vetsoapfan

There are several current characters on the canvas who do not work very well, and may end up being written off if they cannot be fixed. Since new characters are bound to be brought on anyway (they always are), it won't make any difference whatsoever to younger viewers if these new people are tied to Y&R's original founding families or not, because they will still be strangers to the audience. But the older, longer-running fans would get a kick out of it and appreciate the nod to history, so there's no definite "need" for any founding families to remain relegated to the past. All characters should be well-written, cast appropriately, and woven into the fabric of the series, and their origins and family ties do not negate the possibility of that happening.

It sure is.

Yes, the show has continued to change over the decades.

Some of the Emmy nominations during the 1970s were based on name recognition more than actual talent. Farley Granger was not good at all on OLTL and kept noticeably flubbing his lines, yet he was nominated. A lot of the decade's very best actors were consistently overlooked. IMHO, Janice Lynde deserved an Emmy nomination for her character's descent into madness, as did Trish Stewart for her performances during her character's rape storyline. By 1975, it had flown way up to number three (behind ATWT and AW), with a 35% audience share, the highest of any soap that season. It also attracted massive numbers among young female viewers whom the networks coveted the most. That year the show also won Best Daytime Drama and Best Directing at the Emmy Awards.

But as a brand-new serial, it soared very quickly in the ratings, and was very influential in how the soaps were presented from then on. I think the lack of strong competition in the 1980s helped Y&R reach the number one spot, whereas in the 1970s, almost ALL the soaps were great and fighting for the top spot.

The only good thing about my being so ancient is that I was fortunate enough to witness the soaps' golden age. I think the 1950s to 1970s were the very best years for daytime drama. We had Irna Phillips, Agnes Nixon, William J. Bell, Pat Falken Smith, Harding Lemay, Henry Slesar...all the great writers at the height of their careers!

The original cast of Y&R is not alone in letting their egos or thirst for stardom outside of soaps cloud their judgment. It's a shame that so many actors leave so many different TV series, never to find the fame they desire, particularly when the shows they left had given them such great material to play. Janice Lynde, Trish Stewart, Pamela Peters, Tom Hallick, William Gray Espy, and even Jaime Lyn Bauer have never done ANYTHING ELSE that allowed their talents to shine more than Y&R. The first years of the show were pure gold with that cast!

Janice Lynde had wanted out for a long time before she finally departed the series. In the press, she openly admitted in one interview, "There were times when I justed hated Leslie!" Years later, however, she admitted she had been young and very foolish during her run on Y&R, and that being cast as Leslie had afforded her the opportunity to play out some great material. Her replacement, Victoria Mallory, was beautiful and charming, and had a wonderful voice, but she never attained the level of popularity that Lynde had reached. Critics referred to Mallory's interpretation of Leslie as colorless. Trish Stewart also quit in order to try for primetime TV work. She offered to remain on the show without a contract until a suitable replacement could be found, but TPTB dropped her outright and replaced her as well. The "new" Chris, Lynne Topping, was a capable actress, but just not as popular with the viewers as Stewart had been. Pamela Peters walked off the set in the middle of a scene once, and would disappear from the show for long stretches at a time (including when her character of Peggy was involved in a rape storyline). The show briefly replaced her with Patricia Everly who did not work out, and Peters returned for a bit until the entire Brooks family was phased out. Bill Bell acknowledged in interviews that he would have kept the Brooks family around, until Jaime Lyn Bauer also decided to quit. That was the last straw which made him decide to overhaul the show and eliminate many of the original core characters and replace them with the Abbott and Williams families, Victor Newman, etc., as the new focus. As played by the original actors, the Brooks and Foster families were enormously popular and very beloved by the fans.

Yes, Brooks Prentiss could return as a young business rival of Victor's. Chuckie could be brought back too as Jill's nephew. Both JL and JLB have said they would be open to returning, and it would be such a treat for longtime fans. Soaps keep dumping new, irrelevant, and often short-term characters onto the canvas anyway, why not at least try to entice former viewers into watching again by giving us a few nods to the past?

