Broderick

With Fen's little boyfriend having more than 5 lines, and possible residual payments to Doug Davidson, Grant Cramer and Kimberlin Brown for their clips, their $16.86 allotment for the month is gone. The rest of the January episodes will probably be Billy Abbott, alone, doing a podcast, in an empty restaurant.

Interesting. That having happened, I guess it's safe to say we'll never see Fen again. lol.

And I believe that little boy of Kay Alden's (John Alden) played Nicholas Newman in the early 1990s. (There was a scene about 2000 or 2001 where Paul was standing in his office with Cricket, Lynn, and Marissa, and all I could think was that Doug Davidson was the only person in the scene who'd gotten his job based on talent instead of who his family was. The others were all there strictly because they were related to a Bell or a Birn.)

THIRD nep baby -- because you also need to include that terrible girl (Marissa Arena) who played Marissa Bell-Barton on the show. First she was the personal assistant to Diane Jenkins, and the after Alex Donnelley left, she became the handmaiden of Lynn Bassett-Hound. (She was Maria Arena Bell's sister in real life.)

Makes sense --- he made it clear that his allegiance was to CBS for many years. I figured Lee Bell's talk show was likely part of the reason, and of course his own experience with Irna & ATWT was also a factor.

They were. In his "Television Archives" interview, Bill Bell said it was Screen Gems (now Sony) that courted him to create a new show in the early 1970s. The Screen Gems reps were under the impression (initially) that his new show would end-up on NBC, but Bill Bell shrugged and said, "I always knew we were going with CBS." (Had Lee Bell's talk show been on the CBS affiliate in Chicago? Bell seemed to have an allegiance to CBS that he never had to NBC, possibly because he saw the chances of success were greater at CBS, or possibly because of his involvement at CBS with Irna Phillips, or possibly because of Lee's experience there.) But he was very emphatic that he never seriously considered NBC for Y&R.

We used to laugh about this at my house -- Mister Abbott would've never married Brenda Dickson's Jill, but she was ideal to play the divorce storyline with the lurid photographs and adultery. As someone said above, Deborah Adair played the character as more "flippant, but always with an ulterior motive", while Brenda Dickson imbued all the hurt and anger that Jill had endured at the hands of Kay Chancellor. Adair's Jill could be comically callous and calculating, with a shrug of her shoulders. Like at one point, she tried to sell Liz Foster's house to drum-up some cash, and she dragged the New Greg into the middle of it. Liz Brooks made Jill apologize to Greg for wasting his time. Jill had no interest in apologizing to Greg -- because his time meant nothing to Jill, but once she found out John Abbott was in town for a conference, she called Greg and arranged to meet him for lunch to offer her apology, but really she just wanted to park her fanny prominently in a spot where John Abbott would notice her and start thinking of her again. (This is while she was engaged to Andy Richards.) With Adair's Jill, it was easy to forgive her for these types of stunts, because she always played them as though it was just a way to "get ahead", but if it didn't work, aw shucks, at least she tried. Brenda Dickson was always more "focused" and "calculating" in her conniving.

