Alan’s Soap Box: Top 10 Ways to Fix The Young & the Restless

10. Have A Black Couple

Everyone has noticed Lily, Devon and Nate are all dating white people. This is par for the course for Lily who has never had sex with a Black man, but Devon and Nate were usually paired with Black women, so it is a notable shift. On one hand, it is a sign of progress since when Y&R tried to pair Neil and Victoria in the ’90s, it led to death threats and the show buckled under the pressure. On the other hand, it could send the message that for a Black character to be relevant they have to be dating a white character.

The show could fix this without ending any of these pairings. They could just bring back Lily’s son Charlie and he could bring a Black girlfriend to Genoa City with him. Christel Khalil is about to turn 36 years old so she’s reached the TV age where you can play the parent to adults without it looking too absurd. It would also benefit the Winters family to develop the next generation. They could even play on the great The Young & The Restless tradition of the mother hating her son’s girlfriend. Nikki hated Sharon and Jill hated Nina because they saw themselves in them. I would want Lily to have that dynamic with Charlie’s girlfriend.

9. Make Nikki A Lady Who Lunches Again

It was never Bill Bell’s vision for Nikki to have a corporate job. He saw her as a woman in a gilded cage who played the piano and planned galas in between falling off the wagon. She was never meant to be looking at spreadsheets and running a media company. Nikki Newman should not have a job.

Not every soap character should have a job. Some characters should just be rich. If you were married to a billionaire, would you be working? I doubt it. And this doesn’t just apply to women. I don’t want Spencer on GH to have a job either. He can just sit around on his rich bubble butt and love Trina. There are real rich people who just have idle lives and soaps should reflect that. The drama for these types of characters are in their romantic lives and family drama. They aren’t meant to be looking at quarterly earnings reports.

8. Have Chance Stop Being A Cop

Chance being a cop would be fine and dandy if this were Days or GH where cops are used in stories, but The Young & The Restless only needs a cop character twice a year, if that. So it doesn’t make sense to have Chance be chief of police. I realize Maria Arena Bell caused this problem when she brought on the first adult Chance, but it shouldn’t continue.

It would be easy to get him out of that career. Have Chance’s sperm suddenly start working when he inevitably porks Summer. Then, let him have a near death experience with a robber. He could realize he wants to see his child with Summer grow up and quit. Then Chance could work at his birthright Chancellor/Winters or maybe he could run for mayor. Let’s just get the gun out of his hands and the show can hire a soap vet to be the recurring cop character.

7. Hire Breakdown Writers

The consequence of half-assed outlines is black and white flashbacks of recent scenes so episodes can hit the runtime they need. Josh Griffith fired the breakdown writers before the strike so I don’t see it being fixed when the normal writing staff material starts airing again. Josh is still doing the “streamlined” process, just with the normal script writers and co-head writer Amanda Beall.

It is just untenable long term. Whenever Josh vacates his numerous jobs, his replacement is going to want breakdown writers like the other soaps. If they brought on Ron Carlivati or Sara Bibel, they would not say “I want to do every job! I’ll write the outlines! I’ll clean Melody Thomas Scott’s toilet with a toothbrush. I’ll rub Eric Braeden’s feet while reciting Lord Byron’s poetry! I’ll sew Sharon Case a ballgown!” Being head writer is already the hardest job in the entertainment industry. You aren’t going to find anyone else who wants it to be more difficult. Josh Griffith is the only one who wants to be Cinderella.

6. Kill Tucker Off

Trevor St. John is already giving off corpse energy every episode so it would be fitting if Tucker died. What story is there left to tell with Tucker? I can’t think of anything. Not even his biological connection to Katherine makes him worth keeping. They already have Devon to be Katherine’s legacy on the canvas and if they needed more, they could bring back Mackenzie and her two sons. Tucker is a subpar antagonist and not needed on the canvas.

5. Let Diane Be A Bitch

You could have all the therapy in the world and it would not make you a saint. It is ridiculous that Diane is so zen in the face of two years of harassment from half the town. It was so satisfying when she choked Phyllis out at the gala earlier this year, but that was just a moment. They don’t have to regress the character fully. She can still be a loving wife to Jack and have some bite. There’s a middle ground to be found.

I worry that Susan Walters will be so bored with this material that she won’t want to re-sign her contract. It is imperative that they keep her. Jack went three years without a pairing before Susan returned as Diane. Peter Bergman even publicly complained about it. I know they could recast Diane if Susan left, but I would prefer they try to keep her. Peter and Susan work so well together that I don’t want to lose that dynamic. Just give Susan the writing she deserves so I don’t have to hear “The role of Diane Jenkins will now be played by Jamie ‘Turbo’ Luner.”

