Y&R July 2023 Discussion Thread

[1974mdp]

ITA about all the business storylines. There are so many vague companies that are constantly talked about in coffeehouses and restaurants, and to be honest, I couldn't care less who's the CEO at Chancellor-Winters-Marchetti-McCall-Kirsten-Newman this week or who it will be next week. At this rate, Esther will be starting her own multi-million-dollar mystery company soon, Valentine Inc! It's puzzling to me that the writers think this non-stop talking about corporate takeovers qualifies as interesting conflicts to their target viewers. I just can't imagine how many viewers are on the edge of their seat about who's going to buy McCall Unlimited. Snooze.

The Jabot stuff was interesting in the 80s and 90s because we often saw people at work. We knew what the company did, and it was the scene for inter-family conflict. And, it was ONE company. Hell, at this point, you need a scorecard to keep track of who's working at what vague company this week. The show really needs to get out of the board room and back into the bedroom, so to speak. Not to mention, we need some more young, well-developed character and also restless ones as well (people who aren't already rich and are trying to improve their lot in life) to balance out the canvas.

I would rest both Billy and Adam. Both don't really to have much of a purpose right now, and it would free up $$$ to hire some fresh non-Abbott or Newman characters. The two families are so intertwined at this point, they're basically one. How many times can an Abbott marry a Newman? I was disappointed though that the show dropped Allie so soon and never really developed her character. It was nice to see some more diversity on the show finally. The show made her too much a goody-goody. It would have been great to find out that she has a deep, dark secret as well.

I think the real MVPs right now are Susan Walters and Zuleyka Silver. The return of Diane injected some much needed energy in the show, and SW plays her so well. Diane may be "redeemed" but you can still see the spark of the bad girl in her eyes as she still manages to more, low-key stir up trouble.

ZS really takes the sometimes ho-hum material she gets and shines into gold. I love how she stirs the pot and is so focused on what she wants in life and will use anyone in her orbit to get it. When Audra told Kyle that she "loves pretty things" ZS managed to use that line to say so much about her character. The show would be wise to use her even more and bigger. Maybe develop a family around her which would also give us more insight on who she is and why she does the things she does and mix up the canvas more...which it needs badly!

[Faulkner]

You also have characters like Summer and Kyle, who seem like self-involved overgrown teenage dolts, running thriving global fashion brands, and supposedly brilliant at it(!), and we’re supposed to just roll with that. It’s one thing to be incompetent or immature in your personal life and great in business, but we don’t see their corporate brilliance in action.

Soaps have always depicted police officers and doctors who were shown to be bumbling failures, but at least we saw them doing their jobs. Summer and Kyle as these great CEOs just beggars belief. To me, it makes them hard to really accept as characters.

In addition to the lack of budget for sets and props (which I think is probably most of the issue), I think these writers feel that actually showing the business of fashion or cosmetics or technology is too “in the weeds” for viewers. The writers of yesteryear somehow made it interesting as well as tied to character and story. Yet JG and company mistakingly think that CEO musical-chairs and superficial discussions of business plans are more compelling, when they’re actually a snooze. Go figure.

Seriously, what is happening with CLB’s eye?

 

[Vee]

Given the uber-messy state of the gaming industry, from consumers to devs to labor to development cycles and content, there are absolutely Y&R-style stories to be told about the video game business. I can imagine seeing one of the leads or their company blundering in with some sort of high-end, edgy game that goes sideways due to content or one of the devs' pasts or all of the above, just like the many ups and downs with Tuvia and Safra or whatever else. But Y&R just pretends to tell 'business stories' now in all the perfunctory ways people have already mentioned.

[Faulkner]

Kyle trying to convince Mariah to leave Jabot (as selfish as it is) would have more weight if Mariah were actually shown working.

[DramatistDreamer]

Good points made, one and all.
Jack surely had the right idea to let Kyle go, if he couldn’t accept a demotion. Now he should make the same decision with Summer. The mistake is having Audra immediately extend a job offer to Kyle, we should have seen Kyle try to send in his CV to other corporations and get rejected , usually because of his reputation in NYC getting around and/or the executive recruiters at these corporations making the assumptions that Kyle is only temporarily on the outs with his dad and will eventually reconcile and return to Jabot. We should see Audra plotting whether to scoop up Kyle to work for her, weighing the pros and cons, and what could be in it for her before extending an offer to him and Kyle, desperate and dejected, would have been primed to take whatever Audra has to offer.

Kyle tries to plant the seed for Mariah to leave Jabot. Is that supposed to hasten some sort of conflict within Mariah? At the exact same time that her mother Sharon is embarking on starting and/or merging her newly acquired company? Regardless of what happens, Mariah and her brood will never be in danger of going hungry or being homeless, that’s for certain.

The main problems having to do with sets, is really about not having enough sets but of not having the expensive looking sets suitable for wealthy people who live in mansions and work in C-Suites of billion dollar corporations and conglomerates. If the majority of these characters worked as customer service representatives or traveling salespeople, sets wouldn’t mean much to whether the storylines succeeded or failed. Now sets take on an outsized importance because everyone has to be wealthy. The last times the show had working class/blue collar characters, they didn’t even know how to write for them. 

