Everything posted by Broderick
- Y&R: Old Articles
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Y&R: Old Articles
Melody Thomas thought one time that SHE had the last word. It was right after Nikki and Brad bought their way into Jabot circa 1999 or 2000. Nikki was in Victor's office, and he was lambasting her for "throwing away $30 million to join Jabot, when you're not qualified to hold any kind of job." Nikki said, "Well, when you decide you'd like to have a rational conversation about this, call me. In the meantime, here's my CARD!!" Melody Thomas flicked her new Jabot business card onto his desk and RAN for the door like her skirt was on fire, because she was determined to get the last line. Just before she slammed the door behind her, he mumbled, "Ummm-huh. Have a nice day, you hear." You could see the rage on her face 🤣
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Y&R: Old Articles
And Miss Dickson flat-out admitted that. (Wasn't it a behind-the-scenes special on Entertainment TV, or something?) She basically said, "I don't know what the big deal was. We could've easily come in the following Saturday and shot my scenes." Yeah, right, bring the director, the entire light and sound crew, all the camera guys, all the stage hands, hair and makeup, everyone else to the studio on a Saturday to shoot her scenes because she pitched a tantrum Friday afternoon. It would've cost SONY and Bell Dramatic Serial Co thousands & thousands of dollars to do that. But she didn't care; she didn't think it was a problem at all. And y'all remember what pandemonium it was that summer. One day you'd hear the voiceover, "The role of Jill Abbott is being played today by Deborah Adair." The next day, Miss Dickson would return, giving one of the most bizarre performances of her career. Then Jill might have a day off, and then the next day, "The role of Jill Abbott is being played today by Deborah Adair." Then Miss Dickson would return the following day, weirder than ever. Until finally, that fateful day -- "The role of Jill Abbott is NOW being played by Jess Walton." I remember us laughing about it at my house for the two or three weeks that it was occurring, until finally the sobering realization hit -- they've actually kicked her ass out the door for good. Obviously, the constant rescheduling, the hiring of replacements, the auditioning of a permanent actress to play the role --- ALL of that was costing them time & money. Peter Bergman talked about his little tiff with Victor recently on some broadcast (was it that SOAPY podcast Greg Rikaart does?) What I gathered from it is that Bergman was a bit of a perfectionist, learning his lines verbatim, coming to work prepared to give a practiced, polished, rehearsed performance. Braeden, in contrast, was pretty much just winging it, getting the gist of the scene but "massaging" his dialogue pretty drastically, not sticking to the scripts very rigidly, and just "making the scene work" by saying & doing things he felt Victor would do under the circumstances -- which obviously worked-out fine to the TV audience but was probably fairly grueling for his costars. And any of y'all who've ever acted before can see it from both Bergman & Braeden's point-of-view. If you're an actor who wants to stick to the script -- and you know your lines and everyone else's lines when you show up for rehearsal -- the worst thing you can encounter is an "improv" actor who barely even looked at his script the night before. And if you're a seat-of-the-pants improv-type actor, the most irritating thing you can encounter is a "script perfectionist" who pauses the rehearsal and announces, "YOU didn't give me the right cue! And you were supposed to CROSS BEHIND THE DESK on your THIRD line, NOT on your FIFTH line!" We've all been there & done that. And it can lead to a lot of tension. If it's a stage play, you quickly learn that you don't wanna deal with that particular actor in another show ever, but if it's a continuing television situation, you've just gotta work it out, which Jack and Victor evidently did eventually because they seem to respect each other now, although they probably both still have the same rehearsal/performance traits now that they had in the 1990s.