4. Write An Actual Story For Mariah and Tessa

An offscreen adoption is one of the most embarrassing stories I’ve ever seen on soaps. Mariah and Tessa are one of the most popular couples on Y&R and they continuously get treated like they are Doug and Julie on Days. That old couple a soap trots out to be cute and talk to the characters that have stories. We know why Teriah doesn’t get treated well. They are afraid the bigots on Facebook will get fussy if the lesbians are treated like actual characters and not sapphic decoration.

There are actual stories you could play out with Tessa and Mariah. We’ve never met Tessa’s parents. If Y&R actually cared about Tessa, they would have had a soap vet playing Tessa’s trashy mother for three to six months. There’s also Mariah’s backstory of being raised in a cult that could be mined for stories. How would that impact her as a mother? They could actually be using Mariah and Tessa for stories like this and not treating Camryn Grimes and Cait Fairbanks like they are dayplayers.

3. Have More Young and Young-ish Romance

The Young & The Restless does not currently have a buzzy under 40 pairing. They don’t have a Thope or Sprina that inspire people to make fan edits and squee over how sexy they are. Teriah could be this, but they get scraps so that limits the amount of buzz they get. They need to develop the younger generations and have them fucking each other so the young-ish characters can stop fucking the middle-aged characters. I love Sharon, but she doesn’t need to be banging Chance. Sally was greatly damaged by bouncing on Nick.

This show could have twentysomethings if they desired it. There’s Reed, Charlie and Mattie who could all be brought back. It is important to have diversity in age groups on soaps. The youngest person on contract at Y&R is Hayley Erin and she’s 29. It is ridiculous that the age range on a show called The Young and the Restless is 30 to having a seat in the shower old. This needs to be fixed for the show to have a future. The last time this show was actually invested in young characters and their romantic lives was 20 years ago when Kay Alden was writing.

2. More Personal Stories

I don’t care about who runs a media company that didn’t exist last week. I don’t care about rotating job titles. We’ve overdosed on mergers and acquisition stories. Let’s focus less on meaningless business stories and focus on the inner lives of characters. The business stuff could be background noise. I want to see messy personal drama and perhaps some plot driven stories. Shit, they could do a baby switch and doppelgangers and it would be welcome at this point. I’d rather watch Summer’s newly introduced twin Bummer lock her in a cage than hear about Newman Media ever again.

1. Stabilize Victor and Adam’s Father/Son Relationship

We’ve gone through so many cycles of Victor dangling a carrot in Adam’s face and then beating him with that carrot for being foolish enough to think he’d get the carrot. It is tired and played out. Every time it looks like Victor and Adam will make peace, it seems like the show realizes Eric Braeden still has gas left in the tank and regresses it back to the status quo. It feels like watching the same episode over and over.

It doesn’t help that Josh Griffith seems to be trying for a Succession type vibe. Victor was playing his children off each other long before Logan Roy was yelling “Boar on the floor!” Yet he’s managed to make it feel like a ripoff with his shoddy writing. I guess that’s a talent.

They could have Victor and Adam reach peace and still have Adam feuding with his siblings. There’s unexplored paths there as well. How does Abby feel about Victor acting like he only has three children? What if she teamed up with Adam to try to get a bigger piece of the pie when Victor dies? There are ways to play this that are interesting and not just hitting the same beats year after year. Eric Braeden is 82 years old. He doesn’t need to be playing a story where Victor is faking an illness to test his children.

The Young & The Restless is currently streaming on Paramount Plus.

Dispatches From Soap Land

*Frank Valentini can have Finn sucking on Elizabeth’s fingers all he wants, but GH fans still aren’t going to accept that pairing. A colonoscopy was sexier than that scene. Frank will never stop being so stubborn to his own detriment. It is his fatal flaw as an executive producer.

*Gabi and Stefan on Days faking that Kristen abused Rachel just so they can get DiMera shares was disgusting. Does Peacock just not look at long story and scripts? It is crazy that I want executive meddling, but we’ve gotten to that point.

*Li on B&B acting like Lady Catherine de Bourgh from Pride and Prejudice was hilarious. Demanding your niece not work at a fashion house just because your sister was slut back in the day is nuts. If the promiscuity of relatives impacted employment in the world of B&B, no one would be able to get a job.