Y&R: Old Articles

[soapfan770]

The 1980-81 line-up that CBS arranged really floundered except for GL as the other three were in transitional periods and just collapsed going directly head to head with a very strong ABC lineup did no favors. The 1981-82 line-up corrected course. 

@kalbir Thanks for sharing the write ups it’s just fascinating to read. I always notice Bell leaves out what Jon Conboy was doing lol he really hated that man and for good reason too. 

Y&R is also possibly the only soap with two golden eras between the 70’s and the early 90’s and it was all thanks to the 1982 transition. 

[DjPisces89]

Never seen these scenes before. I would love see Sheila and Lauren’s scenes between the lab fight and the kidnapping at the farmhouse. Seems April 92 to June 92 are hard to find online 

[soapfave06]

I really would love to see the show did a transition like this again and the Rosales and Winters families were the way to go. 

If Mal Young had kept the film noir look and feel and modernized everything else, I would have heavily enjoyed seeing the Abbott and Newman families take the back burner while the Winters, Rosales, Fen, etc took the forefront 

Words can't express how bored I am of current Y&R and I don't think I've watched in a solid two to three years. 

[kalbir]

@DramatistDreamer @soapfan770 You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed the write ups.

From what I've seen/read of 1980-1982 Y&R, it was not an easy transition between the 1 hour expansion, time slot changes, ratings dropping, cast changes, EP change but Y&R managed to survive and it would lead to them thriving for the most part from 1983-1998.

Edited December 5, 2021 by kalbir

[DramatistDreamer]

You'd need a William J. Bell for the 21st century to pull this off and Y&R has yet to find such a person.

For all the tinkering that Bell did with characters and format, he didn't seek to reinvent the wheel, in terms of storytelling.

Mal, Chuck, Maria and others, it was as if they either wanted to reinvent the wheel, totally change the sets, but the basic structure of storytelling just seemed to get worse and worse over time.

[YRBB]

I'm always surprised when people advocate the Newman/Abbott families be phased out or limited.

If there's a small silver lining and anything keeping the show together, it is the presence of those core actors and characters. Barely, yes. But I cannot fathom the awfulness of not having that.

[Paul Raven]

Well the Abbott family is pretty much gone with Traci and Ashley popping in from time to time.

Abby is an Abbott in name only.

What made the Abbotts strong was having Jabot integral to the story and it no longer exists.

The problem with the Newmans has been the lack of evolution of the characters. 

Back to the expansion, the clumping of the Williams and Abbotts together always makes it seem they came on at the same time, whereas in reality the Williams were the major new family in the new format and Jack and John were minor characters, with John eventually dropped.

The real format change came in 82 with the intro of the Abbotts and the dropping of the final remnants of the Brooks and Fosters.

Bill Bell's approach with the expansion seemed to be the dismantling of the couples/stories at the time and using those characters to propel new couples and stories.

With Lance gone, Lorie was moved to Michael, then Robert and Victor,

Leslie with Jonas and Lucas with Casey and Karen.

Jill/Derek was dropped.

Nikki/Greg split etc.

There were probably too many changes too quickly.

[will81]

Yes many changes and upheavals

When the show lost Brenda, they barely got six months into a new recast with Bond Gideon before she was dropped and Deborah came on. Adding Jack and John to Jill's story would have worked if Brenda was still around, but having esentially three new people in their own orbit must have been difficult for audiences. On top of that Brett Halsey was apparently a dud on the chemistry front and the Jack/Jill/John triangle fizzled and he was sent packing after six months with the story barely getting any play. Jill definitely lost prominence at this point. 

Another misfire was the cult story, which was Y&R's big summer story for 1980 and a hopeful bid for a ratings climb, but it actually saw the show sink to 12th place in the overall daytime ratings for August 1980 and 7th amongst soaps.

