Y&R: Still The Best After All These Years?

The angel of plot contrivances plays no favorites. As we've seen in recent weeks, just about everybody was hit by some sort of damned convenient circumstance that led to unhappiness and drama. I'm not averse to plot contrivances, really I'm not, but piling them all on top of each other definitely qualifies as dramatic overkill.

However, I'm going to go off on a bit of a rant first: "Do You Plan On Keeping Your Property?" The question was posed to me by a faceless customer support rep calling me about my mortgage payment Friday night. Yes, she was just doing her job...but the tone of that question just set me the hell off and I took it out on her. But it wasn't until later that it occurred to me that that question could be applied to my favorite daytime drama.

Barbara Bloom and company: Do you plan on keeping your property? Or perhaps more accurately, keeping it at the top?

Y&R just celebrated eighteen years as the number one-rated daytime drama on television. Eighteen years. There's always been some debate on whether or not its timeslot and general lack of competition hasn't played a big part in that (though even allowing for that it's still a hell of a feat), but overall most people admit that it was a combination of superior storytelling and a hell of an ensemble cast that made it as dominant as it is/was. Sure, it and the folks who make/made it are not perfect (if nothing else the now-infamous recasting of Ashley Abbott in the 1990s with Shari Shattuck singlehandedly proves that). But there was always a gentle respect for most if not all things on the show...a certain respectful grace, even, which is sadly lacking from a lot of soaps these days.

No doubt that was William J. Bell's doing, and it was a thing he was left to do without overt interference from people above him...because it was working. But nothing lasts forever; Bell gradually relinquished full control over Y&R to (in no particular order) John F. Smith, Kay Alden, and a couple of others before he died in 2005. The thing about this comparatively brief period was that William J. Bell was still there. He was the shadow looming over everything--while those who replaced him at the big chair had their moments of oddness, William was still around to gently tap them on the shoulder and go "Hey, you know something?" And this was a good thing...even while things got strange and/or downright goofy, they didn't get too strange or too goofy (well, not often). They still had that certain grace. Y&R was still unique unto itself.

And then of course came the shift. It really started when Sally Sussman Morina was brought on as a consultant in the fall of 2005, but the obvious shift started when Lynn Marie Latham came aboard. And as much as I'd like to point a finger at her, I'm not going to: the style-to-substance ratio for Y&R had already been changing before she came aboard, and that combined with William J. Bell's absence seemed to have simply accelerated the process. CBS now had free rein to remake a classy, though moody and somewhat atmospheric, soap opera that had dominated the ratings...apparently in the image of the other soaps that were on the air. And so they are--though it's not completely changed yet, of course. There are still echoes of the classy, moody Y&R around...they're hidden behind the reliquary, and they're growing softer with each departure, but they're still there. The show's faster, tending towards more standalone--more predictable--stories...and while that has one short-term advantage in that it makes it easier for new viewers to jump in, it tends to wreak havoc for the long-time fans. Hell, it tends to wreak havoc for just about anybody who's been watching since before the middle of 2005. The worst thing is that it's substantially less subtle than anything else, which may be the real crime of it all; while just about every story in the soap pantheon has been done, it's the execution that makes or breaks how a particular version of a story goes. And if you're showing all your cards, deliberately or otherwise, during the execution...that's just not very much fun, is it?

And all this brings me to the thing that really prompted this rant: the one-two punch of the Daytime Emmy pre-nomination list.

Victoria Rowell's electing to leave the show ahead of the end of her existing contract. Victoria, one of the true class acts of Y&R, deciding to leave like this out of the blue was a shock to say the least--and it's sparked massive speculation about the reasoning behind it. For me, it just made me mad...God knows the lady has to do what she needs to do and doesn't need to answer to anybody about it. But coming as it does in the wake of the other extremely high-profile departures from the show in the last seven months--Jerry Douglas and Eileen Davidson--and combined with both the pre-nomination list and Victoria's own work ethic (this is the same lady who for a while juggled roles on Y&R and Diagnosis Murder), it just seems like an incredible and yet another unnecessary loss of great talent. Especially after this past year, where Drucilla Winters was definitely front and center for a large part of it. Okay, it's not her first departure from the show, and the implication is that she's leaving for greener pastures, but wow--if there's some sort of master plan at work, I damn sure can't see it from here.

In the end--the show's still good, even with all my complaining, but in an annoyingly parts-greater-than-the-whole way. And it's oddly...soulless...in rather large measure, and that frustrates the hell out of me. What's the point in having the best show on daytime TV if it's not recognizable as the best show on TV half of the time?