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Y&R: January 2014 Discussion Thread


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I've tried watching a full week of this show and I swear to God it is absolutely mind-numbing. Every other character is boring as hell and that is a generous estimate. Everything about Y&R has been nickel and dimed JFP-style; bars, clubs, restaurants are the businesses. Chelsea and Chloe are the new "businesswomen" running trunk sales or something, and they're both idiots - I warned people Missy Egan, good as she is, can't play heroine. And I know Y&R got away with the atmospheric mental voice-overs back in the day but it is so ridiculous now.

Why does anyone care about Tyler's offscreen ex-girlfriend? Let alone Tyler? Let alone Tyler and Abby? About that creepy blonde chick or her offscreen brother? Or whoever? I can't believe they gave poor Robert Adamson a line like "I'm glad you told me about your other relative, Zach." Who does that? Who writes that? Were they paid for that line? "Your other relative?"

I could wipe out half this show and I still wouldn't be done cleaning it up. Everything about it is lame as [!@#$%^&*]. It's just boring and bad. Bad is one thing. Bad and boring is cardinal sin.

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Even though I liked KG as Mac, I didn't really appreciate AB as Mac until she came back.

This has been done in all types of genres (soaps, primetime, comic books). Sometimes they work out and other times they don't. I always wonder did Douglas Marland (ATWT) originally intended for both Iva and Lily to be adopted to whitewash the budding Holden/Lily attraction. I know comic writer John Byrne admitted he rectoned a charcter's origin based on a suggestion he got from a fan. Of course there was enough mystery surrounding the character and the recton fit the storyline very well.

As for Chloe being a recton, we knew Esther had a daughter out there and it was just a matter of time before she came into the picture. Just compare Chloe's recton to Dylan's. Longtime viewers even say the timeline didn't make sense for Nikki to be pregnant with him.

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I am pretty sure the Chloe/Kate reveal was not the original intention. It was EH I think who think said years ago that it was a nice surprising twist even to her. Chloe was just suppose to be on short term but people took to her vixen ways and they found a way to keep her on full time. That is when they shifted her to Billy to play on the whole Chancellor relationships -- you know Esther's daughter with Jill's son (Katherine's grandson - at the time).

GR also was suppose to be pretty short term and he was also extended because TPTB loved him. I think once they decided to keep him that had the plan of him being Michael's brother but I don't think that was his orginal arc at all. It was just a brilliant way to tie him to the canvas and began to redeem him. That is how Terrible Tom came about.

As for Dylan, I think having him as Nikki's son was always the intention. When he first joined the cast that was the #1 rumor floating around. JFP even downplayed it in an interview saying that was not true. So they focused on the lame love triangle of Navery vs Davery and once that failed they went back to their original idea.

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I said that in another thread too. Playing crazy or a bitch is easy, which is why people fell for it with Kelly Thiebaud (Britt) on GH even though she's just not very good at anything else. MCE is far more talented than her, but she still can't sell this crud anymore than she could St. Annie on AMC before Annie went nuts. And when GH eventually throws in the towel and turns Nurse Sabrina into a bitch or a loon fans will love that too and praise that creative team, when it's the laziest crutch.

It's not that it's always like that. Turning a character bad is a time-honored tradition, and when done right it can be very good. It worked for MCE/Annie on AMC. But other times it's just a lazy crutch for struggling writers and a failed character. There has to be more to it. But that's OT. The point is, MCE is lame in this role and the character is lame. If you turned her into an Annie-type maybe she could work but she still isn't someone who matters. I'd rather they sink money into getting a real Victoria recast, since Heather Tom is clearly never coming back.

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I have to disagree about Kelly Thiebaud. I started watching GH back in May when I heard Maura West was going to join and KT immediately stood out to me and the episode she was on was not her being crazy or a bitch. Of course I had no idea how bad she was at the time but she was still very interesting to me and the only character that help my interest during my first 2 weeks watching the show.

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I've been watching more often lately, and I couldn't agree more. This show is a snooze. The problem is - I just don't care. About anything or anyone. People said that Bill Bell's Y&R was slow, but it was filled with vibrant characters - Nina, Jill, Dru, Victoria, Katherine, Mamie, Jack, Victor, Ashley, Malcolm, minor characters like Flo, Douglas Austin, etc. No one has a personality or real humor on the show now. Where's the wit and cutting lines? The jealousy, the tension? That doesn't mean I want the show to devolve back into MAB-level lunacy, in which the show was overrun with psychopaths, chest-thumping "dudes" and amorality. (It doesn't have to be one or the other.)

And the black characters are particularly boring. I don't need them to be stereotypes, but I really appreciated Dru and Malcolm's ability to "code-switch" - speak one way in the boardroom and speak another when you're around other black folks. I don't need Tyler to become another "Hey Babygirl" Malcolm-type, but a little street swagger would do him well. Same with Devon, Leslie, and even Hilary. I know VR and SM ad-libbed a lot of their material, and perhaps JFP frowns on that or the actors don't even think to do it. But it was what helped to make Y&R's black characters iconic and truthful.

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Not all black folks speak alike. I know in my family my grandmother hated slang so you won't hear a lot of slang from us. It felt so forced when they started adding all that slang into the Winter's dialogue a couple of years ago particularly with Lily and Cane. It just made them sound like they were trying too hard to be down.

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