Y&R: Episodes Discussion for the week June 22

[loveshery&r]

We just got thru Adam burning a fetus in a fire and now the intentional poisoning Summer...another innocent child...what the h are these IIC thinking? Shock value only again! This is so not "soap". Who in their right mind wants to see innocent children hurt like this? Even child abusers and pedophiles get the you know what kicked out of them in jail by criminals...no one likes to think of innocent children being hurt or violated!! Where is Y&R??? What is this show???

[brimike]

True enough, alphanguy. And you're right. Like I said, I'm usually the one telling people to wait and see how the story plays out. :-) If it turns out Rafe is using Adam to prove he's guilty, then I'm behind it all the way. But like you said, if not? Then it's a problem.

[loveshery&r]

I agree with what you are saying but, I think we're giving them too much credit here. I think what we see now is what it is. Hope I'm wrong. It's all about the shock value anymore--the build up and stories just aren't there anymore.

[brimike]

That's actually the one story I felt there was a good build-up to. I completely understood that Ashley losing the baby was an accident. Adam's plan was to drive Ashley into the loony bin, not kill her baby. Again, I know I'm in the minority. But the gaslighting part of the story (not including Rafe, just the Adam/Ashley/Victor/Jack part) is perfectly clear in my mind, and I've never had any issues with it.

[Bright Eyes]

I could agree with that, except for the Jack part. He has barely been an afterthought in this story.

[brimike]

I don't know. They've played a few scenes of Adam/Jack, where Adam's implied Jack will get what's going to him. I see what you're saying - it's not as clear as Adam's grudge against Victor. But I've always felt going after Ashley was more about Victor. The fact that she was Jack's sister, and it would hurt Jack, was a happy coincidence and the cherry on top for Adam.

[DRW50]

Rafe using Adam would definitely make the story stand out. I just wish they'd taken time to let people get to know Rafe. I think that's the letdown of the story. They have not given viewers reason to care about Rafe. If Ashley wasn't a longtime character I don't know if viewers would are about her either. Jack and Billy have barely been in this story, so Ashley has no one, and if they are upset about what has happened to her, their reactions will probably fall flat.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

As said many times, this gaslighting mess just makes everyone involved look so very dumb, so it's hard to take it seriously anymore. There's no way in hell Victor and Ashley are this stupid.

[rhythmchyc]

If Ashley/Victor weren't dumbed down, if the writers had the sense to really make it impossible for Ashley to leave the mansion, if we had seen more monologues or flashbacks from Adam about why he was doing all of this, this gaslighting story would've been classic Y&R.

It isn't the worst of them all, I agree, I enjoy it too and continue to.

I'd love it if Rafe were using him for his own agenda. However, considering how we've seen that everyone in this gaslighting story has become blind in their own right, I predict nothing but more stupidity from Rafe.

*sigh*

MJ poisoning Summer doesn't bother me. If she dies, that would suck. But MJ's obviously crazy. She seemed like a short-term character from the get-go. And I don't think that she's as sophisticated as she had represented herself since coming on the show. She's desperate at this point. She's gonna do anything to get Jack. What she did was out of hand. But the woman killed her cat, stuffed it, and talks regularly to it as if it's her best friend/therapist. She's loony and totally capable of what she did to Summer.

[DRW50]

There's no reason she had to be a short-term character. She's tied to core characters, she is played by a great actress, and she was a breath of fresh air on a show full of played out characters. I think their writing has boxed her in, because stunts are their way of telling story. It's burned so many characters out.

[rhythmchyc]

That Victor brought her into town for some unknown plan to undoubtedly exact revenge tells me she was intended to be short-term. When we see how incredible Haiduk is, how she's receiving more sympathy than Ashley right now, it makes her imminent departure that much harder. But I see her doing something horrible before the end of the year.

Then again, Gloria, Kevin, and Jana are still on the show and put them together in a yummy fudge swirl, they're still not as captivating as Haiduk has been over the past few months. So, she may be pardoned, but I don't know how the audience would appreciate that considering how incompetent these writers are in creating intelligent and rational excuses for criminals without insulting us.

[Bright Eyes]

And that is just another failure for this regime. Jack SHOULD be a bigger part of this story. These writers CANNOT have characters doing more than one thing a time because they can't layer. Billy should be interacting with Ashley on a more consistent basis. And that's just this story, but getting into that is more fine tuned for the Potpourri thread

[DRW50]

I agree that she was intended to be short term, I'm only saying I don't think she has to be. I think this story has been poorly calculated by Y&R. I think they wanted a way to stop Phyllis from being the main villain in this story, which I'm glad about because I didn't want to see that either, but I think they miscalculated just how badly everyone (Jack, Phyllis, Sharon, Nick) was going to come across in this story. I've seen so many people rooting for MJ to destroy those 4, and I don't think that's what Y&R had in mind. So now this story is going down the same path as the Adam story, many viewers rooted for him until he became too vile to care about, so now they don't root for anyone in the story.

Too many stories have characters who are so compromised, there's no reason to care about them.

[brimike]

I totally agree with you, Amello. I do hear Billy and Jack will be getting more involved in the story as it progresses. But you're right - they should have been part of it from day one.

[DeeeDee]

Brain Tumor.