Thumbs up! down!
Best Of Show Or Worse For Wear? Digest Decides.
thumbs down! YOUNG AND RESTLESS Market Devaluation
Big business has long been a story staple on Y&R, but the recent flurry of acquisitions and takeovers not only all but requires a scorecard to keep track of who works where and who owns what, but isn’t creating enough drama to justify its screen time. To recap, Victor bought Ashland’s biz, Cyaxares, and renamed it Newman Media, not to be confused with Newman Enterprises, which is now known as Newman/ Locke. NE CEO Victoria sold Chanccomm to Chancellor Industries, then bought it back, and also recently acquired Newman Media, quickly jettisoning Chloe and Chelsea’s fashion platform. There’s a whole lot of shaking going on, but to what end? None of these transactions carry even a fraction of the emotional heft of the show’s best corporate sagas, such as the various fights for Jabot. Soap fans crave soaps’ romance, escapism and family drama, and while business shenanigans have their place, their frontand-center storyline status is dragging Genoa City down.
thumbs up! DAYS OF OUR LIVES She’s Baaaaack
Sarah’s return to DAYS, albeit in a fake, masked version of the real Salem heroine, has kicked off an intricate mystery involving many of the soap’s prominent players. Best of all, it’s brought actress Linsey Godfrey back to the canvas, inevitably leading to the real Sarah’s long-awaited return. The story was set in motion when Maggie asked Abigail to look into her daughter’s disappearance. Xander, who’s still carrying a torch for his ex, wanted in,
which sent new love Gwen into a tizzy, given what she knew (that Sarah didn’t really dump Xander, and had actually been abducted by a masked Kristen). Enter Ava, who, via Kristen, concocted a new Sarah impersonation plot to help her pal. Suspicious Abigail smelled a latex rat and peeled the mask right off “Sarah”, revealing Ava, but before she could get answers, Gwen clobbered her over the head and the shady Dimera pilot who whisked Sarah away showed up to do the same to Abby, doubling the show’s missing heroine count. With Chad determined to find his wife and Xander’s romantic future hanging in the balance, DAYS has launched a nifty new caper that could offer a huge payoff.
thumbs down! BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL The Defanged
B&B seemed poised for a storyline slam dunk when, hot on the heels of Sheila’s return, pot-stirring Deacon also came back to town. We expected big things out of this dream-team dastardly duo, but the results of their highly anticipated teamup have been lackluster. After the explosive reveal that Sheila is Finn’s birth mother, she has been reduced to bemoaning her lack of access to her kin, and while she was secretly responsible for Brooke falling off the wagon, that’s been followed up with a whole lot of nothing (i.e., her flashing back to the bottle label-switching ad nauseam). Meanwhile,
Deacon — he of the torrid affair with his mother-in-law that resulted in Hope — has been limited to the far less scandalous (one secret kiss with Brooke, and spending an otherwise chaste night with her above the sheets).
Kimberlin Brown (Sheila) and Sean Kanan (Deacon) have a crackling chemistry in their scenes together and so much potential to inflict serious dramatic damage across the canvas. So, come on, B&B — let’s get to it!