sheilaforever

I'm currently up to #1529: Stephanie is about to stage the ultimatum to keep Eric from marrying Sheila. Highlights of 1993? The paternity test, Sheila& Mike - it still holds up soooo well. Lauren's visit in LA which felt so right as if she has always been part of B&B. The scenes with Sheila, Stephanie, Eric, Ridge and Brooke are all so spot on. Highlight of a different kind... #1520 - have you seen IT yet??? I don't want to spoil anything - I just say musical montage at Forrester Creations... Macy's alcoholism as well as everything connected to it is NOT working for me. I think it all happens too soon and with too little investment by the writers. The Ridge & Brooke stuff is starting to get annoying in April (wasn't fond of Connor's intro), but I'm really PUMPED about the battle for BeLieF because Steve Crown is already befriending Brooke in my last episode...

I'm slightly torn on the assessment that all of these characters are a shell of their former self. Putting aside the obvious much less skillful storylines than in the good old days, I think some parts of Brooke's and Sheila's character is a natural evolution which is actually believable. The Brooke of old was a chemist and smart business woman. Nowadays, she is a desperate housewife who is walking around Forrester Creations in perfect hair, awesome outfits and big clutches, but does NOTHING. However, I could never care for Brooke back then because she was a pathetic homewrecker who always put her needs and destiny of the month first. Therefore, I like Grande Dame Brooke (which started around 2012 with occasional back to the roots moments like "Brill" affair) much better and think it suits her age and role in life to be more grounded - admittedly to some extent Brooke is now more boring, but I think B&B did the right thing by adding a viable younger generation because some stories should not be told with the old guard. Same goes for Sheila: she was always struggling to find love because she lacked something in her childhood. She wanted to e loved for who she is, but was never able to experience true love. All this backstory was told on B&B in the mid/late 90s, sometimes in a rather religious context like in 1996. The evolution of Sheila already began with Amber and having a child with James. I'm pretty surprised by the praise for her 2002 return: while it made great TV, it all really hurt her character: she killed Lance with bees (IMO; her only REAL murder) and her sole ambition was to get her daughter pregnant by Rick!? The shooting at the Forrester Mansion was an accident; so there were chances for redemption which Brad Bell did not follow up with. Her 2005 Y&R run started off amazing but then it was like WTF - and already over. Therefore; I liked her 2017 with a balance of camp and excitement, but never jumping the shark. Sheila's antics are now more grounded and less extreme. For this reason I find her current run also pretty smart and it is actually classic Bell storytelling that a character is making a BIIIIIG fuss about switching a lable of a bottle. Remember the good old days on Y&R and B&B when we viewers were on the edge of our seats by such important decisions (which often took and entire week) whether Nikki was driving into town from the ranch to confront Ashley!? My point is: yes, the production values of B&B are way less exciting. The storylines used to be plotted smarter with better build-up (that said, I think Brad Bell and team show actual ambition to tell more than just one story at a time and make the consecutive stories actually fit with each other in the past 2 years…). On the other hand, I appreciate that Brooke or Sheila of 2022 act different than they did 20 or 30 years ago. It is always a thin line to keep such an evolution in line with the nature of the character. At least for those two, I can dig it. What I could do without is the hallowing sounds around Kimberlin Brown’s scenes because as you pointed it, it totally defeats the purpose to make her an adult character which wants to be good but somehow ends up doing bad stuff.

It's really difficult to pin it down to a favorite scene. They had so much great story going and the show was so smart to constantly bring back Mike in the 90s just when you thought that he was dropped for good. The early stuff is oh so interesting because Mike was introduced as being tech-savvy and Sheila had to use quite a lot of her femine charme to play him. Later on, Mike was head over heels in love with his "babe" and therefore came off as rather one-note. I thought it was a shame that the Psycho house story with Mike and his brother Marty was cut short due to Kimberlin Brown's pregnancy because there was so much potential.

Bringing back James would be awesome indeed! That said: never in a million years did I imagine to have Mike Guthrie back in town. The 2010 return was so random when he gave Stephen (or was it Pam?) a gun. Even though the last 12 years did not go by on him without ageing

I second both. Mid 2014-2015 was GREAT. The best in many years. 2017 showed lots of promise and did some good stuff like the Spectra revival and Sheila's return. It fizzled in the fall, but overall it was still highly watchable. Ever since the only really strong moments were the baby Beth baby switch, Thomas and the Mannequin plus Sheila's latest return. Oh, and for camp's sake I really digged Sally's fake illness with Dr. Penny Escobar the wannabe designer. EDIT: cast wise - 2022 is the strongest set-up in more than a decade, IMO. Bringing back Sheila, Deacon and Taylor were all unexpected but oh so smart decisions which have potential for greatness.

