Y&R: Old Articles

[DRW50]

I can't answer most of those but I don't remember Phyllis interacting with Mari Jo. They were in very different story spheres, and for a very long period of time, almost all of Phyllis' scenes took place in her apartment (when she wasn't spying on Paul or Cricket or Danny or running one of them down).

[RNN8]

 

Thank you. Yeah, I thought the same. I was curious whether they even knew of each other, technically they lived in a small town and had many common acquaintances.

 

So anyone missing the old background music from the show? Whatever they are playing now makes it look like a second-rate soap opera I wouldn't have been bothered to watch in the 90s and 2000s. 

[Dax7000]

I liked the Brooke/Stephanie dynamic for the first several years, but then B&B started making Brooke do far out incredibly manipulative and selfish things, like screwing her daughter's husband, yet had damn near every character excusing her behavior as not being her fault. It kinda reminds me again of how Y&R tried to re-write history as Katherine being a saint. 

[Soaplovers]

I don't recall Phyllis and Mari Jo interacting.... I recall Phyllis/Malcolm interacting and an early scene of her and Dru not meshing well together in the mid 90s.   I remember Mari Jo/Jill interacting quite a bit.

 

Until the late 90s, a lot of times characters hardly ever interacted unless it was at a big event and/or during 4th of July or NYE.  A lot of the actors said they would love the holiday episodes because they would get to work with other actors they normally never worked with.

 

Kay Alden was the one that started mixing the show up a bit with having characters interact, etc.  I kind of liked how Bill Bell did it a little better because if characters interacted, it was always a nice surprise and sometimes led to new stories 

[SoapDope]

Speaking of Phyllis in her apartment for most of her early scenes, I remember in the early mid 90's Nikki NEVER left the ranch and she was always in the living room. I remember Katherine would come over and try to coax her to go somewhere and she said something " I just don't feel up to it". 

[YRfan23]

I like the isolation too, even if I always wonder what would happen if "such and such" shared scenes....it's kind of fun to use your imagination..

[DRW50]

 

I used to joke with my family back then about Nikki never leaving the house. Even when she did it was offcamera - they would have her return with myriad shopping bags. Aside from rare visits to Katherine's house or Victor's penthouse she seemed completely agoraphobic until the late '90s. 

[Soaplovers]

Oh yes... I remember Nikki started taking up needlepoint in the mid 90s.. and viewers wrote in saying that they wished they could stage an intervention because she needed one stat.

[YRfan23]

Welcome to the fourm btw!

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I definitely miss the old background music and that was honestly what we had to look forward too still 2006-2012 when the show started going down the tubes....they still played some familiar scores occasionally...I think it was like Nov 2012 I last heard anything classic, and if they did use anything afterwords, it seemed to be only in flashbacks...

[SoapDope]

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 Yes. She spent most of her time arranging flowers etc...and Miguel would pop in to check to see if she needed anything. I remember MTS giving a set tour once of the Newman ranch and she said she knew if anything was out of order and it would drive her crazy till she or a stage hand put it back in it's proper place. She spent nearly the entire decade of the 90's doing all her scenes on that set. 

[Khan]

You know, we laugh about Nikki's presumed agoraphobia, but that would have been AWESOME for the character, in terms of the stories that could have spun from that disorder.  Much more open-ended, IMO, than her now-you-see-it-now-you-don't multiple sclerosis.

[Paul Raven]

Bill Bell wrote in a specific way. Characters were not meeting up at the Allegro the way they do now at GCAC.

 

Part of that is budgetary in that they have more standing sets now that are used more regularly, but as discussed with Nikki, characters just spent more time in specific sets.

 

There were no workplaces in the 70's like GC Buzz, Jabot,police station etc

 

If we saw an office at Prentiss  Industries  eg it was a rarity.

[Soaplovers]

Someone had once pondered a long time ago about how Douglas Marland would have written Y & R.. and I said he would have been all wrong for the show... since the show was not about a community.. but about people in separate bubbles going about their lives with little to no interaction.. like in real life.  

[Chris B]

I loved how Y&R was written in terms of interaction. The fact that Michael didn’t meet Victor until 1998 made it a big event when they DID meet. Why would a billionaire be hanging out with a second rate lawyer running around trying to rape women? People interacted when they needed to. The bubbles made it feel more natural IMO and kept it from being too repetitive since there were different stories going on. 

[Khan]

Actually, I tend to prefer the higher rate of interaction among characters, if only because I am a big believer in community-type stories on daytime, with umbrella stories that can bring in as many characters as possible.  I guess that's why I'm still such a fan of ATWT and GL, with their themes of "brotherhood of man" and all that.

Edited June 8, 2018 by Khan