Hear what we had to say about the winners. Listen now!

Now on to the winners…

Category You Would Add to the DB Awards
Most boring character

Best One Liner
Jack: Bradsicle

Unbeweavable Award – Most in Need of a New Hairdresser
A tie between Dr. Olivia Winters

& Sharon Abbott

Most Overused Plot Device
Weak Women

Fanbase Most Spit on by TAIC
Lane Fans – Fans of the Lily/Cane pairing

Anticlimactic Moment of the Year
P3’s Return

And Evil Ethan’s Cattle Wrangling Secret

Worst Rewrite Ever
P3 is Alive!

Best Dressed
Phyllis Newman (Michelle Stafford)

Waste of Screentime
Kate Valentine

Wasted Talent – The most underutilized Character
Neil Winters (Kristoff St. John)

The Character You Love to Hate
Victor Newman

Most Overexposed and Pimped Out Character
Kate Valentine

Best Exit Scene of a Character or Actor
Karen Bitchslaps Neil – Nia Peeples

Most Missed Character
Drucilla Winters (Victoria Rowell)

Best Triangle
Billy/Lily/Cane

Best Quad
Cane/Lily/Billy/Chloe

Worst Couple
BAC – Billy/Mac

Best Couple
Lilliam – Lily/Billy

Best Wedding
Kurphy

WTH Moment
The Devon/Tyra Hookup

Alchemy Award – For Spinning Gold out of a Crap Storyline
Stacey Haiduk – Where is Carmen Sandiego/Patty Williams


You Can’t Go Back – Worst History Revisited
Honey I’m Home – P3 Returns

Honorary DB – The Actor Who is a Friend in Your Head
Billy Miller – Billy Abbott

Fanwanker of the Year – This soapstar will do anything to please his fans…
Daniel Goddard (Cane Ashby)

STFU Award! – For the Character that needs to just…
Ethan Ashby & Kate Valentine

Weakest Link on the Y&R Executive Team
Hogan Sheffer

Worst Storyline
All of the “above” (Written in by the voters)
Chipmunk Follies

Scooby Gang Art Heist

Adam Gaslighting Ashley

The Return of P3/You Can’t Handle the Truth

Best Storyline
The Jabot Takeover/Abbotts Restored

Best Actor
Billy Miller – Billy Abbott

Best Actress
Christel Khalil – Lily Winters

Thanks for joining us and see you next … umm, yeah. Let’s not make promises we might not be able to keep. Special thanks to my fellow DT bloggers for many of these great images.

In continuing with my series of articles answering the question, “why are soaps on the decline,” I’d like to now turn my attention to the problem of the Newbie. It is an ever present problem that has only increased over time as many writing teams, instead of giving the existing character something new and inventive to do, much rather bring a newbie on to “spice” things up. Usually, this has led to disaster. Newbies are being used as band aids to the bleeding wounds that are caused by numerous plot points, dead end reveals, and unimaginative storylines.

In looking at the problems associated with too many newbies (or the overuse of a few newbies) I would like to focus on the Young and the Restless. Sure, many soaps do it, but Y&R in the last eight months has so declined in ratings and quality that they need some serious help. Newbies running amok isn’t its only problem (it has many) but it is a definite offender when it comes to the newbies at the moment. Y&R in the last eight months has been on a steady decline in the ratings and the storylines have left MUCH to be desired. They’ve also, at many times in the past eight months, left me pissed off, disillusioned, and overall- bored. So excuse me if my article comes off a bit bitter. I do apologize (read: not really).

