Darn

Doug has been married for a woman for almost 40 years.

Yeah I can't imagine anyone else as Stephanie. Literally no other actor. Stephanie hated Brooke so much sometimes I felt like she was yelling at me.

Yes, she was offered the part and turned it down to return to Days I believe. Eilleen Davidson does not play coquettish well so seeing her that way with Victor is off-putting. I really do not like them together at all.

Thanks you @Forever8 You have to give Chadwick Boseman props for jumping ship as soon as he saw what he his character was becoming. That is also very true. Soap characters don't mention the real world anymore, they also have no hobbies or interests or beliefs. The most they do is generically celebrate Christmas like they're in a coffee commercial. It just baffles me because these shows have 200+ episodes to produce yet won't spare the time to address something that could be impactful. What would Julius talking about real lived experiences have done exactly? Was a quarter of your viewership going to turn the channel because a black man says one sentence?

Thank you so much for sharing that @Faulkner Julius as an ADOS mentioning the Great Migration would NOT have been a stereotype, it would have been SPECIFICITY. It would explain his psychology so much better than anything else they shat out. They had a real opportunity to delve into how the black church plays such a large part in how huge swathes of the black community feel about trans people or homosexuality. I'm so upset!

That's a year before I started watching but I've read enough from the regulars here that 98 was a real upswing after a bit of a lull. March was totally random though lol

I wonder what the ratings would look like if they just DECIDED "Okay we're going to start from March 7th, 1998" and just kept it going until they can film new episodes.

WOW I've never seen this but it's exactly like Ellen Holly said. Carla gets not ONE solo closeup at her OWN WEDDING. Every time they get close to it the camera pulls out to show Viki or makes sure Viki is in the same frame. Pathetic. There's literally a white woman blocking her shot during the cake cutting scene.

I found her and REG frankly annoying (it took until the Hamilton soundtrack for me to warm up to her) but I didn't realize how good or rare it was for a soap to actually have a black woman so frontburner. Evangeline absolutely dominated the screen for most of her tenure and I can't imagine any black character getting even a tenth of the material she did.

And they proceeded to make fun of that for the next 20 years. If I were a fan of the show at the time (I guess I was but I was also 9 so...) I would have been pissed and quit immediately. Evangeline running to John's vanilla bean dick all the time over RJ felt offensive to me, RJ was one of two black men on the show and painted as the worst man in the world and Hank didn't have any story of his own until he disappeared (BTW can anyone tell me why Nathan Purdee left Y&R?).

When I first started watching 20 years ago (lord), I posed the same question on a soap forum and got torn apart because "Mamie Eisenhower! It's just a NAME!". Bill Bell is a legend but...he knew exactly what he was doing.

I've never seen Brenda Epperson's Ashley this much, I started watching long after she left, but I am loving her. I like her SO MUCH more than Eileen Davidson, who I think comes across as less an ice queen and more an icicle. Not a fan. But BE is hitting all the right notes for me, the ep someone posted yesterday where she's pissed at Victor for yelling at her was stellar. She went toe to toe with EB, which I find rare amongst his love interests.

A redemption arc is fine, building him up as a potential love interest is the real problem.

That was one of the most mind-boggling story turns I've ever seen. Yes, let's pair the woman with the man who killed her daughter. No, no it's okay because he has a new face! And is a reverend now! How the hell did any of that get through story meetings or network approval? Ghastly. This show did Brooke and Julia Barr such a disservice. Brooke was so hard for them to write after a point. They had a hard time writing for any woman over 40 that wasn't Erica.

I miss Miguel and Mamie and Lynn, they added so much to the fabric of the show and were a great writing device. You don't want your principals characters have the same conversation for the 100th time? Have them talk to one of their employees/friends and also recap for the audience. They served a purpose. Now we have main characters talking in literal circles for weeks on end because the only outlet they have is their love interest du jour.

This was wild, Nathan had been on the show for 6 years at that point and was meeting John and Ashley for the first time. BB was a master at keeping the cast in their little pocket universes.

Rebecca and Cameron said the same thing. Which made me happy because I was a huge fan of Ryan and Gillian and Leo and Greenlee. But Ryan and Greenlee NEVER worked because they became entirely different people when together.

The immediate aftermath of John's death was great drama. Jack kicking Gloria out! Putting her clothes in garbage bags! I don't mind that 2006 episode either.

Episode 3 is not my bag. Always thought Jacob was miscast and I hated Babe and her mother. Billy Miller was hot and that's about it. MCE somehow managed to make a career out of a badly written role, now she's been stinking up Y&R for nearly a decade in an even worse role.

I was a little disappointed that Darnell wasn't about the Jessie/Angie phenomenon so we could at least get a Debi mention.

Damn Susan Seaforth Hayes nearly doubling her guarantee. Making that overtime lol

I doubt we'll ever go back to the 70s or even early 80s now. They've already done Victor and Nikki, there's no one left to connect to that era and they're not going to do a Paul Williams week. Unless they get desperate.

You're right, I just checked. Dixie died in January 2007, McTavish was the headwriter until April of that year.

That was lovely! These two episodes have been just fantastic. The only real tea was Cady saying the writer who killed her off with poisoned pancakes was punishing her (which everyone guessed), who was that? I can't recall. Pratt?