kalbir

January 14 will mark 15 years since Darlene Conley passed away. Of the original B&B characters as written by Bill Bell, Sally Spectra was another one of my favorites. I didn't mention Sally in the B&B from the Beginning thread since her episodes are still a while away on the YT channel. There was nobody else like Sally on daytime and I would say her arrival was a turning point for B&B. Sally breathed new life into the show and Bill Bell smartly built a business and a family around her, eventually replacing the Logans with the Spectra gang by 1991. It was another missed opportunity during last year's classics that we didn't get a week of the best of Sally Spectra.

I think about a month or so from the engagement to the terminated wedding, then their marriage to Caroline's death was 6 months.

@soapfan770 Yes, that one. Thanks for the link to the thread.

Remember that casting call for Sophia which read like a checklist of every stereotype of Black American females? Was that also making the threads back then?

Y&R had two cast purges in the 1980s, it's time for another one.

Expecting lots of garbage time, yuck.

This meme sums up CBS Daytime demographics pretty good.

Why is the YT channel cutting episodes? It's not like they have to make room for commercials, or do they? Queen Stephanie and her bitch slaps are everything and it was a shame that the classics last year did not give us a week of the best of Queen Stephanie.

@Sasha66 I'd say 1984, as that was the year that Y&R became Y&R as we know it today.

@AMCOLTLLover Victor Newman was introduced as a villain but became an anti-hero.

@j swift Victor's childhood backstory from 1984. Maybe someday the Christmas 1981 episode where Victor first reveals info about his childhood will surface.

1998 was the last excellent year for Y&R so if it had ended in 1999 with John Abbott's return and the Abbott family getting Jabot back, that would've been a perfect ending. We'd have been spared storylines from 2000-2006 that caused long-term damage that the show never really recovered from (ie. Victor's stolen DNA, Jill's parentage rewrite, Cassie's death, John Abbott's death). B&B I think should've ended sometime between 1999-2002. The consensus on this board draws the line at 2003 being the start of the decline. I personally thought B&B's tank era was summer 1995 to spring 1999 and I stopped watching after the Jabot/Newman crossover wrapped up in spring 1999.

@soapfan770 1996 was just a mess overall. There was Nick and Sharon eating the show up until the spring, then the lull started in the fall which carried through the first half of 1997. In between was Who Shot Victor and in all honesty that was the only storyline worth watching that year.

Dr. Josh was Nikki's rebound from Victor disappointing her (remember Nikki thought she and Victor were about to reunite, then Victor went to Kansas to be with Hope and Adam in the aftermath of Cliff's death). Also a plot device to keep Nikki and Victor apart.

@Broderick Thanks for the insights. I noticed a few similarities w/ Stuart and Bill as far as storylines go: Stuart was a newspaper publisher. Bill was a magazine publisher. Stuart was suspicious of Snapper. Bill was suspicious of Ridge. Stuart exposed Snapper's cheating to Chris. Bill exposed Ridge's cheating to Caroline. Stuart preferred Greg for Chris instead of Snapper. Bill preferred Thorne for Caroline instead of Ridge.

@Broderick Another Y&R/B&B character comparison for your insights, Stuart Brooks vs. Bill Spencer.

Brenda Dickson is so extra 🤣 1985 is when she got OTT in her acting and it got worse during 1986 and 1987.

During the Bill Bell years, would we consider Bill Spencer to be a villain? I got the impression that Bill Bell wrote Bill Spencer as a more villainous version of Stuart Brooks.

@j swift I had mentioned that both Dina and JoAnna had abandoned their families and re-entered their lives years later. With TL's Jack, I think he was Dina's favorite child and his mother abandonment issues resulted in his playboy behavior and seeking his father's love and approval, but of course messing up while doing so and not being able to live up to his father's legacy. I don't remember TL's Jack wanting to be a parent. I seem to recall him setting up an appointment for a vasectomy not long after Patty approached him about having a child. Patty got pregnant anyway but miscarried. Albert walked out on his family and left a pregnant Cora unable to care for Victor and the child on the way, that's why Victor was placed in the orphanage. Victor was abandoned by both parents. I can't recall if Cora raised Matthew or if he was eventually placed in the orphanage.

