plot point of hustling her beautiful ass out of that ballroom mid-photograph with her family, and whatever led her to brush aside her debutante granddaughter's biggest moment (especially considering Nicole herself holds the emeritus title of Platinum Deb With the Nicest Booty in Barrington County) must be something she deemed AWFULLY important.

I kinda doubt Lia knows who the Impaler is. I'm figuring Lia answers to someone else, who answers to the Impaler. (They kept saying "VIPs" (plural) at the warehouse, as though there are several different layers of folks involved in the Plasma Thief Hierarchy. lol. And I REALLY doubt Joey knows who the Impaler is. It's always been my belief that Joey is running some kind of outfit (that we know nothing about yet) which is "indirectly" related to the Plasma Thieves. I suspect Joey was keeping an eye on the Plasma Thieves because he's afraid the Plasma Thieves were encroaching on his "territory". I believe he sent Sammy/Randy out to the warehouse to figure out who the Impaler is. (Just my two cents.) Smitty didn't get much of a journalistic article out of this mess, did he? I know Ashley is grief-stricken, but I don't wanna see it. She bores me to TEARS no matter what she's doing.

I'm sorta speculating the same thing. When Nicole hauled her (beautiful) ass out of that debutante ball in such a hurry, it was obviously a Big Important Plot Point. At FIRST, I thought it had something to do with LYNETTE, as we'd just seen Big Bill interrogating Hayley about her past in Philadelphia. But after seeing Wednesday's closing credits, it seems Nicole knows more about an "earlier disappearance" than we'd thought. That particular gentleman had previously consulted with Nicole about his addiction issues, as we already know -- and she made a BIG POINT of reminding Vanessa after the funeral that she couldn't disclose anything she & Doug had ever discussed about addictions.

I'm with @SoapDope78 : Once Victoria Principal left in a ball of flames, I couldn't find anything of value left in the show. I pretty much washed my hands of it. As @te. noted, the show had a couple of REALLY good opportunities to reboot itself: When Patrick Duffy left in 1985, any writer with any sense would've pivoted to the original concept of the show by pitting JR Ewing & Pam Barnes against one another fully. And they certainly had the groundwork to do that (Bobby's will naming Pam as the executor of his estate and the trustee of Christopher's Ewing Oil stock). They completely dropped the ball on that. THEN, when Patrick Duffy came back & Victoria was still on the show, they had yet opportunity to reset, and they bungled that up too. Once Victoria was gone, ppfffft --- the show was essentially a dinosaur lumbering along a few more miserable seasons.

While Derek was bleeding on the warehouse floor, I expected Lia to start frantically scooping up the plasma and pouring it in her purse. Wish they'd showed the CLOCK when Tyrell & Jessica began making love: 10:39 pm -- They take off their clothes. 10:41 pm -- The afterglow. We've all been there at Tyrell's age 😅 I get a kick out of Nate. Wish he'd spelled her name "Francisco".

I think having Derek kick the bucket while saving a friend is a good "circular ending" to the character's trajectory. He debuted last year as a fireman who was injured heroically saving a kittycat from a burning building. Now he can exit as an ex-fireman who heroically dies while saving a friend in a warehouse. Good literary closing for a character who was always a complete waste of time. Jacob seemed to preview that yesterday when Derek wandered into the warehouse, with his mouth hanging open stupidly. ("Don't you ever get tired of trying to SAVE everyone?")

What impressed me the most --- aside from the choreography, of course -- is the realization that BTG has fleshed-out its recurring cast enough to build an entire HUGE event around them. Every one of those kids -- Tyrell, Samantha, Jessica, Donnell, Nate Dogg, Francesca, Deanna -- they're all recurring characters, but there they all were, in the biggest event of the year. And I thought it was clever of the writers to build that whole arc around "where is Donnell?!" When he finally appeared, I was reminded again how much I like his character and the actor who plays him. I thought Deanna was beautiful in her black outfit. And I loved how Andre "rearranged" the tableau of Samantha's grandfolks photo so that Ted was next to Miss Beautiful.

The costume department really knocked themselves out for the debutante ball. I thought all the Dupree Girls looked really good, especially our featured deb (Samantha), her great-granny (Anita), and her grandma (Miss Beautiful). And the men's tuxes looked good. NOBODY looked bad. It's amazing how a show can find extra budget funds when it needs to, lol. And while some programs seem to believe they can only feature 8 or 10 characters in an episode for budget reasons, BTG trots out practically the entire cast. As Jacob might say, "Fo-sho."

I think the recent foreshadowing with both Smitty & Grayson is designed to throw us off. But I know everyone caught that LONG LOOK Derek & Ashley exchanged at Garland Memorial the other day, as the elevator doors s-l-o-w-l-y closed on Derek; I interpreted that scene as a "good-bye, cruel world" scene for Derek Baldwin. (The person I was watching with said, "Well, look. Derek just walked into the Elevator of Death." lol.) When Ben Gavin suddenly went off-contract and Derek suddenly was dismissed from the fire department and went to work in the Blood Clinic at the beginning of the new season, it appeared to me that Derek's fate was sealed. I originally thought Jacob Hawthorne would mysteriously disappear while he was undercover. That didn't happen. So now I'm guessing that one of the "higher-up" Plasma Thieves will make a get-away & snatch-up Jacob as a spur-of-the-moment hostage, which would lead to Naomi erroneously believing her Secret BRCA Fetus is all that remains of Jacob. As for Tomas, who knows? He sure does keep (dangerously) sticking his snout into Lynette, Hayley, and Randy/Sammy's schemes, which doesn't ensure much of a future for him, lol.