Lorie was moved to Michael and then Victor - The issues was, due to JLB's pregnancy nothing but a few smooches ever happened. Lorie and Michael really amounted to nothing and Lorie eventually turned Victor away due to his being married. After JLB returned from maternity leave Lorie spent her time trying to seduce Lucas as a way to get custody of Brooks. Honestly, Lorie seems scant in the story for the remainder of the year. In 1981 she was battling Leslie for Brooks and then Lance again. It isn't until Vanessa plots against Lorie that her story takes off more. 

In terms of John McCoook - before he left, he was initially planning to go on hiatus to film a movie. However by the time he departed in Feb, he had given his notice. It does seem Bell was blind sided by his decision to leave the show. I think the reason he returned in May 1980 was more as a favour to help wrap up some things, since Bell had to write him out so quickly. Y&R asked him to return in late 1980 but when he turned the offer down they eventually hired Dennis Cole. Apparently Troy Donahue was also in the running. 

In terms of the Foster family, Greg was the only one truly active and with story in 1980. Snapper was mostly off and Bell was trying to get Jill going amid cast changes.

In terms of the Brooks - things were a bit of a mess. Peggy had story but in spurts. Lorie I explained above and Chris was gone. Much of Leslie's story relied on Lorie, so it was a slow crawl and seemingly a lot of hand wringing while they all waited for JLB to be ready to return in a more active capacity. The Jonas/Leslie/Lucas/Casey quad was not really exciting from what I could tell. Casey gave up Lucas pretty quick and Lorie had to push Jonas to go after Leslie (and he gave her up quickly too). Then you have the issue of - Leslie and Lucas were never really in love. He always loved Lorie and she always loved Lance. So how was this ever really a quad??? Bell tried it though, it didn't work.

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by will81

[Paul Raven]

Things did get muddied with cast changes, leaves etc.

But straying from what was working was an issue.

From what I saw of Bond she had potential as Jill. If she had have stayed in the Derek/Katherine/Suzanne sphere then viewers might have been easier to accept her.

As stated, mixing her in with JackJohn and Steve - all new characters was a wrong move.

It probably disappointed viewers who had been following the Jill/Derek story to have them quickly say their goodbyes and move on. Surely Bill could have come up with another twist.

Instead he had Derek in the Chancellor workplace story. It was odd that Derek, who had lived and dreamed the Golden Comb, gave up the tight white outfit for a suit and tie, Chancellor had never been part of the story and there was now all sorts of corporate intrigue that hadn't been apart of Y&R.

And Derek and Suzanne pretty much faded away.

Why not bring in his son Jamie to be a part of a teen story with Patty?

And having Brock as a romantic lead was also jarring. He had always been a supporting character to Kay, Jill, Les etc 

It's interesting that Bell claims to have had a change of heart re Victor due to EB performance and then write the dungeon story that painted Victor as a psycho that led to Michael and Julia being dropped to try and rehab Victor so he could stay around.

The Stu/Eve/Liz story went nowhere nor the plot point that Derek and Eve had a prior relationship.

There really was a lot of chopping and changing.

It looks like Wes Kenney kind of read the riot act to Bill about the show floundering and he got it together.

We saw the departure of Cash, April,Barbara, Dorothy, Wayne, Snapper, Sally, Lance, Lorie,Jonas, Karen

Andy and Jill split and she re-engaged with the Abbotts. Paul went undercover. Victor/Nikki continued

The only new story that bombed was Leslie/Robert/Angela and that was wrapped up by the end of the year.

[SoapDope]

The 1980-82 period was a different era for the show. There were a lot of with characters and stories being brought in and then dropped. I also noticed to freshen things up there was an influx of blonde men at this time in the 80's after all the predominate darked haired guys of the 70's. 

I think Bell should have brought back Brad Elliot to give Leslie a happy ending. She wound up being all alone in the end, the way she was in the beginning of the show. I think Brad was Leslie's true love anyway. 

