Broderick

Kim Zimmer likely took a *risk* when she opted not to renegotiate "mid-contract". P&G probably had a stipulation in her contract that she could be dropped at the end of any 13-week cycle, or at the end of a 26-week cycle, or at the end of a 52-week cycle. When she refused to renegotiate, they could've exercised their option and dropped her entirely, cutting her annual salary to $0. (She was evidently confident they wouldn't do that, due to her popularity, and took her chances on holding out to the end of her contract before renegotiating.)

Yep, she seems to have potential, but she just doesn't do much with it -- delivers all her lines exactly the same.

What strikes me about the set is how LIGHT-colored it is. The walls are monochrome, with no difference in color or texture above & below the chair rail. That got fixed soon afterward. Also, the drapes are too pale here; later they became heavy, dark red or burgundy curtains, with sheers. There aren't many sconces on the walls here, and there's not a lot of crystal shimmering yet. Not many fresh flowers in there. The floors aren't finished yet, and there's a noticeable absence of rugs. And of course the orange Cheshire cats Kay always had on the mantel are nowhere to be seen yet.

Several of these were likely "inside jokes" that Bill Bell & Kay Alden concocted. Look at all of those "East Chestnut" addresses! Miss Alden resided at 247 East Chestnut #2500 when those addresses were being utilized. (She doesn't any longer.) 7800 Melrose Avenue for Newman Towers likely reflects 7800 Beverly Blvd, the address of Television City in Hollywood. Lance Prentiss resided at 3780 Lake Shore Drive, Lake Geneva WI 53147. When Bill & Lee Bell lived in Chicago, their weekend lake house was "Casa Del Sueno" at 780 South Lake Shore Drive, Lake Geneva WI 53147. They sold it when they moved to Los Angeles. I guess all of these addresses were easy for them to remember as they were writing.

I don't think Charlie even got pummeled with clocks; they just threw a pepper shaker at him and said, "Hit the road, Chollie!" He just sorta disappeared during the Eve Howard Reign of Terror while YRfan23's Asian man was choking to death at the Royal Wedding, and Nikki shrugged her shoulders and defaulted to "I'LL GET IT, MIGUEL" whenever the doorbell rang.

This little episode probably served four distinct purposes -- (1) Eric Braeden satisfied his guaranteed number of episodes per week while Nikki was tied up with Rick Daros, (2) we learned Victor wasn't afraid of menial work, (3) it fleshed-out the Victor character a bit more for the upcoming Cora Miller storyline, and (4) Kay Alden creamed her panties whenever they called him "Vernon Nelson".

Yep, I believe we were supposed to visualize Wiley's Department Store as a low-rent alternative to Fenmore's. Lauren Fenmore acted superior to Andrea Wiley for that reason, and of course Lauren got her comeuppance when her father realized she was shoplifting her wardrobe from Fenmore's.

She doesn't seem especially reliable. lol.

Douglas Austin was a petty thief, who pretended to be a man of elegance. We first met him in about 1979 when Derek Thurston hired him to break into the Chancellor safe and steal an audio tape of Derek and Jill professing their love for one another, and replace it with a tape of Derek saying, "I'm sorry, Jill, but Kay is the only woman I'll ever really love." Kay Chancellor invited everyone in her little circle over one evening and played the tape for them, as Brock Reynolds was confident the tape would send Derek out the door. Derek was sweating bullets hoping Douglas Austin had switched the tapes in time; he had, and Derek was free to continue conning Kay Chancellor. A few months later, Derek's ex-wife, Suzanne Lynch, "kidnapped" Derek and held him for ransom. Kay's instructions were to put $50,000 in a shoebox and drop it in a garbage can in the park, where Suzanne and Derek would retrieve it. (This was how Suzanne and Derek planned to get some spending money from Kay.) Douglas Austin had dropped by Kay's house (to see Derek), and he "kindly" volunteered to drop the cash in the park for Kay. Instead, he cut-up a bunch of newspaper clippings, put them in the box, stole the $50,000, and left Derek and Suzanne with nothing. Realizing that Douglas had cheated them out of the money, Derek went home and explained that his "terrifying kidnappers" had "freed" him. That's how Douglas Austin managed to have some money of his own -- he stole it from Kay Chancellor. All the "extras" kind of disappeared in the early 2000s. Lynn Bassett-Hound announced that she had to take care of a "sick aunt" or something, and disappeared forever in one day. Miguel had a similar "family emergency". Nikki snatched up an old clock off the mantle, threw it at him and said, "Thanks for your years of service, Miguel", and that was the end of him.

