Y&R: Old Articles

[titan1978]

Do we think Bell kept the right characters to mix with his new families? I think it would be hard to say what Y&R would have been like if he hadn’t kept people like Nikki, Victor, Jill and Katherine once the purge began and he moved towards characters that had little if any ties to the original families.

 

Once we get to the years when Y&R challenges GH and then passes it in the ratings, you really only had a few of orbits on the show.  Victor and the Abbots (through relationships or business), Cricket, Katherine and Jill, and Lauren.  Everyone was tied to those stories or sets of characters as far as I can remember, with little spots of overlap.  By the time Bill left as HW, the Abbots and Jill and Katherine were pretty much not as center stage (except for Jack).  Everything was pretty Victor or Cricket or Drucilla centered.  Kay Alden moves Katherine and Jill and the Abbots back into being major parts of the show again, and leaves them there.

 

I remember at the time Bell was almost done that the show was not as compelling and he wasn’t using people I loved like Nina and Katherine very much.  But Sharon and Nick were always on.

Edited June 8, 2019 by titan1978

[Eboneece]

Thanks for this detailed explanation! Makes much more sense to me now

[DeeeDee]

 

The Abbotts remained pretty central to the canvas EXCEPT for about a year and a half when Brenda left and Y&R tried to integrate The Dennisons onto the canvas.

 

During the 90's everything revolved around The Newmans (primary stories), Abbotts (secondary stories), Winters (tertiary stories), Williams (background stories), and Chancellors (background stories) with everyone else (the Romalottis, the McNeils, etc) orbiting those central families.

 

The brilliant thing Alden did was move Jill out of the Abbott orbit back into the Chancellor orbit which greatly refreshed both families.

[titan1978]

I guess that year and a half looms large for my memory.  The Ashley that replaced Brenda sidelines the character.  And Jess was wasted after the baby Billy stuff, John leaves for a bit and Mamie was gone.  It felt very much like the Abbotts were out of favor.  And truthfully, I felt that way at times before that.  Once Traci stopped being a major player it felt at times like Victor and Ashley were really tied to Victor and John to Jill.  I never felt that Victor was sidelined at any point.  Or Cricket.  Or Drucilla.  

 

And I still think Cricket was the second lead behind Victor.  And then Drucilla.  Because without those three hinges the rest of Bell’s stories in the mid to late 1990’s would have looked nothing like the show we got.  I’m not saying I didn’t love characters tied to them, but they were the leads in those circles.

 

I really and truly miss Dru on this show.  Of those three I never got tired of seeing her.

 

I agree that reigniting Jill and Katherine was the best thing for both characters, and building from there with a new generation was Alden’s master stroke.

 

I really miss Y&R.

[will81]

I'm not sure he had much choice. The only character he was able to intergrate into the new show was Jill. Lucas was pointless once the four L's split, and honestly once Leslie left town with amnesia and Vanessa was dead, Lucas seemed driftless. 

 

Once David/Snapper left, it made little sense for Chris to stay, though why would he have Chris sign a solid contract with Jabot at the same time Snapper was about to leave town, other than to give the character a reason to stay. He also tested Chris out with Jack, so it seems potentially he was going to try to keep her on canvas.

 

Greg was a failed recast. Hauser, though totally wrong as Greg, made the character his own, Howard McGillin seems more like Houghton's Greg, but how do you regress a character like that. I think Bell attempted to revive the Greg/Chris dynamic when Howard first came on, but that seems to have been a bust and Greg pretty much was done. I don't even need to see Howard and Lynn together to know they probably had zero chemistry together.

 

Leslie is the one I am most intrigued by. She stayed in town long after Laurie left and was given a storyline with the Laurence family, I am assuming it fizzeled, once that family was shipped off, Leslie followed soon after. Oddly, Brooks basically vanishes once Lance left town. He is never mentioned again. Laurie seems to skip town on her own and Leslie heads off on tour with Maestro. I am curious as to whether Bell even acknowledged the boy. I don't believe he is mentioned in 1984 when the Brooks sisters returned for the Victor/Nikki wedding.

 

So my guess is Bell may have tried to keep certain characters on canvas, but just couldn't get them to work. Basically he followed the show's natural evolution, rather than stubbornly try to hold on to the past.

