Y&R: Old Articles

[will81]

Agreed. Yeah she lost any subtlety and depth at a certain point, the more power Bill Bell gave Jill, the more absurd Brenda became

 

BUT - It also depended which actor she is in a scene with. For some reason when she is with Eileen she is almost always good. Not sure why. I can rarely find a scene between those two that is awful. Brenda always seemed to try harder with her. With others, by 1987, she would barely make eye contact with them. I hated that thing she did near the end where she would just look off camera while her scene partner was talking

[Aback]

That’s what Victor has been doing forever though. 

[Soaplovers]

I do confess I would have loved to see more of Brenda's Jill with Nina. She was dismissive, but there were instances she knew when Nina was scheming.  There would have been less yelling for sure.

 

Brenda's Jill was cold and sarcastic... keeping her emotions in check.  When Jess took over, Jill became more in your face and unable to hide her true feelings.

[Broderick]

 

Peter Bergman has said in an interview that Eileen Davidson comes into her scenes "fully prepared".  She knows exactly "when she's planning to raise her voice, when she's planning to cut you off, when she's planning to interrupt you, when she's planning to sigh at you with exasperation.  And that enables her to get under your skin more than anyone else you're working with".  (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it.)  And I believe that preparation -- and unpredictability -- is exactly what dragged Brenda Dickson back into her scenes with Eileen.  (Plus Brenda Dickson was probably afraid that if she turned her back to Eileen and stared into the camera pouting, posing, and smirking, Eileen would stand behind her and mock her, making the Jill character look especially foolish and inconsequential.)  

 

 

 

Brenda's habit of staring off-camera was very effective in small doses, especially with Tricia Cast's Nina.  I understand what Brenda Dickson was attempting to accomplish in the scenes.  "I'm so superior to you, I'm not going to look at you.  I'm going to pretend you're not even in my orbit.  I'm going to retreat into a world where you don't exist."  And yes, I do think it was an effective approach for an experienced gold-digger like Jill to utilize with a novice gold-digger like Nina.   But once Brenda Dickson began using that tactic uniformly with Nina, John Abbott, Kay Chancellor, Jack Abbott, Traci Abbott,  Mamie Johnson, and even her own SON Phillip, it just became over-the-top and absurd, like an unprepared diva who doesn't know her lines and is reading the cue cards

 

  

It's never been a becoming characteristic in Eric Braeden either, when it's overused.  It might work while Victor is talking to Jack Abbott, but it looks silly & stupid when he's talking with Nicholas and Victoria.    

[will81]

I had a feeling that was what the deal was with Eileen. I think you are right, if Brenda didn't step up, Eileen would have just ripped her apart and made her look ridiculous.

 

Agreed again about her looking away. I remember a scene with Traci/Beth where she did it and it worked, and yes Nina too. You are right when she started doing it with almost everyone, it was just awful. It made it seem more like Brenda (not Jill) didn't want to be there and it made Jill look like she was having some sort of nuerological issue

[Paul Raven]

Maybe Brenda was reading cue cards...

She was claiming illness and might have been unprepared for her scenes.

[will81]

Not sure it was cue cards, as she never looked off in the same place. Sometimes she would just look at a wall, or up and off. Not in the direction of the cue cards, and she would change where she looked based on where she was standing.

 

I don't doubt Brenda had health issues and was possibly railroaded by producers behind the scenes - Brenda embelishes and twists things, but I notice there was always a kernal of truth there as well. I would not have put it past Ed Scott to gaslight Brenda (who knows though)

 

ETA: I realised what it does, when Brenda uses it in the wrong moments, it sucks the energy out of the scene because it makes every other actor seem like they are talking to a wall. Also not saying she did it all the time either or that it was always the wrong choice, but when she used it incorrectly it really is frustrating and ruins things

Edited September 6, 2020 by will81

[Broderick]

We'll never know for certain how much of her "illness" and "persecution" were real, and how much were merely figments of her imagination, because her concept of "truth" is so murky and vague.  (That's based on having read passages from her book, where she can't even accurately relay her own AGE to the reader without embellishing the facts and masking the issue in confusion.)

 

But I agree with Will81, when she turns to the camera at the wrong times, or when she does it for extended periods of time, it completely removes the Jill character from the scene.  At home, we're treated basically to a tableau of Brenda Dickson posing, pouting, smirking, mugging and vogueing at the camera, while her co-star ineffectively attempts to deliver a soliloquy to the back of her head.   There she is, in her plumed hat with sequined feathers, her spangled shoulder pads, her dramatic veil, with her back turned entirely to her co-star.  While those of us at home are getting the benefit of watching her roll her eyes, smirk, wiggle and pout,  her co-star may as well be performing opposite a corpse.  