Nikki and Greg's marriage was kind of all over the place. I wonder after Bell paired them, he quickly became bored and wanted them to seperate quickly ? They married in 1979 and divorced by 1981 and quickly moved her into Victor's orbit.

Bell also never knew what to do with Peggy. He gave her blips of storyline, then she just hung around. I wonder what he was toying with when he had Victor give her the bedroom eye in 1981 ? 

[Broderick]

 

  

Peggy's weirdest storyline during that period (unless you count her engagement to Steve Williams, while proving to herself that she was more sexually compatible with Jack Abbott, lol) was probably the Slum Lord Storyline that lasted about two episodes and then fizzled out completely.  Seems like Greg Foster was representing a client (Mr. Dixon?) who owned some low-income housing and wanted Greg to set-up a dummy corporation to disguise the ownership.  Greg seemed to think this transaction would make him wealthy.  Go figure.  Stuart Brooks asked Peggy to investigate the "animals" in the community who were providing sub-standard housing to low-income people.  This seemed to be setting up an adversarial relationship between Greg and Peggy, and then it just ended completely with no resolution or follow-up at all.  Peggy just kinda vanished into thin air with no explanation after a few scenes about the substandard housing. 

And in hindsight, we were probably LUCKY, because Bell revisited this issue again in 1993 with Cricket Blair and the Rainbow Gardens apartment complex, and it was dull as hell that time too.

The 1980-early 1982 time frame was definitely Y&R's strangest.  I believe those of us who continued watching daily during this period were mostly doing so out of loyalty.   

[yrfan1983]

Love all these details! Do you recall if Greg was played by Wings H or had Howard M taken over by this point?

[SoapDope]

The Peggy/Greg storyline sounds Craptastic......LOL.......It was when I had to watch Cricket do it in the early 90's. I was a kid during the early 80's and remember bits and pieces of ths show then. The Leslie/Lorie/Lance/Lucas was still dragging on and then Nikki moved onto Victor.

Another bad early 80's storyline that is often mentioned is when Chris Brooks Foster bought new furniture with Stuart's credit card and Snapper was pissed.  I guess Chris wanted her home to represent the 80's Dynasty me decade with Colonial Williamsburg reproductions she picked up at the local Ethan Allen, while Snapper preferred bargain basement goods from the local Goodwill. 

[Broderick]

I'm almost thinking it started out with Wings and ended-up with Howard.  Wings was still around during Nikki's "please-help-I'm-being-terrorized-by-the-stalker-with-mommy-issues" storyline, because Greg (Wings) was having mysterious headaches to make us THINK (for about five minutes) that perhaps HE was the stalker, but then the headaches disappeared and so did Wings.  Howard popped-up in time for Jill's storyline where she sued Jack Abbott for sexual harassment at Jabot (or something), and this business with Peggy and the slum lords was kinda randomly sandwiched in between. 

I remember Snapper, Chris, the credit card furniture, and Dr. Jane Lewis, lol.  Snapper couldn't tell that all that mess hadn't come from Salvation Army supposedly. 

This was a time period where an entire family could disappear in a single episode.  ("Barbara, do you have something to tell us, honey?"  "Sure, Mom.  Dad.  I've been meaning to mention to you that I'm actually a zillionaire with a 30-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and I'm moving back there permanently, and I'd like both of you to go with me.  And April too.  And we're leaving in five minutes!")    

[SoapDope]

LOL.....The Stevens family leaving quickly is hilarious. I think Wes Kenney insisted that hey be axed when he came aboard after Conboy. 

As bad as it sounds, I would love to see scenes of that horrible/stupid Chris storyline.

Wasn't Dr. Jane Lewis played by Mark Harmon's sister  Kelly " Tic Tac spokeswoman" Harmon ? Kelly had once been married to John DeLorean and her and Mark's oldest sister Kris Harmon was married to Ricky Nelson. She played herself on the family Ozzie & Harriet show in the 60's.