Broderick

I believe it was Kevin's paternal grandmother who was named Victoria -- Earle Bancroft's mother. Alison Bancroft, who suspected all along that Victor Newman had fathered the child, taunted Nikki by saying, "Earle's mother was named Victoria. Have you considered that for a name?" I'm the only person on the board who feels this way, but I've got no problem with Joshua Morrow. He's not an especially good actor, but his somewhat dimwitted character has always struck me as someone who would've been spawned by Nikki.

lol. It'd be pretty heartless, but an ideal way to explain where Paul has been lately. Dead. Bell & Alden retconned a whole story for Carl Williams around 1998 -- "Back when Carl was presumed dead ..." (And for the past 7 or 8 years, we'd been thinking he was upstairs asleep!) Then Sally Sussman retconned a long, sad death for Mary Williams. Jack Abbott: "Paul, you remember how it was in Mary's later years -- God rest her soul!" (And all that time, I'd been thinking she was visiting the Vatican with her church group.) Patty popped-up crazy as a loon, after disappearing in 1984 (?) perfectly adjusted, but slightly annoyed with Danny for hauling off & marrying Traci Abbott. They definitely don't mind surprising us when it comes to the Williams family.

I was thinking they might do something more drastic & have Cricket say, "Back when Paul died a few years ago ..." lol.

No, they're on schedule, but that seems to be why they do these "stand-alones", so they can air it on a specific date without any disruption, even if there is an unexpected preemption.

Bell could definitely go off the deep end sometimes with saccharine. Remember that terrible episode on the 4th of July when Victor had to "straighten out" that guy who didn't share Victor's belief that the USA is the "greatest country on earth"? Awful. Friday's (horrible) episode was evidently designed to be a "stand alone episode" that could air Friday the 23rd, even if a preemption threw off the schedule. There's one thing worse than being off a day, and Friday's show is the one thing worse!

To me, that's just Lack Of Imagination. How hard can it be to plan a unique shot in advance (when the director and his/her assistant first get the script) and then execute it the day of taping. They don't even try. And that's one reason the show seems so static -- the characters are just sitting in one place, with no movement at all, because it takes less rehearsal if they remain seated, and it takes less imagination on the part of the director who doesn't have to bother with a zoom shot or an overhead shot or anything else halfway creative.

Yep, there's never a "fresh" new character who catches our attention, in the manner a new character, properly integrated onto the canvas, did when writers were willing to shake up the status quo. At one point, Nikki, Jack, Ashley, Traci, Lauren were all new young characters who made a strong enough impression to promote allegiance to them. About the only one I can think of in recent years is Hillary Curtis, but they couldn't afford her because of their overreliance on the old high-priced "sacred cows", so their solution was to kill her.

At this point, I doubt it matters much who's writing or who's producing. As someone pointed out way above, it's tough to write for a show that's got no sets. You can't "show" anything. Characters are stuck sitting around in restaurants talking about stuff that happened off-camera. Until they find a way to get a few sets, they've got a bleak future in my opinion.

Yes, we can never overstate the prominence of Cricket during that period. She was injected into every aspect of the show. Let's just be glad she couldn't sing, lol.

Losing Brenda Dickson in 1987, Eileen Davidson in 1988, and Terry Lester in 1989 definitely resulted in the Abbott orbit being a bit less "quirky" and "colorful" than before, and the characters were likely not as much fun for Bill Bell to write. Melody Thomas Scott seemed to fill part of the void, and you can't help think Ed Scott was sort of "pimping" the increased reliance on her for story material.

I found it. It was Friday. Ashley (shivers): Brrrr. Wow. Tucker: What'll you have? Ashley: I would love a hot chocolate. Tucker: You sure you don't want some fancy coffee drink with foam and extra shots and scalded --- Ashley: Tucker, I'm a very simple girl. Ok, you don't buy it, huh. How about some cinnamon on top? Tucker: Of what? A hot chocolate? Ashley: Yes. Tucker (motions to mute barista): Hi, Sir. Two hot chocolates with cinnamon, please. Keep the change. [The whole thing was like a low-budget parody of the coffee shop scene in Tommy Wiseau's The Room, where everyone orders cheesecake, water, and coffee. Except Tommy Wiseau could afford extras. But with Eileen Davidson's salary, the barista practically had his mouth duct-taped shut.]

