Opinion: From GH to Y&R, Unlikely Soap Couples Are Taking Over — And It’s (Mostly) Working!
Victoria and Kyle are shockingly great on The Young and the Restless. Ditto General Hospital‘s Carly/Valentin and the promise of Bill and Dani 2.0 on Beyond the Gates. But Days of our Lives‘s Marlena/Stefano is a tired retread and The Bold and the Beautiful‘s Will and Dylan are a snooze.
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Everything we know about Y&R‘s Victoria Newman and the much younger Kyle Abbott tells us they shouldn’t work, yet they’re the hottest couple on daytime. They even have a song about “Slow Burning Love” to accompany their sex romps. What gives?!
Forbidden love is Soaps 101, so start with that — he was recently engaged to her daughter. They have pushed the envelope from the jump. Blindfolds and ice cubes at 1:00 in the afternoon at a seedy motel? “Pan to the fireplace,” advised Bob Woods (Bo, One Life to Live) about love scenes, but these two do more than just hit the sheets. They talk about real issues re: business and their complicated families, and are making a genuine effort to get to know each other.
Kyle: “Let’s play ‘Have you ever?’ Every time we answer ‘yes,’ a piece of clothing comes off.”
Victoria: “That definitely ups the ante.”
So does Kyle renting them a love nest where they can now meet in secret. In between removing articles of clothing, he mentioned he got her a remote for the garage so she never has to wait for him. That’s love.
Victoria: “This is our safe space.”
Kyle: “I like to think of it as our danger zone.”
Soap secrets never stay buried for long, so what will undo them? Claire finding out Kyle is much hotter in bed with her mom? Billy discovering his ex-wife is zooming his nephew? Or Victor learning his daughter is acting out scenes from Body Heat with the son of his sworn enemy, Jack Abbott? Whatever it is, I’m here for it.
Come to think of it, September was “older woman, younger man” month on Y&R. Stephanie and Nate are harder to buy because she is best friends with his mom, Olivia, and we don’t know them very well. But what the duo lacks in chemistry, they make up for in classic lines.
Stephanie (re: her son Holden): “I don’t want to weigh things down with how I tell my grown-ass son about my booty call.”
Memo to Claire and Holden: It doesn’t bode well for your “romance” that your moms are getting more action than you are.