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Y&R: Old Articles
Remember the deal with Peter Bergman & Eric Braeden and their little fisticuffs incident in the early 1990s? My understanding is that they were gonna get the axe from Y&R if they didn't kiss and make-up. Well, obviously if they HAD gotten the axe, they would've both gotten other offers due to their popularity at the time. BUT if they'd been fired and one of them had filed a $10 million termination suit against SONY, I doubt any other producer would've touched the plaintiff with a 10-foot pole. (I've always felt that Miss Dickson cooked her own goose career-wise by filing suit. She scared off any potential offers with that. If she'd gone away quietly, you know someone else would've hired her, especially considering that she looked even better than she had looked eleven and one-half years earlier 😅)
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Y&R: Old Articles
All that "controversial ordeal" about Brenda Dickson getting fired in 1987 --- I always figured it was a combination of EVERYBODY telling the truth about what happened (even Brenda Dickson herself). Yes, her performance had become extremely hammy to the point it was sometimes laughable. I never had any problem at all with how she played the character. She was completely over-the-top and camp, but after all, Jill had recently divorced John Abbott and taken 20% of Jabot, and for the first time in her life, Jill thought she was on equal footing with Kay Chancellor. Brenda Dickson evidently interpreted that to mean Jill would affect a pseudo-British accent, wiggle her hips more, jiggle her breasts more, and stare haughtily into the distance while speaking to people she looked down on, which was practically everyone in Genoa City. Except Brad Carlton, lol. We know that certain actors on the show didn't much care for her (Jerry Douglas comes to mind immediately). We also know that Brenda Dickson had purchased a Mercedes with a personalized license plate that said "JILL" on it. She seemed to sometimes have difficulty "coming down" from her campy performance, and she evidently sashayed around at times believing she was Jill Abbott instead of Brenda Dickson. We also know that Melody Thomas had married producer Edward Scott in 1985 and had transitioned from being a "Tier Three" character in the late 1970s to an important young ingenue by 1982. After marrying Ed Scott, she probably had a bit more input into the producer's ear. From what Miss Dickson has claimed, the "West Coast producers" filed reports about on-set activities with the Chicago-based writer (Bill Bell) that Miss Dickson didn't believe were completely accurate. Clearly, Ed Scott & Tom Langan had developed certain ideas about how Miss Dickson should be playing her character (and behaving in the studio) that differed from Miss Dickson's theatrical interpretation. Bill Bell might've also been frustrated with how extremely campy she'd gotten. And some of her castmates were also outdone with her antics. It was all the perfect storm for her to get fired, and I doubt she helped her case any by announcing she would dictate when she would work and when she wouldn't work. (And Bill Bell wasn't helping by writing into 4 out of every 5 episodes.) I wasn't the least bit surprised when she was shown out the door. And I also suspected everyone who spoke about the matter was telling what they believed to be a truthful account of what happened. Of course the coup de grace was when she filed her $10 million lawsuit against SONY for her dismissal. That pretty much closed the door on her ever returning to Y&R, and it also caused other producers on other shows to view her as a trouble-maker who wasn't worth hiring. It was all a shame.
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BTG: June 2026 Discussion Thread
The last tornado we had in my city touched down in a very small neighborhood and completely destroyed many of the houses there. But it downed trees all over town as it swept across the city; it didn't peel-off roofs or destroy walls except in the small area where it touched the ground. That's typically been my experience with them.
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BTG: June 2026 Discussion Thread
I can't imagine why revisiting Eva's paternity would make any difference story wise. Ted has learned to love Eva like a daughter, and I doubt that would change even if Leslie has been lying about the girl's parentage. Ted is a nice guy & it wouldn't change his feelings about Eva. I appreciated the irony of Andre Richardson bleeding on the floor, while Mrs. Andre Richardson was pawing all over Big Bill in the elevator and giggling like a hyena about sitting "side saddle" across his face, and at the same time Mrs. Big Bill is trapped in another room pawing all over Martin's little friend from college.
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BTG: June 2026 Discussion Thread
Just what we've ALL been clamoring for. More storyline material for Joey Armstrong. 😒
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Cosmetic Changes / The Future
Until we start copying & pasting "I do NOT give Facebook permission to use any of my pictures, posts, or information, both past and future!!", there's probably hope we'll figure out the new format eventually, lol.
