Y&R: Episodes discussion., Week of July 6

[lmfan]

But he is a molestor. I don't know any woman who would not be extremely upset to find out that the person giving them internal exams is a molestor even if they were not molested. Of course how would she know she wasn't molested or used in some way. It isn't pulling straws. And the thing is they could have had Adam blackmailing him for anything but they made him a molestor. Why?

And Adam has to be the luckiest SOB in the world. He has relatives who believe every BS story he tells them inlvuding being held down while inmates inject something in his eyes, he is the only person who I know who can lose weight in his ankle, he causes Ashley to lose her baby but is lucky because she develops the very rare condition of hysterical pregnancy and he just happens to have information he could use to blackmail a renowned OB/GYN to take care of Ashley. And now conveniently for himhe finds out Ashley and Sharon have nearly the exact due dates and both are expecting girls. I know there is dramatic license in soaps but this story is just eyerolling. I can't wait to see how he pulls off having Sharon and Ashley go into labor at the exact same time.

[DRW50]

I don't think it matters that we don't know the doctor. We know he molests female patients. We know Ashley is at his mercy, and at the mercy of a man who terrorized her into a miscarriage. Why this choice of blackmail material on the show's part unless they want us to feel disgusted and loathe Adam? So if people are sickened, then aren't they just feeling what the show wants them to feel?

I think the story was already dark enough without adding the extra ugliness.

I don't think the story is dreck, but I think it's all very by the numbers. I don't see any characters in the story, I just see pawns. Ashley is so generic, this seems to be her only purpose on the show, to be traumatized and be subjected to a baby switch. As for Sharon, I'm just on overload with all her traumas and I still don't know when she got the same due date as Ashley, or what the point of her fling with Billy was, or the point of the stealing storyline.

[lmfan]

I don't hate you Cashton. I just disagree with you, but we're good. Now MAB isn't one of my favorites right now, but I don't hate her either.

I think Sheila was popular as a villian and people could sympathize with her, but people wanted Lauren to get her baby back and were happy for her when she finally did. Lauren also had some payback/karma due her back then and this Sheila story went along way with that.

But having someone like MJ messing with Lauren and Michael's marriage would be a better story than messing with either of Nick's relationships, and I don't know why they haven't written that story after them being together for five years now. That's good old fasioned soap and MAB doesn't even have to be inspired by Michael and Lauren to write it. It practically writes itself.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Adam and MJ go without saying. They're both also at the center of two of the show's biggest front-burner stories at the moment too.

You can be despicable and not be a psycho and outright evil as well.

I find most of the characters on Y&R to be selfish, unsympathetic, un-rootable, and stupid. Nick isn't a psycho, for example, and I do not like him. I think he's a selfish pig who wants to have it every which way he can. I do not feel sorry for him or anyone around him for this Summer situation.

The same can be said for the other members of the Quad.

Billy is another problem. He's another despicable pig wants to have it every way he can.

Ar argument can be made that Phillip III, regardless of his reasons for leaving his family is a despicable character for putting his family though that entire mess.

Then there's the recent introduction of Deacon, whose despicable nature is well know.

I have no problems with negatives traits of characters being played up, but the show offers no variety, especially with its male characters. Most of them have to be unstable, pigs, nasty, and treat women like toys or just outright crap.

Not that I want to see a supersaturation of heroic/romantic leading men or anything. I think this show needs to rebuild it's professional side and have a lot of these characters working again. I think the show needs to branch out and diversify its tone, I think the show has give its characters depth, instead of making them so one-dimensional or changing them to suit the next plot point...

But for the professional side to be rebuilt, this regime would have to care about the businesses aspect on this show. We've seen that they do not do corporate stories and their only idea of professionalism is having Nick and Phyllis worry about who is going to be on the cover of the next Restless Style...

[DRW50]

I agree. Billy spent months lying to various women, being a manwhore, feeling sorry for himself, and he has never made any serious efforts at atonement or at growing up. He's just having a clandestine fling with Mackenzie, throwing little tantrums about Cane and Phillip instead of caring about Jill or Katherine. Mackenzie is supposed to be his great healing true love, but he seems the same to me, and he will probably be even worse when

Hogan finds sympathetic, good characters, especially men, boring, and they are hard to find on any soap he writes for.

Balance is key to a soap. You need to have light with darkness. Otherwise, the characters we are supposed to feel sorry for end up being so unsympathetic that the show has to have increasingly heinous crimes committed to try to make them more palatable.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I agree completely.

[rhythmchyc]

I, too, was bothered by how much I enjoyed Deacon and his damn wink on Friday. This scoobie story was supposed to be blech all around but Kanan's so much fun. This is why spoilers are bad. I went in expecting the worst and got a pleasant surprise.

Let us see then, how it plays out.

Adam isn't redeemable but there's still a possibility he'll stay. He's not crazy, as I've believed this entire time, and Victor's been undermined by him countless times. He may stay on scheming. Because Victor and Jack play tweedledums for another year or so. I really wish someone would blame this stupidity on Victor's epilepsy, even though there are obviously no usual signs and it'd be another poorly drafted explanation, it'd still make more sense to me than Victor being naïve about Adam and soft on Mary Jane.

