Y&R: Old Articles

[Soaplovers]

 

THIS!!

 

And remember until Nikki and Victor met in the fall of 1981.. they hardly interacted with one another.. and both were on the show at the same time for over 18 months.. so when they interacted.. it worked because he wasn't the type to go to a strip club and she didn't have any dealings with Chancellor/Jabot back than.... so it never made sense for them to to interact until Douglas dragged Victor to the Bayou (and I recall Victor wasn't too keen on strip clubs).. and he saw Nikki perform and was entranced.

 

I also recall Ryan/Victoria were the young star crossed lovers for almost a year... and one episode had Ryan at Gina's lamenting not being able to be with Victoria.. and at the same time, both Chris and Nina were at Gina's.. and Chris was trying to get Nina back out into the dating world.. and Chris saw Ryan and had the two meet... and than Ryan/Nina had a one night stand.. and the rest they say is history in regards to that triangle.   

 

 

[YRfan23]

What’s so funny re: Nikki and Victor though is that Victor was friends with Casey and on a brief snippet of a 1980 episode I uploaded Victor brings flowers for Nikki! So he definitely knew Casey had a younger sister but I guess didn’t meet her or even realize Nikki was Casey’s sister till the Bayou a year later!

 

 

[RNN8]

Thank you.

 

Well I did some research, apparently JFP fired all the music composers and supervisors and sold the whole music catalog (except the main theme) to a different entity (I still haven't found out to whom). Whoever has been composing cues ever since is someone who clearly messed up everything because the music is boring and has anything but an Y&R feel. I terribly miss those cues played behind different suspense scenes (Sheila having flashbacks on the plane when she was on the way to GC to tell Lauren she was alive - 1993, Patty's cues (2009-2010),  Sheila holding Lauren at gunpoint and telling her it's time for them to leave to Michigan (that one has different variations and I like them all), Isabella drowning Christine in the last scene,  Michael Baldwin punching Tom Fisher in 2005, Tricia Dennison raping Victor in 2001, Sharon hearing all those voices right before burning down the ranch (2012),   David Kimble saying "Revenge is over, the party is mine" right after "shooting" Nina and Cricket in 1991, Ashley getting into the car accident in 2003,  Sharon driving back home after hitting Cameron with a bottle and seeing "his corpse" in the mirror while driving and so many more). I've been trying a lot to find a way to buy some of  them but without any luck as I have no idea who were the rights sold to.

 

In 2017, Sally Sussman fired Paul Antonelli (originally hired by JFP) and rehired Mike Dobson, the former music supervisor - she was listening to the fans' voices and was trying to bring back the old music. I contacted Dobson to see whether there was any chance in this regard but he never replied. Then Sally took off and now it looks like Mal Young does not want to bring back the old music and Dobson is probably stuck with the new composers and the crap they are composing. As a result, I find Mal Young just as bad as JFP in terms of the show's management and just as bad as Pratt in terms of the writing style.

 

I never ever thought I would end up stopping watching the show and I am still shocked it still hasn't been cancelled and there are still viewers out there.  But I do hope it won't take as long to fire Young and it took to fire JFP and Pratt. Even if they brought back Maria Arena Bell, I'd still be happy.

Edited June 9, 2018 by AlexNN8

[LondonScribe]

I did not know that the old musical cue catalogue had been sold. Firstly, what a silly, short-sighted thing to do and secondly, doesn’t that make it harder to get them back/use them? As whoever owns them now may not want to sell them back?

 

I did not know that Mike Dobson was back and couldn’t tell in any event. If he doesn’t have the rich, wonderful catalogue at his disposal then it could be a frustrating and fruitless experience for him.

 

When he was given the keys to the kingdom, I simply recapped on this board what Mal Young did as producer of Brookside and the sensibilities he brought to the shows he had supervion of at the BBC. I did not once say he would be great for Y&R. What would happen if he is sacked is a whole other conversation and one that fills me with trepidation simply because SONY and CBS have proven time and again they can’t get this choice right. And that seems rooted in the fact that they  want to stay away from Bill Bell and his interpretation of the show.

 

Plus, the powers that be have shown how much they can dig their heels in when it comes to sticking by their appointments. 

[Cat]

You have expressed everything I feel about Y&R and its music. That musical archive was part of Y&R's DNA. It was like another character. It took Y&R from being the usual soap about dialogue/plot to one about human psychology. The music was the expression of the brokenhearted,  longing-filled, twisted, dark psychology of these characters. It 'explained' why they sometimes broke down, were irrational, got caught up in an impulse (not to mention, that same style of music saved Brad Bell's shoddy writing on B&B for years!). I used to call WJB's Y&R the film noir of soaps, and the music went a long way in anchoring that cinematic, film noir, spine-tingling feel.

 

The fact that JFP sold that archive to needlessly replace it with some 90s Casio keyboard sh*t does not surprise me, but even after all this time it enrages me.  Her arrogance enrages me --- yes, arrogance, because she assumed she would either be on the show forever, or at least when she departed, she will have left her indeliable mark on the show. She made sure her aesthetic legacy of crappy, grey sets and crappy, grey, generic music remains. I hate that!

 

It's gotten to the point where if MAB came back, i wouldnt mind either... however, one must not forget the incalcuble damage Maria also did to the show, her shlock writing, her wastefulness. Because of her tenure, the Bells' control of the show was lost forever. Sony and CBS stepped in and instantly set about turning the Rolls Royce of soaps into a Chevy Cavalier. As @UK LAW says, Sony/CBS cannot get their hiring right. I don't know how they succeed with keeping Day's identity intact (just about), but with Y&R it's like they are staffing a brokedown strip-mall Sears. They have no understanding of the show and don't care to have any. They're just going to keep staffing Y&R with increasingly cheap and dirty options until it stops making pennies for them.

