The Young and the Restless Is Doing the Unthinkable With Victor and Nikki — and We Just… Don’t… Get It
Monday, November 15th, 2021
Did you ever imagine there would come a day when they would be reduced to talk-to characters?
Regular readers of Soaps.com know that The Young and the Restless confounds us on the regular. (See also: our latest Soapbox column.) But every once in a while, it not only confounds, it infuriates us. Case in point: what the CBS soap is doing with Victor and Nikki.
Above: A substantive storyline for Victor? No piano required — that would be music to our ears.
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
More: Young & Restless star’s 10th anniversary scrapbook
The Newmans are two of most complicated and combustable characters in the history of daytime — and not for nothing, played by the legendary-for-a-reason Eric Braeden and Melody Thomas Scott. But instead of front and center, the show has moved them… well, left of center. Victor no longer drives story, he’s at best a passenger in other characters’ stories, a mere problem-solver. Has your grandpa killed your dad? Call Victor. Has your surrogate been kidnapped? Call Victor. Has your husband gone missing? Call Victor.
He’s become, in essence, the local handyman but for issues more byzantine than a leaky faucet. Where is the Black Knight who used to squash his enemies like they were bugs? Actually, that’s a rhetorical question. We know where he is — he’s alternating between huffing and puffing like the power player he once was and sitting around plotting with son Adam to ruin, of all people, Billy Boy Abbott. How is that any kind of challenge for Victor? It shouldn’t even qualify as an amusing diversion.
More: There’s the fire that we like to see in Nikki’s eyes! Now point it at an actual plotline.
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
More: Victor Newman’s life and loves [PHOTOS]
Meanwhile, Nikki, despite being an alcoholic ex-stripper with a recurring yen for younger men, has been reduced to playing the thankless role of her family’s peacekeeper. That can be a full-time job, we’ll grant you. But is it a rewarding one? Not for viewers accustomed to seeing her stir the pot rather than remove it from the stove.
She’s not (and never should be) Alice Horton, for Pete’s sake!
What do you think, Young & Restless fans? Shouldn’t Victor and Nikki be playing more active parts in their lives — and shouldn’t they actually have lives? On your way to the comments, stop off at the photo gallery below, which revisits highlights of Nikki’s checkered past.
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Image: CBS screenshot
1/23
<p>Believe it or not, Melody Thomas Scott didn’t originate the role of <em>The Young and the Restless</em>’ naughty-by-nature Nikki Reed, Erica Hope did, in 1978. Despite getting to act opposite future Emmy winner Doug Davidson as Paul Williams, she lasted only a few months before Scott (then just Melody Thomas) was brought in.</p>
Image: CBS screenshot
2/23
<p>The Hollywood vet, who’d already worked with everyone from John Wayne to Alfred Hitchcock, thought that she was just signing with the soap for three years. But she was such a hit as Casey Reed’s impetuous kid sister that three turned into six, and six turned into nine, and… You’re not actually going to ask us to do the math, are you? ’Cause that won’t go well.</p>
Image: CBS screenshot
3/23
<p>Nikki and Paul’s relationship wasn’t really what you’d call deep. At the time, she was just a mixed-up kid, and he was a libidinous beach bum. She finally gave him the heave-ho — emphasis on the “ho” — after he gave <em>her</em> VD. From there, she moved on to a guy who was really going places — places <em>besides</em> the free clinic, we mean!</p>
Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
4/23
<p>Although Nikki took the first of her many husbands when she married young lawyer Greg Foster, she by no means settled down. Rather, she got suckered into signing with Rose DeVille’s <span style="text-decoration: line-through">modeling agency</span> prostitution ring and joining Ian Ward’s <span style="text-decoration: line-through">commune</span> cult, where she bore Paul a son that she put out of her mind for decades.</p>
Image: CBS screenshot
5/23
<p>In 1981, Nikki was taken home to meet Mother by a besotted suitor named Crazy Edward. Yes, that was his real name, and in a second, you’ll understand why: Mother was long deceased, her remains kept in an urn like so many Oreos in a cookie jar. “He wanted to marry Nikki,” Scott told <a href="https://www.hillsdale.net/article/20140227/NEWS/302279982" target="_blank"><em>TV Guide</em></a>, “or kill them both in a murder/suicide.” And they say romance is dead!</p>
Image: CBS screenshot
6/23
<p>Strapped for cash and a natural at undressing, Nikki began stripping at the Bayou, which was kind of a deal-breaker for her hoity-toity subsequent boyfriend, Kevin Bancroft. Or at least it was for his even hoitier and toitier Mommie Dearest (whom she might have preferred in an urn). But ya know who <em>didn’t</em> have a problem with the way that Nikki worked the pole?</p>
Image: CBS
7/23
<p>Megabucks Victor Newman was smitten from the moment he laid eyes on Nikki. But he insisted to anyone who would listen that he didn’t want to make her his woman, he simply wanted to transform her into a lady. Mm-hmm, <em>suuure</em>, Victor. Finally, after Nikki had given birth to his daughter Victoria while married to Kevin, Victor put a ring on it — a huge honkin’ one, we probably don’t need to tell you.</p>
Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
8/23
<p>Everyone who was anyone — and OK, a few people who just <em>wanted</em> to be somebody — attended the lavish 1984 nuptials that united Nikki and Victor in holy matrimony. And it seemed at first that the couple really was in it for the long haul. But <em>only</em> at first; the long haul proved to be much shorter than either they or we expected.</p>
Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
9/23
