Broderick

Seems like Nikki and Patty were both waiting tables at the Allegro for a little while. Brock had hired them. That Patty Minter was supposed to serve as a "conscience" to Nikki. She never had a story of her own. She just said things like, "Wow, Nikki, I'm saving myself for the right guy!" And Nikki would roll her eyes and say, "Why? Just do it with fifteen or twenty of them!" It was a mechanism for the writers to establish that Nikki was a "slut going down the wrong path" without having to drag Casey into it as the confidant.

Yeah, Erica Hope definitely gave Nikki a trashy look and attitude that was completely believable. I can remember a scene where she was in the Allegro with that Patty Minter girl, and I made the comment to my siblings that Nikki looked as though she'd been gang-banged the previous night. Melody Thomas initially played the role more like a silly airheaded bimbo and less like the complete slut we'd seen with Erica Hope.

Snapper and Casey always had such good chemistry, despite having to deliver absurd lines to each about "picking up vibes", having something "heavy going down", and wondering where someone's "head is at" lol.

I don't think they ever specifically said it was in Ohio, but that was always kinda the implication, that it was a fictional version of Cincinnati. They were always going "upstate" as though to Columbus or Cleveland, and there was that big old picture of Cincinnati in the opening credits for years. Wasn't there even a bar near the courthouse called the "Ho-Hi-Ho"?

That's true, and we'd have missed out on a LOT. But I've always suspected that Bell's original plan was to bring back Stephanie Williams, in a recurring capacity, as the "upper middle class" girlfriend of Nathan, and then a few months later introduce Drucilla as the illiterate shoplifter who would become dependent on Nathan. At that point, he would've had all his players in place, and he would've signed Stephanie Williams and Victoria Rowell to contracts. There would've still been a Dru, but not an Olivia. We'll never know for sure, though, since "General Hospital" signed Stephanie Williams to a contract, forcing Bell to re-work the entire trajectory of what he'd planned for Nathan.

Yeah, Lynne Bassett-Hound was utterly wretched and only had a job because her father was on the writing staff. Once Jerry Birn was off the writing staff, his dull daughter was booted out the door instantly. Stephanie Williams had such good chemistry with both Doug Davidson and Steven Ford, and her character should have evolved into Paul's partner at Williams & Richards, once Steven Ford was gone. She was good with the aerobics classes, a great dancer, had good friendship chemistry with Traci, good rival chemistry with Lauren, and worked well with whomever she was paired with romantically. It's just hard to believe that Bell couldn't find a way to continue using her.

Re-watching the "It's Ok to Say No Concert" reminded me what a mistake it was for Bill Bell to let Stephanie E. Williams get away. That girl, in addition to being beautiful, was talented on so many different levels.

Makes sense. I just remember it seemed kinda "rushed". I was changing schools at the time and gave it lots of thought. Traci, on the other hand was like, "Hmmm, I think I'll go to Stanford and finish my degree. Oh, and by the way, I'm leaving today. Good-bye!" lol. Yeah, Rose & Vince were like those Thenardiers in Les Miserables. Whenever we thought we were rid of them, they popped up yet again. They were funny.

Didn't Beth Maitland also get "purged" (temporarily) during all of that? Seems like Traci announced rather suddenly that she was going to Stanford to finish her degree, packed her bags, and swooshed out of town rather suddenly. Also seems like Beth Maitland was removed from the cast list. Brad walked around grouchy about it for several weeks, became closer with Lauren, then Neil Fenmore died, Brad started working with Lauren on the Fenmore Foundation, and after a few months, Traci came swooping back in. I never knew if the intention had always been to bring Traci back later in the year, or if Bill Bell just kinda changed his mind about getting rid of her in the first place.

A couple of Miss Dickson's favorite attributes are DEFINITELY about to escape in that pic!

I was thinking (director) Herbert Kenwith stuck around longer than he did. He directed the first episode of Y&R, and I was thinking he stayed several years. But according to his bio, he moved on to Norman Lear comedies. Y&R has been lucky to have several good directors, including all those you've listed here -- Bill Glenn, Richard Dunlop, Frank Pacelli, and Rudy Vejar, as well as Kathryn Foster in the 1990s and 2000s.

Yeah, they were all jumping the bones of their make-up men in the early 1980s. Melody Thomas had a baby with Carlos Yeaggy, who was one of the make-up men. That's what inspired the whole Victoria storyline. Then she decided she'd rather marry an executive producer instead lol.

By 1973, she was mostly just a washed-up, middle-aged TV actress who was drawing unemployment and raising her three kids. I believe her last notable TV appearance had been in "Bracken's World" circa 1969-1970, and her movie career was pretty much finished for good.

