Young & Restless Fans Call for a Major Change That We Can 100-Percent Get

Recently, Soaps.com lamented the current state of The Young and the Restless and laid out a 10-step plan that would fix what is broken. (You can review it here.) Then, we asked on Facebook what you would change about the show if you could? One response came up more than any other: the writers.

But the CBS soap doesn’t necessarily need to pull an “out with the old, in with the new” switcheroo with its scribes. It could simply invite, allow and encourage them to reprioritize. Whoever is giving the orders, be it the network or head honcho Josh Griffith, could wake up one day and say, “Gosh, you know, people really don’t seem to be as jazzed about CEO wars as I am,” and give the team new marching orders.

It would be that easy. Have the boss come in and say, “OK, gang, here’s what we’re gonna do. Get out your laptops and do a search-and-replace that changes every ‘I want so-and-so out of my company!’ into ‘I want… ’ and put someone’s name there. We’re getting out of the business business and back into the business of love, lust, yearning, desire.”

Overnight, Young & Restless would be transformed from an hour a day about rich people fighting about job titles that will make their egos and bank accounts marginally bigger into an hour a day about the battles that really matter: to turn the head of the ones they love, to stay in love, to resist temptation.

We’re not talking about conjured-up nonsense like Phyllis’ outta-nowhere desire to reunite with Danny, either. (That was more about her hatred of Christine than any interest in her ex, anyway.) We’re talking about that feeling that you get when The Person walks into the room, and you forget for a moment that breathing requires you to actively inhale air… the feeling that you get when you are apart from The Person for a day, an hour, 10 minutes… the feeling that you get when the anticipation of the kiss explodes into the kiss itself.

More: Young & Restless twist that left star crying, ‘No!’

If Young & Restless wants to keep doing some big-business stories, fine. But perhaps a closer look needs to be taken at how they are told and what is at their core. Chancellor-Winters is eating a lot of airtime these days, but what is at stake? Devon and Lily are being made to work with untrustworthy Billy, who has been given power by his mommy. It’s just petty corner-office politics, not life-or-death to any of these characters and certainly not edge-of-your-seat entertainment for viewers.

If you’ll recall, when corporate wars actually played well, they involved greed, vengeance, shame. When Jack lost Jabot to Victor, it meant something because he was so embarrassed in front of his father, because he had let down his entire family, because he had been bested by an antagonist that he loathed. When Billy screws up a company, or Adam loses a seat of power, it means nothing because (a) those beats have been played to death, (b) they never hold themselves accountable for anything, and (c) they have moved into a different executive suite by the next commercial break.

On Soaps.com’s Young & Restless message board, reader starkllr responded to our initial query with what sounds like a terrific idea (and how is the show not doing this on the regular in the first place?): Have “the writing staff set up a giant whiteboard and, for every character on the show, write down three things that character dearly wants — one work-related, one romance-related, and the third can be anything else. Make sure at least two of the three things conflict with each other. Then for each of those three things, write down the name of another character who’s preventing/opposing them from getting what they desire.

“That exercise,” starkllr concluded, “would easily provide enough material for a couple of years’ worth of strong, satisfying character-driven stories.” We couldn’t agree more.