Y&R: Old Articles

[YRfan23]

I could have seen PB returning to AMC unless Agnes Nixon wouldn’t have wanted to bring in the violence he endured at Y&R. 

[Paul Raven]

Yes I get the feeling Eric feels Victor should still be the lead male on the show and be written as the same character as 20 years ago.

He seems pretty much to rely on cue cards now and spends most of his time seated.

I wish he had have (at least) semi retired on his 40th anni and bowed out gracefully, just making guest appearances -  or even allowing Victor to be killed off!

[amybrickwallace]

I think they are going to reschedule.

[soapfave06]

Jack, Victor, Nikki, all of them are so dead as characters to me. If Mal Young would have returned to the film noir/classic Hollywood feel and pushed Ana, Fen, Hilary, Devon, Mariah, etc to the forefront I think the show could have had a better revival for a new generation since B&B with Hope/Liam/Steffi, debatable, sure but they did successfully push a new generation. 

Oh, what could have been. And bringing back Leslie & Lorie Brooks and Olivia Winters to ground the next generation would have been such good icing on the cake. 

[yrfan1983]

I'm watching the '96 "Who Shot Victor" story and I recognized the priest at Nikki and Brad's wedding as the same one from Nikki and Kevin's '82 wedding and Nikki and Victor's '84 wedding. The '96 credits listed his name: Reverend Bob Bock.

I found this bio of the Reverend http://www.fccnh.org/who-we-are/staff/bob-bock/ It says he "served for over twenty-five years as the resident pastor for “Young and Restless,” a role they named after him."

I wonder if he performed any of the on-screen marriages prior to '82...

Sadly, he just passed away a few months ago https://www.dsf.edu/single-post/tribute-to-the-late-rev-dr-robert-m-bock

[BoldRestless]

That was a good find @yrfan1983! I had no idea he was a real pastor. You would think it would have come up in a trivia book or something. I had also noticed he was the same pastor at Brad & Traci's 1986 wedding (German episode) and their 1991 wedding that was reaired last year. I just thought it was good continuity hiring the same actor. I see he has an imdb page that lists appearances in 1986, 1992, 1993, and 1996 but that's not all of them so I wonder if that was really his last appearance.

 

[will81]

This article is from March 07, 1982 - We have the two episodes dealing with Cash's death which happened the week of Mar 1 - 5, Kenney is listed as EP on those eps. I wonder if Mar 1 - 5 was his first credited week on the show. Anybody know his actual start date (in terms of credited episodes)

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[YRfan23]

Thanks for the article! I have wondered myself if Conboy had left earlier like maybe Late 1981, with Kenney taking over instantly, but It sounds like around February 82 is when Kenney came in full time. 

[Paul Raven]

I know Bill bell respected Wes Kenney but this article and others at the time seem to credit Kenney with storyline decisions.

I would imagine Bill might listen to Wes, but surely Kenney couldn't just say 'Kill off Cash' and Bill would acquiesce?

It would be interesting to know how that relationship worked.

[BoldRestless]

So the reverend was a real life reverend and Cash was a real stripper? 

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[Paul Raven]

And Katherine was a real alcoholic

[will81]

I think the soap press probably assumed all EP's and HW's had the same working relationship unless otherwise stated.

I also believe Bell wanted a partnership with his EP, so he may not have taken storyline direction, but maybe Kenney told him what he felt was working and what wasn't, rather than actually dictating story. 

I do think Bell lost his focus when the show went to an hour and regained it when Kenney came on. I don't see Bell as arrogant enough to dismiss good advice that he felt would help the show. 

He is also there for Ashley and Blade's wedding in 1994 and is credited on the Feb 18, 1994 episode 

I haven't checked but maybe he married Victor and Hope as well on the June 17, 1994 episode

Edited November 3, 2021 by will81

[yrfan1983]

Seems to me like MTS' real-life pregnancy shifted a lot of things. The writers had to move her away from stripping at the Bayou, and came up with this insta-story of "who's the daddy", and bringing on Kevin, Caroline, Allison and Earl. So then there's much less reason for Cash to be around from a storyline perspective.  Personally, I think they should have stuck with the Katherine-Cash romance, which was trashy and filled with chemistry, instead of pivoting to Katherine-Earl, which was Dead on Arrival.

