Credit: CBS screenshot (6)

Lately, when I’ve filled in for Candi writing the Young & Restless Soapbox, it’s driven me to drink — and not in a “This is great! Pop the bubbly” kinda way. This week, however, only some parts of some episodes left me crying in my beer over squandered opportunities and a no-longer-remarkable absence of logic. Care to discuss? Pour a beverage of your choosing and let’s roll…

Exit Stage Left?

Michael Graziadei can make virtually any material work, he’s so natural on screen. (That’s his hilarious imitation of Lucy fangirling over Faith below. #perfection) But Daniel lost so many points with me when he cheated on Lily — with whom he had a great renewed relationship! — that I won’t be altogether crushed if, as he and Heather were considering, they go to Portugal with their daughter to visit Paul. Maybe afterwards, Daniel and Lucy can return without Heather? I just can’t get behind her and Daniel as a couple. There’s no “there” there other than that they share a daughter. Although I did appreciate that, for once, the show didn’t have them move from job to job with the ease of changing seats in a movie theater. An actual nod to real life? Thumbs up!

Moving the thumb in the opposite direction, what was up with Daniel telling Sharon that he wasn’t sure Lucy was “ready to face the truth about her dad’s guilt” regarding Cassie’s death? The youngster made the disastrous decision to try and drive her drunk crush home, he didn’t kill her. If Sharon had framed Daniel’s involvement as “guilt,” especially considering her mental state, that, we might have bought. But Daniel doing so? Not so much. Oh, and was I the only one who took one look at the length of Lucy’s skirt (below) and thought in my most parental voice, “You march right up to your room, young lady, and put on at least two more inches of that outfit!”?

More: Joshua Morrow (nearly) kisses and tells

Family Business

As the Glissade vs. Jabot war really began to take shape, I was left with questions, many questions. For starters, why is Victor obsessed with making people who don’t get along work together (whether members of his own family or, in this case, Kyle and Audra)? Why would Victor immediately try to weaken his leadership team by making Audra suspicious of Kyle? And, considering that the three of them met in the same park that everyone they know frequents, how on earth is the identity of Glissade’s “mystery investor” still a mystery to anyone? At least Jack and Diane figured it out immediately. But Victor’s motivation in all this remains hella murky. He bought a cosmetics company to put Jabot out of business and hired Jack’s son to run it, thereby rubbing salt in the wound, and all because…

He’s mad that Jack tried to help get Nikki sober? A thank-you note might have been more appropriate. On top of that, Victor’s admission to Adam that he is Glissade’s “mystery investor” (shocker!) and that his intention is to use Newman Media to pump up the new company and squash Jabot rang… oddly pathetic. It was if Dad was telling Adam, “If you, too, work hard enough at it, you can hold onto ancient petty grudges and demonstrate zero growth over years and years — decades, even!” #lifegoals

More: Victor set to pull an ‘Aunt Jordan’?

At least Kyle’s showdowns with his parents crackled with energy. He’s an entitled, insufferable brat — and the show already has one of those — but the scenes were straight-up fire. Michael Mealor even reached a level of intensity that reminded me of Peter Bergman. Jack’s face-off with Victor was fun, too, right down to The Mustache bellowing that what his archenemy was experiencing was the consequences of his being a bad father. Of course Victor, who was once sued by his children and has never managed to forge a lasting bond with Adam, would be so self-unaware as to make such an accusation!

To Quote Taylor Swift…

… you need to calm down. That’s what I wanted to tell Summer during her endless rants about Kyle moving himself and Harrison out of the Abbott mansion. The way she was going on and on, you’d have sworn her ex was talking about taking their kid to some war-torn hellhole, not a penthouse three blocks away. And where was all this concern about “continuity” in Harrison’s life when the former marrieds cut Tara out of it and relocated to Italy? On the plus side, it was a smart use of history to have Daniel remind his sister that custody battles leave scars — and it took a long time for his relationship with Phyllis to heal after hers with Danny. (Also loved that he called Summer on how very Mom-like her over-the-top battle cry sounded!)

Thursday’s episode invited us to an endless business meeting between Lily and Devon that, were this real life, we’d have doodled and texted through. I get that she’s indebted to Jill, but more so than to Neil? Huh? Also, I suppose that we can consider the Lily/Billy re-team-up a sign of things to come. As it is, he and Sally looked 99.9-percent sure that something happened between Adam and Chelsea. (See below.) So we can probably give up any hopes that we might have had that this coupling was going to happen.

In Brief

Did anyone else think that we saw a glimpse of the real Claire peeking out when she crossed paths with Kyle and Audra? For just a moment or two there, the Pollyanna facade dropped with her rival, and we got a taste of snarkiness that left me wanting seconds. • To be clear, the excitement that Harrison expressed over digging up earthworms is the sort that I want to get from tuning in every day. (See below.) • Did Nikki really say with a straight face that Victor is “a good man”? Madam, he put an imposter husband in Phyllis’ bed, weaponized poor, crazy Patty and sicked whackadoo Kelly on Jack. (Maybe Nikki’s tippling again, and we just don’t know it?) • Adam made the inevitable reveal of his hookup with Chelsea so much worse, didn’t he, by not taking any of the opportunities to come clean that Sally dropped in his lap. If he’d fessed up then and there, I actually feel like his significant other would have and could have forgiven him. • Why would Claire’s relatives be talking about changing her name to Newman, not Howard like her dad? If they want to buck tradition, that’s fine and dandy. But taking Cole’s surname wasn’t even mentioned as a possibility.

More: Don’t give Bryton James *this* storyline

Ironically, the show did something that I always want it to this week: It showed us happy couples enjoying one another. The trouble was, the Christine/Danny/Traci/Alan scenes were so so cutesy and devoid of wit, they made me feel bad for all involved. In real life, Lauralee Bell is funny; why can’t Christine be? Christopher Cousins was a hoot on One Life to Live; is it so impossible to write to that gift? • The Nick/Phyllis scenes gave the impression that the powers that be were throwing up their hands and saying, “We don’t have anybody else for them, let’s just put them back together.” Wow. Creative. See also: Nate and Audra. They make sense on paper, but do they set that paper afire on screen? Especially when so much of their foreplay is just more business blather? • After Chelsea and Billy met up at Crimson lights, only to go eat at Society, it occurred to me: Do we need to tell the show that changing locations doesn’t count as movement in a plot?