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BTG: June 2026 Discussion Thread
Your guess is as good as mine 😅 I think Elon is the police chief of "Metro Police Department", which evidently covers all parts of the DC metro area, regardless of county, state, and district lines -- although we know it doesn't work that way in real life. Orphey Gene's appears to be in DC, being based on the Florida Avenue Grill, in the 1100 block of Florida Ave NW in DC. I'm guessing Uptown is in DC, too, although I don't know what it's supposed to be based on (other than a green paint nightmare). Not sure about Bill's office, but I suspect DC for that one too.
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BTG: June 2026 Discussion Thread
He recently confided in his brain-damaged concubine (Vanessa) that he's got some ole sister named Heather that he ain't seen in 150 years. I figure if the Impaler is jumping up & down wanting a 1-on-1 with Joey, she's probably that Heather person. (That seems like a fairly dull assumption, and I don't know how Smitty would get a 5-part story out of it.)
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BTG: June 2026 Discussion Thread
I sort of enjoy episodes like today's show, where the writers basically "pour their storyline bible backstory" onto the screen. We saw it a few weeks ago in a Jacob/Naomi episode, and now we saw it today with Dani, Bill, Hayley, Naomi, and Chelsea. I wouldn't want an episode like this every WEEK, but for once in a blue moon, it's an interesting way to show the lives of the characters prior to February 2025.
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ALL: Escapism vs any semblance of reality
I always got the impression Chancellor Industries was a group of factories, just like the one Phillip oversaw in Genoa City. In one of the early episodes, Phillip encouraged Kay to take a vacation to Nassau, but he couldn't accompany her because it would look bad to take a vacation while he was doing lay-offs at the plant. There was never any indication that Phillip & Kay were "billionaires", just that they'd grown wealthy from running blue-collar type businesses (probably shirt factories, or jeans factories, or coat factories). We saw the innerworkings of the Chancellor Industries corporate offices in 1980, and that seemed to underline that it was merely a small to mid-sized company that operated factories. It seemed downright ludicrous when Kay Chancellor died circa 2013, and they announced she was magically a billionaire. When John and Jill Abbott were divorcing in 1985 or 1986, they made a BIG DEAL about John Abbott being required to file a financial disclosure to determine Jill's settlement and alimony payments. Michael Crawford (Jill's attorney) was surprised to learn that John Abbott was worth almost four million dollars! Brenda Dickson's Jill became extremely greedy when she heard that "giant" number being thrown around. In today's dollars, that would be like $12 million -- not even enough to require the filing of an estate tax return at John's death. The writers have completely lost sight of poorer people, and they've also lost sight of the "moderate wealth" we were always led to believe the upper echelon characters possessed.
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Y&R: Old Articles
I don't know a LOT of different soap actors, like some of y'all do. But I was thinking of someone in the mold of a Chris Bernau --a man who could play sophistication, suaveness, and a steely determination in his career, but with a slightly more "formidable" presence than John McCook ever had. Someone who could be Stephanie's equal. It would've completely changed the dynamics of the show if Eric had been less of a spineless patsy. There actually WAS an actor similar to that on B&B during its first year --- the actor who'd played Neil Fenmore on Y&R. (James Storm?) Whenever I saw a scene between Bill Spencer Senior and Stephanie Forrester, I often wondered how the story would've developed differently if HE had been cast as Eric Forrester. Someone posted a picture of (a washed-up) Troy Donahue in this thread yesterday. That immediately made me think of TAB HUNTER, who was a decent actor, was only a few years older than Susan Flannery, and still came across as very handsome and sort of boyishly playful in the 1980s, but also understood sophistication (and subterfuge). I expect he would've been happy for a steady job in 1987.
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Y&R: Old Articles
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.
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Y&R: Old Articles
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.
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Y&R: Old Articles
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.
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Y&R: Old Articles
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.
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BTG: May 2026 Discussion Thread
(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". 😅)
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BTG: May 2026 Discussion Thread
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. 😅
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BTG: May 2026 Discussion Thread
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.
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BTG: May 2026 Discussion Thread
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.
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BTG: May 2026 Discussion Thread
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.
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Dallas Discussion Thread
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.
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BTG: May 2026 Discussion Thread
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".