A Single Young & Restless Character Could Not Only Give the Show a Much-Needed Reality Check But Set the Whole Canvas On Its Ear
Ironically, the character in question could also lead to far richer storytelling.
We’ve written before about our difficulty lately getting into the business storylines that The Young and the Restless has always told so well. How worried can we be about zillionaires losing millions when they’d still be left with… millions? Everyone on the soap, it feels like, is so rich and powerful that there’s nothing at stake, certainly nothing to which those of us who actually fret over our bills can relate.
Then, as Lily was pressing Devon to merge Hamilton-Winters with Chancellor Industries to form an even more mega mega-company, it hit us: What the show is missing is any kind of a have-not, exactly the kind of character that Devon was before he was adopted into the wealthy Winters clan and made the heir of Genoa City’s Duchess, Katherine.
Were Young & Restless to introduce somebody who couldn’t buy a restaurant as casually as we might a pack of bubblegum, it would restore the kind of balance to the canvas that it had back in the days of the scrappy, hardworking Fosters. It would be a welcome reality check for characters like Noah, who’s such a hot mess about his love life. “What, exactly, are you moping about when you could have your limo driver drop you at every nightclub in town?” And it might give some of Genoa City’s other Richie Riches a shocking new perspective. “Whoa, I really do have it easy!”
“Mo money, mo problems? I highly doubt that.”
Credit: Courtesy of the Everett Collection
The Young and the Restless had exactly this sort of have-not on hand in Lola and Arturo. She was, at least at first, an aspirational character with more pride than money — a stark contrast to Summer and Kyle, the trust-fund babies who made up the other two legs of her popular, if short-lived, love triangle. And during Arturo’s romance with Abby, it utterly flummoxed her that he actually had to work.
Yes, Abby, work. It’s a real thing that those of us who don’t have mansions to wander around do.
Unfortunately, instead of capitalize on the contrast between the well-to-do and the barely-making-do, the show discarded Arturo and put Lola so far on the back burner that she fell off the stove.
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So why not learn from that mistake? Introduce a new have-not and this time play over the long haul the chasm between characters who never have to think about the rent and characters who actually have to clip coupons and take their own car to the shop to get repairs that they can only hope they can afford.
What do you think, Young & Restless fans? Wouldn’t such a character be a welcome addition? On your way to the comments, stop off at the below photo gallery, a collection of glamtastic portraits of the show’s 2022 cast.
