The Young and the Restless

The Young and the Restless (commonly abbreviated to Y&R) is an American soap opera that takes place in Genoa City, Wisconsin (named after a vacation spot that series creators William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell visited annually). It first debuted on the CBS television network on March 26, 1973, replacing Where the Heart Is (soap opera) and Love is a Many Splendored Thing. Y&R has aired over eight thousand episodes.

History

The Young and the Restless stood out from other soaps on the air for its brightness, both literal and figurative. Soap operas at the time tended to be comparatively darkly-lit and lugubrious in tone. The Young and the Restless infused light, humor and youth into the genre. In its early years, The Young and the Restless centered around the Foster and Brooks families. William and Elizabeth Foster had three children: Snapper, Greg, and Jill. Stuart and Jennifer Brooks had four daughters: Leslie, Chris, Peggy, and Lauralee (nicknamed Lorie and played by Jaime Lyn Bauer; her father would turn out to be Elizabeth Foster's brother, Bruce Henderson). At the core of the show was a class struggle: the Brooks family was rich while the Fosters were poor. The young cast was derided by some soap fans, who mocked the show by calling it "The Young and the Chestless". Leslie and Lorie fought over first Brad Eliot and then Lance Prentiss, a triangle stretched into four when Lance's sea captain brother Lucas arrived.

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One of Y&R's first and longest-lasting storylines involved the rivalry between Katherine Chancellor (Jeanne Cooper) and Jill Foster (Jess Walton). In 1973 Jill (then played by Deborah Adair) went to work as Kay's personal secretary to help her struggling family pay the bills. Kay was a boozy matron trapped in a loveless marriage to Phillip Chancellor (Donnelly Rhodes). Jill and Phillip fell in love but when Phillip and Kay were on their way to get a divorce, Kay crashed the car (with decades of speculation on whether she did so intentionally). Phillip, on his deathbed, married Jill and bequeathed her and their child Phillip III his fortune, but Kay successfully contested his decision. An embittered Jill (then Brenda Dickson) became a vixen and the two ladies fought over beautician Derek Thurston. Jill then married tycoon John Abbott (Jerry Douglas) while Kay went through groundbreaking stories about alcoholism and facelifts. Years later Jill, after her 2 marriages to John were over and her son Phillip was dead from a car crash, went back to court and the judge declared she owned half of the Chancellor mansion. Jill and Kay fought over the new arrangement as well as Jill's son Billy dating Kay's granddaughter Mackenzie. In 2003 Jill discovered that Katherine was her birth mother, and told Billy and Mac moments before they consummated their relationship. In 2004 Jill's birth father Arthur (David Hedison) briefly visited, and mother and daughter fought over him while Kay again battled her drinking problem.

Related Topics:
Jeanne Cooper - Jess Walton - Deborah Adair - Donnelly Rhodes - Brenda Dickson - Jerry Douglas - 2003 - 2004 - David Hedison

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Although Lorie Brooks was initially little more than the bad girl who tormented pure sister Leslie, she became a lead in her own right as she battled her sister over custody of Leslie's son Brooks, and battled her psychotic mother-in-law Vanessa (who even killed herself just to frame Lorie for the crime). Lorie acted and reacted based on her neuroses and was as much a child as a woman, naughty as well as sympathetic, a template for many future Y&R female leads. Most of the Brooks and Foster families had been recast again and again by the early 80's, and when Bell decided to expand Y&R to an hour in 1980, many lead actors said they could not sustain themselves on an hour show. Bell told himself he would wait for one more major departure before making big changes. When Jaime Lyn Bauer quit in 1982 due to exhaustion, Bell took the opportunity to write out all of the Brooks and Fosters, save Jill. Gradually, the focus shifted from the Brooks and Foster families to the Williams, Newman and Abbott families and around their respective companies, Newman Enterprises and Jabot Cosmetics. Most of the Williams family have been phased out but the other two families remain. Y&R is one of the only shows in the history of daytime to eliminate their original core families and benefit from the result.

