Episode 78 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 78:

It's A Wonderful Wife

Well, it's Christmas and Christmas tales are in vogue, so I wanted to do a tale of redemption. And who didst present himself oh so in need of redemption but Neil. I thought about re-doing last year's variant of A Christmas Carol, but figured I should survey my other options first. The choice of It's a Wonderful Life lept out at me when I started to consider the opportunities for reviewing past events.

Next came the question of who to cast as Clarence. Picking someone that was dead wasn't working for me, so I started to scan the ``missing into the great Y&R black hole of lost characters'' for someone to use. Mamie presented herself as an obvious choice. The little jokes about her cruise that never returned and about Eric Braeden's presence in the Titanic were just coincidence, but seemed like fun to pursue. Anyway, I was sad when Mamie went away and was just dropped--this seemed a good chance to finally retrieve her.

Still on my mind were a couple of 5-year-old video tapes I'd recently watched showing `the old Dru' and how much fun she was before they transformed her to the new, Stepford-esque Dru. So this was my chance to plot out her life if she hadn't been thus transformed.

Next I just picked a bunch of mistakes I wish Y&R would repair. Like the killing of Rex. And I tried to see if I could stretch things to make them Neil's fault. It was easier than I expected, actually. Explanations fell out of nowhere--mostly due to various other things that have nagged us ever since forever, like how much time Neil spends in Olivia's office, or like the extremely tenuous claim that the "test shots" of Dru were good enough for someone to use as a centerfold. It's always fun inventing explanations for those situations. And here the two needs (the need of those plot elements for an explanation and my need to find some way to justify other hypothesized events) just kind of dovetailed.

Finally, I forced a happy ending onto the whole thing 'cuz it is Christmas, and Christmas stories call for such things. But in truth, I don't expect anything could get through Neil's thick skull, and I was a hair's breadth from ending with him saying to Mamie, "So what's your point?" and then having her sigh and resign herself to not getting her wings through him.

By the way, here's wishing a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or just plain Happy Holidays to all my readers!

That's all for Episode 78's morals. Don't miss Episode 79 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.