Y&R May 2018 Discussion Thread

[ajsp35801]

 

I don't think it's ridiculous at all. I'm still whining about this organization passing over me to give my scholarship to the third honor in my high school class because said third Honor's mother was in the organization giving out the scholarship. Mind you, the valedictorian and salutatorian ALWAYS got it in prior years.  I'm still salty that I wasn't chosen my 10th grade year to be a hostest at the senior prom despite my assisting said teacher in putting it together. And on and on...so for once, I can totally relate to Hilary's crazy! 

[mango]

FWIW, popcorn breaks are a big hit in my office. Sorry, Jack!

[Soapsuds]

Another awful episode. The best part was the previews and seeing Kyle shirtless. It's too bad I hate the character of Kyle.

[ranger1rg]

 

I would’ve been fine with it all if they’d left out the viral stuff against Hilary for lying. Would she be that stupid to call herself prom queen? She could still have told the story to Devon. The writers needed a better reason for him to show up with the tiara.

 

And nothing said about Maddie not going to prom? I guess she’s now back to caring only about books and studying. Lily sure didn’t seem to consider Maddie’s feelings at all.

 

Besides, do we have any reason to care about Charlie and the prom girl who finds her dress an hour before prom begins?

 

Now Jack’s quitting. Story on Y&R is now “another character changes jobs.” I’m sick of these people staying in a position for only weeks before quitting. It’s ridiculous.

[SteelCity]

Nah! Not into the dumd looking shot boy type, also washboard ass.

[ajsp35801]

 

Hilary is quite stupid. Has been for some time now. So yes, I buy her lying about that. She lies even when it's unnecesary and everyone knows she is. This is absolutely something she'd do.

 

Charlie went to Shauna's prom. Walnut Grove's prom was said to be the next day.  

 

The entire prom drama was Hilary's story. It was about her and told from her POV. So I'm assuming we should care about it because we care about her. The teens didn't have one scene alone so I don't think the show expected you to care about them. 

 

Mal is obsessed with father's and sons. This just seems like another way to showcase a pair, Jack and Kyle. 

[Faulkner]

It’s so weird. Squats and lunges are “in” these days. 

[DramatistDreamer]

There were elements of the Prom-themed episode(s) that were kind of cute. 

They could've had Reed stick out the school year and attend, so they could fill out the student ranks--it's kind of sad to have only one couple highlighted for prom.

 

I even thought Hilary and Devon's prom-ish interlude was cute until they ruined things with that cheesy music.  Couldn't anyone find some Donny Hathaway?  Or someone who sounds like Donny Hathaway or India.arie or...somebody with some soul??

 

Melissa Ordway has come a loooong way and she has good chemistry with Arturo. There's a weird pattern of Y&R putting her with male characters after they've been with relatives (Ashley, Summer, Victoria, would-be kind of S-I-L Sharon and now Nikki).  It's somewhat bizarre.

 

Although, I know this will cause some grumbles from the Y&R-is-perfect-so shut up sect, I can't help but mention how funny it is that months ago, I kicked around the idea of Ashley setting up her own lab and creating her own cosmetics and that way she'd be a free agent to contract work with the corporation of her choosing. 

Now we're seeing Jack say he wants to start his own startup? Eh, m'kay. 

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Jack doesn't have a chemistry degree, so who would he get to formulate his cosmetics?  Although if he found a way to lure Ashley away from Newman, maybe we'd see something interesting.

HWG, even CI could be investors-- it would just be interesting to see Jill, Jack and Ashley work together again (or try) and have Neil into the mix. 

Have Jill try to pilfer her Men's line from God-knows-where it is now (Newman might have got it when they re-acquired B&S) and set off a corporate tussle over who legally has proprietary rights of the Men's line. Whew, this stuff writes itself.

 

There were some interesting scenes in the few episodes I watched yesterday and just now but I have to admit that watching more than one episode of Y&R in a row is a chore for me because there's no overall cohesion with these stories.

[Faulkner]

Victoria has not only emerged from an abusive relationship; she was involved in the coverup of her abuser’s death. (Not to mention Reed up and leaves.) Somehow the person who came out of that situation with the most angst was Sharon. And now Victoria is back maneuvering for power at Newman like nothing happened. 

 

And Victor had several serious life-threatening injuries and now he’s just strolling around GC. I know this is typical soap to have characters near death one day and laughing and clinking glasses with friends the next, but all of these events happen without any real consequences. For all of the superficial “CHANGE!,” everything just stays the same at the end of the day. It doesn’t make for a very satisfying watch when you see characters endure serious trauma and don’t evolve or adjust their lives even a little bit. The JT story has just flatlined, and while I know it’s not over, I’m not invested in seeing where it heads because this show is so poorly paced and constructed.