I believe they're too broke even to pay the set decorator to change out the props in the Generic Office Set. Which is why they don't really have one. One day last week (I believe it was Friday), Tucker and Eileen had an especially poverty-stricken scene in Crimson Lights. They wandered in, and of course there wasn't an extra anywhere in sight, because the show had exhausted its budget for the week and couldn't pay another customer $1,000 to sit at a table. It was just an empty tumble-weed set like an abandoned ghost-town bar on Gunsmoke. Tony Morina was FAR too broke to pay Sharon Case to appear in the episode. Instead, some random male barista was standing at the register. He was strictly forbidden to speak, because if he'd spoken, he would've gone from being an "extra" at $1,000 per day to an "under five" at $1,500 per day, and the extra $500 would've evidently forced SONY into immediate bankruptcy. So Tony Marina must've told the barista, "Don't you say ONE WORD. You'd better not even GRUNT. If you make a SOUND and cost us an extra $500, I'll kick your tail out of here so fast you'll knock that Crimson Lights Dummy off the wall as you sail past." This left Tucker and Ashley having to take each other's orders, with the barista wordlessly looking on and trying to gesture with his eyes that he knew what they wanted. "Well, Ashley, I'd bet you'd like a hot chocolate with cream on the top. Me, why I believe I'll have a regular coffee. Black." "I'm not sure I want the cream." "I bet you do. I bet you do want cream on the top. And I'm SURE I want a coffee." The barista was forbidden to tell them how much the drinks were, so Tucker threw him a bill and said, "Keep the change." The barista was forbidden to say, "Thanks" or "Merry Christmas" or anything. It was the WORST saving of $500 I've ever seen on the show. They may as well have held up a sign that said, "We're too broke to let the barista speak. That's why Trevor and Eileen are taking each other's orders!" And when you start noticing stuff like that, it's awfully hard to enjoy the episode.

Yeah, when Chance & Abby were sitting in that little "anteroom" discussing Devon's having porked her, there was a hallway visible outside the little room, and you could see some french doors in the hallway. There was no evidence of a front door, a living room, or a dining room anywhere near the little "anteroom". It gave the impression they'd constructed this makeshift little anteroom in order to ditch what was left of the foyer and the living room.

I don't understand the cost savings in deconstructing existing sets. Nor do I understand why they can't create bedrooms or hospital rooms with one wall, and tight camera angles. Their biggest problem seems to be lack of imagination, rather than the tight budget itself.

In her little interview with the television archives, Jeanne Cooper says that John Conboy hired her (along with Patricia what's-her-name who was the associate producer back then), and Jeanne says he was suave and debonair and handsome, while Patricia looked like a pastry chef. Jeanne had nothing but positive things to say about Conboy as the interview continued. (Bill Bell pretty much hated him, I think, by the time they parted ways.)

When Chance and Abby were sitting around discussing him walking in on her "sofa sex" with Devon, they had their conversation in this odd, random little room in the Chancellor house that seemed to be designed to take the place of the living room.

You'd imagine that he and Case are paid about the same, since they've been on the show relatively the same length of time and in the same positions. But it wouldn't surprise me if she makes a little more, since she arrived (in 1994?) a bit more experienced/seasoned and she's a little bit older than he is. Plus, he's a Newman on the show, and she's an ex-Newman. If one of the two gets curtailed faster than the other for budgetary reasons, you can guess which one it'll be.

Pay attention to Sharon Case, too. Sharon's lack of airtime and lack of storyline has been so evident in 2022 that Soap Opera Digest named her "Biggest Waste of Talent". All she does is appear sporadically, pour coffee, and offer advice like a glorified extra. It seems possible she's become too expensive to use as frequently as before, resulting in a declining number of appearance and an unwillingness to showcase her in a story of her own. Sharon Case and Joshua Morrow, having been on the show 25+ years, are now "senior cast members", in a tier somewhere below Eric Braeden, Melody Thomas Scott, Peter Bergman, Kate Linder, and Christian LeBlanc. The next group, seniority-wise, are Bryton and Amelia Heinle, both of whom were hired in the early 2000s, when the "big budget days" were over.

Doug Davidson, Kristoff St. John , Christian LeBlanc, and Kate Linder were all still listed as contract players in September 2018. In September 2018, Doug Davidson publicly revealed in several interviews (and on Twitter) that he'd been working without a contract since January 2018, although he was listed as a contract actor. He implied (but didn't state outright) that he wasn't alone in the "fake contract group". Our poster, French Fan, was doing the episode counts during that time. French Fan was consistently listing Doug as a contract actor. Other posters would alert French Fan, 'You should remove Doug from the contract list, as he's recurring. He's admitted that he's recurring." French Fan said, "Nope, can't do it. He's still listed as contract." (And he was still listed that way.) Finally, in November 2018, two months after his public announcement that he'd been recurring since January 2018, Doug Davidson was removed from the credits as a contract actor. It appeared that Doug was only removed because he'd publicly spilled the beans about having no contract. Kristoff St. John died in February 2019. He was immediately removed from the contract players list at the point of his death. Bryton gave a "post-death interview" and revealed that Kristoff (in addition to agonizing over his son Julian's death, was "very depressed" about his "status with the show" and whether he still truly "had a job". Bryton said he'd been trying to cheer Kristoff up about his job situation. (The implication was that Kristoff had ALSO been bumped to recurring but was still quietly masquerading as a contract performer, as Kristoff, unlike Doug Davidson, hadn't opened up publicly about his contract status.) [The last time that Bryton James saw St. John was a day he’ll never forget as he and another close friend, Daniel Goddard (Cane), spent an entire day with their distraught pal in a show of moral support. “He had been drinking pretty heavily for days straight and was talking about the possibility of hurting himself,” James explained. “He was convinced he had lost his job, just so many things. It was all wrapped into grief about Julian… I’d never seen somebody suffer, in person, like that. It was the hardest thing to watch, it was the hardest thing to see because you can’t do anything.”] During all this, not a peep from Kate Linder or Christian LeBlanc, who'd seen their own appearances drastically reduced in a corresponding time period with Doug Davidson & Kristoff St. John's noticeable absence. Kate and Christian kept on posting positive things about the show on social media and attending show events and acting as though they were happy as clams with appearing five or six times a year (in Kate's case) or once or twice a month (in Christian's case). If I had to guess, I'd say that all 4 of them (Doug, Kristoff, Christian and Kate) were bumped during Mal Young's 2018 tenure but were allowed to continue being credited as contract players because of their seniority. Don't know it for a fact, just guessing it. But if they really DO still have contracts, Kate's contract must guarantee her about 6 shows annually, and Christian's contract must guarantee him about 2 shows per month.

