Y&R: Old Articles

[Sapounopera]

These 1982 episodes! Thank you so much! 

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Now this is a soap opera. Jill's journey from the 1974 episode where she dreams about being rich and is introduced to Kay for the first time to these scenes where she is ready to marry another older rich man after the Phillip tragedy. She is not as naive anymore, she knows what she has to do. And she still believes that the answer to all her problems is finding a father figure to replace Bill Foster. Jill Foster was a fascinating character. It is so sad that  she is an afterthought these days. She should be involved in the Billy stories and the Abbott drama. And the Jack-Ashley scenes. 35 years later we still have the Abbott siblings in the family living room dealing with another family crisis. This is why I love soap operas. 

 

I love JLB. Lori is fascinating, too bad that she didn't become the Newman matriarch instead of Nikki. 

 

I find the Nikki scenes the least interesting from the 1982  episodes. Kevin is also rather boring. It is nice to see Kay involved though. Patty is someone I expected to be bland and boring, but the actress was very good. Too bad that she didn't stay longer with the show. Characters like Karen, Carolyn, Robert, Claire, Angela, Cindy came and went without leaving a mark. Those crazy transitional Y&R years with all these random people. I still don't understand how the show survived this era. 

 

The Lance/Leslie/Brooks scenes were something I enjoyed a lot. They felt like a seventies romance novel and their tone was completely different than the rest of the show. 

[yrfan1983]

Ah, very interesting! Never considered this motivation but it makes perfect sense. I saw the scenes from '75 or '76 where Phillip (right before he dies) promises Jill he will financially take care of her family, and she looks so relieved.

[yrfan1983]

Watched episode 3... Esther pop-up! I assume it was Kate Linder... I could only see a body walking by, but no face. We briefly heard the voice but couldn't tell if it was KL.

 

Substitute Carl was hot!

[YRfan23]

It was definitely Kate Linder, lol Esther had been around since April 8, 82, she probably was just more of a day player the first year.

[Soaplovers]

I actually have to say I liked Deborah adairs take on Jill.  The Jill I really remember is Jess Walton and the very ending of Brenda Dicksons stint, but I had heard from my late mom and other relatives that they liked DA as Jill.

 

I bet it was jarring when Brenda Dickson came back in 1983 considering all the changes in Jill in the 3 years she was gone.  There was no way that BD would have played this scene the way DA did...where she is marrying John for security, yet truly loves and cares for John due to the father figure angle.  Jill dated Andy???  I can imagine this Jill dating him, but not the other two Jills.  

[DRW50]

 

Dickson said it was very jarring to her as she felt Jill was now being written as a villain. I always wondered because while I haven't actually seen the late '70s material I get that type of vibe from some of it.

[SoapDope]

 

I always wondered what went on with BD and the show in her second run. What bits I saw of her 70's run, she was more human. In her 80's run (when I was watching then) she came across as a campy caricature and cheap copy of Alexis on Dynasty. At one point she started speaking with kind of a eurotrash accent. 

[allmc2008]

She also says she preferred the villian...

[DRW50]

 

She said she had to play that up because she no longer felt Jill was a heroine, or something along those lines. Whatever happened it seemed like things started spinning out of control somewhere between the early months or first year of her return and 1986-1987. It's a shame, since as much I do love Jess as Jill, I think Brenda at her best really got the heart and emotions of Jill (as shown in some of those '80s flashback episodes and more raw moments).

[SoapDope]

I know what you mean. It was always kind of sad that when Kay would flashback to the past after JW took over, they could never show some of her best scenes with Jill, since BD was no longer playing the part. JC in her book said BD could be a handful at times, she still loved working with her and people behind the scenes did her wrong. 

[yrfan1983]

I read this quote too, but it confused me.  From '78-'79, Jill tricked Stuart Brooks into marriage by pretending she was pregnant, and tried and failed to get a divorce settlement from him. For the rest of '79, before BD left, she went back to plotting with Derek how to fleece Katherine of her money.  

So... seems like Jill of the late '70s was already a schemer - not sure why BD was so thrown off when she came back.

[DeeeDee]

Early Jill was a schemer too she just was written with more heart to balance things out.

 

Deborah's Jill was Randall Edwards to Brenda's Ilene Kristen.

[DRW50]

 

That makes sense. I hadn't thought of it that way. It's a credit to Bell that he didn't regress Deborah's Jill to try to make her more like Brenda, as RH kept trying to do to Randall. 

[DeeeDee]

Jill has always been a character that's wanted more from life.

 

It's just over the years she's matured into a woman who is ok with that.

 

Deborah's Jill is a softer presence than Brenda's flighty Jill or Jess earthy Jill but she's very much in line with who the character always has been.

[Khan]

Watching the stuff with Kevin and Nikki just has wishing me once more that we could see Christopher Holder return as Kevin and learn he, and not Victor, is Victoria's biological father.  That, and not Ashley's being exposed as Brent Davis' kid, should be what's playing out right now.