Last Updated on January 26, 2022
If you’re a fan of CBS soaps ‘The Young and the Restless’ and ‘The Bold and the Beautiful,’ you better not miss this week’s episodes.
When this Thursday’s episodes of the last two CBS soaps have aired, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful will have reached a strange milestone. No new episodes will remain.
Both shows shut down production because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And since they stopped making new episodes, they’re about to run out of the shows already produced. That happens this Thursday.
A few weeks back, The Young and the Restless went to a four-day week, running classic episodes on Fridays. But this Thursday, it’s the end of the line.
Both shows, the only remaining CBS soaps on the schedule and the two most successful, made plans to keep their audiences entertained in the meantime. Both plan to rerun episodes grouped in “theme weeks.”
The Young and the Restless plans to honor its longtime matriarch, Katherine Chancellor, all next week. Jeanne Cooper portrayed the millionaire Chancellor for 40 years until her death in 2013.
The Bold and the Beautiful, meanwhile, plans to spend next week reliving various trips to Monte Carlo. Nice work if you can get it.
Soaps have been pre-recorded since the 1970s. Back in the early 1980s, Search for Tomorrow, living on its last legs after moving from CBS to NBC, managed to lose a tape. So producers called the cast in to perform one episode live. Some still insist it had to be a publicity stunt to boost ratings. (If that’s true, it still didn’t help.)
Going live isn’t an option this time around, of course, because of the pandemic and social distancing rules.
It’s not clear how long the “theme weeks” will continue. But if you’re a fan of classic soap moments, you’ll probably enjoy what they roll out.
Meanwhile, ABC’s last remaining soap, General Hospital, will run out of new episodes in late May.
But NBC’s last serial, Days of Our Lives, somehow managed to get about eight months ahead of schedule. When the pandemic eases enough to allow production to resume, they should still be airing new shows.