[BoldRestless]

They could work the lack of sets into the story a little better. I was ok with seeing Jill on Zoom because Jess Walton lives far away and it makes total sense for Jill to meet with executives that way. It's cringe having Lily and Devon talk about all the floors full of workers at Chancellor - whose offices Chloe and Sally are now redecorating. 

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 It would make so much more sense to just say they moved to a new building where everyone is remote except the C-suite. That office is all we see or are ever going to see. Somehow these people can work from anywhere, with many characters having no offices at all, but also, they often have to "come home/go to the office to pick up a file." It's so contrived. 

 

The business plots on Y&R used to have multiple layers. You had worker bees like Ryan, Neil, and Brad who had to strive for promotions. You had Jill waltzing into an executive position needing to prove herself. Victor and John were the founders of their companies who commanded a certain level of respect. Jack, Ashley, and Victoria were nepo-babies with varying levels of business acumen. You had models like Dru, Diane, or Cricket around interacting with these characters and involved in romances. The interactions and conflicts in the office correlated to personal lives. 

 

Another thing they used to do well was legal stuff. I was reminded of that when skimming through the Nicholas trial for Matt Clark's shooting and the Danny/Phyllis divorce and custody stuff. For whatever money it took to put up the courthouse set, they could really wring weeks and weeks of good drama out of that. Every day they would be hanging around court talking about strategy for the day, wondering who would testify, taking the time to go through testimony, then court breaks, then cross-examination, then debriefing after court. One set of characters in the hallway and the other set in the empty courtroom, strategizing. And there was really something at stake. 

 

GH is the hospital soap so they invested in a big hospital set which I assume stays up all the time. B&B is the fashion soap so they keep the Forrester sets and do enough for the ocassional small fashion show. If Y&R wants to be the business soap, they have to show more than 1-2 offices and the coffeehouse. 

 

[Liberty City]

The ultimate problem is The Young and the Restless has no over-night set crew and have not since COVID, so that's why the community sets stayed up (Crimson Lights, The Grand Phoenix), and you had a couple of home sets.  Clearly, putting the GCAC back up was a major task, and it is why they're using it so often.

[1974mdp]

Exactly! We rarely see anyone working, so we don't care about the musical chair CEOs.

[DramatistDreamer]

I also wonder whether Audra will turn out to be one-note, one-dimensional. It’s especially important for characters, particularly vixens to show vulnerability, even if only in private. It’s necessary that viewers see some vulnerability, so when/if the character goes out of her way to hide it, we still know that somewhere deep, it still exists.

[1974mdp]

Exactly! Fleshing out her backstory and telling us where she came from would go a long ways in also making her sympathetic. She strikes me as the type of character who came up with little money and has fought tooth and nail to get where she is today.

[DramatistDreamer]

She doesn’t need to be a sympathetic character, just so there are different sides to her, where we feel as if there is some impetus for her actions beyond the most basic motivations.

Edited July 16, 2023 by DramatistDreamer

[Paul Raven]

I get the feeling that like so many others, Audra is not a fully fleshed out character. The actress was probably given little background to work with. Josh probably does this to give him flexibility moving forward but it comes across as a character with little substance.

Do we know anything about Audra's past?

Re the businesses-even with more insight into the gaming industry I don't think most viewers would be that interested compare to cosmetics.

All these different businesses require sets so it would make more sense to focus on Jabot, have several characters  and have a few sets dedicated to that business where various characters could interact.

One other thing that bugs me is the lack of supporting characters. I get that the budget can't support them on an ongoing basis but surely they could introduce say a PA for  Devon-a day player. He/she could appear once in a while and the rest of the time be mentioned .

Same for staff-an U/5 at the Newman Ranch 'yes Mrs Newman' only needs to be seen a few times but established that they are there.

An extra as a secretary at the desk at Jabot etc

From time to time they have used a small space-two walls as a set and it has worked. An easy way to create an office space or bedroom when needed.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

If viewers had seen Daniel as a teen, loving, practically being addicted to video games (which would have made sense since m uh, Phyllis), I think tptb could have gotten viewers to care. You would be surprised how you could get viewers/audience to care about something if you care enough to write something with detail and specificity and tie it to a character with a degree of popularity. It’s truly possible.

Also, if you have at least one or two, or better yet a series of crisis (big and small) that raise the stakes. The added problem of having a product that doesn’t seem real is that there are no real stakes, any conflicts or crises will seem manufactured and artificial when the concepts that they are built on don’t seem real.

[Cruising Soaps]

The problem with Audra was that she was to cause problems for Noah and Allie.  Then JG shipped them off to Europe.  The real story behind how Noah and Audra met, the miscarriage, and the breakup wasn't really fully flushed out.  

[AMCHistory]

I've been out of the loop on this show. Did JT ever make a return to Genoa City, or did we only get that stilted ZOOM call, clearly shot on Thad's iPhone in his new bachelor pad?

It's good to know that JT is actually still alive. I would love to know what relationship, if any, he has with Mac and his kids.