A GENOA SALAMI

Many bloggers dip into the old mailbag on occasion and address their readers' concerns and comments.

Me, I confront those voices in my head.....

VOICE: How come you haven't splained away that big Zonk on 'Entourage' a couple of weeks ago?

ME: What big Zonk?

VOICE: Come on! How could you miss it? It was as big as your gut!

ME: No need to get personal.

VOICE: Aris' wife took a job on the soap opera 'The Young & The Restless'.

ME: Right. Mrs. Ari used to be a regular on the show as Kendall Scott, the town slut of Genoa City. So?

VOICE: So??? Your sainted mother's favorite show was 'Y&R'! Shouldn't it be part of your silly TV universe, just as much as 'Entourage'!

ME: And it is.

VOICE: But they treated it like a TV show and not as part of their own reality!

ME: But it is a TV show on Earth Prime-Time, as well as being part of that world. This isn't the first time it's happened, you know. When you've been the Number One soap opera for a couple of decades, other shows are going to notice and they'll want to tap into that magic with references made on their shows.

We've seen it referred to as a TV show before on other shows, like 'The Nanny' ("The Nanny Napper") and 'Boy Meets World' ("And Then There Was Shawn"). Best of all was on 'Diagnosis Murder', when Amanda won a guest role on the soap opera and wouldn't you know it? An actual murder took place while she was on the set.

VOICE: But the 'Entourage' set looked just like the coffee house on 'Young & The Restless'!

ME: Well, it should! Don't you want verisimilitude?

VOICE: Do I? Sounds like something that's been going around....

ME: Look, since they were going to show the Seattle skyline in 'Frasier' each week, they knew they had to make it accurate. Otherwise there would be nitpickers out there who would tell them so otherwise. Probably somebody like Kaye's maid Esther, who lives in the "real" 'Y&R' world, would be watching the Toobworld 'Y&R' while she should be cleaning the Chancellor estate. And you know "Miss BooHoo" would see the difference if her set didn't look like the real place, which is a TV show set for her!

VOICE: I'm still trying to grasp the idea that actors from the real world are playing themselves in Toobworld, and those versions are playing the TV versions of the characters they play back in the real world!

ME: It gets easier. Various cast members of 'The Young & The Restless' appeared in that 'Diagnosis Murder' episode as themselves, and not as the characters they play in the show. Eric Braeden, Jeanne Cooper, Lauralee Bell, Melody Thomas Scott, Kristoff St. John, Heather Thom, J. Eddie Peck, and Doug Davidson all showed up and many of them mistook Amanda for the actress who plays her in the real world, Victoria Rowell. (That's because Ms. Rowell played Drusilla Winters on 'Y&R'. So there's another great example that a character and the actor who played them can exist in the same universe.)

VOICE: Boy! You do go on! So that should be a Zonk right there!

ME: No, because it's just a case of them portraying the "real life people" of Genoa City, like what happened here in the real world with 'Toma', 'Bat Masterson', and George Steinbrenner in 'Seinfeld'.

That didn't negate the relationship both shows share with Toobworld to cause a Zonk. All we really know about Toobworld's 'Young & The Restless' is that it takes place in Genoa City, Wisconsin, as well, and that although it features actors playing the real-life people of that city, it also has characters not found in the real world version (which of course is the basis for its inclusion in Toobworld).

For all we know, the versions of people like Victor and Nikki Newman and Cricket are just minor characters in that version of 'Y&R', but Kendall Scott and her former student - played by Javier Gracho in Toobworld, who is played by Xavier Torres in the real world - could have been the leading roles during their runs on the show. And those two characters don't exist in the "real" Genoa City.

VOICE: If I had my own head to live in, you'd be making it hurt.

ME: This isn't the first time we've seen this happen in Toobworld. It's obvious that the Toobworld version of 'Days Of Our Lives' can't be the same one in our world, because Joey Tribbiani appeared in that version as Dr. Drake Ramoray. And the plotline about him falling down an elevator shaft and getting a brain transplant from some other "fictional" character never occurred on the true 'DOOL'.

VOICE: I surrender!

ME: Good. It's late. I need to get some sleep......

BCnU!
Toby OB

"We'll return to 'The Young and the Restless'

Right after this word from Feeny.
And here is the word:
Shut up!"
Mr. Feeny
'Boy Meets World'