 

Sorry to be so pessimistic but that's how I feel about the situation at the moment.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Cat

[Soaplovers]

@Cat The only reason Days has maintained some of it's identity is because Corday still has a voice/control (sometimes too much) over decisions.. hence why the music is still the same and some of the elements remind me of Days of old.

 

Why Sony/CBS even thought hiring Mal Young was a good idea still boggles my mind.. did they not look at his resume over in the UK?  He was responsible for turning the long departed UK soap Brookside (a UK daytime version of Knots Landing about residens on a cul da sac) from an introspective soap into a plot driven dreck that ultimately drove away viewers in the long term.  While his touch might have worked on a soap like Days... it isn't a fit on Y & R.

[DRW50]

 

Looking back I can appreciate what Bell was doing and I can understand the importance of isolated character groups. At the time I slowly grew sick of it, because many of my favorite characters at the time were forever stuck with the same people. I loathed Ryan yet Nina spent much of her time obsessing over him. Victoria was stalled in the same quad for years until Heather Tom quit, obsessing over sexy book editors. Jill spent most of her time with that dullard played by Granville van Dusen (such a boring actor for such a compelling name). 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Waaaay back in the 1970s, Janice Lynde was critical about character isolation too. She said that actors complained they never got to work with anyone outside their own bubble. She approached TPTB with ways how her character could interact with Liz Foster, Katherine Chancellor, etc., but was rebuffed. She made it sound like Bill Bell and/or John Conboy basically told her to mind her own business and leave the writing to the writers.

 

UGH. This happens ALL THE TIME. TIIC hire people because they have had past experience, regardless of how ineffective or disastrous that experience was. Look at how many times Charles Pratt and Pissy have been hired to write different shows. It boggles the mind.

[RNN8]

Oh, I very much agree with every single word you said. The music was indeed like a character. I could find my ways to buy the crap of some of the SL's just for the sake of that music that was making a huge difference. Had I known I was taking it for granted, I would've appreciated the show more in the 2000s. 

 

As with JFP, I have always thought something was wrong about her. I saw some sort of a short interview on Youtube where she was bragging over how much emotion she brought into the show once she stepped in and how the fans loved her work. It wasn't the crap she was saying that was pissing me off the most, but the fact that one could easily see she was a totally and utterly arrogant and unprofessional sorry excuse for an EP who hated herself a bit and who was trying to overcompensate her lack of competency (which I believe she was aware of )with this cheap attitude. That's when I knew she was the biggest joke Y&R had had; and no wonder why the damage she caused to the show is now irreparable. She fired entire teams, not only those looking after the background music - if you look at the camera angles, actors, hairstylists, sets etc., everything is different and completely artificial - it even feels like the background music we used to love would no longer fit into this whole dump she left as a legacy.

 

Regarding MAB, she did a lot of damage for sure. Personally, I always liked the Sheila Carter character, I basically grew up with that character and my heart was broken when LML killed her off in that joke of a SL. What MAB did was burying Sheila six feet deeper when creating that stupid Mamma Bear - Daisy - Ryder cheap SL. Sarah being Sheila's sister and Daisy and Ryder being Sheila's and Tom Fisher's kids? I mean, really? We already have the scenes when the two of them had met in 2005 and she obviously thought we had forgotten. The only SL that she can get the credit for and that I really liked was Patty/Mary Jane Benson's return; it did bring suspense even though part of me wishes Patty was still the harmless girl I heard she used to be in the 80s (except when she shot Jack lol). And maybe the fact that she made everyone aware of the fact that Phyllis had run over Christine and Paul in 1994. 

 

There used to be tonnes of petitions out there requesting CBS to fire her, it's a shame I can't see any website with any petition set for Young's firing. I might just have to start one myself lol!

 

Yes, Dobson is back. He's been there for a year now, he had updated his Facebook and LinkedIn as well. Sally Sussman was kind enough to write me back last year after I wrote her first and she confirmed she hired him to bring back the music, but she left the show immediately after. And Paul Antonneli, the one who replaced Mike after he was fired by JFP (and who was now replaced by Mike again), confirmed the whole music library was sold and it is unlikely it will ever be commercially available. He suggested that I contact Sony Music, which I did, but they never replied to any of my messages so I reached a dead end and I gave up. Here's hoping! 

[SoapDope]

 

Did Katherine interact that much with the Brooks during the 1970's ? Did she do lunch with Jennifer etc...? 

[vetsoapfan]

 

No, even back then, all the characters were isolated into their own personal little groups, although Katherine did go to see one of Leslie's shows.

[Soaplovers]

I liked the isolation that Bill Bell did for Y & R... because that is real life.  I'm all for character interaction, but it has to make sense.  I recall Nina left the show just as it was starting the process of making the show less isolated and more of a community feel... so it was jarring when during the 'funeral' for Chance that she was hanging out with Ashley, Jack, etc... since she'd never interacted with them on screen (unless it was done off screen).

 

I do know that Leslie in her last months was hired by Victor to help Nikki become cultured by teaching her the pianos, etc.  And we've seen Nikki play the piano on and off over the years even with her grandson Reed.

 

 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Leslie Brooks gave Jill piano lessons too, when Brenda Dickson played Jill.

[SoapDope]

Did Katherine actually talk to Leslie or just sit in the crowd ? I always wondered if Kay had scenes with Peggy when the Jack/Peggy/Joanne thing was going on. I guess not.

 

I remember Melody talking about the storyline groupings keeping actors isolated from other actors, especially in the early days. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

To my knowledge, Peggy and Mrs. C never shared a single scene. And Katherine only sat in the audience while Leslie was playing the piano.