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Y&R: Week of April 06, 2009


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I take it you were not a fan of the epilespy arc?

Man, there was period there (Spring/Summer 2006?) where I was tuned every single day in breathless anticipation. It was during the SETUP of each of LML's stories (the execution and conclusion were awful).

Victor with his drawer full of paper dolls.

Brad dragging out newspaper clippings about "Family Murdered in Parma OH" (when we knew he was from Cleveland in the Bobby Marsino arc)

John getting woozy in prison

These all happened around the same time, and it still gives me goosebumps. Suddenly, from one day to the next, I COULD NOT PREDICT what would happen next? I didn't see any useful spoilers. It was pure mystery.

The show surprised me on a daily basis and I loved it.

Let me be clear...by July/August, I knew it was dreck. Epilepsy causes you to become more spiritual? Brad is running from the NAZIs? John is DEAD? DEAD?

But for a brief shining moment, it was bliss.

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No. I was all WTF is wrong with VICTOR NEWMAN? This is bullshit. I was interested for maybe two weeks then was over it. It seemed clunky to me, if thats the right word. lol.

The brad story i loved. from begining to end. no matter how bad it was. because it was Brad, and i loved him all my soap opera fanboy heart.

really, i know a lot of ppl speak well of LML's beginning phase, but i never was that into it. something felt off, and i didnt like it. but ive also never been HUGE on Y&R and am always very on/off with it.

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I remember feeling the same way. The first I'd say 5 or 6 months of the LML era I really enjoyed..... it was fresh, new and things had been shaken up..... I think John's death signaled the end of ANY momentum that hack bitch had going, because after that it just started free falling like no tomorrow.

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I liked the epilepsy storyline too. Wouldn't it be funny if Adam, mixed up some of his own meds with Victor's, accidentally giving Victor what amounts to placebos and we saw the return of the nice, humble, like able Victor, only written by MAB who seems to do better follow-thru with her vulnerable elderly stories.

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I liked the concept behind the epilepsy story (like Mark said, giving Nikki the ability to take care of Victor for a change, Victor's personality shift), but my problem with it lies in that when all was said and done, "Victor has epilepsy" isn't a story. It's a declarative statement.

The emotions and situations it evoked were definitely interesting, and the individual script writers certainly found a lot of really fascinating beats to play. But there was no story attached to it. No plot. And without that marriage of plot and character, it was lacking something vital. In my opinion.

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Well put. Very shortly before John died...maybe within 1-2 weeks...Brad also killed a Nazi with his thighs-of-steel. That, I believe, signalled the shark jumping for me.

I'd love to see vulnerable Victor. Frankly, I'd like it revealed that his current brand of nastiness is really a medication error...and when we get his dosage right, he'll be Uncle Friendly again.

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Same problem with Devon.

I've said before that I wear a hearing aid.

That shapes my life EVERY DAY. It affects behavioral adjustments (where I sit, where I stand, how I adjust my position). It affects how I relate to others (I think I have a quizzical look pretty often, because I'm straining to understand...I fantasize it makes me seem Spockian).

But I've had this problem since I was less than 2 years old. So OF COURSE it shaped my personality. OF COURSE it affected my social relationships and my career choices and...

So, while Devon's hearing loss per se is not a story...it certainly could have formed character...and that hearing loss could have carried him forward for the rest of his days. Instead it was ignored. (I have to say, thank god...because that blinking blue light over the Winters' doorway, and all that f*cking typing, was very hard tow atch).

The hearing loss should have LED to story. Devon sees a girl he likes...but he can't get up the nerve to ask her out because of that contraption on his head. So she goes to another, and he pines from afar with unrequited love. That's a story. Then a girl he's not that into pays attention to him and gets pregnant and... (I'm not advocating for such a cliche)...my point is the deafness should be driving story every single day.

There is NO WAY IN HELL that Devon would be becoming a MUSICIAN or whatever with a cochlear implant. Uh uh.

And so it is with Victor. The "vulnerability" that it introduced, perhaps modulated, should have infused him every day thereafter.

And let me say that the mystery of figuring out what was wrong with Victor, that WAS a (short-arc) story, and my favorite one of the LML era.

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TOTALLY! "Devon loses his hearing" isn't a storyline. It's one beat in a storyline that never got played out. You're dead on right with everything. And I love your story idea for where it should go!

Yes, that mini-arc felt like a story. That was written while Alden and Smith were still affiliated with the show. And I really feel that, no matter what anyone thinks of them as writers, at least they understood the basic concepts of a plotline. (This is not my pitch to try to "sell" anyone on Alden/Smith specifically. Just pointing out that there were writers on the team who understood the structural aspects to a storyline.) Those first few weeks, the mystery and the confusion, it felt like they were building to something. Alden and Smith left soon afterwards, and that's when any semblance of a storyline did. It just became scenes and episodes about epilepsy, with no build-up, no long-term purpose.

Just like with Devon.

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LOL! Sabrina haunting Ashley. Love it. I do hope that Adam is behind it and that he drives Ashley to a mental asylum. Estella will take the fall before they figure out that Adam may be behind it. The rest of the show. Whatever.

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