I don't recall there ever being a shortage of Danny Romalotti, from the time he first appeared in the summer of 1981 until he left to do "Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" in the 1990s. He maybe doesn't appear in many recaps, because most of his early material was strictly "C-storyline" stuff that was barely worth a mention in the big picture. If I remember right, he was initially a waiter at Jonas's, where Paul and Andy both ended up working. (In fact, the three actors -- Damian, Ford & Davidson -- all got their charcoal sketch done together for the opening credits.) There was a little "locker room set" attached to Jonas's restaurant, where Paul, Andy, and Danny could change into their designated waiter uniforms, which were white shirts, black pants, and aprons. This was a clearly a John Conboy-esque trope that allowed the three boys to stand around in their undershirts and Fruit of the Looms to discuss their love lives, in a somewhat homoerotic manner, that caused John Kelly Genovese to grouse that the show was "verging on T&A titillation." Danny was supposed to be the innocent "good boy" (presumably Catholic) who was the antitheses of Jack Abbott (the older, more worldly boy that Patty and her friend Gretchen had encountered in a country-western Urban Cowboy bar that they weren't supposed to be in). Seems to be it was a slow-moving, fairly thoughtful storyline, in which Patty was pretty torn about whether she preferred the boy who sang saccharine songs to her in a swing, or the boy who had a fancy job, a fancy car, and was sexually experienced. Danny had presented himself at work as being from a "large, happy family". Paul and Nikki decided to surprise him by doing a little biography on him for the newspaper, or for the program notes in a little concert he was doing. They went to the house where he supposedly lived, but no one there had ever heard of him. He was forced to admit that his mother was deceased, and his sister & father were in the slammer for thieving, and he'd merely told everyone at work a version at work that he WISHED was true. This got even more sympathy from Mary Williams (who hadn't yet turned into the sauerkraut and spareribs cartoon of her later years). Mary was Danny's big champion, as she didn't want Patty "living in sin" with "that Abbott boy", and she felt Danny was more in line with Patty's conservative, Catholic upbringing. This went on for about a year. In the spring of 1982, Traci Abbott arrived in town from boarding school, and she had posters of Danny all over the wall of her bedroom. It was quickly revealed (vis-à-vis her friendship with Angela Laurence) that she had a huge crush on Danny. She was stunned to find out Patty actually KNEW him. This led to a lot of stuttering, stammering, red-faced scenes in which Traci couldn't believe she was actually able to speak with her idol.) But he was CONSISTENTLY around. Michael Damian likely had a fairly flexible schedule that allowed him to record and do concerts, but I don't recall him being "missing" for a long period of time. Most of us who watched daily back then (who were teenagers) were far more interested in Danny, Patty and Jack than we were in the "A-storyline", which was Lorie Brooks and the Vanessa Prentiss trial.

I never could buy into Donna Reed as Miss Ellie. If Old Man Southworth had told Donna Reed to go round up some steers, she would've pitched a fit over the possibility of breaking a fingernail, lol. Hope Lange probably would've worked. Priscilla Pointer was pretty much wasted; they didn't try very hard to write for her while they had her.

Y'all are right ... Chris was still around when the 1897 story ended. It was later that he vamoosed. I just remembered Hoffman looking at the moon, rubbing her goozle, batting her eyes, tearing at her gloves, and barking ... "And to think ... Chris is still ... out there ... somewhere, Barnabas." It's a shame the show couldn't wrap-up in the "real" present, with the "real" Collins family that we'd met in the first episode.

A LOT of their stories got so convoluted, because there seemed to be little advance planning. That 1897 storyline, for instance, seemed to be pretty straightforward at first. The goals seemed to be explaining (1) how Chris Jennings became a werewolf and (2) why Quentin Collins was hanging around Collinwood. By the time it was over, we had Count Petofi's hand, a witch (Angelique) trying to stop a phoenix (Laura) from staking a vampire (Barnabas), and the actor who played Chris Jennings had quit the show and moved on, negating the entire purpose of the whole storyline. Not saying it was a *bad* story but it just didn't serve its purpose, and it ended up veering into a convoluted mess. Same with Joanna Mills in 1840.

She talked a great deal about utilizing today's news. She said back in the 1980s, when soaps were more "cutting edge", they weren't afraid to take a news story, incorporate it into a storyline, and examine it from all different angles, from the standpoint of how the various characters would react to the situation. She indicated CBS is afraid of that now, and they'd rather stick with the evil twins, back-from-the-dead, and doppelganger type stories. She laughed about the 1985 storyline when Tyrone Jackson wore "whiteface" as Robert Tyrone; she said, "You couldn't do a story like that on network TV anymore." She's right about that.

lol. I remember Joanna Mills, but I swear I don't think she was on the show even a month.

I tend to forget she was on the show. Didn't she last about 3 weeks?

Probably when Shemar delivered Kristoff's eulogy on Y&R. It wasn't so much the "wonderful writing"; it was seeing Shemar grieving for a guy who'd taught him so much over the years.

