Y&R’s rating plummet....

[Daniel Avery]

Good scene, yes....but the Covid-friendly staging takes away from the overall impact. No one is hugging her, holding her hand...they're all staying physically distant from her while trying to sell the idea that they so deeply love her. It's like they expect her to spontaneously combust.

 

[TJames03]

Yeah, but they didn’t really have a choice.

 

[bmasters9]

So many people clamor for "new blood" in the industry, saying the "same old names" shuffling from one soap to another is the reason the shows can't innovate or reinvent themselves for the new era. And then when the networks do try to bring new people in, fans accuse these new people of destroying what they hold dear, of not "knowing what the fans want" since they haven't worked in soaps. Fans complain about the sorry state of soaps but they're so protective over the genre that they don't want 'outsiders' coming in and resent them taking chances with "their show".

Darned if they don't, danged if they do, basically (a pickle I wouldn't ever wanna find myself in).

 

[TJames03]

Darned if they don't, danged if they do, basically (a pickle I wouldn't ever wanna find myself in).

Braeden and Thomas Scott are dreadful actors, though. If they bring in younger crowds, link the next generation with the Brooks or Fosters.

 

[Ray&Donna]

It used to be on in every hospital waiting room, but the ones here all show HGTV now

 

[Daniel Avery]

Story time....
On One Life to Live there was a plotline where Starr Manning was trying to become a pop star, and an unscrupulous "producer" conned her into filming what she thought was a music video. It was actually going to be used as the basis of a porn video. So she had to sing this song called "Jail Bait," dressed in a skimpy outfit and pole-dancing, etc. on a set that looked like a jail house. She figured out the man was trying to con her eventually, and I think he ended up getting beaten up by Starr's father, Todd. I remember watching the ersatz "music video" and being mesmerized by how bad it all looked. Daytime production standards and music videos do not mix.

So one of my friends worked at the county health department around this time, a nurse who mostly counseled teens and young adults regarding STI's and unplanned pregnancies. They had a TV in their waiting room tuned to soaps all the time, and it just so happened that OLTL was on that day with the sound turned down. I saw Mary Ellen at church that weekend and since she knew I loved soaps, she sought me out to laughingly tell me about that whole situation. She looked up from the desk to see "some girl in a push-up bra practically having sex with some near-naked male dancer in a foggy prison cell" and with no sound on, it looked like a porno. The people in the waiting room were all sitting there wide-eyed until someone loudly asked her to turn the channel--she just turned it off entirely. I knew immediately what she was talking about and explained the storyline to her, but she assured me it did not help.

 

[Rove]

but the Covid-friendly staging takes away from the overall impact

A simple question. I no longer follow the shenanigans on Y&R however I am familiar with the character Dana. Was there a need for the character to be let go? Was Y&R heading down this path prior to Covid-19 screwing with filming?

I do agree the scene looked odd with the actors practising social distancing but I'm left wondering how powerful it could have been if the dreaded Covid-19 had not flung its nastiness across the globe. For a big moment like this the actors should have been placed into 14 days isolation prior to this being shot. It's a small sacrifice to pay for your craft.

 

[TJames03]

Dina was set to die right when MA returned. This whole storyline was planned long ago. They all knew that, believably, the storyline would naturally take awhile to properly have the right effect. Sadly, it was modified due to Covid.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Yes, the story was proposed by Sally Sussman Morina when she was writing the show. It was her idea to bring Dina back after so many years, since the Abbotts had been neglected so much by the previous regimes. Even after SSM departed, they kept the story since it had been set up so well and provided so much story for the Abbotts*.
Unlike the "mystery soap ailments" we see so often, she chose Alzheimer's because everyone knew how it would all end up, and there would be no way for the network to come back later and say "Hey, any way you could change the story and have her survive?". I think Marla Adams (who is around 80) probably wanted a limited return, and if not for the Covid shutdown it likely would have ended in May Sweeps.

*I'm sure it helped that Anthony Morina, the current Executive Producer, is SSM's real-life husband.