Thanks Diane!

For the last few weeks I’ve felt like I had morning sickness every time I watched Y&R.  It was this overwhelming sensation of feeling bad or dreading that I was going to feel bad every time the episode started.  It was awful, especially since this is a show I’ve been watching since I was a “tween.”  But every day with each new episode it was the same old same old – just like morning sickness for all of you who were fortunate to never have that symptom of pregnancy.  The same conversations begot the same conversations which begot menacing stares and threats.  Ugh, it was brutal.  NOBODY in Genoa City is happy.  No one is allowed a moment’s enjoyment about anything or even worse things will happen.  We glimpsed moments of new dialogue with things like Adam being unbelievably cruel to Sharon and Diane running around town like a chicken with its head cut off, but those were only brief.  What happened to the Winters family?  What happened to the Atkinson’s?  Why is Katherine Chancellor running around town like a raging bitch out to ruin EVERYTHING her son has?  Why can’t we have those conversations while building the story for what everyone knew would be a whodunit murder mystery?

Anyway, this week brought new life (sorry Diane) to the show.  Everyone in town has a motive but who did it?  Who felt they couldn’t possibly survive without killing Diane?  I for one am sad to see Diane go.  She was a great character – a legacy character of a sort. She had something to do with almost everyone in town and had links to one of its major families, the Abbott’s, through her son Kyle.  I’m not sure why this writing regime always feels the need to kill off legacy characters.  Just send them away for goodness sake.  That way you can always come back to it later if you need to.  I get that sometimes great story telling is achieved by killing a beloved character but I think Y&R has more than fulfilled that quota.  I mean really Colleen, Brad, John, Drucilla, the Winter’s family (because honestly, they might as well be dead as little as we see them) are just some of the latest casualties. But again, I digress.

I am enjoying the way the story is unfolding.  Whoever thought of that cool visual of Diane’s dead face under water with that sweet sound effect when doing flashbacks should get a raise.  That is a wonderful sound effect/touch that makes this whodunit feel current.  I’m also happy that this brought that yummy detective Ronan Malloy back.  I do wish though that he would have come back a little softer – not a lot, just a little.  Maura West, however, made the most and then some of her last days on set.  She is selling the crap out of this story.  While Diane made some choices that don’t make sense, once she set on her course she was great.  She got Kyle away from all the crazy that was to come and made sure EVERYONE knew exactly how she felt about them before the end.  It’s so rare to get characters who tell the brutal truth so I savor each and every one of those moments. Diane was blessed with a lot during her swan song.  If only she had spared an extra moment to go and tell Katherine just how horrible she is it would have been perfect.

Kay spent her week seriously lobbying to be the next murder victim.  Not content to just ruin the business of the son she didn’t want and doesn’t like, Kay set out to also terminate Tucker’s marriage.  Why you ask?  Yeah, so did everyone else who heard about it.  Just because Kay doesn’t like something doesn’t mean she should be able to change it if it doesn’t pertain to her.  Up until minutes before his accident Kay hated Tucker and wanted nothing to do with him.  It’s really ridiculous that she has this much say over his life now.  I really hope Tucker makes it his business to get her back.  I also hope Ashley has a chance to take all of Kay’s past mistakes and rub them in her face.  Kay acts like she’s not a recovering alcoholic and like she’s never done anything wrong – ever.  Ugh… she’s such an unlikeable person right now.  And it’s really unfortunate because I’m feeling like I will never like Kay again.  There’s just been too much of her buttinskiness of late for me.  But perhaps it will be as @susan_rodeo said on Twitter – this is Kay’s year to be the Christmas special.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

As for Ashley and Tucker, I’m LOVING the fact that the deed is not what hurts Ashley the most, but the fact that Tucker’s lie caused her to choose him over her own daughter.  She’s now realizing that she’s just as horrible a parent as she so boldly and brazenly called Sharon months ago.  I for one, think Ash should drive on up to the prison and apologize to Sharon for being such a complete and total hypocrite regarding parenting skills.  Sharon is no prize, but then again neither are you Ashley.

Now I’m hoping that this coming week will bring us some variety on the show.  I’d love to see some OTHER people in Genoa City, you know Collin or Lily, or Devon, or Neil or Lauren or anyone who’s not a Newman/Abott.  I wish the show would figure out how to balance things out more.  The murder of Diane is something that could be talked about across town because everyone knows something about her.  Then we could see OTHER people doing OTHER things.  Like Neil should still be handling business at Chancellor and somebody should at least tell Sofia that Tucker didn’t get control of his company back.  Ah well, dreams….

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