I'll defer to the Tim Sullivan experts, lol. I know that "Andrea" was Andrea Wiley. Miss Wiley was a classmate of Traci & Lauren and was the heiress of Wiley's Department Store. My understanding was always that Traci's daddy had a higher net worth than Andrea's daddy, so Tim seemed more interested in Traci than in Andrea. However, in the event Traci happened to see through him, he kept Andrea around as a back-up contingency plan. Jack Abbott figured most of this out fairly early, just as the audience was figuring it out. Ashley and John believed Traci should make her own decision about it. We had the whole pregnancy thing, and Danny married Traci, but she lost the baby. Tim hovered around in the background. I kept thinking we were rid of him, but then he'd reappear later. He showed up in 1987 and ushered Traci off to California to finish her degree, which opened the door for Brad to become involved with Lauren. Then Traci returned, with a big collegiate bow in her hair sometime in the fall of 1987, for a full-fledged triangle with Lauren and Brad. I think this story was likely re-written when Brenda Dickson left the show, as Bill Bell seemed to be toying with the idea of injecting BOTH Jill and Lauren into Brad's storyline while Beth Maitland was off the show. Didn't pan out with Jess Walton though, as she wasn't as "obvious" as Miss Dickson.

"Vernon Nelson", of course, was the real-life name of Kay Alden's husband, who recently passed away. This was VANITY, I suppose, where Kay Alden (who always seemed to have a big crush on Eric Braeden) got the "privilege" of seeing Eric Braeden being called "Vernon Nelson" by another character on the show. (Vernon R. Nelson 74, passed away unexpectedly at his residence on Wednesday, March 25, 2020. Private family visitation was held at the funeral home. Burial will follow in Kansas. Steinke-Lazarczyk Family Funeral Home and Cremation Services of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, is proudly serving the family.) There was a little period of time in the early 1980s during which Victor Newman and Douglas Austin engaged in "comical antics" that caused Julia Newman to roll her eyes and sneer at their foolishness. Seems like somewhere along in here, Douglas volunteered his services to father Julia's baby, then brought in his nephew Alan to be interviewed for the position. It was all just stupidity.

Don't forget Y&R's very first female suicide attempt -- Sally McGuire, pregnant by one man (Snapper), saved by another man (Brad Eliot), married another man (Pierre Roulland).

Back in 1987, I wasn't particularly fond of B&B either. Sometimes watched it during lunch, but it was a take-it-or-leave-it type of viewing. But I've REALLY been enjoying re-watching it "from the beginning", because these old 1987/1988 episodes seem so superior to today's soaps.

Pam receiving controlling interest over Christopher's shares of Ewing Oil under Bobby's will was probably one of the best potential storylines Dallas ever had. And they completely blew it.

I think Caroline's too good for anyone else on the show. Ridge is garbage, Thorne's a wuss, her dad's mean, and her "best friend" is a tramp.

One reason Y&R likely looks so wretched is that we're accustomed to something so much better. (The bigger they are, the harder they fall.)

If Rocco ever sings "Night & Day, I Slave Away" while Ridge seduces Caroline, we'll know they copied, lol. (Ridge does seem pretty closely modeled on Don Juan.)

If it's the episode in which Mark Henderson finds out the blood types are screwed-up and Lorie's his sister, that's from December of 1975. (Lorie and Mark were supposed to get married between Xmas and New Years Eve of 1975.) Is that the episode you're talking about, where Leslie sings "If My Friends Could See Me Now"? Lance Prentiss first started appearing sometime in the late fall of 1975. (The copyright date in the closing credits should verify that --- MCMLXXV = 1975.)

I believe the current Writers Guild of America minimum for a head writer on a 60-minute serial is about $42,500 per week, or approximately $2,200,000 per year. Josh Griffith may earn more than the union minimum. lol. No idea what coddled veteran actors are being paid nowadays. But we know from court documents (Shattuck v. Moss) how much Ronn Moss, a 25-year veteran, was being paid by "Bold & Beautiful" for the 2011-2012 season ($700,000 per year), and we know how much he was offered (and subsequently turned down) for the 2012-2013 season (a one-year contract valued at $400,000 per year). We can assume from his offer that salaries declined approximately 3/7, or 42%, from 2011 to 2012 for long-term veteran actors. Assuming Moss had accepted the 2012-2013 offer of $400,000 and continued to work on the show, and assuming further audience erosion caused a further 25% budget decrease between 2013 and 2022, his $400,000 per year would now be slashed to approximately $300,000 per year. Extrapolating Moss's numbers to a 60-minute serial such as Y&R, you could have easily have had a veteran actor making $800,000 per year for the 2011-2012 season. His/her offer for the 2012-2013 season would've been approximately $460,000, based upon the Ronn Moss contract formula of 3/7 decrease from 2012 to 2013. Assuming that viewer erosion in the subsequent nine seasons has caused a 25% decrease in salaries from the 2012-2013 season to the 2021-2022 season, that veteran would now be earning approximately $350,000 per year. So I'd guess the older codgers may still earn somewhere between $300,000 to $500,000 per year. (The variables, of course, are that traditionally salaries are higher on a one-hour serial than on a 30-minute serial, but the lucrative foreign market of "B&B" might make that particular show's budget more in line with the budget of an hour-long serial.)