Yes, there are still ways to weave the show's original roots into the current canvas, but I doubt TPTB are interested. They probably think no one in the current audience cares about the distant past.

As a longtime viewer (I watched from the show's debut in 1973), the Brooks sisters' appearance was what I wanted to see again the most. I stopped watching Y&R on a daily basis after the original Brooks and Foster families were written out.

Over the Christmas holidays, I chatted with a friend who is wont to ask thought-provoking, if silly, questions. Lamenting the lack of good, available men in real life, she asked me what character(s) from television I would choose to have a romantic relationship with, or even marry. I initially scoffed at the question, because of course it's absurd and pointless to fantasize about things which can never actually happen, and yet...since she brought up the subject, I have been asking myself: WHAT CHARACTER(S) FROM MY FAVORITE TV SHOWS WOULD I CONSIDER GOOD BOYFRIEND OR HUSBAND MATERIAL? (Don't judge me; I freely admit I am nuts!) Romance comes much easier to characters on television than it does in real life, and there are many wonderful guys from the TV universe whom I would eagerly put on my fantasy-husband list. The only problem is narrowing it down to a single choice! (Although since this is all fantasy anyway, who says I must be limited to just one, LOL? There ARE seven days in a week!) Now I am dithering over whom to choose from among Wolfgang, Lito, and Will. Like you, I find it impossible to make a decision. I would be thrilled, and very lucky, to land any one of them! I will have to sit myself down and give this more serious thought!

One of the many reasons to watch Sense8 is for the hunky hotness! Who is your favorite? (Here are my top three.)

Tell me about it! I have the vapors! LOL! It's actor-model Matthew Camp, by the way.

Carl, you find some of the most amazing (and obscure) videos. Good job!

Great choices, Slick Jones!

Thank you so much! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, YRBB, and the entire SON community!

If any of these hunky Christmas models were to visit me tonight, I would really be a 'Ho...'Ho...'Ho!

Merry Christmas!

I am curious to know what they would pay an actor for using him in a pre-taped opening, in which he had no lines and did not have to do any additional work. Or when they only showed his face in a still photograph. Surely not the equivalent of a new, first-run episode in which he spoke reams of dialogue. I used to wonder the same thing watching LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE. That show would often have weddings or funerals or other church services, in which several regular actors would appear silently in the background for only a few moments during those group scenes. They might be on camera for thirty seconds, and never speak. Of course they would be paid, but the same salary as in a regular episode when they had 45 pages of dialogue? Pr would there be some sort of pay-scale adjustment?

Seeing this happen to Ashley is quite painful. I wish the show were not eliminating a character who represents a solid moral centerpiece. I would rather say goodbye to a Dingle or two.

Yes, I remember reading that story about Barrow wanting to be paid for appearing in the opening. Still, if I were in charge, I would have simply dropped him and just used everyone else. Or perhaps made a few different openings, only one with Johnny Ryan which could be shown when Barrow was actually going to appear on that day. The "anonymous strangers" were off-putting. James Arness (GUNSMOKE) once said that the extra they used in the initial opening for that show (the man seen in the distance for a brief second before Marshall Dillon shoots him) also demanded additional payment for appearing in the opeing footage, and the show simply replaced him. That's the way to go if TPTB refuse to cough up the extra cash, IMHO. When it premiered, DARK SHADOWS had Alexandra Moltke (Vicki) narrate the beginning of every episode. ("My name is Victoria Winters...."), but when the producers wanted to save money and not pay her for episodes in which she did not actually appear, they simply had other actors, those who WOULD be featured in that particular episode, narrate the prologue instead.

I will never understand the logic behind eliminating the pictures of the show's characters from this RH opening logo, and replacing them with a bunch of anonymous strangers. It's like the "bedsheets in the wind" opening from OLTL, with all its pictures of unknown models who had nothing whatsoever to do with...the show.

First dibs on the cutie in the speedo!