As I said in my previous article on why soaps are in the crapper: Balance is key. The problem with many soaps, and it isn’t really a new problem, is the lack of it.
I don’t know about you, but I have found myself coming upon a soap I stopped watching for some time, (usually b/c they do something STUPID like kill off, or put into a coma one of my fav characters. You listening One Life to Live? Bring back Evangeline Williamson!…but I digress), and I am TOTALLY lost for a good half of the show. Not because I can’t follow the plots (I mean, it’s hardly rocket science) but because I have NO IDEA who is who on the show. They’ll be whole segments of a scene where some newbie is giving her sob story, or kissing on some character that I KNOW last time I watched was with someone the audience actually knew, and I’m sitting there like, “Why do I give a damn?” Oh that’s right- I don’t. And heaven forbid the newbie is pretty much related to NO ONE on the show of importance and the story is revolving around them. Then, I’m really sitting there wondering what is going on and why the characters are written to care. (Note: Being related to the help on the show who in their 20 something years haven’t had a real storyline- DOES NOT COUNT. Flame me if you want- but that doesn’t make them a “legacy” character and somehow validate why they are front and center all of a sudden.) Also, I’m even more confused when every other scene with other characters, who used to have their own storylines to talk about, has them talking about one of the newbies- for most of the conversation. In other words- pimping them.
This, my delusional reader, is when a newbie has run amok on my soap.
There are various degrees of overkill. Some are not as bad as others. There are even times when a newbie’s entrance is so subtle that before you know it, I don’t hate them b/c they’re a newbie taking up space, but I simply hate them b/c they’re a shitty character! (I’m looking at you Tyra).

Young and The Restless, with its slipping ratings and plot points galore, has fallen victim to this practice. It is not so much the number of newbies they have added on the show in the past year, but what each newbie they have added has meant or done to the show with their presence. For every newbie that is added and given significant screen time and storyline- there is a REAL LEGACY CHARACTER, (or simply a character people have come to know), that is not getting the same.

The newbie overkill virus is one of the symptoms of the sickness that has taken hold of Y&R. It seems that, instead of writing engaging story lines for the characters that are there (and have been there for years), they rather bring in a new character to “stir things up” or whatever they think they’re “creating” with these contrived plot points with long lost relatives, boyfriends, and the like. It is totally possible to have newbies on the show, but there are some things YOU MUST avoid, or they will run amok. These rules, Y&R seems to be breaking left and right.

The rules:

1. Don’t change history just so a newbie’s presence can make sense. Y&R did this with the Cane character (and we see how that worked out) and they seem to be doing it again with yet another newbie coming onto the canvas. (Spoiler: Seems like Kay’s long lost SON is coming into town with Nikki. Yeah, you read that right. I said SON. And all this time we thought it was a girl…oh wait- it WAS A GIRL. The writers just decided to give our brains a big – FUCK YOU, and switch it up.)

2. A.)Don’t throw established characters under the bus in an attempt to make a newbie more appealing. B.) Don’t use established characters to pimp and justify why a newbie is still taking up so much screen time.
Writers, we are smarter than that. We recognize when an established character that we’ve come to know is acting out of character for the sole purpose of the newbie to continue to look smart, interesting, or appealing. Case and point: Chloe.
Somehow, no one else was able to figure out the holes in her baby making story, until ANOTHER NEWBIE (in the form of an established character) Billy came onto the canvas and figured it out. Lily was made to give Cane the go ahead to marry the woman, hence keeping this storyline going. AND THEN, when she was finally found out for all the crap she pulled, JILL DID NOT kick her ass to the curb!! JILL??!! Am I not to believe that Jill, in all other circumstances would have made an attempt to pay Chloe off and tell her to leave town. I mean, she’s done it before to others for less. Why not Chloe?
To add insult to injury another established character (Mac) is thrown under the bus (becoming the MISTRESS to her first love Billy) in opposition to Chloe. AAAAANNND- Billy is being made to be TORN between Chloe and MAC…Billy’s MAC. This is NOT MAKING SENSE PEOPLE. There is no way Billy should be torn. AAAAANNNNND (keeps getting better) the legacy newbie in town (Chance) is being made to fall for Chloe.
Wow- all this to try to make us believe that this character deserves all the screen time she’s been given since she’s been on. Let’s not even talk about how Chloe is living in the mansion while Mac still doesn’t seem to even have an apartment. That “mobile home” (read:trailer) DOES NOT COUNT.

3. When storylines and or couples are no longer working don’t just throw a newbie in there to somehow “stir” things up. This is like putting a band-aid over a bleeding gash. If a couple or storyline is not working, adding someone the audience doesn’t know to the canvas will NOT HELP, but just further complicate matters.

