Y& R MARKS 40 SOAPY YEARS
What do you get when you last for four decades, when you are a household name to millions of North American television viewers, when you win awards for your stellar work, and when your stars cause mini- riots just by walking through an airport?
What you get, mostly, is no respect. At least from the snobberazzi, which is to say elitists who think the only decent television on the air is that which has the word documentary in its title.
Which is odd because, half a century on, the daytime soap opera has outlived, outlasted and outsmarted most of its broadcast competitors; the ultimate survivor in the television wars that have left hundreds of sitcoms, cartoons, game shows, prime- time dramas, comedies and talk fests in its ratings wake.
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the CBS debut of The Young and The Restless, the top- rated daytime soap that has delivered its shocking, sad, sexy, silly and often controversial storylines to record numbers of North American viewers.
The truth is there is little else of a similar nature on the tube that has such a venerable pedigree, or has kept such loyal fans, so much so that many of the viewers today grew up watching the show with their moms.
They will tell you that Y& R is their secret addiction, and to prove it they can reel off the number of times Victor Newman has been married ( 14, four times to Nikki Reed), along with the number of his children ( four with three different women). They will also tell you that Eric Braeden, who has portrayed Newman for 33 years on the show, is one of the most enigmatically ruthless blackguards on television.
They will tell you, too, that he has good- looking children. One of them is the show’s resident hunk, 39- year- old Joshua Morrow, who has portrayed Victor’s son Nicholas since 1994.
In town recently for The Spring West Coast Women’s Show at the PNE, Morrow mused about the longevity of Y& R and what keeps it at the top of a diminishing heap when so many other soaps have long called it a wrap.
“It’s the fans,” said Morrow. “We tell the stories that they are committed to.”
Langley’s Janis Wilson and her 10- year- old son Dane were on hand for a meet and greet with Morrow, and 52- year- old Wilson was delighted to say she has watched Y& R for 25 years “because they tell stories that the audience can relate to.” She recalls a storyline about cancer that helped her get through her own travails with radiation and chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer six years ago.
The first soap opera, Painted Dreams, hit radio airwaves in 1930 and eventually gave rise to a packed daily television lineup of more than a dozen soaps that had their characters exploring often controversial and closeted issues of the day — from spousal abuse, promiscuity, incest and homosexuality to AIDS, bulimia, addiction, cancer, depression and bullying.
The bodice- ripping love scenes, often stilted dialogue, murderous plots, unlikely disasters and static sets were de rigueur, but did little to lessen the serials’ popularity and audiences tuned in by the millions. ( And, yes, they were called soaps because companies like Procter & Gamble and Lever Brothers used the captive audience of mostly housewives to advertise their cleaning products).
Today, there are only four soap operas still on the air — Y& R, General Hospital, Days of Our Lives and The Bold and The Beautiful. The decline of the once- healthy genre is attributed to changing cultures, including more women working outside the home, and a younger generation that is increasingly distracted by other cable and Internet diversions.
But through it all, Y& R has hung on, its complicated cliffhanging storylines centred around the Newman, Abbott and Chancellor families of Genoa City, Wis. The show and its actors have won seven daytime Emmys and it continues to attract up to five million viewers every weekday, all year long ( there are no reruns or breaks, but for Christmas and the odd U. S. holiday) — a phenomenal achievement when, just to put it in perspective, far fewer people watch the Stanley Cup Final or the U. S. Open golf tournament.
Co- created in 1972 by the late William J. Bell and his wife Lee Phillip Bell, Y& R was originally titled The Innocent Years, which was changed when the Bells decided that America wasn’t really that innocent. It also began as a half- hour show, but soon expanded to an hour. William was Y& R’s executive producer and head writer until he retired in 1998. His daughter- in- law Maria Bell assumed his role from 2008 until 2012, when she was fired, reportedly for the unpopular storyline that had Victor Newman marrying his daughter- inlaw Sharon.
In The Young and Restless Life of William J. Bell, published last year and co- written in part by Lee Phillip Bell, actor David Hasselhoff, who starred on Y& R from 1975 to 1982, wrote in the book’s foreword that Bell was always there to tell the truth “in a positive way.”
That, in the end, may be the secret to the show’s success.
It may be that Y& R still survives because, despite its schlocky reputation and the derision of media critics, it’s really just a tarted- up reflection of our own lives, or the lives we’d like to live.
Speaking earlier this week on The Talk, actor Peter Bergman, who portrays the show’s perpetually lovelorn patriarch Jack Abbott, says fans stick around because of “the continuity. When you turn on Y& R, you know what you’re going to see.”
That, he says, and the fact “that we shower together.”