Let's see Mary Jane leave town to terrorize Phyllis and Sharon for the next decade a la Sheila. That'd be fun. But she can't stay on now and the longer she's at the ranch, the sooner I want her to leave. The woman has all that cash Victor gave her a couple weeks ago, what'd she spend it on, kitty treats?

And Victor should fire his security guards and henchmen (if you will) for the pathetic work they've been doing the past few months LOL.

It is a shame, too, how the two beefcakes on Y&R, Nick and now Deacon, have greasy disgusting hair. They need to just chop it off.

[y&r_fan]

Victoria's reaction to the Adam/Rafe revelation was awful. Especially the delayed gasp. The sad thing about Amelia's current work is that SHE CAN DO BETTER. But for some reason, whether it be laziness or dissatisfaction with her storylines, she chooses not to. I'm totally on the "recast Victoria" bandwagon now. (As long as Thad stays.)

Unpopular opinion: I think the show is perfectly paced now. Not Bell/Alden slow, but not LML fast.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

With regards the the pacing, I personally feel it's all over the place. Like they'll drag certain things out that don't need to be prolonged and it loses all sense and reasoning, say something like the Quad or Katherine's kidnapping a few months ago. And other things that should be played out for a longer amount of time, like someone walking in on Adam/Rafe is done way too fast.

[brimike]

I have to say this, since someone else brought it up.

And I preface it by saying I am a Sheffer fan - I don't think he's perfect, by any means. And I fully admit he's had some HUGE clunkers in his daytime career. But overall, I have enjoyed a lot of his stuff.

But this... THIS... really bothers me. Not because of the story. I was one of the rare few who wasn't as offended by

as others were. BUT - that doesn't mean I didn't see how it affected the rest of the DOOL online community. So this just shows me that TPTB really don't learn from their mistakes, and that's why it annoys me.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, best possible scenario - this story idea is ALL Maria's and not Hogan's at all, and it's all a big coincidence that it also happened under Hogan's watch at another show. EVEN THEN - even in that best possible circumstance, why wouldn't Sheffer chime in and say something like "Word of caution - I did something similar and it really blew up in my face. Just sayin'..."

It really disturbs me - not because I'm necessarily against the storyline specifically, but because I'm against the symbolism behind it - that says to me nobody learns from the mistakes of the past. I can almost always give a pass when a writer ends up telling a storyline that didn't work out as well as they originally hoped - but then to do it again KNOWING it didn't work the first time? That's just inconsiderate.

[DRW50]

Some stories seem to go on forever, like the gaslighting, while others are through warp speed. Or all the time spent on Billy/Chloe/Lily/Cane, and then within the space of a few days, Cane and Lily were back together, Chloe gave birth, Billy told everyone the truth.

It's frustrating to see material that can play for a longer period of time go through in a day or two. Like Cane telling everyone he was an impostor. By the end of the episode, Phillip was back. By the end of the next episode, Katherine had already begun making a rapid recovery from her stroke, and everyone knew Phillip was alive.

Why not have Cane tell everyone the truth, chaos ensues, and then Katherine, who wants to get inside to grieve in private, runs into Phillip? The sight of him causes her to have a stroke. Phillip panics as he hears voices, and leaves. Katherine is rushed to the hospital. While everyone worries about her, Phillip has to decide whether or not to return to Australia for good or to try to see Katherine to make up for some of the pain he caused. He decides to visit Katherine, to at least say goodbye, and Nina sees him. Nina and Phillip argue and Nina is in disbelief, and then Jill sees Phillip. Jill and Phillip talk and she tries to understand how he could ever do this. Finally, Katherine wakes up, and tells them to shut the hell up, and they all begin to try to process what Phillip has done. And perhaps Katherine could have made a slow recovery from her stroke, with Phillip by her side helping her through all the steps.

[rhythmchyc]

Wouldn't it be mahvelous of Deacon was the catalyst to take the scoobies and Victoria straight outta art land entirely?

Mahvelous.

Nikki seeing Adam and Rafe would've been fast pacing only if she actually did something to show how that connected with Ashley's gaslighting. For now, she's still contemplating what's going on so who knows how her snooping will effect that plot. It may take more months.

I don't know how Sharon stealing Victor's wallet will be the worst thing in the world. It's not like she impersonated his dead wife, causing his gf to miscarry, or cause his granddaughter to go into a coma. So what? Everyone will look at poor Sharon again and she'll be on her way back to Jack's arms? When did MJ learn of Sharon's kleptomania anyway?

Speaking of Victor's gf, it's quite annoying for the writers to switch back and forth between wife and gf. Pick one already. Thanks.

The music during Nikki and Heather's scene was really distracting. What was that about? I can't even remember that conversation; the music was like a mockery.

Nikki and Victoria's scenes were also cool, not like a mother speaking to her daughter but like a boss speaking to her employee, and not a close employee either.

Then, when Braeden hugged and kissed Heinle on the head in Summer's room Thursday, she looked like she wanted to whine, "let me just finish my lines before you cop a feel, old man." So strange.