If I remember right, the Chancellors were discussed in the dialogue for several days (or weeks) before the viewers ever encountered them. A slow-build to their debut, I believe you'd call it. There was discussion in the dialogue that on Foothill Road, there was a big house that overlooked the city. The house, of course, belonged to Mr. & Mrs. Chancellor. It was also established that the Chancellors owned several factories and manufacturing plants around town, including the one where Liz worked. The Chancellor anecdotes seemed to be providing some "local flavor" to help flesh-out the physical appearance of Genoa City. I'd say it's certainly possible that we first saw Kay Chancellor for one or two appearances in late 1973, before Phillip and Kay made their big splash in January of 1974. That was just kinda the way Bill Bell wrote. Slowly, and thoughtfully. The cast listing wouldn't provide any clue of when Jeanne Cooper first became a contract player, because the cast only scrolled "in order of appearance", for any specific day. Jeanne could've well started appearing in late 1973, and the press assumed that she was recurring instead of contract, as her storyline didn't really kick-off till January 28, 1974.

His name was "Sean Garrison"; he was an actor from western shows in the 1960s.

We all remember things differently, of course. For instance, I vividly remember the episode in 1980 where Bond Gideon's Jill puts the multiple layers of lipstick on the customer at Jabot, and John Abbott fusses at her, and then later tells her the idea has merit. BUT I could've sworn Brett Halsey played John Abbott in that episode. When it surfaced online earlier this year, John Abbott was played by some complete stranger that I never remember seeing in my life. I remembered the episode itself, but just not the actor. Our memories are fuzzy that way sometimes. Whoever came up with the "Joseph Thomas was a doppelganger to scare Nikki" is just remembering it wrong. That never happened. Jill only strayed into the Greg/Nikki storyline for like ONE DAY, and that was when Liz was shot and was hospitalized. Jack Abbott took Jill to the hospital, so Jill could make sure her mother was going to be ok. And then Jill was like, "Ok, looks like Ma is going to make it! Thanks for the ride, Jack!", and she went directly back into her new Jabot storyline. She didn't plot any "revenge scheme" against Nikki, and Quinn Redeker didn't appear.

I never bought Miss Dickson's book, but I've flipped through it and read the part about Jeanne Cooper, whom Miss Dickson refers to as "Jean". (The book is FULL of misspellings, errors, and apparent fantasies of Miss Dickson, as you might expect. There are probably kernels of truth here & there, but also embellishments and elaborations.) Brenda Dickson basically says that Jeanne Cooper was a raging alcoholic (which is pretty much public knowledge to most fans of the show, I guess, as Jeanne Cooper openly discussed her alcoholism). Miss Dickson, in her quest to defame Bill Bell and Y&R, claims that Bill Bell "enabled" Jeanne Cooper to be an alcoholic. She implies that Bell and Conboy specifically hired an alcoholic actress (Cooper) to fill the role of an alcoholic character (Kay Chancellor) and sort of enabled/encouraged Jeanne Cooper to remain an alcoholic as long as the storyline called for Kay Chancellor to have bouts of sobriety and drunkenness. THEN, when it was time for Kay Chancellor to become "permanently sober", the Evil Bill Bell told Jeanne Cooper, "Sober up, you old crone, or I'll kick you out the door." None of this was really a "slam" of Jeanne Cooper, but Brenda Dickson, in her crazy book, just "uses" Jeanne Cooper to make Bill Bell sound more horrible and mean than he probably really was. She implies that Bell manipulated and abused Jeanne Cooper's alcoholism, and that Jeanne Cooper was too drunk, stupid and naïve to realize she was being manipulated. Only the Wise Brenda Dickson could see all of this unfolding. That's what Beth Maitland was reacting to when she said that it was low and thoughtless of Brenda to discuss two dead people (Bell and Cooper) who weren't around to defend themselves. If Bell were still alive today, he'd obviously say that he never condoned or encouraged Cooper's drinking, and if Jeanne Cooper were still alive today, she'd obviously say that Bill Bell wasn't the reason she drank.

Yes, one of the soap mags made a comment circa 1986 that "if you'd like to watch a parody of Brenda Dickson, just tune into Y&R weekdays on CBS to see Brenda Dickson doing a parody of Brenda Dickson!" lol. I think there's a lot of truth in that statement. She definitely appeared to have some (untreated) problems with emotional stability, and I'm sure there were those on the set who exploited that particular vulnerability of hers, for their own benefit.

We'll never know for certain how much of her "illness" and "persecution" were real, and how much were merely figments of her imagination, because her concept of "truth" is so murky and vague. (That's based on having read passages from her book, where she can't even accurately relay her own AGE to the reader without embellishing the facts and masking the issue in confusion.) But I agree with Will81, when she turns to the camera at the wrong times, or when she does it for extended periods of time, it completely removes the Jill character from the scene. At home, we're treated basically to a tableau of Brenda Dickson posing, pouting, smirking, mugging and vogueing at the camera, while her co-star ineffectively attempts to deliver a soliloquy to the back of her head. There she is, in her plumed hat with sequined feathers, her spangled shoulder pads, her dramatic veil, with her back turned entirely to her co-star. While those of us at home are getting the benefit of watching her roll her eyes, smirk, wiggle and pout, her co-star may as well be performing opposite a corpse. There's nothing wrong with a little camp -- and heaven knows, she was plenty campy --- but it was just TOO much! It was difficult to understand why the other characters were wasting their time on Jill. If I were Phillip Chancellor III and my mother acted that way, I'd have just stayed at Kay Chancellor's house with no qualms about it. If I were Michael Crawford, I wouldn't have asked for the first date, let alone the second. If I were Brad Carlton, I wouldn't have wanted to associate myself with her men's line project. If I were David Kimball, I would've asked to be transferred to a different department. She just went so far with it at the end that it ruined any sense of reality associated with it. If a character has no redeeming qualities at all and can't even manage to LOOK sympathetic for a second or two, then there's pretty much no reason for the character to exist, as all the human conflict is erased.