[yrfan1983]

delete

Edited November 3, 2021 by yrfan1983

[Broderick]

Much has been written over the years about the relationship between Tennessee Williams (writer) and Elia Kazan (director).   Tennessee Williams (like William J. Bell) was a well-known and gifted writer who didn't *need* any certain director or producer to handle his scripts.  Elia Kazan (like Wes Kenney) was a respected and award-winning director who could choose to collaborate with virtually any author he chose.  But Tennessee Williams often reworked his own scripts, over and over again, to gain the approval of Elia Kazan, whom he knew would make them commercially and critically successful.  He wrote in his diary, "I don't WANT to make these changes, but if I don't, I'm afraid Kazan will lose interest and walk away."  Elia Kazan, likewise, would receive a 100% ready-to-direct script from a lesser known screenwriter or playwright, and he'd toss it aside in favor of spending hours and hours helping Tennessee Williams work out the kinks in one of his scripts, knowing that once finished, the Williams script would be the superior product.   

That's the relationship I believe existed between Bell and Kenney.  Bell was, without a doubt, one of the most perceptive writers working in the genre.  But with the hour format, which he detested, he'd sort of lost his footing.  John Conboy took advantage of the struggle.  Bell began giving in to his personal excesses -- writing in circles at times, introducing characters who lacked a clear focus, changing his mind about storylines mid-stream, digging too heavily into some characters while glossing over other storylines entirely.  In many ways, the show was VERY MESSY from 1980 till 1982, although it had its isolated beautiful moments, as it always had.  John Conboy was preoccupied with developing his own show (completely parroting the Bell formula of wealthy family/working-class family with young and beautiful stars in the main roles).  Conboy didn't seem at all invested in Y&R -- and his solution to Bell's writing struggle was simply to cloak the entire product in tits & ass titillation to disguise the meandering and subpar writing.   I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before on the board -- the awkward braless scenes that popped-up in virtually every episode from this period, the almost comical hip-flexing and bicep-posing the actors were expected to do to make the show interesting.  Even the soap magazine reviewers (such as John Kelly Genovese) were commenting, "Daytime's golden soap has ventured into the world of the tacky and the cheap." 

I believe Bell was looking to Wes Kenney to help him right the ship and remake Y&R into the more tastefully sensual product that it had been prior to 1980.  And I believe Wes Kenney would've rather critiqued and corrected William J. Bell's flaws than work on a more well-oiled soap written by a lesser talent than Bell. 

There's no doubt that Bell was in charge of the writing, and Kenney was in charge of the production values, as evidenced by Kenney's balancing of Conboy's "film noir lighting" into a brighter, more modern-looking serial.  But I expect Kenney DID make some suggestions about storylines, and Bell, realizing the ratings were dropping, likely listened to him.  And as others have pointed out, Melody Thomas's surprise pregnancy meant making certain changes to the storylines that had existed pre-pregnancy.  It seemed fairly necessary to bump-off Jerry Cashman, and of course Kay Chancellor got a new beau in the less-than-charismatic Mark Tapscott.  The soap press at the time rejoiced at this development ("After a series of distasteful assignments -- Joe LaDue, Victor Mohica, and John Gibson -- Jeanne Cooper finally has a love interest worthy of her.")  I disagreed; I thought Jeanne Cooper had great chemistry with John Gibson's Cash character, but the message that a still attractive 50-year-old woman needed to PAY MONEY to a young man for sex seemed a strange message to send in a medium geared primarily to female viewers.  That seems to be the type of thing that Wes Kenney pointed out to Bill Bell, and Bell then rectified the problems.  No doubt, their collaboration, like the collaboration of Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, worked for both of them, and Y&R quickly recovered from its ratings slump.