Y&R/ Maria Bell losing their way?

[aMLCproduction]

Is it just me or does it feel like the writers are just retelling stories of yesteryear, Kevin and his looneyness, Kathrine/Marge, here we go with Nick and Sharon again. Adam being blind( his mother was too) Victor and Ashley back together again. And alas we have the Jill and Kay rivarly, which is nice but again nothing new

This Kevin storyline feels so weird esp with that ugly rat that he keeps seeing. Previews for Monday don't look any better. Ashley hears baby's crying in some dark place.

I am begining to question the direction of the show. It's not enticing no more. I don't know what in the hell got into Sharan. I just feel that story isn't making a lot of sense. They turned her a theving slut

And Neil is being written so out of character. I can't belive they are doing him like that.

I don't like the new Mac, they could have found some one better. and I don't like Tyra.

Your thoghts?...

[MarkH]

Goodness gracious. They had a BAD WEEK. Not even a bad week...just a lackluster week. Let's face it...this last month has really been a punctuation between the end of March sweeps (Cake-fight! Mac's home!) and the start of what appears to be a genuinely exciting May. In this inter-regnum, we gave some of the A-list players a chance to rest a bit, and we saw a few new stories launched.

If soap fans are now SO QUICK-TRIGGER that they cannot even tolerate transitional weeks, the armageddon is nigh.

So, no. MAB is not losing her way. The team is not losing their way. The show is an organism...it grows, changes, evolves. As we move from one chapter to the next, the pace has slowed a bit. It is not helped, I will confess, by that blasted chipmunk...but that is clearly not a long-term story.

I found much to admire, even in this week..."losing the way"? Look to the rest of daytime for much clearer examples of that, okay?

[Khan]

First, Y&R was a symphony; now, it's an amoeba. Make up your mind.

[Sylph]

Perhaps it's a paramecium?

[MarkH]

I was wrong both times. It is a chipmunk.

You have too much fun with these d*mn smileys

[Khan]

Yeah. That thing. (So I flunked biology. I never said I was Will Hunting.)

Actually, I like to think of Y&R as a box of chocolates. Meaning, it's over-priced, and contains entirely too many nougats.

[Sylph]

I do, don't I?

Anyway... I've been thinking... Perhaps Y&R is a virus, a bacteriophage or something? You know — it can be alive and well or it can be crystallised for long periods of time (a sh!tty writing analogy)? A virus is something that can be dead but alive, like that cat of Schrödinger's. No one knows whether that cat's alive or dead.

I actually like your amoeba suggestion much better than I do my paramecium!

[Khan]

No, Y&R is a 'bubble' that presses on your chest, and that you can't get rid of until you've had a good belch (sp?).

Or, it's an annoying poster on SON, who spouts flagrant anti-gay rhetoric, floods the boards with meaningless new threads, and rattles off impossible wish lists for producers and writers.

Either way, it's gaseous.

[Sylph]

So it's bad? You don't like it? But somehow you can't quit it?

:lol:

[Khan]

Oh, no, I can quit Y&R. Getting my mother to stop talking about it, OTOH, is another matter.

[MarkH]

For me -- getting serious for a sec -- and aware of how pathetic this makes me sound -- Y&R is like a member of the family or a hometown.

It's been with me for 36 years. I haven't always liked it...but some times I have loved it beyond words. The people who inhabit it have narratives that flow through my own life. When Nick and Sharon were almost losing Noah (at birth), something very similar was happening in my life. When Kay came back from the dead (after her Jamaican excursion) and sprang to life -- catlike -- just as Jill was about to consummate her marriage to Kay's "widower" Derek, it was an amazing moment. I was watching with my dad, and my memory of that moment has more to do with his shared laughter and joy with me over that moment...than the moment itself.

It is a story woven into my own life, and because the threads are continuous -- characters and situations from as early as 1973 still resonate today -- it feels truly continuous with my life. I can truly trace where I was in my life at different points with where Nikki and Victor and Kay and Jill were in their lives. When Jeanne Cooper finally passes, it will be a monumental loss in my own life...only because she brought me such joy over the years...and I'll be sad to lose the joy.

I think that is what I mean by "living thing". Y&R has a life...and for the most part, it is one that makes sense, one that can be traced in logical ways to what went before. Even stylistically, things that were there at the beginning (backlighting, pregnant pauses) are there today...and it all reinforces that sense of home.

Through all the places I have gone, and been, Genoa City has always been there...providing a "home base". In the dark days, the Genoans have been there to distract me and give me 38 minutes of relief and distraction.

Sylph has talked elsewhere about abandoning shows when they are bad...because plummeting ratings will send a sign...will drive evolution.

That makes logical sense. But you're talking about killing off "family" for some greater good. Uh uh. Never. Not while I can help it.

We can now return to our stupid similes and smilies

[Sylph]

Well, that's offensive! There's much more intelligence in Schrödinger's cat, paramecium, virus and an amoeba than there'll ever be in Y&R, a soap. Without quantum mechanics and Verschränkung there would be no soaps.

[MarkH]

Yes sir! But here may be where we differ. I have many places in my life to go for "intelligence". While I like cleverness, soaps (when they're good) is where I go for "feeling". Humor, anger, whimsicality, suspense, irritation...the gamut.

[Sylph]

Word. I really agree. But also have to point out that intelligence & emotion don't always neutralise each other. They can co-exist, and that's when things are at their best.

[Khan]

I can relate to what you're talking about, MarkH, because I feel largely the same way about GL. As a matter of fact, there hasn't been a time in my life when I didn't like, if not love, "my show".

But even when I did love it, I never compared it to a symphony.