Example 1: Cane and Lily: Until recently they have had no internal conflict between them. They were a fluffy couple. So what does TPTB do? They bring in Chloe. Then all the baby drama starts, yada, yada, etc. etc., and I’m STILL wondering why we went through all of that in the first place.

Example 2: Victoria and JT. Wow- this couple is really boring. Most of the audience wonders why they are still together. What do the writers do? They add the newbie Deacon (who I have to admit is hot and one of the few newbies I like) to the mix. Now Victoria is all of a sudden bonding with this guy out of NOWHERE. How about we establish that JT and Victoria had problems in the first place? That is b/c up until these recent events; all we saw was them being a happy couple. A LITTLE BUILD UP WOULD BE NICE!! It’s sloppy writing.

Example 3: Daniel and Amber. Now…I won’t let my personal bias get in the way, (maybe a little bit, b/c Daily- Daniel and Lily- was thrown under the bus so this one dimensional couple could be placed together) but this couple doesn’t have the connection to get enough people to care about them. Hence, why they are always placed in the Scooby Gang (them, Jana, and Kevin) with no real story of their own. So what does TPTB do to “spice” it up? They bring in Deacon! Now Deacon is manipulating Amber to do some really STUPID stuff, more naive than she normally is, and Daniel is standing around huffing and puffing. It’s contrived to be honest.

Soon to be Example 4: Y&R has recently put out a casting call for a young woman to come onto the canvas who is high school age. I’m pretty sure this is to nip in the bud the dismal young couple that is Eden and Noah. When in reality we don’t need a newbie to do that. Let the two of them break up, kill Eden off and send Noah’s spoiled ass to boarding school. Neither of these characters will be missed.

Example 5: Billy and Chloe (no words….no words…). Well, this couple clearly failed. But TPTB aren’t ready to throw in the towel. So what are they doing? Bringing in good wholesome boy Chance to try to win Chloe’s heart. So what is the result? Me sitting through scenes of two newbies (I don’t care if Chloe’s been on for a year, she’s still new to me) wondering why I should give a damn.

What it comes down to is balance. When there is some newbie that I don’t know on the canvas, as a regular audience member, I am already suspicious of them. This is yet another example of why Prime time shows fair better. When a new character is added they aren’t usually made front and center. There aren’t enough episodes in a season to be devoting whole hours to some newbie that the audience may or may not like. I get that soaps are on all year round, five days a week, but just because you think you have a lot of time on your hands, doesn’t mean you should throw quality to the wind. Y&R needs to realize that they have a huge amount of characters on this show they do not use enough (Colleen, Paul, Michael, Lauren, etc.) and the audience would like to see more of them.
Then again, maybe I’m just delusional.

Well, well, well, its looks as if Y&R’s favorite Diva, Victoria Rowell, is once again in talks to renew her role as Drucilla Winters. Not only is she in talks, but sources say, that she is in the final stages of contract negations. After polls, letters, and fan out cry, Maria & co. have realized that there is only one woman who can play Drucilla Winters. But get this, Dru is already being written into a current storyline, and well since the Winters only have one storyline, it’s not hard to guess which one it is. Not only that, but VR herself was on CNN this past weekend, and said that she’s optimistic that Dru is still alive and bitching. (Well she didn’t say that last part but this is Dru, so…) Per her twitter page, VR stated that the ball is completely in Maria’s court. Let’s pray that she’s a rebounder.

Source: Mr. Brooks
Victoria Rowell’s Twitter

I have watched Y&R on and off now for about 20 years, and after 20 years I’ll admit that my memories of plot twists and certain events are rather sketchy. Yet for better or worse — mainly worse– my first recollections of Nicole Reed (aka Nikki Newman) are etched firmly in my mind.

My very first memory of Nikki was watching her weep mournfully before Jack, her then husband, about her addiction to alcohol. I remember thinking, “am I supposed to feel sorry for this character?” If I was, I didn’t! I felt that Jack was much too good for her and could not understand why she was so completely obsessed with a man (one Victor Newman) who did not seem to genuinely love or respect her. But what did I know about “love” at 15? Clearly nothing! According to the Y&R “Bible,” Victor and Nikki are the loves of each other’s lives. They are soulmates; the representation, par excellence, of “real love” in Soapdom.