Yeah, the "London Gala" aired in July of 1981, so presumably those scenes were written (and taped) during the Writers Guild strike period. The sets (which allegedly were repurposed for "Capitol") were likely designed then too, lol. Another "prominent story" that month (which was a COMPLETE misfire) was that business with Chris Brooks & the furniture, Jane Lewis, and Snapper. We saw a LOT of the hospital during that storyline, as most of Jane Lewis's relentless and transparent pursuit of Snapper occurred in the hospital. Additional hospital sets were built, and those sets also seemed to find their way to "Capitol". Here's what the Washington DC newspaper said about the premier of "Capitol" in early 1982: "Capitol involves some elaborate sets built in Hollywood to simulate a Virginia mansion, a Georgetown town house, and a hospital. John Conboy approached CBS with plans for a daytime serial set in the nation's capital eighteen months ago, and they loved the idea." I've no idea whether or not John Conboy actually designed extravagant sets (at William J. Bell's expense) that could be transferred easily to "Capitol", but from a historical standpoint, the answer appears to be that he likely did. The writing was all over the map during that timeframe. We had that weird scene between Lorie and Brooks just before Lorie boarded the plane for London. ("Oh, Brooks, I suddenly had the strangest feeling that I won't see you again for a long, long time!" Then she was back in a week, with no mention of that foreboding ever again.) Greg Foster suddenly developed those awful, migraine headaches that couldn't be explained. Snapper and Liz worried themselves to death about Greg for about 5 minutes, and then Liz jetted off to London to a ball, and Snapper became 100% involved with furniture, leaving Greg to die. (This was presumably to make us think Greg, while blacked out with migraines, might be Nikki's Mysterious Stalker.) This was when Kay Chancellor jetted off to Zurich to consult with plastic surgeons, and then popped back into GC a few weeks later to take Liz to strip shows with no further mention of the plastic surgery trip. None of it made ANY sense, lol. It was hard to watch.

ALL of the stories from that period seemed a bit off, lol. The only specific new set I can remember is that ENORMOUS SET that was created for the "London gala" in the late summer of 1981. (At the time, I assumed that the Colonnade Room had been modified to create that particular set.) But if Bill Bell is remembering correctly, perhaps that was a specially-built set for the "London gala" storyline, and perhaps it later became the Clegg mansion foyer for "Capitol"? Y'all will easily recall the set in question. Lorie comes slinking down the stairs in a gown cut all the way up to crotch, while Kay Chancellor gasps in amazement at her audacity, while Leslie -- the guest of honor -- cringes in horror. Here's a "Capitol" promo that appears to feature Y&R's "London Gala" set, just as it had appeared earlier on Y&R: (It looks as though the Writers Guild Strike ran from April 1981 through July 1981. The "London Gala" storyline was in July of 1981.)

I expect the Executive Producer (Conboy) could theoretically have fired the head writer (Bell). Naturally if that had happened, Bell would've appealed the decision to the show's three owners -- Bell Dramatic Serial Company, Corday Productions, and Columbia Pictures Television. You'd assume Bell Dramatic Serial Company and Corday Productions would have voted to override the Executive Producer and keep Bell as head writer, lol. BUT if Conboy had kissed the right tails at Columbia Pictures, supposedly Columbia could have insisted on Bell's termination. This flexing of Columbia's muscle seemed to be the case when Columbia made the decision to expand Y&R to an hour and told Bell, "We'll do it with or WITHOUT you", indicating that Columbia Pictures/Screen Gems held the unilateral ability to replace Bell as head writer if they chose to. So the ability of Columbia to override Bell's authority was evidently always an issue that lurked in the background. I've got no idea if Conboy ever seriously attempted such a maneuver. Bell went on record as saying that their parting was fairly acrimonious. Bell said that "I'd prefer not to talk about John Conboy", but when pressed, he indicated that Conboy -- during the writer's strike of 1981 -- ordered some fairly elaborate sets for Y&R that were subsequently repurposed for "Capitol", leaving Y&R way overbudget for 1981. Bell Dramatic Serial Company had to cover its portion of the budget overage, and Bell was clearly angry about it, feeling that Conboy had betrayed him financially. I've never seen where John Conboy has said a negative word about Bill Bell (ever). In fact, Conboy has commented on how "fortunate" he was to work with a "wonderful writer" like Bill Bell. You'll notice that after John Conboy left Y&R, Bill Bell always wisely reserved for himself a title of "co-executive producer" or "senior executive producer", so that he'd never be placed in a position where one of his co-workers had authority over him again from a creative (or financial) standpoint .

