One thing that bothers me about Y&R is when Victor is dumped down by the writers, or at least that's the impression given, as evidenced by his enthusiasm for Nate right now. As for Victor, I think that the writers are subliminally pointing out the day that he will no longer be part of the show. It's still a pleasure when Victor is on air, but actually everything just repeats itself. The only new fact in recent years was that Victor gave Victoria control of Newman Enterprises, but now we know that he is in control of everything and that he, as always, does what he wants with his companies and that he tries to control the lives of his children. Business matters will probably only become really interesting again when Victor's inheritance is distributed one day.
As interesting as Victoria and original Ashland's love story was, her affair with Nate is disappointing. It's too soon for Victoria to fall for another man who's using her. Nate is hard to sell as a businessman anyway. In fact, he just took over the ideas of his predecessor Sally, who was fired, and claimed her success as his own.
Like Nate, Audra is a character who's all over the place, but to be really interesting, she has to marry either one of the Newmans or the Abbotts. Maybe she'll get lucky with Kyle, who is character-wise going in a direction that I don't like.
I enjoy Diane, although the story drags on, but I prefer it that way than if she went straight back to her roots. Amazing that she could pull herself together like that with Phyllis. It was also amazing how Phyllis' dilemma turned out in court. I thought we would find out that someone else had killed Jeremy, but in fact it was Phyllis and the judge was smitten with Phyllis' honesty, so she released her on parole.
I never liked Tucker. I also didn't like the idea of Katherine and Jill being mother and daughter, but it was still better than the Tucker story. Tucker was suddenly too present on the show as Katherine's son and father to Devon, who I also never liked as Katherine's grandson. On Y&R in the past, I wasn't a fan when daytime veterans like Stephen Nichols or Steve Burton were made members of the core families, only to disappear after a few years and not be mentioned anymore. Tucker was suddenly remembered, but with nuTucker it's hard to imagine that he and Jill have the same birthday, ie the same year of birth. Trevor St. John delivers as Tucker, but the character just isn't exciting.
For me, Mark Grossman is the weakest Adam Newman so far, but it's more about the script than the actor. Either Adam is a changed man and boring or he's malicious again, but then his intrigues aren't nearly as exciting as those of his predecessors.
