Best and the Worst Black Storylines

[SFK]

I didn't see them myself, but I read a fan's recollection (I believe on this board) that OLTL did a flashback of an asian orderly forcing himself on Addie when the story was first told with Mia Korf playing Blair, and then they went so far as to redo the flashback with a white actor once Kassie (then Wesley) DePaiva was in the role.

[EricMontreal22]

I definitely get your point--ABC's "thing", that finally got them to start having successful soaps in the 60s and 70s, as the young network, was to go with "edgier" stuff, whether that meant trying a gothic soap or trying one that showed things, like other races and social storylines, that the P&G soaps were all happy not including...

As for interacial couples, I know people often think of them as too safe, but I did love Tom and Livia growing up--they really were the most stable, loving couple on AMC at that time. I wasn't as into them as some, but Julia and Noah had some great moments (I guess that was the first case of a black male with a female white or latina actress in a soap interacial romance).

[EricMontreal22]

Those fantasies came on liek the first week that the Labines were writing--but even they seemed to drop the ball after a month or so

[SFK]

I echo the Livia & Tom and Julia & Noah sentiment, a great time to be a fan. It's hard for me to remember anything super dramatic/earth shattering about Tom and Livia, they were just a lovely, extremely likeable pair. Actually, it's kind of hard for me to buy that they'd have split up. And at the time I remember reading in one of my mom's soap mags in the bathroom that Tonya Pinkins who was married to a white guy was going through some major drama at home concerning the custody of her own children.

I have a vague memory of Cristian or Antonio walking in on them while they were about to get busy in the kitchen. Wow, Carlotta, sometimes I forget how she used to be on contract and involved with Clint and Hank.

[Leia]

Julia and Noah made a great love story. I loved them.

I can't picture this. As Viki says AT ALL!

[Khan]

Frankly, Leia, that's a tough one for me to answer. I try, and then I remember he actually had a Black woman named Mamie Johnson working as the rich white man's maid, and I lose my [!@#$%^&*].

[Khan]

Y&R only included them b/c GENERATIONS was going off the air; and in the end, more eyeballs watching your show is just that.

[kalbir]

I'm pretty sure Y&R's African-American audience first grew in the mid-1980s, during the Jazz/Tyrone/Amy/Nathan storylines, but then really took off in the first half of the 1990s with the arrivals of Victoria Rowell and Shemar Moore.

[RomeAt50]

I thought they were still together when Livia last appeared? I assumed they were still married offscreen.

[SFK]

Oh, okay, I thought they'd established that they'd split up. I guess I'm just confusing the fact that they never brought Dick Shoberg back for any appearances.

[Khan]

Not that SM or VR aren't huge w/ AA audiences, but I don't think they'd have the fans that they do w/o EB's Victor Newman back in his mid-'80's heyday, or Brenda Dickson's crazy, campy Jill during hers.

[SFK]

Khan, you do make a point worth mentioning for the sake of telling the whole story. Black people have loved their stories for years, from the days when black characters weren't at all to be expected (my, how times have changed ). My grandmother watched the CBS lineup since the '50s and raised a soap fan daughter along the way, the introduction of black characters sweetened the pot but didn't build the viewership (at least for the legacy fans). I surmise that black college kids who'd never watched soaps growing up would have been the main pool from which Y&R "created" new fans. I tend to think that most soap fans don't "join in" but are "born in."

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Dru and Malcolm had mass appeal to non-black viewers too, the thing about those characters was that everyone accepted them and could relate to them. Women of all races wanted to be feisty and have Dru's fashion sense, and women (and gay men) of all races fancied them some Shemar.

They might have been isolated in their own corner for some of the 90's, but the stories themselves I thought were geared towards mass audiences rather than being "that black story."

[Khan]

Was it Tyler Perry who said (on "Oprah"?) how his success had enabled him to buy his mother a large home and hire her a maid like "Mrs. Chancellor" on Y&R? You would think most, if not all, African-Americans would resent seeing an older, wealthy Caucasian woman living "up on the hill" in a town w/ a minimal Black presence; yet, for most AA fans of Y&R, at least, it was almost as if they were living vicariously through Kay (and Victor). If they couldn't tolerate anyone, it was Nikki, who was just some "big-boobied ho" who suddenly felt entitled on account of the rich man who took her out of the gutter, cleaned her up and married her.

[kalbir]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn_1ZWo0GNw

When this song came out in 2006, I wondered if T-Pain (or his mom and/or grandma) watched Y&R.