[soapfan770]

 

Erm, the only regret I ever heard was Bell said was him killing off Phillip III; by the time 1995 had rolled around JC was calling the show "The Young and the Rest of Us" and I'm sure it bothered Bell but he was having success with Y&R's third generation; otherwise he kept the right characters. I know late '96 and early '97 the show had really stagnated but Bell did turn the show around right before he officially retired and in perfect shape for Alden to take over. 

 

Nikki scored herself a "younger" man; we never got the Ryan/Jill one night stand the show really wanted to do and almost headed that way. I had heard something Ryan and Jill were suppose to sleep together, Victor find out and then blackmail Jill, leading to Jill being prime suspect in Victor's shooting, but I guess the show decided to play it safe and go some other absurd route in having Jill being prime suspect in Victor's shooting in addition to Brad. 

 

Ashley Abbott was a character Bell loved and knew how vital she was to the show. Otherwise she wouldn't have been recast for Shari Shattuck, which did prove to be a determent to the whole Audrey North story that went south.  Otherwise the show was just fine, and Nick & Sharon were a lot more dynamic back. Network pressure, massive backstage politics, and in-fighting is what destroyed Y&R's later end of the third generation and decimated its fourth generation. 

Edited June 9, 2019 by soapfan770

[allmc2008]

 

[DeeeDee]

You just summed up the second half of 96 & most of 97. But besides that period the Abbotts remained a relatively strong part of the canvas with Jill & the Abbott siblings taking turns as the lead members of the family.

 

 

The Abbotts remained a central core family but the Ashley recasts & the dumping of the Voilens really hurt the balance of the family. It also didn't help that Beth went recurring once Traci married Steve (although Traci remained a strong recurring presence until the late 90s).

 

 

Not really. Cricket was more of a lead in the early 90s than she was in the mid-late 90s. By the time Cricket married Paul they were largely supporting players in everyone else's stories. Cricket wasn't driving stories like she had (to a ridiculous degree) in the early 90s.

 

 

While Drucilla was the lead in the Barber/Winters orbit, the focus had firmly turned towards Olivia & Malcolm by the time VR left (with TLW carrying their part of the canvas quite well).

 

If any characters could be considered "leads" of 90s Y&R it would arguably be Nick & Sharon (who have rarely been placed on the backburner during their entire 25 year run on the show). Even the mighty Victor Newman became a supporting player in their stories.

 

 

Alden & Walton's gradual revitalization of Jill was fantastic. Their work is so unsung. Half the Emmys Flannery won in the early 00s rightfully belong to Jess.

 

[BetterForgotten]

In many ways, the crap writing and decimation of Sharon's character over the past 15 years mirrored that of the show. Sharon was Bell's last big/popular heroine who he invested A LOT into. She may not have been everyone's cup of tea (much like the show), but the tearing down of that character coincided with the tearing down of the show itself and ultimately what Bell established. 

Edited June 9, 2019 by BetterForgotten

[DeeeDee]

 

+1.

[SoapDope]

I remember Bill Bell said in an interview with SOD back in the 90's, that it pained him to write out his original Foster/Brooks families. He said when David and Jaime decided to leave and knowing the audience was sick of recast (an nobody would accept a recast for JLB), he sat down over lunch and made the decision to phase the families out and move the Abbott's and Williams front burner. He had big plans for the Patty character and was upset when Lilibet Stern left the show in 83. 

[asafi]

Good evening all

How are you?

is there any chance to upload episodes from 1994 surrounding Rex Sterling's death and funeral? those were great episodes.

Thank you,

[vetsoapfan]

 

Looking back on it, we were blessed to get so many gifted, charismatic, fine actors among the original cast. I grew to appreciate them even more as the recasts rolled in. Brenda Dickson was successfully replaced as Jill Foster,  but all the other replacements ranged from bland (Brian Kerwin) to downright awful. Wings Hauser. UGH. Need I say more?

[will81]

I haven't seen much of Wings, but he does not seem like Greg at all. Greg always seemed like a soft soul, probably a lot like Clayton Norcross' Thorne on B&B. Wings seems like a brute. Angry, gritty and almost violent in a way. It must have been odd to go from him to Howard McGillin, though I have never seen Howard, he seems like he was probably more like Greg was under James Houghton.

[vetsoapfan]

 

Of the three recast actors in the role of Greg, HM was the "Greg-ist." Brian Kerwin was as dull as a wet noodle, and WH came across like a would-be serial killer. If the writing had been better, and if TPTB had committed to the character, I think HM would have eventually worked out.