And great! We have a Victoria who had a crate fall on her head, one who was pissed her dad was getting over Sabrina, and now a happy Victoria building a lame collection.

What I wanna know is, Where in the world is the real Victoria?

Would the real Victoria Newman please stand up! Please stand up...

[MarkH]

PM me your conjectured secret! Please! I'm now guessing too...

If Mary were on now, meddling with Paul and Heather, that would in itself be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. In the process, she could sigh and cry about her lost Patty. Building that up NOW will make the reveal all the more entertaining and meaningful when it finally happens. AND it positions Mary to be there for the eventual healing arc.

Gosh, I wish the writers would anticipate all this and bring Mary back stat!

I do think that is a problem! Those of us really digging (Scooby-language, sorry) some of these storylines are males. I think there is an extra phenomenology about an expelled fetus and a molester doctor that raises a level of disgust that we all intellectually understand, but that many female viewers actually feel. Brimike addressed this before...I think they may have forgotten their audience on this beat...but it negatively colors everything that follows.

I think I wrote this elsewhere, but I do keep reminding myself that Y&R is a Sidney Sheldon novel, not Dostoevsky. That's truly the lens we have to remind ourselves of...a commercial product...a potboiler...rapidly produced and relatively inexpensive drama. Within that context, does the product excel?

With regard to tone diversification, you're obviously right. All four front burner stories now (Adam, Mary Jane, P3, Deacon) are based on deeply flawed, dark characters at their center.

However, it is now clear that the reason for the Adam - Mary Jane confluence was to lead to their alliance. We're now there. So those two had to be juxtaposed in time.

But the other stories could have been lighter and happier in counterpoint, I guess.

I'm a little different with regard to the romance and business pieces. I don't think Y&R can do a good romance. I don't think it has ever been terrific at it...the ones in recent memory that I liked (JT and Fonseca-Lily, first-round Lily and Daniel, early days of Adam and Heather) were seldom key storylines. I don't like what happens to characters in romances...sappiness, schmaltz. I could do without that soap cliche forever, honestly. I'm definitely much more of the "warped romance" flavor. One of my favorite recent romantic comedies in cinema was Definitely, Maybe, which used an entirely flashback structure and a "How I Met Your Mother" narrative. It was "the other side of love", and I'll definitely always prefer that.

As for business, I'm here to say that I mostly have hated Y&R business stories. Tuvia vs. Safra. Ugh. I didn't mind Jack-Brad take over NE...but that was fairly isolated. My FAVORITE "business" era was early LML. Not so much because of the business stuff (NVP...whatever happened to that?), but because of how the business setting became transformed into a key setting...all the players were at work...the sets were dynamic and showed lots of flow of people from one set to the next...storylines intermingled. I loved that. But since I think I was alone in loving that, and since the budget no longer allows it, I'm fine with having business take a back seat for a while.

Honestly, if we don't do a Newman-Abbott business redux (yawn), what kinds of interesting business tales can they even tell?

Deacon and his wink!

The hair didn't bother me on Deacon. That's part of his story and character. But Nick...needs his hair at this length, but just washed and hanging there (I like it best that way)..."dry look". And he needs to be clean shaven. Then he is the ULTIMATE hot-daddy.

I think the show is playing against Morrow's cuteness...they want him to be the "bad guy" right now, whose waffling has damaged two of the show's leading ladies.

[BadZoe]

I think this is exactly the tragic direction they should take this storyline. They should even take it one step further and have beatings as well. I would love a flashback with Signy Coleman and a little Adam in the kitchen where the poor kid is covered from head to toe in bruises, but his mother being literally blind to it. He could be so afraid to tell his poor mother that he accepts this kind of abuse. They also never explained what happened to Cliff when she was dying. Maybe one day Adam took his opportunity and shoved him into the grain auger and called it an accident. If Adam was the victim of severe abuse it would explain why he was so resentful of Nick, Victoria and especially Victor, knowing that he didn't need to grow up that way.

As for Ashley being referred to as Victor's wife, I think Adam is the only one who does that. It probably goes towards his justification of what he is doing to her, she gets what she deserves for marrying the bastard. I think instead of going by Eileen's word, Ashley should still be pregnant with her dead baby. My mom knows someone who after being over-due for over a month, delivered a dead and rotting almost full term baby.

It seems to me that Eileen is playing Ashley like she knows she had a miscarriage that night and is just going along with Adam to see how far he's going to go.

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I would have liked a scene of Victor with Summer apologizing for bringing this nasty evil woman to town.

Instead of just planting the wallet on Sharon, why didn't MJ also stick in the peanut-butter cookies. To me, Sharon would have as much motive as anyone to poison Summer. Was the maid who found the wallet the same one Nick gave a tip to? Is she even going to turn the wallet in, or just take the money and quit?

It's just too easy with MJ and Deascum leaving pictures around for the numskulls to figure out who the bad guys are.

As for SH, she's good but she can't cry to save her life. Hands covering the eyes while making crying noises is worse than not crying at all.

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SC stole my hairstyle. I have long blond hair, with a slightly darker tone underneath and lots of volume!!

[BadZoe]

And a big no to that guy being Little E. The kid might be 12 now, but no way is he a grown man.