The Young and the Restless Week in Review

A few things happened in Genoa City this recently: Victor and his pregnant child bride made their union legal. Lily turned 21. Michael learned the truth about his father. Sounds pretty good, huh?

I'll ask you guys: what did you think of The Young and the Restless this week?

Nikki: I found it utterly painful. It just...it hurts to watch it. Can boredom actually kill you? Because I feel my brain swelling just thinking about it. David Chow, for God's sake. I'm better than this. America is better than this.

Neil: I thought it was sort of boring-
Victor: Youdidnotthinkitwasboring,youthoughtitwasthoroughlyenjoyable
Neil: I thought it was thoroughly enjoyable

Lily: I, like, totally need a drink right now

Michael: I, like, totally need five more of these

Katherine: This show will be cancelled in a year!

Well, that's a little drastic, but I kind of see her point...

If you just read a short recap of the week's events, you'd probably bet that the week was pretty entertaining over all. I hope for your sake that you wouldn't wager much, because, in true Y&R fashion, none of them were properly compelling. I don't know how you take a creepy and ill-advised wedding, a 21st birthday and the discovery of a secret that's been a couple of years in the making and make them boring, but I guess when there's a will, there's a way, and Maria Arena Bell has a will. I just wish the will weren't an all-encompassing desire to sap the world of entertainment.

Before I start, I'd like to give an overdue shoutout to Tammin Sursok. Yes, that Tammin Sursok. I know, right? Well, I like to give credit where credit is due, and she looked absolutely STUNNING at the Daytime Emmys last week. If I had seen her, I probably would have called her one of my favorite looks of the evening. Gorgeous! The color, the dress, the hair. Even the Fivehead is under control. Loved it.

But SOAPNet felt it more important for me to see Regis Philbin yammer on about something, and watch not one, but two segments about some imaginary Vanessa Hudgens ripoff. Those bastards will not stop until they take away everything I hold dear.

My love of soap weddings is well documented, and this wedding had the added bonus of being a COMPLETE trainwreck. It seems like it would be such fun to attend a wedding of two people obviously ill-matched, where you and the other guests exchange knowing glances over cocktails. But this wedding was just...snooze.

For starters, it took place in a barn. And I know, I know, that the Newman barn is, like all things Newman, luxurious, prestigious and better than everything else in the world. And for the most part it did look pretty. But still...they got married in a barn.

And their vows?

Sabrina: (Sighs) When I was 12 years old, my life as I knew it changed, and ever since then, I've been... wandering around the world...looking for something, for someone...looking for home. And I finally found it. Victor, you're like a-- you're like a long-lost dream. It's a feeling that I thought was gone forever, and here you are. And just being with you, my love, talking to you for hours about art. Watching the horses and the sunsets with your arms around me, and I'm safe again. I feel so treasured. I feel so loved. I only hope that as the years go by, I'll be to you everything that you are to me.

Victor: You already are. You make me very happy. I think you meeting Victoria and becoming her best friend was fate's hand at work. I love your exuberance and love for life. I love the fact that I can talk to you about almost anything. You're so bright. I adore you. And I've fallen deeply in love with you, and you make me very happy. That's all. 

So Sabrina pours her heart into a cheesy, sappy and over-the-top declaration of her love for Victor, so overwrought that I'm sure it was lifted from a fanfic, and Victor

• References the fact that she's friends with his daughter, driving home the point that he's too old for her
• Mentions that he can't talk to her about everything
• Calls her "bright", which is something you see on report cards, not wedding vows
• Ends with "That's all"

How soul stirringly romantic!

And nobody in attendance did the reasonable thing and object! Sure, Victoria sat throwing bitchface throughout

but she didn't man up when the world needed her to!

(I love the baby playing Reed, BTW. He has the most massive, chubby head ever, and he's the cutest thing in the world)

Sabrina wore Monique Lhullier

And the rest of the guests wore things that veered from ugly to hideous. Ashley, for example, made the most of her return to Genoa City and wore a sofa to commemorate the occasion

While Katherine wore a pantsuit that, judging by the collar, wanted to kill her

Jana's peach maid of honor dress was accentuated with her bizarre headgear

How sad is it, incidentally, that Jana was the maid of honor? If I were Sabrina, I'd have either paid a stranger to be my maid of honor or gone without.

And Phyllis showed off her banging body in a revealing green dress that seemed to be inappropriate for a wedding in a barn

Sabrina's mom, who was supposed to be played by Finola Hughes until GH said that she couldn't do it because she has a big summer story coming up (How much do you want to bet that the GH writers are now like "Shit, this means we have to write something for her. Damn") also rocked the cleavage something fierce

She also had some shenanigans with a memory card and attempting to sell photos of the wedding and take videos of the Newman ranch that were dumb and foiled by Victoria and Adam. Adam had her bags packed and told her to leave town, which she did through a revolving door. Cute, writers!

