Romalotti

I have always liked John McCook as Eric. I can’t see anyone else in the role now. He has a certain charm and his acting is serviceable. He was kind of a wuss but that’s what happens when you’re married to Stephanie for decades. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Oh yeah that’s right! Latham didn’t show up until around 2006 or 2007. How did John F. Smith get the OK to move forward with THAT story? 🤷🏻‍♂️

What storylines do you consider to be the rough patch?

I have been watching from the beginning and season one, episode 120 is so bizarre. Suddenly Stephanie is showing up at the Logan house to see Caroline for the first time AGAIN. She meets Beth for the first time again, even though all this happened a few episodes ago. Except now Caroline has already identified her attacker in the lineup. There’s all new scenes with Storm and Beth and Stephanie together in the Logan kitchen….it’s all so bizarre. I feel like they decided to move around some scenes after they were already shot and they accidentally messed up the continuity. Surprised no one noticed before it aired or else they DID notice and weren’t going to spend the money for even more reshoots. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I think that ANY soap these days would benefit from Bill Bell’s magic touch…especially and ironically Y&R. 😏

A HUGE agree from me on that. I’ve seen paternity reveals totally derail soaps over the years. I’ll never forgive Y&R and Lynn Marie Latham for the Katherine/Jill reveal. And it was all reversed a few years later anyway. Also, I groan when I think about Richard Channing being Angela’s son on Falcon Crest (that reveal was handled HORRIBLY by the writers too — somehow the whole town just suddenly knew about it but no one was shown being told about it and it had almost zero implications on the characters overall). I feel that most of the time, these “shocking reveals” that change family dynamics hurt the shows overall. And like you said, after the shock, often the writers have nowhere to go with the story. There’s plenty of drama to be mined from characters without half of the town finding out that they have a different mother or father than they previously thought.

Hunter Tylo said that when she auditioned for the show, she was auditioning for both Caroline’s doctor and Caroline herself. Bill Bell was trying so hard to find a suitable recast for Caroline and then just realized it was futile and decided to have her succumb to cancer.

I loved reading your analysis of the episodes! I’m on episode 113 at the moment.

I did share it on the message board a few weeks ago. It feels good to know that they are actually listening to and responding to the viewers.

I had some issues with the audio through the first chunk of season one episodes. Mostly the background music was so insanely loud that sometimes you’d see the actors speaking and wouldn’t be able to hear anything. I switched over to watching episodes on Tubi because the audio levels are normal on there. I’m hoping they fix the issue before I reach season two.

As soon as I saw your post, I bought the book for $10 on Kindle and just finished reading it. It’s a good book with lots of information I didn’t know about before. Bill Bell will always be one of my creative inspirations. Thank you for leading me to the book!

I’ve been watching the show for the first time. I’m at the end of season seven and I agree with pretty much everything you said. Season seven was the first season where I felt disconnected from the show. It felt like there was no plan and characters were suddenly pawns of the plots and nothing else. Half of the cast disappeared for multiple episodes and when they WERE onscreen, they got thrown into one disjointed storyline after another. It’s kinda sad that the show fell off so far, so fast. But your opinion of season eight has me a little hopeful, at least.

I remember the scenes you’re talking about. It’s very early in the first season. Chase and Maggie act surprised that Angela would do something so underhanded when Angela had JUST done something underhanded in the previous episode. Actually this happened because they reversed the airing order of two episodes, rather than the writers trying to be explicitly episodic.

Personally, I love Marquita Goings in this role and I’ll be saddened to see her leave the show. So, with that in mind, I am a bit forgiving of the writers for stalling the poisoning plot. I figure when Hayley is exposed, she’s leaving the show soon afterwards and I don’t want her to go. That being said, YES they need to advance this storyline. Hayley was revealed to be a scammer back in OCTOBER. It’s over half a year later and the only advancement in the storyline is that Lynette has come and gone and now we are back to square one — Hayley brazenly poisoning Bill’s drinks in public. 🙄

I kinda wish I knew more of the inner workings of the soap world. Like, did they sideline Nicole because they only budgeted for a certain amount of actors in an episode? Or because she is needed for multiple episodes later in the week so they wanted to give her a day off? I need to find a good autobiography written by a soap scribe. Too bad Bill Bell never wrote an autobiography. It would have been a classic and we could have learned so much from it.

