Young & Restless Sweeps Bust: *This* Frontburner Story Is a Flop for ‘Exhausted’ Fans

Young & Restless fans, and soap fans in general, are a discerning audience. They’ll allow a writer to push the envelope if the story is good… but once characters begin behaving unlike themselves to enable a plot, look out. Things get even worse if you add squandered potential, suspension of disbelief, and overkill into the mix. That’s exactly what has happened with one front burner May Sweeps storyline, and viewers are not having it…

Young & Restless has a unique problem in that the writer chooses a character to be a main player, and then inexplicably makes them… boring. Actually, there may be an explanation. It’s seemingly a yen to have viewers love and accept the character. Everyone on the canvas falls all over themselves to praise the person in question, which often has the opposite affect with viewers. While the writer intends for the audience to be convinced to care about the character, the truth is, they found them more interesting when they weren’t so perfectly reformed. Case in point: Chelsea Lawson, and more recently, Claire Grace.

It’s Claire’s overnight transformation from brainwashed killer to a Mary Poppins-esque nanny that has fans gritting their teeth in frustration. For many, it’s the disappointment of watching a character with so much potential to be complex and create drama, be reduced to a saccharin sweet people pleaser.

Worse, Claire’s transition from murdering psycho to a rosy-cheeked, kid-loving, adored daughter and granddaughter was just too easy and too fast. The Newmans are a suspicious and savvy bunch and to have them so quickly embrace a person who infiltrated Nikki’s office, spirited her off to a lake house where she was held captive and tortured with an alcohol IV, and then helped poison them all, is beyond unbelievable. Summer has been made out to be the ‘baddie’ for questioning if Claire could be trusted, when she was actually the only voice of reason.

The Newman fam’s open-armed and unquestioning support of Claire has also hit a nerve with Adam fans, and rightfully so. At the very least, this storyline could have provided an opportunity for Victoria to see the situation with her half-brother differently so as to drive story in an intriguing direction moving forward, but they didn’t even go there.

Young & Restless viewers have long been ‘over’ the writer’s obsession with all things job-related, and Claire’s front burner storyline has proved to be no exception. Not only was Claire made into a ‘saint’ but she also loves children all of the sudden. This cold, calculating human morphed into Mary Poppins right before our eyes… and we’ve had to hear about it non-stop. This just doesn’t make for a compelling soap opera.

When a character is mishandled in this way, the characters close to them suffer as well. Victor should have been the last person to accept Claire considering her role in what happened to Nikki. Although we suppose it’s fitting that he decided to forgive her because she proved to be useful to him. That, at least, is vintage Victor.

Victoria accepting her daughter makes much more sense, but it’s come at a price. Claire’s mother, who has lived and breathed for Newman Enterprises and the corporate world to an extent that it became part of her very identity, is suddenly unrecognizable.

It’s bizarre that Victoria is suddenly content to hang around the tack house. Pushing for her and Claire to team up to take the reins of Newman away from Nick and Adam would be in character. Delight with her daughter being a nanny for the Abbotts is decidedly not.

Young & Restless fans aren’t shy about calling out the writing when it’s disappointing, people are behaving out of character, and when potential for drama has been squandered. ‘Boring’, ‘tired’, and ‘exhausting’ are not the ideals when it comes to viewer reaction to a front burner story.