 

There's nothing wrong with a little camp -- and heaven knows, she was plenty campy --- but it was just TOO much!    It was difficult to understand why the other characters were wasting their time on Jill.  If I were Phillip Chancellor III and my mother acted that way, I'd have just stayed at Kay Chancellor's house with no qualms about it.  If I were Michael Crawford, I wouldn't have asked for the first date, let alone the second.  If I were Brad Carlton, I wouldn't have wanted to associate myself with her men's line project.  If I were David Kimball, I would've asked to be transferred to a different department.   She just went so far with it at the end that it ruined any sense of reality associated with it.  If a character has no redeeming qualities at all and can't even manage to LOOK sympathetic for a second or two, then there's pretty much no reason for the character to exist, as all the human conflict is erased.   

[OzFrog]

 

And this is why I have always loved PB & ED’s Jack and Ashley (you can probably tell that by my profile pic). Their scenes together are always dynamite. When she arrived in 1982, ED was a little green, but then by 1984, she was ON. It’s a shame TPTB can’t bring her back for some solid story.

[BoldRestless]

Looks like we'll be continuing into 1986! God, I feel so spoiled.

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 Thank you x a million to the uploader! I'll have to try to get my 1986 episodes into the vault too. 

 

I am surprised at how touched I was by the outcome of the Brent Davis storyline (I like how we're now following one big storyline at a time, not necessarily the same characters). Not really getting how the police dropped his case for shooting Katherine, or how the great love between them developed (Kay is such a magnet for death, no wonder she was so bitter!), but I could put it aside because the scenes were so good. Eileen Davidson shined. This feels like a pivotal moment for Ashley maturing and softening... she was so alone dealing with this, without her usual support system of John, Traci, and Jack (who had been blackmailing her to step down as president or he'd tell John he wasn't her father). I actually love that they had John going to his grave not knowing the secret, but even so, this changed Ashley indelibly.  It perfectly sets up Ashley's deepening relationship with Victor, her guilt over little Victoria (there was some line about "you took my daddy away" that Victoria will later say to Ashley), the abortion and her lifelong desire for a child and future mental breakdowns.

 

Also loving Brock's unexpected return and his calming influence of Kay, Jill, and Ashley (too bad that didn't go anywhere), plus some beautiful 70s clips. That scene where he says Kay would've aborted him had that option been available was pretty shocking, I did not know that things had been so bad between them. Was Brock already reformed when he first debuted? Both Kay and Ashley seemed surprised he found the Lord, now I'm curious about his days as a bad boy. 

[kalbir]

Ed Scott took over as EP in November 1986 and it wasn't long after that all the reported BTS drama w/ BD began. One has to wonder how much of it was BD and how much of it was ES. Remember the early years of ES as EP (1986-1989) also had Cricket eating the show and the departures of ED and TL. Yes, I know Y&R reached #1 during ES's run but IMO he got all the credit for the groundwork that was laid by H. Wesley Kenney.

Edited September 6, 2020 by kalbir

[Sapounopera]

I feel that ES wanted MTS to be the first lady of Y&R.

That and BD was probably involved with someone very powerful on set, who wanted her out of the way. 

[Soaplovers]

I will say that the Jill character changed completely with Jess Walton taking over.  Jess's Jill was convincing as a Jabot employee in charge of the Men's line, while Brenda's Jill looked like she was playing dress up (which made sense since she only was working there due to the divorce settlement with John).

 

And rewatching the scenes of Bond's Jill... she was more subdued and almost too professional and level headed to play Jill.   Did Deborah Adair's Jill ever work at Jabot?  If so, did she come across more professional as Jill?

[OzFrog]

 

I believe it was Deborah Adair’s Jill who was originally fired from Jabot by one of the Abbotts, if the 1981 synopses are anything to go by, so yes DA was working at Jabot. I haven’t see any footage, so I can’t attest to level of professionalism.

 

 

With all the chatter about how detached Brenda Dickson seems in her scenes (and yes I notice it too), there is only one person whom I’ve noticed she doesn’t do this with and actually seems human around  - Beau Kayser. You visibly see her relax and just enjoy herself. Any 80s scene I’ve watched thus far between Jill and Brock shows Brenda Dickson to be almost a completely different person from when she shares scenes with any other Y&R actors, even Jeanne Cooper. I don’t know whether that’s just how she plays the Jill character or whether there was something deeper there.

[yrfan1983]

I saw the Sept 81 ep where Jack fires DA’s Jill from Jabot – the Museum of TV/Paley has it in their collection. The reason he fires her is that bc Patty visits Jabot to see Jack, but Jill intercepts Patty first and impulsively tells Patty that Jill and Jack are having an affair. When Jack finds out about Jill's lie, he fires her.  So while it seems that Jill had some strong points as a Jabot employee, her unprofessionalism ultimately got her fired