Y&R: VICTORIA BUSTS BILLY
■ While going through the pockets of Billy’s jacket, Victoria comes across a receipt from the dive bar he’s been frequenting. “She’s known something’s up with Billy and this bar is a place that isn’t really normal for him,” notes Head Writer Josh Griffith. “It’s so out of the way that, of course, it would raise some red flags with her.”
Billy arrives home and acts like nothing is out of the ordinary. Victoria then shows him the receipt. “She sort of semicasually asks, ‘Do you want to explain this?’ ” Griffith shares. “He covers and comes up with a clever excuse in the moment that he was meeting a client and it was near the airport, but she doesn’t really buy it.”
Although convinced that Billy just lied to her, Victoria changes the subject, but the next day she visits her mom and shows Nikki the receipt. “Nikki’s in an interesting position because there’s the history of all the times that Billy has hurt Victoria, but Nikki also knows that usually it’s been because of his addictive personality,” explains the scribe. “As an addict, she knows that what this probably means is he’s in trouble and he needs help.”
Nikki asks if her daughter thinks Billy is gambling again and Victoria responds that she feels there’s something deeper involved. Victoria resolves to just ask Billy to be honest with her. “Nikki is helpful in getting Victoria to a place where she has to go forward and find out what’s going on,” Griffith notes. “Victoria doesn’t want to get mad or condemn Billy. She wants to ask what she can do to help.”
Which she knows could be a difficult conversation. “Billy’s whole point is, ‘That’s the problem. Everybody thinks I’m in trouble and that I need help; they don’t just see this aspect of my personality,’ ” points out Griffith. “This is a journey for him, too, to get to where he can say this is who I am. All along he’s saying, ‘If I talk to Victoria before I’m ready to talk to her, she’s going to try to fix me the way she always does.’ It’s Amanda who’s been helping him through this.”
Billy comes home to Victoria and they agree that they need to talk. “He’s at the point of saying, ‘I don’t think I need fixing,’ ” Griffith teases. “That opens the door to his coming to the realization that there’s no reason to lie about what’s going on because there’s nothing wrong in his mind. But we’ll see how Victoria feels about that.”