Oh! And Sabrina had an awkward conversation with Ashley. I guess any conversation between a pregnant bride forty years her husband's junior and his ex-wife who stole his sperm is bound to be awkard, but still

Ashley: I wanted to thank you. When I brought Abby over this morning to meet you, you were so, so kind to her that she actually decided to name her new doll Sabrina.

Sabrina: Seriously?

Ashley: Yes. Isn't that cute?

Sabrina: That's adorable. What a--

Ashley: She's cute.

Sabrina: She--she's so cute.

Ashley: Aw. Thank you.

WTF, Ash? You do realize that adorable is the same as cute, no?

The highlight of the wedding episode, to be honest, was Nick's Duh Face. He's a strong contender for the title this year, and it reminded me, as things invariably do, of the Golden Girls episode where Dorothy gets married and you can hear the inner monologues of everyone as she walks down the aisle and Blanche expresses insecurity over how gorgeous Dorothy looks in her gown with the paper-mache collar (I Know) and wonders what Rose is thinking and it turns out Rose is just singing "The Farmer In The Dell" to herself. Nick was quite obviously singing either "The Farmer in the Dell" or "Do You Know The Muffin Man" throughout the ceremony

The newlyweds then took a brief, half hour long jaunt out of the country for their honeymoon. In case you couldn't tell by the shot of the Eiffel Tower, the show kindly captioned the shot to tell us they went to Paris

Romantic!

I'm kind of happy that the honeymoon was so brief because it meant that we only had to hear their circular conversation a few times:

(Paraphrased)

Sabrina: I love you so much.

Victor: I love you, my sweet.

Sabrina: I just love you.

Victor: I truly and most certainly do love you.

Sabrina: I love you more.

Victor: ...okay, you got me there.

If you didn't know who this birthday party was for, wouldn't you think that a few office co-workers realized "Oh, crap, it's Doreen's birthday and we didn't do anything. Okay, I'll run to Carvel and get a cake, you run to the dollar store and get some balloons and streamers and we'll have Janice go get a birthday card and meet in the conference room in an hour"?

But, no, this is the 21st birthday party Lily's friends and boyfriend threw her. Lily, the aspiring model. Dru and Neil's daughter. I know she's annoying, but she deserves something more than dollar store streamers!

It was cute when Neil and Devon surprised her, but isn't this picture missing a little something?

Like, say, someone wearing an insane hat? Come back, Dru!

So the saddest party in the universe was going to be just Lily, Devon, Tatyana Ali, Cane and Colleen, but Chloe wound up coming home with Lily so she crashed it by accident with an adorable "Hey guys! It's me!" face

How cute is Liz Hendrickson? She is SO CUTE. I just love her, and I wish that the writers would figure out what they want to do with the Chloe character, because she's just all over the place. But someone so pretty and wonderful deserves a well written character, so I hope the writers shape up.

Ignoring her epic cuteness, the other guests reacted like Lily had brought a schizophrenic homeless man home with her

I mean, I know Chloe's obnoxious, but come on! Adorable! And, really, you'd think they'd be happy that someone else came to Lily's party. Having Chloe there made it merely pathetic, rather than tragic.

And then Eva, America's Next Top Model#3, showed up with her child. It was bizarre. I mean, when did she start acting? And why does she have a kid? And how cheesy is it that her character is named Tyra? And do you think the real Tyra is angry that America's (Pause) Next (Pause) Top (Pause) Model is a factory for soap actresses now? But most importantly, what is with her wig?

That's not okay.

Becca pointed out that, since Eva is tall for a normal person, I won't be able to make jokes about her height anymore, which completely obliterates a third of the Eva Pigford jokes in my repertoire. Rest assured, though, I'll come up with new material with which to mock her, especially since she's going to be in a storyline with Neil. Abrasive vs. Boring: Who will win?!?!

All of us, including the FBI, who noted it in my dossier, know that I love Jack Abbott to pieces, but I recently had to question my love when he made a remark about Amber having a great sense of style. Who, Jack? Amber? Amber Valletta? Amber Tamblyn? Amber Benson? Amber Von Tussle? Amber the One Legged Reality Star from SNL? Because you, brilliant and wonderful Jack Abbott, being brilliant and wonderful, certainly can't mean this Amber

Because that getup is approaching Britney Spears Circa The Umbrella Incident levels of crazy. It almost gave me a seizure, for serious.

It's also the most noteworthy thing related to Restless Style to happen in...ever. The magazine idea was stupid to start, and has gotten progressively dumber as the story marches on. I'm tired of hearing Jack and Sharon bicker with Nick and Phyllis about the target demographic they should try to get, and what kind of advertisers they want and what can they afford on their website and virtual models and on and on and on.