<p>Victor’s attraction to business foe Jack Abbott’s sister, Ashley, turned Nikki green with envy. But she wasn’t about to just cry into the buckets of money that she now had and work extra hard to get her hair bigger than her rival’s. Oh no, the supervixen used her vivid imagination and began hatching plots. Well, that <em>and</em> the hair stuff.</p>
Image: CBS screenshot
10/23
<p>One of Nikki’s more hilariously harebrained schemes involved a fantasy in which she played dead just long enough for Victor to realize that without her, life wasn’t worth living. Rather than go through with it, though, she remembered that there were other fun things to do while lying down and took up with the last person that Victor would want her to!</p>
Image: Monty Brinton/CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
11/23
<p>When Nikki’s affair with Victor’s archrival Jack didn’t bring her husband back to her, she faked a terminal illness (minus the coffin) and gave birth to their son, Nicholas. Finally, after Victor offered to give Jack back his family’s cosmetics company in exchange for Nikki — then pulled a double-cross! — she went ahead and married into the Abbott family, all but saying, “So there!” instead of “I do.” </p>
Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection (2)
12/23
<p>Following Victor’s “death” in 1993, Nikki did a good bit of her mourning in the bed of younger man Cole Howard, which wound up being super awkward on not one but two fronts: First, Victoria (then Heather Tom, Katie on <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> nowadays) decided that <em>she</em> was in love with the would-be author, too. Then, after Nikki’s lover made her his mother-in-law, it was feared that he’d actually just married his half sister!</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
13/23
<p>After Victor came back from Kansas — alive, but with eyes only for blind farmer Hope Adams — Nikki enjoyed a rebound romance with Brad Carlton (Don Diamont, now <em>Bold & Beautiful</em> playboy Bill). It could have turned into a rebound marriage, too, were it not for the fact that mad, mad Mari Jo Mason took aim at the Mustache on the day his ex-wife was to become another man’s next one. Hearing the news, Nikki ran from the altar right to Victor’s side.</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
14/23
<p>Though daughter-in-law Sharon wasn’t Nikki’s favorite person — or even one of her <em>100</em> favorite people — she still teamed up with ex-con Larry Warton to help the damsel in distress dispose of the body of her abusive lover, Cameron Kirsten. Mind you, not only wasn’t the villain really dead, he was so alive — <em>and</em> twisted — that he then murdered Sharon’s babydaddy Frank Barritt and left <em>his</em> corpse where his own had been dumped.</p>
Image: Brian Lowe/JPI
15/23
<p>One year, Nikki married her “widowed” gynecologist. The next, she flirted with the brother of a childhood friend that she’d… wow… accidentally killed. Soon after that, she became a business mogul and ran for the state senate with the help of campaign manager and future husband David Chow. We don’t want to imply that she was blind to his scheming, but thanks to this photo, it can probably go without saying.</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
16/23
<p>After a car accident killed both David and Victor’s wife-of-the-week, Sabrina Costelana, Nikki tried to be there for her ex. He, in turn, tried to be anywhere that she <em>wasn’t</em>. So, rather than take a minute and get her head screwed on straight, the widow threw herself into an engagement to old flame Paul. Presumably, she was happier about it than she appears.</p>
Image: Sean Smith/JPI
17/23
<p>Nikki was all set to remarry Victor for the umpteenth time in 2010 when conniving Meggie McClaine recruited<em> Bold & Beautiful</em> bad guy Deacon Sharpe to give the once and future Mrs. Newman a nudge off the wagon. He not only did so, he managed to blackmail her into becoming his unhappily-hitched sugar mama. Note: This is <em>not</em> a photo of them reciting their vows to one another… but it might as well have been!</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
18/23
<p>Even after Nikki was extricated from her marriage to Deacon, she and Victor couldn’t get it together for longer than a commercial break. So she decided to remarry Jack, who at the time was using a wheelchair thanks to bonkers ex Patty Williams having used him for target practice. But, since Nikki considers marriages as easy to end as phone calls, she and Jack split up before they’d even sent thank-you notes for their wedding gifts.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
19/23
<p>As soon as Victor got done marrying and remarrying ex-daughter-in-law Sharon Collins, he became engaged again to Nikki, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Never a dull moment with those two! Even their wedding was fraught with drama, as Newman family black sheep Adam (then Michael Muhney) took a bullet that was meant to make him an orphan.</p>
Image: Sean Smith/JPI
20/23
<p>Following the death of her dear friend and mentor, Katherine Chancellor, Nikki confided in Paul that she’d had cult leader Ian Ward’s child back in their New World Brotherhood days. Only, much to their relief, Dylan McAvoy turned out not to be the Machiavellian predator’s offspring but Paul’s. Bullet, dodged!</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
21/23
<p>When contractor Arturo Rosales’ bid to turn Rainbow Gardens Apartments into low-cost housing came in higher than was acceptable, Nikki did what any sensible do-gooder would and slept with him. Although ya <em>know</em>, now that we think about how hot he was, we have to wonder; maybe altruism wasn’t the <em>only</em> reason that Nikki carried on that particular May/December affair.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
22/23
<p>After Victoria (now Amelia Heinle) broke her engagement to ex-husband J.T. Hellstrom, Nikki saved her from his subsequent attack by whacking him with a fireplace poker. Afterwards, Nikki , along with Nick’s most frequent wives, Sharon and Phyllis Summers, buried the body. Which, it bears mentioning, still had a pulse.</p>
Image: John Paschal/JPI
23/23
