There was a time when soaps and their writers took an “anything goes” approach to storytelling. Whether it was Guiding Light turning Reva into a time-traveling, formerly-cloned princess or Passions having a magical toddler conjure up a mermaid, daytime was full-to-bursting with tales that were more sci-fi and fantasy than drama and romance.
Through it all, however, Young & Restless largely remained rooted in more realistic narratives. And that might be why longtime viewers are so incredibly frustrated with what the show has become in recent months.
“This whole AI storyline has pushed things into completely absurd territory,” declared redditor /u/gigibeerur in kicking off a vibrant discussion on r/youngandtherestlesss.
“I’m all for suspending disbelief,” they went on to say, “but this storyline feels less like drama and more like an insult to the audience’s intelligence. There’s a difference between over-the-top and outright ridiculousness.”
Agreed /u/Standard_Addition529, “It’s like [the writers] are saying, ‘Oh, they are soap opera viewers. They will watch anything!’”
The thread went on to discuss many of the implausible-at-best situations unfolding in Genoa City these days. And lest one think this is just reddit being reddit, that same conversation is taking place in every corner of social media.
All Artificial, No Intelligence
While Young & Restless has long used big business as a primary backdrop for its storytelling, companies like Newman, Jabot and Chancellor were exactly that: backdrops. But the re-introduction of a new-in-every-way Cane, along with his seemingly all-powerful AI program, became only the latest example of how the soap has attempted to morph into a low-res version of Succession.
Worse, the pacing has dragged the entire show down. It’s been over nine months since half the town packed up to go wandering around Cane’s French hedge maze and even longer since the erstwhile Aristotle Dumas and his AI became the talk of the town.
As /u/catchinupnow voiced in another Young & Restless-related thread, watching the story unfold makes them “feel like I’ve aged 10 years waiting for it to end… it’s exhausting and boring.”
Ironically, as Phyllis was handing out major corporations like lollipops, all with a few keystrokes, the real world was offering up a prime example of just how difficult corporate mergers can be. For months, Netflix and Paramount have been battling it out for control of Warner Bros. If you weren’t following every move made by the real-world counterparts of Jack and Victor, we can’t blame you. Why? Because it wasn’t all that interesting to the average person.
Game of Thrones was never really about who’d wind up in the titular seat, and Succession was more about messy family dynamics than the future of Waystar Royco. And heck, daytime’s most-watched story of all time — when General Hospital sent Luke and Laura on the run — wasn’t about weather machines or the left-handed boy, but rather the couple we were watching fall in love.
The good news is that bad soap stories can be changed. Heck, we’ve seen tales vanish, never to be mentioned again. But that’s a story for another day. For now, all we can do is hold out hope that sooner rather than later, Young & Restless will remember — and return to — what made it daytime’s No. 1 show in the first place.