I believe it's hyperbole. Bell is oversimplifying what happened, or he's misremembering. I know he's said that 1,000 times, but it's not what we saw occur on-screen. I think it's more like this. Bill Bell to Kay Alden: "You know, Kay, that damn Dennis Cole SUCKS as Lance. Yes, he was a matinee idol of sorts, but he's simply no good as Lance. I've learned my lesson from this. I'm not doing any more major recasts of my little pets. If my two favorite little Sweet Babies -- David Hasselhoff and Jaime Lyn Bauer -- decide to leave the show, I'm not recasting those two roles. I'll just write those two characters out, and anyone connected with them can either SINK or SWIM on their own merits." Sure enough, David Hasselhoff and Jaime Lyn Bauer left permanently, within four or five months of each other. And sure enough, he didn't recast the parts. And sure enough, everyone around them was given the opportunity to sink or swim. Jill Foster SWAM, by virtue of being in a new storyline that held a great deal of potential. Greg Foster SANK, as neither Wings Hauser nor Howard McGillan had been terribly effective, going all the way back to like 1978. Chris Brooks SANK, because Bill Bell held her head under the water and drowned her. (He clearly couldn't foresee separating her character from the Snapper character, though he clearly toyed with the idea of doing it for a few weeks.) Peggy Brooks SANK, because she was always just the Kid Sister of the others and not a leading lady in her own right. (Plus that dreadful Steve Williams character and that tasteless cult storyline dragged her way down.) Leslie Brooks SANK, because although Victoria Mallory was a capable actress and a good musician, her character had been tied too closely to Lorie for her to survive on her own. (But Bell tried his best -- in the new opening credits for 1982, he even gave Victoria Mallory and Robert Laurence the "anchor position" as the show's "leads", but they couldn't carry their own storyline, which of course wasn't an especially GOOD storyline anyhow. It was just doomed.) Tom Ligon (Lucas) SANK because he was a casualty of the Lance recast and Jaime Lyn Bauer's exit; plus he'd been victimized by a pair of wretched storylines. First, he was stuck in that San Leandro mess with Sebastian Crowne (a dud), Jerry Lacy (a dud) and "Pris" (a dud), and then when he finally came up for air, he was given the thankless job of being the insufferable villain in the Vanessa Prentiss suicide. "You killed my mother, Lorie, and you're going to PAY for it." The audience knew what happened to Vanessa, and we knew Lucas was wrong in his assumptions, but he said stated his flimsy case ten thousand times, and it was awful. (If we'd seen Vanessa's suicide occur from Lucas's standpoint -- instead of from Lauralee's standpoint -- and if we'd only learned the truth of how Vanessa died via flashback during Lorie's trial, perhaps we'd have been more sympathetic to Lucas's point of view during the arrest and the trial. But we knew he was wrong from the get-go, he was strident as hell about it, and it just made him unlikable.) That's a complicated explanation for what happened to the various characters in the Brooks/Foster orbit, but I believe that's what actually occurred, and Bill Bell merely oversimplified it by saying, "I wrote them all out when Snapper and Lorie left." It's easier to say it that way.