Yes, and then when you tell a provocative storyline (such as the one Sussman mentioned -- an uncharacteristically belligerent Devon having an altercation with the police), it could ripple throughout the entire organization and beyond. You'd have Lily, who works at Jabot, immediately taking up for Devon, while a character who's at odds with Lily over a project at Jabot -- say, Billy, for instance -- immediately takes up for the police. A character who'd previously worked with Devon but who now works at Jabot might release, on social media, video footage of Devon yelling at the policemen. Those were the types of stories that Bill Bell did -- not so much "who's the new CEO", but rather how all the characters respond to one another and to the events that are happening in their midst. It becomes about the CHARACTERS, and not just about where they happen to work.

She points that out. She said that soaps are fundamentally person-to-person drama, and if you're devoted to it, you can make it work in a restaurant or a coffee house. lol.

The newer writers have missed the point in Y&R's business storylines. Bell's business storylines -- which he did extremely well, in my opinion -- were never about the "business" itself; his storylines were about the interactions of the characters within the business, and how greed in the workplace, a bad business decision, or a careless remark made to a co-worker could set off a chain of events that impacted not only the employees of the company but everyone else within their circle. The newer writers seem to think we care about who's the CEO of this company or who's the CEO of that company. That means nothing to us at all, if we're not seeing their workplace interactions.

The hosts are horrid, so that makes it difficult to listen. Here's what she said that I found interesting --- (1) She'd watched Y&R since 1973. She'd watched a few other soaps before (Edge of Night, Secret Storm, and All My Children), but she was instantly captivated with Y&R. Bill Bell asked her what drew her to the show. She said, "Bill, I like the show because it's a mood piece. That's what makes it beautiful and captivating. [Obviously, that aspect of the show is now out the window entirely.] (2) She said of all the shows that had expanded from 30 minutes to an hour, Y&R had the roughest, rockiest, most turbulent transition. (3) In 1982, she attended a writers workshop. In late 1982, she put her "skills" to use and wrote a long-term story projection for Y&R, based on what was airing in late 1982. Bill Bell read it and was impressed and hired her to work as his story consultant. She said it was because he was extremely frustrated in late 1982, due to the show having dropped so far in the ratings during the transition to an hour. (4) She was only 26 years old when Bill Bell hired her in late 1982/early 1983. (5) Writing for the show is currently difficult, because of the SET restrictions. You have to use certain sets. They can't be moved; they can't be changed, because it causes budgetary problems. Therefore, a number of things you'd like to SHOW HAPPENING, instead must be recapped in Crimson Lights. (6) She never specifically mentioned "Black Lives Matter". She said that her projection (which CBS nixed in 2016) was that Devon and Hillary would have a fight, Devon would drive away angrily, he would be speeding, he would be stopped by the police, he would get out of the car with an angry, bitter, combative attitude -- she said he would be a complete "a-hole" to the police -- and they would be unnecessarily brutal to him because of his belligerent attitude. She thought it would be an interesting storyline, with multiple facets, because no one in the altercation was completely right and no one was completely wrong. [Sorry, but this is the type of storyline that soaps did extremely well in the 1970s and 1980s when they were at the top of their game, before all the evil twins and doppelgangers. This would've been a much more provocative storyline, in my opinion, than anything we've seen on Y&R in 20 years.]

Great! I was thinking I'd just seen it again recently during the early stages of the Jack/Nikki/Victor/Ashley quad.

That episode is actually floating around. I watched it just a few weeks ago. I believe it's either 7/1/1985 or 7/2/1985. It's not the scene where he first offers her the job at Mergeron, but a follow-up scene in which he asks her if she's made a decision yet. Much discussion about him believing Ashley was "born to be an executive" and "together, we can take Mergeron to new heights, etc."

