Episode 73 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 73:

Will Nikki be unknowingly bowled over by Sarah? Will Diane take the Nikki threat lying down?

It seems increasingly obvious that Sarah's going to poison someone. My personal choice would be Diane, because Nikki is the most likely person to be suspected (and that would get Nikki out of the way); if Nikki was not suspected, then Diane would still be out of the way, and Nikki would be free to go after Victor. Well, ignoring Joshua. But I'm sure she could deal with that if she had to. On the other hand, Sarah might choose to poison Nikki directly. Since it wasn't obvious who the better choice was (and because it made for a better story), I went for both just to cover the bases.

This was also an opportunity to showcase a little more about Miguel: his skill as a manager, and his subtle command of the complex social issues surrounding a typical Newman gathering.

And, finally, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to make the the dual poisoning work without getting Sarah arrested. I was afraid I'd have to go back and rewrite the whole thing because it just wasn't believable. Then, suddenly, I realized that with Wiley and Bates, motivation doesn't matter. I could feed them any inane, poorly worked out theory and they'd buy it. Having cops that gullible sure makes it easier on the writers--no need for tiresome rewrites. Just write a bunch of slop and go. That sure was easy. I'm starting to understand better why we have such lame characters on the show.

Will John and Katherine's wedding come off without a hitch?

I've never felt John and Katherine were a very good match. John is way too boring. So I was looking for a way to break this up. The Y&R tradition seems to be for the bride or groom to `accidentally' sleep with someone the night before the wedding, and who am I to buck this time-honored tradition? Of course, there was the minor matter of not having anyone obvious for Katherine to be with--but fortunately, it's also a `recent tradition' to rewrite history, so I took the liberty of hinting at a history for Katherine and Kurt. Besides, it has always bothered me that Kurt and Katherine were becoming close friends and then he just stopped seeing her all of a sudden when he got involved with Hope and Ashley. This gave me an excuse to establish an explanation for their sudden separation--that he had found himself suddenly emotionally out of control by the feelings he had for Katherine.

Will Jill and Ryan spend Thanksgiving all alone?

The folks on the newsgroup have been puzzling about Keith's absence. We're (sadly) bracing ourselves for the possibility of a new character playing the part. I hope that's not what happens--the actor is fine, what we need is for the character to change--perhaps to acquire some more sinister traits.

But anyway, I've wanted for a while to get Jill and Ryan together. Jill used to chase Ryan and then one day mysteriously stopped. I think it'd be interesting to see some fights between Jill and Trisha over Jill's potential interest in Ryan. It almost doesn't matter if it's real or imagined--it just matters that Trisha thinks it's real. Also, if Jill and Ryan were together for real, their collective power might be interesting if they opted to try for custody of little Phillip.

That's all for Episode 73's morals. Don't miss Episode 74 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.