Related Topics:
1980 - 1982

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Around the same time Bell phased out the originals, Eric Braeden arrived as the sinister tycoon Victor Newman who was so menacing to his wife Julia (Meg Bennett) that he locked her boyfriend in a dungeon and forced him to watch Victor and Julia's bedroom via closed-circuit camera. Bell saw something in Braeden's performance and since the show had few strong male characters, elevated him to star status. Soon after, Victor went to a strip club and met brash yet innocent Nikki Reed. Nikki had gone through a number of second-tier stories (killing her rapist dad, getting an STD from Paul Williams, joining a cult) but as played by Melody Thomas Scott was a naughty antiheroine in the Lorie Brooks mold. She married Victor in a lavish 1984 wedding and their love-hate relationship suffered many divorces, affairs and remarriages involving everyone from Abbotts to blind Kansas farm women to gynecologists. After over a decade apart, they reunited in 1998 and have basically been together since.

Related Topics:
Eric Braeden - Meg Bennett - Melody Thomas Scott - 1984 - 1998

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The Young and the Restless is also one of the few soaps to have successfully integrated a number of African American actors into its cast. In the mid-80's Y&R created a storyline which revolved around a young black man being made up in whiteface to bring down a mafia kingpin, but the characters were written out within a few years. The introduction of the Winters family and the Barber sisters in the early 1990s interacted fairly well with the established characters when given the dialogue and the situations to do so. The new characters were created after Generations earned critical acclaim for casting an entire African American family from the show's inception. Established hits like The Young and the Restless were criticized as the show had a low number of minorities (the Barber sisters, for example, were tied to one of the two black characters on the show at the time: the Abbott maid, Mamie Johnson, played by Margeurite Ray, then Veronica Redd. The other character, Nathan Hastings, was married off to Barber sister Olivia (Tonya Lee Williams) before dying in a hit and run in 1996).

Related Topics:
African American - 1990s - Generations - Margeurite Ray - Veronica Redd - Tonya Lee Williams - 1996

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Critics of Y&R continued to deride the show even after its integration, noting that, most of the time, the core black characters largely interacted with themselves only. In the case of Winters siblings Neil (Kristoff St. John) and Malcolm (Shemar Moore), and Barber sisters Olivia and Drucilla (Victoria Rowell), they were shown to usually just swap each other's partners when a "shake-up" was needed in the romantic scheme of the story, leading to a seemingly neverending love quadrangle between the four characters that gained the nickname "Four Square" from fans and critics alike. Later actions have proven that this choice was due to the supposition that it was ostensibly "too controversial" to have an interracial pairing. Indeed, a pairing in the late 1990s between Neil Winters and Victoria Newman was axed by CBS executives, who were rumored to have received many angry phone calls and letters by viewers in the South. In 2004, a love affair between web designer Phyllis Abbott (Michelle Stafford) and chemist Damon Porter (Keith Hamilton Cobb) was prominently featured, despite concerns that the interracial pairing would be scrapped just like the one that was written before.

Related Topics:
Kristoff St. John - Shemar Moore - Victoria Rowell - Quadrangle - South - 2004 - Web designer - Michelle Stafford - Keith Hamilton Cobb

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Unlike other soaps in the 80's or 90's, Y&R avoided preachy social issues. When they did touch on such issues as abortion or the homeless crisis or AIDS, it was only as a plot device with a few facts and statistics thrown in for effect. For instance, when Ashley Abbott (Eileen Davidson) aborted Victor's child in the 80's, any viewers or scholars who may have looked for a serious story on the pros and cons of abortion would have been disappointed. Ashley only aborted her baby because her lover Victor's wife, Nikki, was then-terminally ill, and Ashley did not want to cause her pain. After learning of her abortion, Victor ripped her to shreds, causing a devastated Ashley to lose her mind and wind up in an insane asylum (in true soap fashion, she married her psychiatrist).