That seems downright affordable, unless as j swift noted, the backstage Covid protocols run up the cost far in excess of the actual SAG rates. And I suppose having multiple "strangers" on the set does indeed require a great deal more testing & monitoring. I believe the profit margins of CBS, Sony, & Bell are likely the three most significant factors at play in stripping the show down to this embarrassing "bare bones" budget. If CBS can't guarantee a certain rate of return on their annual licensing deal with Sony (which is obviously tougher each year with viewer erosion & declining advertising revenue), CBS would happily ditch the show entirely and expand "Price is Right" or turn the hour over to affiliates, especially with that hour of programming being in the noontime/early afternoon in most markets. I would imagine CBS is squeezing Sony pretty tightly on the licensing fee. And of course if Sony & Bell Dramatic Serial Company can't guarantee a certain target profit from the licensing deal with CBS, they've got no financial motivation to cough-up the funds to produce an expensive hour of television. What's suffering, we all see, is the show itself. It seems to be a repeat of what we saw with the P&G shows, where the networks were paying P&G less and less annually for the package, until it ultimately reached the point where it wasn't in the financial interest of P&G to continue outlaying the production costs without a target guaranteed return for the shareholders. (In P&G's case, the advertising itself for P&G products was a "plus", while Sony doesn't even have that layer of motivation to continue producing & licensing the show if their profits on the licensing deal with CBS aren't satisfactory.) I expect so, too. TOO MANY of them, in fact. But there seems to be a "fear factor" in play: if you cut one of those old veterans out of the picture, are 100,000 viewers gonna leave, as well? Looks like the show is afraid to take that chance. Supposedly, the median age of a soap viewer is about 66 years old, which means about half the viewers are even older than that. The show seems to believe older viewers are so attached to Victor, Nikki, Jack, Phyllis, etal that they'd have a conniption fit and stop watching if those performers weren't featured prominently. It seems to be a dawg chasing its tail. If the show refuses to invest in fresh, younger performers in engaging storylines (and we all know that's the case, and its been the case for the past 20 years), the audience will continue to age further, and then the show is stuck even deeper in the "expensive vet pit" that Y&R seems unable to claw its way out of. With this anniversary approaching, you can't help remembering that in 1973 & 1974, the four "older characters" on the show, the ones who portrayed the parents of the primary cast -- Julianna McCarthy, Bob Colbert, Dorothy Green, and Jeanne Cooper -- were all in their early to mid 40s and were significantly YOUNGER than Nick and Sharon are now. Y&R isn't a show that's aged well.

Couldn't agree more. Kay Alden -- though her writing could be sort of "dull -- was meticulous dealing with Brad & Ashley, going to GREAT lengths to show the ever-changing dynamics in Ashley and Brad's marriage, and it worked. Once Jack Smith popped back into the picture, Ashley was suddenly announcing the paternity of Sperm Abby on videotape, Brad was suddenly hot for Olivia, and the entire storyline imploded.

I can't honestly answer, because I'm not 100% familiar with the SAG scale for extras. But it seems like each extra is about $1,000 per day. If you book him for 3 days, you can get him for about $2,600. If you book him for the whole week, he's about $3,500. So if they've got TWO of them, that's about $7,000 for the week, and we'd start noticing they're the same two folks. And if they speak, they becomes "under fives", and they suddenly cost about twice as much, lol. Hence, all the mute bartenders who only stare at you while you place your order in Crimson Lights.

"Lack of money drives everything ... Y&R actually spends money, but you'll notice on Y&R, whenever you're in a restaurant or a bar, there's no one else there. No customers. There's maybe a maitre'd, or a bartender, but there's not customers. Ever. And that's because in terms of budget, they can't afford anymore to bring in, say, twenty, background performers to play customers in the restaurant, when they're doing scenes in the restaurant. They just can't afford it. So you've got empty restaurants, empty bars, empty hotel lobbies. There's just aren't people there. That's a budget-driven issue." I believe the problem is in the way Y&R is distributed to CBS. If CBS thinks they can sell $20 worth of ads during a year of Y&R, CBS tells SONY, "We'll pay you $15 to provide us with a year of Y&R". (This gives CBS a $5 profit on the show.) SONY then pockets their OWN $5 profit. That leaves a budget of $10 for the show. The Bell family wants to make a profit of $3 as co-owners of the show, and Corday Productions wants to make a profit of $1 for their 1% ownership. We've now got a budget of $6 for the show. CBS is offering $20, but once all the owners and distributors make their profit, the budget for the show itself is $6. That's not the case with "General Hospital" (which is owned by the network) or with "B&B" which is distributed by Bell-Phillip. But it's what I believe drove Days of our Lives off network TV, and what I believe causes Y&R to look so pathetic.