Sadly, after finding myself enjoying Nikki Newman as a character for the first time in almost 20 years — due to her honest and refreshing relationship with Paul Williams — this past week Y&R has, once again, inveterated why I generally dislike Nikki and loath her relationship with Victor.

On the eve of Nikki’s marriage to a kind, faithful, honest, strong, patient, loving and attractive man — a man that has brought out the best in her — Nikki has decided to throw her hat back into Victor’s ring. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, Victor Newman, a rich, powerful, manipulative, emotionally abusive, narcissistic, vindictive, cruel and disrespectful man, continues to be held up by Y&R’s head writers as the kind of man we women should want and desire. Really writers? Is this what you want to convey to your viewers?

Based on Nikki and Victor’s relationship over the last 20 years, this is what the writers of Y&R have taught me about love:

1) Real love is based purely on a person’s emotions. How a women is treated by a man bears no permanent impact on how she should feel about him. Accordingly, he can treat her with utter contempt, but she still loves him. And such feelings justify her making a fool of herself as she continually pursues this sadistic man regardless of what her brain tells her. The 25 year roller coaster of emotional abuse and turmoil simply means you are “star-crossed lovers,” fulfilling a fatalistic “calling” over which the pair have no control.

2) Real love is not meant to bring out the best qualities of character in a person. Rather a women who is truly “in love” becomes manipulative, desperate, pathetic, weak-willed and needy. In fact, poor character is a marker of the depth of her affections for said man. And in turn, this overly-emotional, vindictive, insecure, hypocritical, manipulative, petty, snide, and selfish women is held up as the kind of women who is “interesting,” “loveable,” and “strong.”

3) Real love is essentially an obsession. As such, if a women has had a child with a man he becomes the “love of her life,” regardless of how many children he reproduces with other women. And she will pass over a “good man” for her true obsession, I mean, love. As for the man in this equation, he is permanently torn between these women, loving them all. Consequently, the children become a tool to manipulate this man, especially if he is straying from the relationship.

4) Real love permits a women to be an interloper in every new relationship the “love of your life” might enter. The home he now shares with his new partner, will still be your home and he will forever be your husband. Moreover, your adult children will always be his legitimate children and family. His other children should always come second, regardless of how much like their father they are!

5) Real love is not about respect or friendship. Instead, a man who treats a women with respect can only be that women’s “best friend forever.” For a man to truly be “in love” he must not respect the women he is with and she must not be his partner or equal. His “true love” is a women who is sexually desirable, but lacking substance. She is a women he can manipulate for “her best interests” and “his own reasons.” Furthermore traditional views of marriage and love, that is, marriage based on partnership, friendship, respect, fidelity, and honesty, are merely notions of nostalgia, and as such, are “boring” and “asexual.”

To be sure, these 5 points merely scratch the surface, but it scares me to think how many women — and young women, at that — are getting their cues about love from this set of values. There is something truly misogynistic occurring in soap writing: a deep hatred of women. I suppose this was to be expected 30 years ago. But nothing has really changed, has it? In fact, I propose that it’s gotten worse!

I have to wonder if the reason for this is that soaps, for the most part, continue to be written by men (gay or straight) for straight women. Their musings, as men, of what a women should be becomes the dominant image presented to a mostly female viewing audience. While there are female writers and producers, these women are still in the minority; that is, this industry is still a “man’s world.” Maria Arena Bell may be the head writer and co-executive producer of Y&R, but it would seem to me that she is not writing for women. Rather she is simply putting forward the kind of poppycock the men she is surrounded by will approve. And for the first time in soap history, women are rejecting this male perspective, whether it is written by a women or a man.

Currently, there are numerous shows in primetime that portray women as strong, capable, smart, accomplished, ambitious, sexually aware, attractive, stable and interesting. These are the characters to whom I relate and enjoy watching. In front of these female characters, Nicole Reed Newman Abbot Newman Chow Newman is defunct! I barely like her, let alone want to be like her. Some may argue that because this is just a story, it is not a corollary to real life. But why tell stories at all if this is the case? Stories provide us with a vision of who we are, what we believe, and who we want to be. Consequently, is it any wonder that enlightened female viewers are turning off soaps in droves? Why would we watch a television show that fails to represent us? The simple answer is: we shouldn’t and we won’t!