And now Phyllis is bitchy to Amber because she doesn't think Amber is good enough for Daniel. I know that mothers can be over protective of their sons, but seriously, Phyll? Daniel has a long way to go before he leaves the depths of skeevedom and right now, Amber's the only person in his league. It's not a big league.

Michael's search for his father ended this week when he learned that his father was wanted for murder and jumped bail, and realized that Gloria had been lying to him for decades. Christian LeBlanc was predictably fabulous as Michael completely lost his shit

but...I don't know. It seemed so thrown together. I know the story has been brewing for a long while, but Paul gave him the news, he got angry, he got sad, he got angry again, he confronted Gloria and got mad all in the span of one episode. What ever happened to stretching things out for maximum emotional impact? Couldn't they have spared, like, two more episodes to explore this? I hate this show, a little bit.

The highlight of Michael's emotional rollercoaster was the supreme "WTF? Is he okay? Should I call 911?" look Paul had on his face the entire time

I love Paul. I also love how he ran over when Nikki was depressed at the bar and Victor sidled over to her like the cat who ate the canary wondering where her husband was, and quickly pretended that she was meeting him so that she could save face. Their friendship is so great.

Dear Judith Chapman,

I just wanted to let you know that there are ways to convey emotion that don't include bug eyes

or making your neck veins throb

or pulling indescribable faces

Just thought you'd like to know

Love,

Mallory

I am past the point of even caring about Gloria. I don't understand her, I don't understand why all of the men in town fall in love with her, especially when Jill is around, and I don't understand why she and Jeff are eloping, or why they were frolocking in piles of money

Not least because it makes me think of Scrooge McDuck diving into piles of money, and I've let Gloria and Jeff ruin a lot of things, but I will not let them ruin childhood memories of Ducktales!

There was also far too much Nikki and David Chow turmoil, but I think we are way too bored by the rest of it to even get into how boring this storyline really is.

Comments

[Madelyn]

Any ep review that defends the integrity of Ducktales (and rightfully so!) is automatically made of win.

[ande mcbeal]

Wait.... Those were the actual vows? Those weren't one of your clever recaps? Sweet Mother of God! What is wrong with Maria Arena Bell and what fresh hell can she and Hogan Sheffer cook up?

[Beth R.]

All I have to say is....

"Might solve a mystery....or rewrite history. Ducktails...woo hoo!"

[esp13]

Re: Judith Chapman.

I've run across some old Days episodes when she was playing Angelica and it's safe to say that the bug eyes and bulging neck veins have a long history. It was really kind of scary seeing that same look 19 years ago.

[Elizabeth]

Spot on, apart from Jana's headpiece (I thought it was cute).

[Roxiebell]

When I stopped watching Y&R several months ago it appears more then million viewers did as well. OUCH.....what a drastic decline in ratings and if this show dips under 3.0 they'll never get it back!

[Bourgeois Nerd]

I saw that picture of the Eiffel Tower with "Paris" under it and thought, "Paris... Texas? *LOL*" (That's from OLTL, BTW, Becca and Mallory. You know, the one that cures cancer.)

OMG, Ducktales shout-out! Have I mentioned lately that I love you, Mallory? Seriously, I soooo wanted to be Scrooge and get to swim around in a vault full of money.

[Carl]

Adam kicking Sabrina's becleavaged mother out of town was the best part of the week. Mother from hell was played by Cynthia Sikes, who spent 3 years as Dr. Annie Cavanero on St. Elsewhere, which was a better soap than anything on the air now.

I absolutely hate the Nikki/David story.

Eva has done some limited acting before, but I don't know why she is on here. Any story with Neil is automatic fail. And what's with the singing child who throws out 30 year old wisecracks?

[FooFooLaRue]

Yeah sure, Tammin looked good at the Daytime Emmys but she still can't act worth a darn and she's simply NOT Colleen. This gal is woefully miscast and I'm very disappointed that when Colleen returned from China she didn't look like Adrianne Leon.

[Gene]

No wonder the ratings are tanking. This show is so boring the and the only thing that was interesting about the wedding is phyllis's dress. I have more personality and action than all the show have in months. I just hope that this is the last thing that they do and get the show back to what it is.

[Goddess]

Puhleeze tell me Sabrina's mother is going to be on more than one or two eps, after they made such a huge deal about it. If not, I'm gonna have to assume she was hired by the same idiot who hired Adam's gf for all of two or three shows. That whole fiasco made no sense either. Besides, Sabrina's mother was a breath of fresh air in that stuffy family.

[Jack_s]

Chloe cute? Where? When? The woman is about as appealling as having a root canal and menstrual craps whilst giving birth!

[Shyann]

i love your show!