Yes, in the case of newbies, I suspect they have a lower rate per episode PLUS a lower guaranteed number of appearances, so there's a certain financial flexibility in using them more often as the budget allows. You can sometimes afford to work them in excess of their "required minimum". But in order to free-up the revenue to expand their appearances, you need to reduce the number of required appearances of say a Hans Gudegast or a Melody Thomas or a Peter Bergman, who have the higher dollar amount per appearance. These monthly recaps are a great tool for looking at the trends that are developing. We've talked a lot about the senior cast members and their required minimums. It appears to me that Kate Linder and Christian LeBlanc have been downgraded to shockingly low required minimum appearances, or they're possibly even "glorified recurring", though they're still listed as contract cast members.

I've always suspected that in the first big round of pay-cuts, certain senior actors (Hans, Melody Thomas, Peter Bergman) probably kept their existing guarantee of episodes (2.5 per week, 3 per week, whatever they had in place) but were given a reduced salary per episode. Other senior actors (Doug Davidson) probably kept the higher salary per episode, but had the guaranteed number of episodes chopped down substantially or even eliminated entirely. Now, with viewership still eroding and even more cutbacks necessary, we'll see both components come into play for the senior cast members -- those who were given a smaller per-episode-salary in 2009 or 2010 will now see their guaranteed number of appearances reduced as well. (Just my suspicion.)

It's the ever-tightening budget, I expect. In 2009, we famously learned Hans has a contract cycle that begins in October & ends in September. "In October 2009, Braeden and The Young and the Restless came to an impasse regarding contract negotiations, and press reports indicated he might leave the show. However, CBS later announced that Braeden had inked a new three-year deal and would remain with the show, agreeing to a reduction in salary, which was the original issue." Look at a recent 36-week period: December 2021 13 shows January 2022 9 shows March 2022 16 shows April 2022 14 shows May 2022 9 shows June 2022 15 shows July 2022 10 shows August 2022 13 shows September 2022 9 shows TOTALS 108 SHOWS IN A 36-WEEK PERIOD, EXACTLY 3 SHOWS PER WEEK AVERAGE Now, look at his latest contract cycle, beginning in October of 2022 October 2022 4 shows November 2022 4 shows TOTALS 8 SHOWS IN AN 8-WEEK PERIOD, EXACTLY 1 SHOW PER WEEK AVERAGE I'm guessing that Hans signed a new contract in October 2022 that dropped him from a 3-show per week guarantee to a 1-show per week guarantee. I could be dead wrong, of course.

And of course it was pretty strange when Brenda Epperson was playing the older sister and Beth Maitland was playing the younger sister, with Epperson being about 7 years younger than Maitland.

Those "separate orbits" were REALLY noticeable back in early 1980s to mid 1980s. Although Beth Maitland is actually a year or so older than Eileen Davidson, Bill Bell really made an effort to keep Eileen's Ashley segregated from those "youth storylines" involving Traci, Lauren, Danny, Amy, Cricket, Brad, etal. We would frequently see Ashley counseling Traci at home, or we'd see Ashley applauding Cricket's incredibly superb modeling skills as Miss Junior Jabot, or we'd see Ashley telling Jack to be nicer to Brad at work, but socially -- just no. Ashley and Jack were in the "grown folks" storylines, and Traci existed in a whole different little world.

Here's a home for sale in the Lake Geneva/Lyons/Genoa City area. If you look closely, the Emmy Awards behind the desk in the office, the Rocking Horse in the living room, the Merry-Go-Round horse next to the pub table, the Pool Table, and much of the artwork were featured about 10 years ago in the sale pictures of 247 East Chestnut #2500 in Chicago, where a certain former Y&R writer resided. Looks like she's had enough of both Chicago AND Lake Geneva. https://www.jamesedition.com/real_estate/lake-geneva-wi-usa/2842-moelter-dr-11835818