Y&R: Old Articles

[yrfan1983]

Agreed… TEB sounds better on Alibis than MD!
I wonder if TEB ever took singing lessons after the show insisted she sing…

So there’s so many reasons why Traci might have been crying…

-    She’s in love with Danny and is jealous that Lauren is sharing this special experience with him

-    She’s professionally jealous of Lauren as Traci also wants to be a singer but feels she doesn’t measure up

-    She’s traumatized that Lauren just basically admitted to trying to manipulate Traci’s relationships, for unknown reasons

-    She’s still in love with Tim, and the lyrics to Alibis are flashing her back to when she walked in on Tim sleeping with another woman

This is the type of layered writing from Bill Bell that I love and makes YR so special!
 

[Broderick]

I felt like it was *mainly* a combination of Tim's lies and deceptions (with his "alibis" always being "watertight"), her pregnancy by a man who was disloyal, her love for Danny who was always so helpful to her, and Lauren's inexplicable hatefulness.  But you make a great point -- it was likely even more than that.  

[YRfan23]

Haha honestly Michael D, didn’t sound too hot on that one either

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but I think it’s because TEB was WAY off key!!

She actually sounds better a few years later  when she performs summer 1989 imo

 

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Edited September 28, 2022 by YRfan23

[Broderick]

Sometimes when Lauren is singing with Gina & Traci, you start noticing how much "depth" Patty Weaver and Beth Maitland have in their voices, and how extensive their ranges are and Lauren is just kinda "there" for the ride.  

I agree with you, though -- she and Michael Damian sounded horrible on the Survivor cover.  Just awful.  

(Evidently, Lauralee Bell must sound like a frawg, or Daddy would've had her singing daily, lol.)   

[yrfan1983]

This truly made me LOL! Thanks for the daily laugh. Daddy didn't even have Cricket sing some corny patriotic song on the 4th of July.

(Cricket did perform a god-awful choreographed dance during Danny's '90 concert, which highlighted LLB's lack of musicality)

[Broderick]

After Cricket's awkward dance, Danny said, "Wow! I've never seen moves like that in my life!" 

(I don't think ANY of us had seen anything quite like that before, lol.)  

[Darn]

Wait, is that actually Beth Maitland's voice?

[yrfan1983]

It is! There was a short-lived plot in '84-85 where Traci attempted her own singing career, so BM sang on the show quite a bit, but I think that story got dropped.

[Darn]

She's very good! I didn't expect her singing voice to be so deep.

[Broderick]

Yeah, Traci was singing solo at the Torchlight Club (I think it was called) which was owned by the blind husband of Mary Ingalls on "Little House on the Prairie".  

Lauren Fenmore & Shawn Garrett sabotaged her solo career by telling customers the show was cancelled, etc., confusing the nights she was performing, and so forth.  It was mainly a storyline about how low Lauren and Shawn would stoop to keep her from having a successful career. 

Seems like Ashley had watched Traci perform the night Brent Davis accosted Ashley in the garage.   

[yrfan1983]

@Broderick - I keep meaning to ask you, with your amazing encyclopedic memory of the vintage years - what's your take on the 1980 cult story?

On one hand - of course I want to see it.

On the other hand... it just sounds kind of lurid (i.e. - Peggy Brooks is swarmed by rats!!) And the character of cult leader Sumiko reads on paper like an awful Dragon Lady stereotype.

[Broderick]

Ha, as a kid, I thought it was thrilling, but as I aged I found it sort of absurd. 

When Peggy was in the Rat House, she looked at her captors and said, "You'll never conquer ME!"  (In later years, my siblings and I would recite Peggy's line to one another while winning in Monopoly or Scrabble or tennis -- "You'll never conquer ME!" lol.)

That Asian lady -- Sumeko or whatever -- felt Paul was "sexually alive" and offered to "quench his sexual urges".  She looked him dead in the face and said, "Come to me, for I am your Spiritual Mother."  That line got quoted around my house a lot too.  If I needed my brother to come help me haul out the trash, I'd say, "Come to me, for I am your Spiritual Mother."   

The constant singing of "there's a New World coming and it's just around the bend, coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love" was annoying as hell.  And it was practically a daily occurrence.   

Also, the show was very disjointed in 1980, which enabled a lot of bizarre crossovers.  The New World Kidz sold flowers to raise money for the commune.  That mean Paul and Nikki might be dispatched to the Allegro or Jonas's or whatever it was called at the time to sell flowers.  Mister Bell would have Nikki walk up to someone like Vanessa Prentiss and sell her a flower.  Meanwhile, Paul might be selling a flower to Lucas Prentiss or Derek Thurston or someone.  It just highlighted the show was comprised of various "pools" of characters who'd never even SEEN one another before.  

You don't wanna watch it

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[YRfan23]

Oh I want to see that Nikki/Vanessa scene though!!

[Broderick]

Oh, I don't remember if it was really Vanessa, but Nikki would be selling flowers to some lead character in one storyline, while Paul would be selling to lead characters in another storyline.  

Seems like there was a scene in the park where perhaps Nikki sold flowers to Suzanne Lynch and Derek Thurston, and Paul sold flowers in the restaurant to Vanessa and Lucas.  Cindy Fisher's character and Matthew might pop-up and sell a flower to Lorie Brooks.  

It was just a jumbled-up mess of people who'd never seen one another before, but who were all lead characters in various storylines, colliding over Cult Flowers.  

[yrfan1983]

Ok I want to become a member of your family! My family never once in my life has quoted YR!