The Sorry, Sad and Atrocious State of The Young and the Restless

To begin, I want everyone to know that this is not an indictment on the entire cast itself, but rather on those responsible for running this show from behind the scenes.  Although, some cast members will not escape what I will have to say here.


Ever since the legendary and well loved show creator, head writer and executive producer Bill Bell Sr. stepped down from being a head writer at The Young and the Restless a decade or more ago due to the onset of Alzheimer's, (which is a disease that robs someone of their memory and it does eventually kill the person with the disease because the body and mind does not remember to do what it is supposed to do in order to stay alive), the show has been written and executive produced very poorly.  After Edward Scott, husband to Y&R star, Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki) was shown the door at Y&R and relieved of his duties as executive producer, that is when the show began its downward spiral.


First, it was Lynn Marie Latham as Executive Producer and Head Writer, along with her son as Co-Head Writer really wrote and produced this show by taking a very sharp left or right turn (you can pick) and having many of the characters do things that they would never do.  Under LML's rule, Victoria Rowell (Drucilla Barber Winters) decided to leave Y&R and LML ended up killing her character off the show.*  She also fired long-time cast member, Jerry Douglas (ex-John Abbott) by killing John off the show and she also fired Eileen Davidson (Ashley Abbott-McCall).  Eileen eventually did return to Y&R two years later after LML and company were fired by Sony Pictures because she refused to come into work and Executive Produce the show because she planned on staying on the picket lines during the Writers Strike of 2007-2008.

After LML was let go, Bill Bell Jr.'s wife, Maria Arena Bell was hired as Executive Producer and Head Writer.  She would later on add much maligned and hated co-executive producer, Paul Rauch and two new co-head writers, Scott Hamner and Hogan Sheffer, the latter of which is an multiple Emmy winning head writer from As The World Turns (ATWT) who was let go by ATWT after his writing went downhill.  He eventually went to Days of our Lives and didn't fare much better there either.  Unfortunately for the cast of Y&R, the MAB/Paul Rauch/Scott Hamner/Hogan Sheffer era has completely destroyed this once crown jewel of daytime television (Paul Rauch eventually left the show in 2010 or 2011 I believe, much to the relief of fans and cast alike).  


MAB had promised when she took over in 2008 that she would get a new show opening sequence with actor credits.  It only took her nearly 5 years to finally get around to doing it (it will debut later this month or in early June).  I don't even know why she's even bothering to do it now considering the state that the show is in and it looks like Y&R will NOT be re-newed after the current contract expires with Sony Pictures and CBS (which is 2014).


She eventually started bringing on characters that had no business being on Y&R in the first place (Cane, Colin, Genevieve are just a few of the many that she's brought on to the show).  She has completely destroyed characters with dialogue and actions that made no sense whatsoever.  Hired actors for roles that had been previously played by fan favorites only for those actors to turn out to be horrible re-casting decisions (Darius McCrary, Eden Reigel and Maura West come to mind).  Darius attempted to make the role of Malcolm Winters into his own but couldn't overcome the negative fan reaction and the immense popularity of the original Malcolm portrayed by Shemar Moore, who is now thriving in prime-time on CBS' hit crime drama, "Criminal Minds".  Eden Reigel, an Emmy winner from "All My Children", where she played Bianca Montgomery, Erica Kane's lesbian daughter took over the role of  Heather Stevens from popular actress Vail Bloom and again, Eden failed to win the fans over and when she came back from maternity leave, she unfortunately had to find out that she had been fired by Y&R via twitter, which Y&R and Sony pictures was scolded and given a lot of flak and hate mail for the way in which they handled Eden's termination.  Then Maria decided to hire recent unemployed actress and 2-time Emmy winner, Maura West to take over the role of Diane Jenkins, a role that should have been played by a much older actress (Maura is in her mid to late 30's).  Despite Maura taking the crappy writing that she was given and turning it into sugar (most of the time), she just could not overcome the negative fan reaction and Diane was killed off, which set off a nearly 9 month long murder mystery, which was horribly written and fans eventually lost interest and didn't care who killed Diane off anymore (fans eventually learned that recently returned to Genoa City, Nikki Newman (Melody Thomas Scott) had killed Diane in self-defense).  That storyline basically fizzled right from the beginning because Maria and her writing team just didn't know what to do with this storyline.  You have to give Maura praise because she knew two weeks into her time at Y&R that the role that she was playing was doomed from the beginning.  But Maura, being professional as ever, took the scripts that she was given and really gave it her all up until the character of Diane was killed off.