 

And Jack storming off in an elevator in a huff is a Friday cliffhanger? I don’t even like or care about B&B or Brad Bell or the Liam story, but Wyatt revealing he’s been lying for Bill... that’s a cliffhanger.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Some on this board wanted to fight me over me saying that Y&R's DV storyline was trash but in reality, it was a cheap copy of the BLL series, and it was trash.  In the end, it was more about Victor's battle with JT with a side of JT's cruelty/abuse on Victoria. 

The DV storyline did not move one needle, all the stories flowed out of Victor's 'life and death' struggle after his fall down the stairs.

 

Nick deciding to go back to Newman- that wasn't because of the DV story, that was after seeing his father in critical condition. 

This is where the real angst will be when Victoria has to battle her siblings for dominion over Newman.

 

Victor could've easily suspected JT was infiltrating his company, decided to put up spying equipment to try to find out what JT knows.  JT could've found it, found it to be sick and twisted, confronted Victor, accused him of being sick, taunted Victor over him being a voyeur in his daughter's bedroom, a fight could've ensued resulting in the exact same result. 

Y&R wanted to promote themselves as having an interest in DV but that story went nowhere except down when it devolved into a dime store quasi-murder mystery.  Does anyone even care about that story anymore?  Does anyone give a damn whether Paul uncovers the truth or not?

In the meantime, like @Faulkner said, Tori has shrugged the whole episode off and it's business as usual. I guess she doesn't need therapy anymore either because it's in the past.

 

Seems like they thoroughly wasted TL for a storyline that has absolutely no long term impact.  In this way, the DV, Ashley and Jack paternity stories all have something in common.  They all made me wonder what was the point?  I know Jack's story is still unfolding but it's been so self-indulgent that I'm already bored with it.

[Roman]

IMPO, Mal is using huge changes to bloodlines and SLs to prop up the part of the story he REALLY wants to tell (JT abuses and gets killed, and then changes to the Witches of GC trying to hide the crime......Jack is not a blood Abbott, so now him and his step brother Billy at at war over Jabot, with someone else soon to join in). if it get sto the story he wants to tell, he'll use very powerful changes and forget about them, plus with every other day being a new day....

[Khan]

 

The part of the debate that still gets me is justifying JT's about-face with "He's ALWAYS been this way" and "Well, who knows what happened to him while he and Mac were out of town."  You MIGHT get away with the latter argument (since, yes, he had been off the canvas for awhile, and therefore, we didn't see the changes he'd been through -- although, hearing it from Mac really doesn't have the same impact as seeing it for ourselves, but I digress), but the former?  That J.T. had always been this loutish?  Sorry, but I'm not buying it.  Even at the beginning, when J.T. first appeared, and he was coming off as more jerky than he was when TL left, nothing about him suggested to me that this guy had the capacity to abuse women.

 

The fact is, you could have swapped out J.T. with a new, short-term, David Kimble-like character who ends up abusing and scaring Victoria and then bites it in the end, and the story would have been the same, with the same impact (or lack thereof) on everyone involved.

[Faulkner]

In theory, I admired Mal’s idea to make an abuser someone who doesn’t look the part instead of a person already known for extreme psychopathic violence like Michael or Kevin. As @ajsp35801 mentioned, abusers aren’t always so obvious, and making JT an abuser made me uncomfortable because I always liked him. But Mal wound up making what could have been a fascinating character study into a cheap plot point to push forward tired agendas and to pretend to be far more daring and envelope-pushing than he really was. It feels like a character was destroyed for no reason. We didn’t even get the chance to see the impact of the abuse on Reed, because Mal saw him as an inconvenience. It’s all very cynical.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Y&R like most soaps from the past decade, has had obvious problems with continuity and story cohesiveness but IMO, this new episode, new day strategy has exacerbated all the continuity flaws.  Some days you may be able to overlook it but overall, it hasn't been good for the basic storytelling aspect and it's pretty noticeable. 

 

It's all PR for something that flopped because the viewer never got a chance to see the 'changes' in JT onscreen over time (which could've been achieved by having the character make brief visits through the years, or at least one year before returning for an extended story arc).

And when you're trying to convince a long time viewer that that a character has undergone a change this extreme, you have to show us, show what the circumstances were that elicited such a change, so that you can justify the changes that happen.

For me, it just wasn't good enough to hear Mac say that JT's personality 'changed' because he couldn't hold the jobs he wanted. If that's the case then every guy who loses a job or spends time unemployed can suddenly turn into a wife beater.  Usually the signs are there from a very young age and being a 'bad boy' as a teen doesn't cut it either. I've known, even dated guys (in my 20s) who had rebellious streaks but were very respectful and found men who disrespected women in any way to be appalling.  This casts everyone in the same mold, which could be kind of insulting, severely lacking nuance, at the very least. 

[SteelCity]

Not on soaps, it's almost obligatory that if your man on soaps that you must have no ass. Very few have slipped by. Very few! I'm looking at you Eddie Cibrian!