Y'all have hit about everything. Expanding to an hour exposed every (hidden) weakness in Y&R's foundation, and magnified each of those faults. CBS & Screen Gems had allowed Bill Bell to write without outlines and long-term projections, because they trusted his instincts. He told them, "I don't believe my show will work in the hour format," and suddenly they no longer trusted his instincts; they thought they knew better. They basically told him, "We're going to an hour with or without you," and he reluctantly agreed to the change. His screenwriting method (sitting down with his dialogue writer Kay Alden and jotting down an outline at 8:00 in the morning and then immediately writing the script) was fine for the 30-minute format, but he and Kay couldn't write an hour-long show that way. So they brought in additional writers and stumbled, fumbled, with the very process that had made the show successful. John Conboy understood the languid, sensual, visual appeal of Y&R. But evidently his relationship with Bill Bell was somewhat strained and was on the verge of imploding; it couldn't have come at a worse time. Also there was a fundamental "shallowness" to Conboy that probably no one suspected, because Bell's thoughtful writing was concealing it. Conboy seemed to believe that writing was secondary to beauty -- just take the bras off the girls and have their breasts jiggle, and you've got yourself a success. Put a boy in a pair of tight pants, and your ratings will increase. He was a fool. It was Bell's writing -- combined with Conboy's visuals -- that made Y&R so successful in the 1970s. Separate those two things (the writing and the beauty) and the product became less than the sum of its parts. We quickly saw that happen, right before our eyes, and the entire show unraveled. It was only when Wes Kenney came along in 1982 that the problem was mitigated. Bill Bell was clever enough to realize that Y&R wasn't the Holy Grail of soaps. It was a product that had benefited from the mistakes of its competitors. One year Y&R was firmly in 9th place; the following year it was 3rd place. Screen Gems and CBS cheered and lauded Y&R for its "wildfire ratings success". There wasn't any wildfire success. Other shows had expanded to an hour and then floundered, or they'd been given lousy time slots. Y&R had shot up from #9 to #3 by merely being consistent -- holding its own -- while other shows toppled and failed. Bell didn't have some "magic bullet", and he knew that; but his employers couldn't see the big picture. In my opinion, the Williams family WAS dropped in too quickly, and the Steve Williams character (probably envisioned by Bell as the "moral" son) came across as a sanctimonious jackass/yuppie who was VERY difficult to like; that particular character stymied the Williams family from Day One, damaging Peggy to an extent, and making the (already distasteful) cult storyline virtually unwatchable. What actually did work was something completely unexpected -- the little "pseudo-family" created at Jonas's restaurant, where Paul, Andy, and Danny Romalotti all worked as waiters. Those three guys even got their own "family" opening shot in the 1982 credits. John Conboy proudly crowed, "We put three handsome young guys in white shirts and black pants, and our ratings immediately went up!" Naw, it worked because Danny and Andy were orphaned characters, and Paul's real brother (Steve) was a disaster. The audience could sense that the "real storyline" was among these three guys, and we responded to it. The new core family that worked wasn't the Williams family itself, but the Paul/Andy/Danny relationship, and Bell worked it for years -- dropping Paul and Andy into a detective office with the charismatic Stephanie E. Williams, and casting Danny in the "little brother" role with Patty, then Traci and Lauren, then Cricket. It took a LOT of trial and error to find the things that worked, and the things that didn't. When the show went to an hour, Bill Bell probably never DREAMED that the "pseudo-family" of Victor, Nikki, Kevin and Kay Chancellor would materialize and work, that Paul's actual "brothers" would be a recurring character played by President Ford's son and a kid spotted on "American Bandstand", but there it was and it worked, and these were the things that kept the show going in the right direction until the Abbotts could finally be stabilized as the "new" Brooks family.

Jill and her roommate (Eve Howard) seemed to be under the impression that "Traci & Tiffany" might be coming home for Christmas 1980. Naturally I assumed they would be as well, but that didn't pan out. Brett Halsey's John had spoken with Jill about "Traci & Tiffany" on several occasions. In hindsight, thank heavens Tiffany's debut was delayed by 18 months or so. By the time Tiffany's moment to appear had arrived, Bill Bell knew that Jaime Lyn Bauer was leaving, and it became obvious that "Tiffany" needed to be re-tooled into a more assertive, aggressive heroine who could fill the void Jaime's exit would create. I've often wondered how Bell had initially envisioned Tiffany -- probably nothing like the character Eileen Davidson brought to the canvas in the spring of 1982. Jeanne Cooper's long absence wasn't explained at all on-screen (that I can remember). She basically just came back from Felipe's Island, asked Victor to continue overseeing Chancellor Industries, dumped Derek, dumped Douglas, and *poof* vanished after one or two episodes. No mention of a trip or anything. (This was sometime in the early months of 1981.) I don't recall seeing her again until way up in the summertime, when an episode opened with her standing in the living room, examining her wrinkles in the mirror, and deciding that she would engage the new escort service. Then she took another strange hiatus a few months later, after the London Gala. She and Cash booked a return trip to Genoa City from London, but she advised him that he would be returning alone, as she'd decided to travel to Zurich to meet with a plastic surgeon. We didn't see her for several weeks, when she came breezing back in for the Smiley/gambling debt storyline with no follow-up about the Zurich surgeon. Possibly these exits were inspired by real-life trips to rehab, but obviously the press wasn't anxious to report on that. I believe they were just described as "vacations" -- "Jeanne Cooper has returned to her role as Kay Thurston following a long vacation".