At this point, I’m convinced that Nicole running off during the cotillion wasn’t a mysterious plot point and the only reason it happened was that they needed a valid reason why Daphnée Duplaix wasn’t in the next episode that took place at cotillion.

I haven’t read every post in the thread but I just have to mention Michael Graziadei who plays Daniel on Y&R. He's gorgeous and a great actor too. Kinda makes me wish I still watched the show…

I just finished season one, episode 80 last night. So far, the show has a “once upon a time” quality to it — It’s like the epic prelude to an amazing generational saga. When I first started the series, it felt like I was watching two completely different tv shows: one about a rich family in the high fashion world, the other about a lower middle class family who is struggling to get by. The character of Alex was the initially the only one who crossed back and forth between the families….then we learned that Beth and Eric had a past together…then we saw Brooke befriend Caroline…then Brooke met Ridge and Thorne…and as of last night, Rocco has made contact with the Forresters too. I was NOT expecting Rocco to come running in out of nowhere (what was he doing in the parking garage anyway) to rescue Ridge and Caroline from muggers. And he didn’t just rescue them, he went all Lorenzo Lamas on them (either Lance Cumson OR Snakeeater) and started doing ninja kicks and jumps and other moves that were straight out of a 1966 Batfight. Meanwhile, Ridge just stands there like a lump and watches Rocco kick ass. I’m glad they finally connected Rocco to the Forresters. I have a slight crush on Bryan Genesse and I always get a little more excited when I see he’s in an episode. But I have no idea how he would exist in the Forresters’ world but I can’t wait to find out!

I look forward to your posts every day! Even though I usually read them before I get home to watch the episode at dinner time. A little teaser is always nice!

Oh wow, I’d be thrilled to get Loving in some form! It’s an outright tragedy they wiped so many tapes of old soap episodes though. Imagine a streaming site where EVERY episode of EVERY soap ever existed.

Bill Bell was able to create the B&B app because the Bell family owns B&B. I don’t think any other soap, even the Bells’ Y&R, is owned by its creators. I imagine the networks or maybe sponsors like Proctor and Gamble own the other soaps. So unfortunately, it’s unlikely we will see another soap come out with an app. That being said, if they ever made all the Y&R episodes available, it would be a dream come true. Other soaps I’ve wanted to watch: Sunset Beach, Loving, Capitol, Passions… In a perfect world, we could sit around watching Edge of Night episodes from the 60s but nearly every soap from before the 1970s erased all their old episodes. 😞

If Tomas had to play a scene where he was grieving over Kat dying, he would look like he had a mild case of indigestion. Fortunately he hasn’t had any “big scenes” yet.

This is very comforting. It’s rare to see a company respond positively to feedback and address it like this. Hopefully someone mentioned the background music issue — some episodes (at least in season one) have the background music so loud that you literally cannot hear what the actors are saying. I had to rewatch a few episodes on Tubi (the very same episodes are fine on Tubi) because when Eric and Stephanie were having an important discussion about their marriage, Stephanie in particular was impossible to hear. Even the subtitles didn’t make an attempt haha. I’ll happily subscribe to this app forever as long as I can enjoy the episodes without having to guess what they are saying.

If the writers don’t kill off Tomas as part of the “Hayley is a con artist” storyline, they are gonna regret the hell out of it later. Kat and Tomas are a cute couple but hardly soulmates. The show wouldn’t miss a step if Kat started dating someone else.

What ideas do you think were seeded in the first season? Asking because I have a LOT of storyline ideas for this show haha. I agree with your thoughts — I love the show but it’s not going to be great unless SOMETHING changes. The storylines don’t seem to have many twists and turns like on classic soaps. Where’s the big storyline that encapsulates over two years of the show that keeps us glued to the screens? Leslie COULD have been a big bad villain like Sheila on Y&R/B&B but she’s gotten too cartoonish as she’s backed away from causing any real trouble (booking a bunch of wedding venues to spoil Chelsea’s wedding day is NOT what I call a “supervillain” move).