Then Maria hired the worst actress ever, Yvonne Zima to play Daisy Carter, the daughter of the evil nurse, Sheila that terrorized Genoa City and Los Angeles (where Y&R's sister soap The Bold and the Beautiful is located) for well over a decade).  Lucky for all of us, we will NEVER have to see Sheila again but by the same token, UNlucky for all of the fans is that we have to see one-note actress Yvonne Zima continue to get scripts and work as she tries to retain custody of her daughter, Lucy, the very daughter she abandoned on church steps and fled to Canada after she conked out her baby daddy, Daniel and pushed him out of the car and left him by the side of the road to die during the dead of winter.  Fans have been clamoring for Maria to fire the horrible actress for months now but Maria continues to terrorize and put the screws to the fans by continuing to have Yvonne on the show.  All at the same time, Maria has been hiring actor/actress left and right from recently canceled "All My Children" (Debbi Morgan, Melissa Claire Egan and Darnell Williams) along with "D" List actors, Catherine Bach and Bret Butler.  She also just recently re-casted the roles of Fenmore Baldwin and Summer Newman with teen-agers and she also re-casted the role of Kyle Abbott with a much older actor (who is not being well received by the fans already).  While doing all of this, this past Wednesday, May 9, 2012, came the shocking news that fan favorite, Emmy nominated actress, Eileen Davidson had been fired by Y&R............again!  Here's hoping that Eileen lands on her feet and returns to "Days of our Lives" to reprise the role of E.J. Dimera's (James Scott) mother.


Maria is also putting Sharon Newman in a relationship with Victor Newman, a man that would easily pass as her GRANDFATHER!  What did Sharon Case (Sharon) and Eric Braeden (Victor) ever do to Maria to deserve craptastic storyline material like that?!  As soon as I found out about this, I decided to not watch Y&R anymore.  I haven't watched for a week and quite frankly, I don't miss it one iota.


To sort of wrap this all up, Maria will now revisit a storyline from way back in the early 1990's when Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) nearly killed Christine Blair (Lauralee Bell) and rendered Paul Williams (Doug Davidson) impotent when she hit the both of them with her car.  To further my point that Maria Arena Bell cannot come up with her own original material, I wrote a blog back on September 4, 2011 titled, "What I would do if I were at the helm of Y&R?" (here's the link:  http://whatiwoulddoifiwereatthehelmofyr.blogspot.com/), I suggested that the show revisit this very storyline.  You'll have to read to nearly the bottom of that blog to see what I wrote.  Maria is now bringing back Lauralee Bell, Michael Damian (Danny Romalotti) and Aaron Lustig (Dr. Tim Reid) for this very storyline.  How much do you want to bet that Maria stole my idea for this storyline?  I'd bet a $1MILLION on it!  There is no way in sam hell that she would come up with that storyline on her own.  And if Maria says that the writers plan that far in advance, I'll tell her, "Yeah and I sell my used underwear that far in advance too."  Disgusting? Yes!  Necessary to get my point across!  Hell yes!


In closing, Maria, Scott Hamner and Hogan Sheffer ALL need to be fired from Y&R and Ed Scott needs to be brought back as Executive Producer and Kay Alden and Jack Smith need to be brought back to Head Write this show.  Unfortunately, I don't see this happening since Maria is married into the Bell family and they'd never fire her and Sony Pictures is too afraid of pissing the Bell family off to do it themselves.  So, we're stuck with MAB, Scott Hamner and Hogan Sheffer for the long run and in all liklihood, we'll see the end of Y&R fairly soon and their many fans (myself included) will obviously grieve at the loss of such an iconic daytime drama but will also breathe a sigh of relief that we won't have to be subjected to Maria's idiotic writing.  The following actors all need to be let go from Y&R:  Daniel Goddard (Cane Ashby), Genie Francis (Genevieve Atkinson), Christel Khalil (recast the role of Lily), Stephen Nichols (Tucker McCall), Debbi Morgan (Harmony), Darnell Williams (Sarge), Melissa Claire Egan (Chelsea), Ted Shackleford (Jeffrey), Julie Pace Mitchell (Sofia), Yvonne Zima (Daisy), Amelia Heinle (recast the role of Victoria), Judith Chapman (Gloria), Peter Porte (Ricky), Jessica Collins (Avery), Michelle Stafford (Phyllis), Michael Graziadei (Daniel), Michael Fairman (Murphy), Jessica Heap (Eden), Blake Hood (Kyle) and Catherine Bach (Anita).  Getting rid of all of these actors would free up so much money for the show to give their veterans the salaries that they deserve, upgrade their sets and much more.  But before any of this happens, Sony has to grow some balls and take the bull by the horns and fire Maria Arena Bell, Scott Hamner and Hogan Sheffer.  I really feel sorry for much of the long time cast members who've been saddled with such horrible scripts from Maria and her co-horts and I'm sorry that they have to go through some of the most disgusting storylines ever played out on daytime television.  As of right now, Maria Arena Bell is by far THE WORST HEAD WRITER in daytime serial storytelling.


'Nuff said! 


*  Thanks to an eagle eyed reader, he corrected me and said that Victoria Rowell left during the LML period, NOT the MAB period.  My apologies for the error.