According to CBS Soaps in Depth they are. Although the peeps at Guiding Light are denying it, word is that both Jeanne Cooper and Christian Leblanc have already filmed scenes that will appear in the final episode of daytime’s longest running soap. Guiding Light’s final episode airs September 18th, so tune in then to see if the rumors are true. What do you think of Katherine Chancellor and Michael Baldwin showing up in Springfield? With GL coming to an end, do you think Y&R should pick up some of their characters and/or actors? Personally, I just want to see what both of them look like under the ‘natural’ lighting of GL’s ‘new’ production model, LOL.

According to Sara Bibel, Last Friday Sony Pictures Television President Steve Mosko called a town hall meeting to discuss the sad economic state of the union with the cast, crew and employees of Y&R, and boost morale before contract renewals where more paycuts will be required.

Despite being on set that day, Eric “I ain’t taking no stinking paycut” Braeden was a no show.

Get the full report on http://www.fancast.com/blogs/tv-news/deep-soap-power-plays/

For two weeks in a row Christel Khalil has shown that she’s more than just a pretty. In an industry were looks can over shadow talent, CK proved to the critical ass who said that she was nothing more than a hair model, that she’s a good actress. For the past few months the actress has been given cheesy dialogue and has been forced to play a character, who seemed to be lacking any depth or maturity, and at times seemed to show her dislike for such drivel, by phoning in her scenes. But when given good dialogue in a craptastic s/l, CK turned crap into gold. When Lily Winters was diagnosed with Cancer, Christel gave a performance with enough emotional depth to have made a grown man cry. With a maturity that is rarely scene in the character, Lily made some hard choices and although many wouldn’t have agreed with them, most understood. It takes a good actress to not only make you feel her pain, but to understand it. Many didn’t like that Lily wanted Assby by her side, but Christel delivered in such a way that although many not care for her choice of spouse and would like nothing more than to him ran over by an eighteen wheeler, you understood why she wanted him there. And although the character my have left the hospital and went out to look for this man, when she found him she spoke like a woman who needed someone to understand, and to lean on. End the he may not have told her what she wanted to her and may not have been the ear that was needed *cough Billy cough* you knew that it was important for her to see him. In conclusion, although, I believe that this s/l was unnecessary and cruel, I am happy that the viewers of Y&R (especially the dumbass critics) got a chance to see depth of Lily Winters, portrayed so beautifully by Christel Khalil.

Honorable Mention:

Kristoff St. John

Over the past year Emmy winner Kristoff St. John, has been sitting on the side lines waiting to get into the game. When his number was called up, he showed that the real Neil Winters was a still live and kicking and not hiding out somewhere in a crappy adultery s/l. No, Neil Winters was doing what he does best, being a father. While many viewers haven’t liked Neil’s over protective attitude and have even said that it was bordering on creepy, a few of US have yet to see such a thing. Neil has acted like man who lost his the love of his life, and is overprotective their child and his last link to her. Kristoff has shown us a man who is still grieving for the wife he couldn’t protect, so is overly compensating by trying to protect his daughter. When told that there was possibility that his Lily might have cancer, although dying inside, at the possibility loosing his only daughter, he didn’t breakdown, but gave her the strength that she needed to get through. He is practically standing alone against a villain who has hurt and manipulated his daughter again and again, while almost everyone else, including the child he loves is so quick to forget and forgive. At the end of Friday’s EP when Neil found out that the surgeon had performed a full hysterectomy on Lily, his face showed such raw pain that it a heart could truly be broken his was in that moment. In conclusion Kristoff St. John may not have been the star of the EP, but with borage of emotions, he was definitely the REAL co-star. Thank you for showing us, that although Neil was out of his depths, felt lost and alone himself, when push comes to shove, he may not reach the shore, but he will be the shore for everyone else.