Related Topics:
Abortion - AIDS - Eileen Davidson

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One social issue which was too hot for Y&R was homosexuality. In the mid-70's, lonely society matron Kay Chancellor befriended an overweight, unhappy housewife named Joann Curtis. Kay moved Joann into her home and helped her get a better self-image. Soon, Kay's son Brock wondered about all the time the ladies were spending together, as Kay planned a special vacation to Hawaii for herself and Joann. The ratings dropped and outraged fan letters poured in. Bell quickly dropped the relationship, wrote out Joann, and the show stabilized.

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A relatively controversial fixture on the show for several decades was Bell's daughter, Lauralee. Lauralee debuted in 1983 in a bit part as photographer Joe Blair's teenage cousin Cricket. As Lauralee grew up, Christine became more and more prominent, to the point where 1988 storylines had 4 different men madly in love with her. Longtime fan favorite Terry Lester (Jack Abbott) left the show in 1989 and blamed her partly, claiming that the excessive airtime given to Cricket drowned out the other performers. Christine married rock star Danny (Michael Damian) then private eye Paul Williams (Doug Davidson), became an attorney and asked people to refer to her as "Chris", but remained a somewhat saccharine central heroine. At one point in 1996 the show hinted at a romance between Christine and the much older Victor Newman - negative viewer reaction killed the story. Later Christine became involved with Michael Baldwin (Christian LeBlanc), who had stalked her years earlier. This led to a controversial storyline where Paul, angry at his ex-wife's new love, raped Christine - many fans could not believe heroic Paul would ever do such a thing, and were upset by scenes which said that the two had simply had "rough sex" that Christine could not admit she wanted. Christine and Paul got back together but eventually split for good. By 2003 or so, Lauralee Bell's marriage and children, as well as a successful clothing store, diminished her onscreen airtime and paved the way for other characters. In early 2005 she announced her move from contract to recurring status.

Related Topics:
1983 - 1988 - Terry Lester - 1989 - Michael Damian - Doug Davidson - 1996 - Christian LeBlanc - 2003 - 2005

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While heavy recasting is considered to have doomed some series such as Ryan's Hope and Love is a Many Splendored Thing, many would agree that Y&R's casting choices were some of the best in the genre. Most important characters were played by the same actor for decades; if they left the show, the characters left with them. When leads were recast, the replacements were often popular and remade the character in their own image, such as Peter Bergman's Jack Abbott, Susan Walters' Diane Jenkins, Jess Walton's Jill Foster Abbott or Judith Chapman's Gloria Abbott. When Y&R did make the occasional casting blunder, such as the brief 1997 replacement for Heather Tom's Victoria Newman, Sarah Aldrich, the mistake was quickly rectified when Tom returned to the show (Tom left the show again in 2003 and in 2005, the show found former All My Children star Amelia Heinle, who was an instant hit in the role). The recent recast of Mackenzie Browning from Ashley Bashioum to Rachel Kimsey, met a so-so reception from fans, yet ratings stayed flat. Kimsey is still in the role, and is showing no signs of leaving the show in the near future.

Related Topics:
Ryan's Hope - Love is a Many Splendored Thing - Peter Bergman - Susan Walters - Jess Walton - Judith Chapman - 1997 - Heather Tom - Sarah Aldrich - 2003 - 2005 - All My Children - Amelia Heinle - Ashley Bashioum - Rachel Kimsey

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Along with every other daytime soap, Y&R has suffered audience erosion, with particularly noticeable losses from 2001 to the present day. The show, in response to the bleeding, took some power away from longtime backstage brass like Edward Scott and Kay Alden, instead relying on headwriter Jack Smith. Another highly publicized move was the rehiring of Shemar Moore (Malcolm Winters) for a limited run. Moore was extremely popular with African-American viewers, and the show lost a health chunk of that demographic upon his 2001 departure. Although fans were happy to see him return, Malcolm's new storyline garnered mixed reviews at best, and the ratings barely nudged. In another high-profile storyline, Nick and Sharon's young daughter Cassie (Camryn Grimes), beloved by fans, was killed off. In spite of rave reviews from the soap press, the ratings stayed flat.

Related Topics:
2001 - Edward Scott - Kay Alden - Jack Smith - Shemar Moore - Camryn Grimes

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