She missed out on the GOOD directing days at Y&R, but hey, promoting from within, is at least a classic Y&R tradition. Therefore congrats to her!

I'm happy that occasionally this show is still about fashion, like when Ellen von Unwerth guest starred. This was a pretty cool cameo. Due to budget restraints, they just cannot pull a big fashion show twice a year these days. Taht said:even in the past we had backstage view fashion shows pr "previews" in Eric's office or so. Both could be done.

I knew it. I guess: THAT is the twist… however, the show will lose interest in Finn in max 12 months…

For those LOVING the Y&R crossovers: Don Diamont appeared as Brad Carlton in #1522-1524. There have been clips on YouTube for ages but the exact length of his first B&B stint (16 years before debuting as Bill Spencer Jr.) was unknown (at least) to me: April 19-April 21, 1993.

@ChickenNuggetz92As always: thank you for your dedication, tech-savvy-ness and time/money that you spend on providing these of a kind treasure troves!

Awesome promo indeed!

Just my two cents for a quick clean-up for some data space: Folders 1993 -> January till June could be deleted because of the Videoland uploads. Yes, they do have subtitles in them ut are much higher quality than the previous and partial uploads in those folders...

I think so: Ridge is not Eric's son, Thorne had only Aly, Kristen never had a bio child and Felicia had only Dino who has not been around since 2006!?

+1 I Loved Aly. It was a terrile decision to kill her off - in such a wasteful manner.

Soooooo excited for this. I've only seen clips (of all of it) but not the real build-up...

The whole process of dividing Thorne & Macy was not very flattering for either character. The shared apartment part was already pretty far-fetched considering that Karen the virgin came from Starlight Texas and was probably not used to such elaborate living arrangements and Thorne used to be stand-up good guy. Then, Thorne and Macy kept beating around the bush for months when Thorne mistook Macy hugging Jake for an actual affair. Then, Macy had the brilliant idea to send a tape to Thorne - instead of talking to him. I guess, someone told Macy that letters get intercepted in LA (Hello, Brooke!) all the time, so she felt super smart about it. Karen knows about the true story for the separation between Macy and Thorne but keeps it for herself after Macy goes full b*tch mode on. Perfectly fine, yet Karen is supposed to be this lovely person and therefore acts rather OOC. Macy is that desperate that she goes on a bender due to Thorne’s rejection (but was singing for Sly at Bikini Bar just two episodes prior)… While the story is quite the elaborate plot and makes attempts to add reasoning to all these rather confusing behaviours, nevertheless it made ALL of these characters very un-like-able for me.

I only watched those few Y&R episodes available in The Vault from January 1993 so far which I listed a few pages back. There, it was etablished that Lauren did not really love Scott (anymore) but decided to reunite with him for Scotty's sake. The relationship between Scott (who always came off as a non-character to me BTW) and Lauren felt very cool. Lauren kept bitching about Sheila had done to her while Scott wanted to move on (for storyline's sake, I guess ;-)). Add: Brad being very handsome and Lauren being Lauren - so of course they had to find out if chemistry is still there and have sex. In a coincidence only happing on soaps Sheila who is living in LA permanently and has hardly been in Genoa City the past 8 months - was JUST in Genoa City at the time and JUST at this very moment in Lauren's suite when Brad and Lauren had their 1993 one-night-stand to snap some pictures.

!Vielen Dank!

Karen was a creation of Bill Bell who did not step down as headwriter from B&B until the middle of Karen's original run. When JJ left again, it might have been her choice again because she was just not into acting that much and wanted to become a fulltime writer...

B&B has been getting a lot of SOD covers lately…

True!

Ah ok. Thanks for correcting me.

Thanks! The part of Tom directing at Dynasty is a cop-out - unless she is directing the rest of the show's current season because she has NOT done so since an episode that aired August (!) 2021. That said, I'm not against the rather loose on/off-appearances from Katie because Tom is always a joy to watch, yet the show is not in desperate need to have Katie around 24/7.

I'm curious what is going with Heather Tom. She has been absent for so long - also for the anniversary parties and KKL's private events it seems.

I couldn't agree more about Sally. As for Caroline: I also really liked that she had a career in journalism. Sure, she only got the chance due to daddy, but it added something valuable to the character for the couple of months where they heavily used Eye on Fashion as well as Valerie as her sidekick. This was of course still in the days where Brooke has a respectable career as a chemist. For the past 10 years Brooke has been walking around LA minding everyone's business but no longer seems to be nvolved with real business which is a shame.