ALL: The Least Destroyed Soap Opera

[Saving ATWT]

Yeah, but rich people drink Brandy and use glasses. Jack and Janet suck it down from the bottle and fight and burp after. They are sitting in a farm house kitchen. This is a lot different than a soap diva with a decanter.

[DRW50]

Exactly. They don't know and they don't care. The only thing this regime knows about Billy's past is that he loved Mac and that he hates Jill. They don't know anything about his childhood or teen years. They seem to think Jill dumped him in a boarding school as soon as he was out of the womb.

They do act like his drinking is "cute." Those Christmas scenes were just appalling. We were supposed to be amused and entertained as the entire Chancellor family stood around watching a drunk Billy endanger his own child.

The writing for Liberty and Janet confuses me. I do think on some level they brought them in as trashy characters, or at least as women who were very confident in their sexuality (which can be written as trashy on a soap), but then they backpedaled. Liberty became this ingenue and Janet has become Mother Teresa.

[Saving ATWT]

Why did they want rid of Brad? I must have missed the story and am curious.

Okay, I think TPTB should take viewers feeling into account because, when we watch, we make bring ad dollars; however, a writer is never going to please everyone. I don't think soap writers have any civic responsibility to educate us on the dangers of drinking via a Billy Abbot PSA. As a writer, I feel the need to defend another writer's right to self-expression. If we don't like what he/she is doing, we have the right to change the channel. When we come here, each of us is a critic basically writting a review. Sometimes, though, it seems like people go at the various writers for commiting some crime agaist humanity. Are soaps art? Or are soaps just PSA's, simple educational tools that real artists should mock and laugh at? I consider soaps art and am not going to ram down a writer's throat for not sending a responsible message. If message is the writer's job, then Shakespeare was a scum bag. Do you know how many kids have killed themselves over Romeo and Juliet. I can just imagine the posts we'd see if Shakespeare were writing soaps and he used, say, Billy and Mac in a suicide scene. Everyone would be saying that he encouraged suicide and was just doing it for ratings. Also, he had a lot of sociopathic tyranic characters. I guess he's be in trouble for this, too. I'm not calling Sheffer the Bard but all artists have rights.

[Saving ATWT]

Wow...what a difference there is between Julia and Janet--how did Jack change so much. I sort of feel like ATWT mocks poor, 'trashy' people. They started with Rose, then JJ's moter (forgot her name), then Iris, and now Janet. Look at how they dress Janet with that red wig and Peg Bundie clothes. I'd almost swear they were doing a play on Married with Children. Does that make Jack, Al? I sort of feel like TPTB have been 'slumming it' in an effort to gain unemployed viewers during the recession. I have had this odd feeling that they might be trying to salvage Janet by modeling her after Emma with the religion thing. Emma goes on those church retreats and does do a lot of cooking.

[Chris B]

What do you mean PSA? If a character was sitting there surrounded by both parents and his best friend screaming "He's dead!" while he lay with no pulse after drinking too much, I think that's a major enough event to change someone's life. I don't need a drunk driving PSA, but I need consistency. As a writer, you should understand that. Especially when you consider how reckless everything else in his life is, him taking up drinking again should be a red flag. It should worry people. At the very least use it to it's highest dramatic potential and create some interesting family dynamics with the Chancellor's and Abbott's.

Also, hell no I won't turn the channel. This isn't Maria Arena Bell's show just like Chuck Pratt doesn't own AMC and Guza doesn't own GH. If you're coming into an existing show you do have a responsibility to stay true to the vision of the show. You can reinvent it, update it, introduce new characters, add more comedy or drama. Whatever you'd like, but a viewer should be able to tune in 5-10 years later and recognize characters. Every story shouldn't be retconned thus confusing returning viewers. And after investing so many years in Y&R, hell no I'm not going to stop watching because some hack is decimating it right now.

[EricMontreal22]

As did80s Opal on AMC. I dunno... I'm not sure I have a point lol I mean maybe it's odd to have Jack and Janet drink the way Roseanne and Dan used to do on her show, but it kinda makes sense given their background doesn't it?