Peter Bergman has said in an interview that Eileen Davidson comes into her scenes "fully prepared". She knows exactly "when she's planning to raise her voice, when she's planning to cut you off, when she's planning to interrupt you, when she's planning to sigh at you with exasperation. And that enables her to get under your skin more than anyone else you're working with". (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it.) And I believe that preparation -- and unpredictability -- is exactly what dragged Brenda Dickson back into her scenes with Eileen. (Plus Brenda Dickson was probably afraid that if she turned her back to Eileen and stared into the camera pouting, posing, and smirking, Eileen would stand behind her and mock her, making the Jill character look especially foolish and inconsequential.) Brenda's habit of staring off-camera was very effective in small doses, especially with Tricia Cast's Nina. I understand what Brenda Dickson was attempting to accomplish in the scenes. "I'm so superior to you, I'm not going to look at you. I'm going to pretend you're not even in my orbit. I'm going to retreat into a world where you don't exist." And yes, I do think it was an effective approach for an experienced gold-digger like Jill to utilize with a novice gold-digger like Nina. But once Brenda Dickson began using that tactic uniformly with Nina, John Abbott, Kay Chancellor, Jack Abbott, Traci Abbott, Mamie Johnson, and even her own SON Phillip, it just became over-the-top and absurd, like an unprepared diva who doesn't know her lines and is reading the cue cards It's never been a becoming characteristic in Eric Braeden either, when it's overused. It might work while Victor is talking to Jack Abbott, but it looks silly & stupid when he's talking with Nicholas and Victoria.

Yes, and sometimes it's difficult to tell when she's "good" and when she's "cringey". Because it's all kind of the same. The problem seems to be that she basically just stripped away all of the character's vulnerability and innocence. She replaced those characteristics with the swiveling hips, the jutting breasts, the rolling eyes, the sighs, the pouts, the hats, and the overblown costumes. Sometimes it works in one scene, and in the next scene, it just looks utterly absurd.

A lot of us on the old Mediadomain board were complaining during the George Kaplan mess about the rewrite of Brad's history. There's a scene from about 1985 where he meets with his mother in a diner --- is that what's included in the clip referenced above? -- and he gives her an envelope of money that he'd saved working for the Abbotts. She mentions that she has several other children, and she wants them all to earn an honest living. Then, when Brad and Traci become engaged, Brad takes his mother's invitation out of the "to be mailed" stack and hides it in his desk drawer at Jabot. Lauren Fenmore finds it, and becomes curious why he doesn't want his mother to attend the wedding. It's a whole little minor storyline that was completely tossed out completely for all that reliquary mess.

In the weeks leading up to it, the duel storyline was presented as being a "very dramatic and serious stand-off", at least from the point of view of Victor and Douglas, who proposed the dueling pistols. But on the day of the duel, it was played more as "dark comedy", which was fitting considering the circumstances. lol

Douglas shot him in the butt. I believe the "witnesses" were Victor & Brock. Victor was serving as Douglas Austin's "second", and Brock was reluctantly serving as Derek's "second". Seems that Derek kept stepping in gopher holes as they walked out to the dueling ground. Kay Chancellor was at home, waiting for the outcome. She heard the shot, and then Derek came in with a butt wound.

I don't remember a trip to the hospital for Lance after the shooting. I was thinking Lorie Brooks just called her brother-in-law, Snapper, who came out to the lake house and treated Lance at the scene. Then Snapper told Lorie and Vanessa, "I'm not sure what happened here, but you'd better look into filing a police report", which they opted not to do. That's the way I remember it. I remember when he came on. It was in very late 1979 or very early 1980. He was a professional thief. Derek Thurston hired him to break into a safe, remove an audio tape, and substitute a new tape in its place. (The story was that Brock had recorded a private conversation between Derek and Jill, during which they professed their love for each other and talked about what a gruesome old bat Derek's wife, Kay Chancellor, was. Brock gave his mother the tape and said, "If you want to know how your husband really feels about you, here's a tape of him and Jill discussing you." Kay didn't want to hear it and put in her safe. Later she decided to listen to it. Derek hired Douglas Austin to swap out the tape with a better version where Derek was babbling about what a wonderful wife Kay Chancellor was.) Shortly after the show expanded to an hour, Douglas's role increased. He stole $50,000 of "ransom money" that Kay Chancellor delivered to Suzanne Lynch to free Derek from a hoax kidnapping. Then Douglas started courting Kay.