Calling it now, Nick is going to go back-and-forth between Sharon, Phyllis, and Chelsea until Y&R ends.

@DramatistDreamer @soapfan770 You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed the write ups. From what I've seen/read of 1980-1982 Y&R, it was not an easy transition between the 1 hour expansion, time slot changes, ratings dropping, cast changes, EP change but Y&R managed to survive and it would lead to them thriving for the most part from 1983-1998.

I recently came across the 1997 book Worlds Without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera. In the book Bill Bell comments on two pivotal events in Y&R history. I hope nobody minds that I quoted his comments in full. On Taking Y&R to One Hour "Once assured that Y&R was a runaway hit, CBS inevitably wanted to talk to me about an hour. I'll spare you the gruesome details, but after months of enormous pressure from the network and the affiliates, I somehow found myself committed to doing the hour show. What ultimately happened is that our ratings went down and it took us three years to become number one again. How could this have happened? One reason is that when we went to an hour, we had a number of cast defections. The issue of performing in a one-hour show had not been part of their contracts. And some of our leading actors understandably felt that their popularity on Restless would open the door to fame and fortune in nighttime or films. Obviously we had to recast prime characters in our two core families, the Brooks and the Fosters. It was then that I decided if even one more actor from these families decided to leave the show, I'd have to do something radical. A short time later, Jaime Lyn Bauer, who played Lauralee Brooks and was one of the very few original cast members remaining, came to me and said she was physically exhausted, which she was, and that she wasn't going to renew her contract when it was up in August. This was February. There was no other answer. I had to replace what had been the core of our show since its inception. Two complete families. About eleven actors in all. But replace them with what? As I studied the remaining cast, I realized I had two characters - Paul Williams, played by Doug Davidson, and Jack Abbott, played by Terry Lester - both of whom had a relatively insignificant presence on the show. They didn't have families. Hell, they didn't even have bedrooms. But these became the two characters I would build our two new families around. I remember the head of daytime for CBS advising me "with the strongest possible conviction" that I was making a grave mistake by replacing these families. There was a great risk, no question, but my conviction was that it could be even more disastrous if I didn't. I immediately began establishing new families while interweaving the old. We made this transformation without losing so much as a share point. In fact, our ratings and share points kept building, with our two new families emerging as the dominant characters on the show. This is where Victor Newman came into the picture." On Victor Newman "You are not going to believe this, but this character, who today is daytime's number one romantic lead, was to be a short-term noncontract role. It would last between eight to twelve weeks, at which time he was to be shot by his beautiful wife. In short, Victor Newman was in concept a despicable, contemptible, unfaithful wife abuser. When I saw Eric Braeden's first performance - the voice, the power, the inner strength - I knew immediately that I didn't want to lose this man. He was exactly what the show needed. Not the hateful man we saw on-screen, but the man he could and would become over time. The first thing was to get Eric under contract, but he didn't want to go under contract. He was very uneasy about television, the daytime serial, the people he worked with, the producers. This was a whole other world for Eric. And Eric is a cautious man. Over time, Eric became more comfortable with the medium, and more trusting with the producers, and agreed to sign a contract. If memory serves, it was for six months. I immediately changed my story in the hope of salvaging this character. The rest is history."

I don't think the actor is even 30 years old, so he's almost a decade younger than Melissa Ordway. Funny thing is that in real time Chance is 12 years older than Abby. When adult Chance returned in 2009, I don't remember if his age was established, but since he served in Iraq then worked as a detective so he had to have been past 21. I know John Driscoll was 28 at the time.

@soapfan770 Agree, Lillie Belle Barber was the last of the messy matriarchs. One of the most powerful scenes on 1990s Y&R was the Dru/Lillie Belle confrontation where Dru learned she was the result of marital rape.

Mary Williams was messy in the sense that she attempted to control Paul's love life. Nobody was good enough for her #1 son.