That said, while I'm not someone who's gonna say people shouldn't drink on soaps, far from it, I do agree that Y&R's recent drunk scenes with Billy (at first I thought they were leading up to something, now I don't) are just badly written considering that character;'s history (and the history nearly everyone around him is aware of)

[Saving ATWT]

I think the writer(s) are trying to say that Billy has lost his way. The history everyone keeps talking about happened when he was still in his teens. He was a innocent preppy kid who had just lost his virginity. This was before finished college, worked abroad, and turned into a bad ass rich boy. I've changed a lot since age 19, so have most of my friends. If anything, his development is a shade of realism. I think people find Billy's transformation hard to buy because they didn't see it happen. It all happened off screen. I remember the PSA they did on Billy and teenage drinking, it was cheezy. I'm guessing TPTB would rather not revisit such a lackluster, lame brained plot point since they are using Billy the Pornographer to chase the 18-34 demo. Another PSA would chase these viewers away or, at the least, turn them off. I find self-absorbed Billy blah, would rather chill with Adam, but the showrunners seem fond of the character as they turn the show over to the younger cast.

As for the people around him, his own ghost father warned him that drinking would kill him. If that is not an intervention then I don't know what is. Also, Jack telling him bye bye is a pretty big clue for Billy that he is going down the wrong path.

[Cat]

In some ways, B&B is both the least AND most destroyed soap. I think it can be fixed, though, thanks to the show's small, long-time cast and its shorter half-hour length. It has some great characters, and the current Jackie M vs. Dollar Bill's FC vs. old skool Forrester set-up has a lot of promise.

It just needs some quality writing and some grounding. Right now, some of the writing looks like it took TIIC 0.05 seconds to come up with the plots.

It also needs a quality overhaul in other departments -- namely Wardrobe which still produces fashion shows that were already dated as of 1992. Seriously, in a world as fashion-savvy as Hollywood currently is, you'd think they could dig out a stylist who can keep up with latest trends. And they don't need to spend billions on a clothing budget, either, in order to make it look high-end.

[DeeeDee]

...Seriously?

[Khan]

With the proper combination of HW and EP, I definitely think Y&R, or even B&B, has the potential to becoming good-if-not-great again. Unlike the other soaps still on-air (ATWT notwithstanding), there is still enough "core" on either show to return to and build upon. Again, though, it all boils down to who is put in charge, and how they go about bringing back disenchanted fans on a regular basis.

[YRBB]

+1

[y&r_fan]

I don't care what anyone says - Y&R is the least destroyed. Y&R has had its problems (to put it mildly), with both LML and (to a lesser extent) MAB, but never once have I found it unwatchable. B&B had its horror period from 2005-2007 - THAT was unwatchable - but Y&R has never had an era like that.

[Vee]

Y&R might be strongest ratings-wise, but least destroyed I am no longer sure of. It is as though CBS/Sony/MAB are deliberately trying to wreck the show, to bring it down to size with the rest of the struggling soaps as quickly as possible so as to cancel it as fast as possible. More and more everyday it resembles a struggling AMC or GH.

[DeeeDee]

LML was Y&R's nadir.

[Mitch]

Well, you can't change your drinking habits based on your partners. Alcholics have to deal with the fact that others dont have the same problem. I do think that Jack's drinking beer is realistic...he is a "guy," and guys like their beer he IS Joe Sixpack (without the beer belly of course!)

I think you on to something about Televest and their research. During Wheeler's time GL got really "trashy," The Coopers took precedence over the Bauers, like the Snyders do the Hughes, (not that economics makes a family trashy) and Reva, who always had one toe in the trash pool, but who was embarrased about it, totally embraced her white trash mama thing..not to mention the introduction of Jonathon, the trashiest character to grace the GL screen EVER...(even going so far as screwing his cousin.) Then we switched to Peapack, which is a beautiful, very wealthy horse country town, and all we saw of it was the ugliest trashiest parts of it, from run down farm houses to portapotties and garbage dumpsters. I remember Harley's house, which had two young kids in it,but the inside was a perpectual construction zone and the backyard had rusty ass junk in it. I was convinced that this was all Wheeler's idea to make it more "real," (as if we all lived with rusty junk in out backyards, while scewing an international jewel thief who looked like a chippendale's dancer.) Its funny, but both GL and ATWT were always the "Country Club," soaps, even when Marland wrote for "poor," characters they spoke like they came from Harvard. You may have a point there.