‘The Young & The Restless’ and ‘Bold & The Beautiful’ to Air Classic Episodes Fridays Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

The Young and The Restless fans were in for a treat Friday, as CBS chose to re-air the classic 1984 episode featuring Victor and Nikki Newman’s first marriage. CBS also aired a rerun of The Bold and The Beautiful and will continue airing reruns on Fridays to draw out the backlog of new episodes filmed before the two soap operas halted production due to the coronavirus pandemic. ABC made a similar decision with its daytime soap, General Hospital.

Victor (Eric Braeden) and Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) have married three different times during the show’s run. The first time they tied the knot was in the April 12, 1984 episode. “You’re invited to join #YR for the wedding of Victor and Nikki Newman. Watch their first ‘I do’s’ tomorrow at our regularly scheduled time on [CBS]! And we will pick up where we left off today on Monday’s episode,” the show announced on Twitter Thursday.

The Bold and The Beautiful aired a more recent repeat on Friday. B&B fans relived the special 30th anniversary episode from March 21, 2017. The episode was filmed in Australia and featured Steffy (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) and Liam (Scott Clifton). The series shared special videos from actors John McCook and Katherine Kelly Lang, reminding viewers to check out the classic episode.

New episodes of Y&R and B&B will continue airing on Mondays through Thursdays, notes Soaps.com. When production was shut down last month, the shows only had enough new episodes through early May, so airing reruns at the end of the week will help them stretch out the back inventory.

ABC is doing the same thing with General Hospital, which has enough episodes left in the tank to keep new stories airing through the end of May. The “Flashback Friday” GH episodes will feature introductions from current castmembers.

The Young and the Restless launched in March 1973, and now has more than 11,000 episodes. The series won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series 10 times. The Bold and The Beautiful launched in 1987 and reached 8,000 episodes in January 2019.

While ABC and CBS’ soaps have to pull some unique moves during the coronavirus pandemic, NBC’s Days of Our Lives does not have to worry. According to TVLine, the show has eight months of episodes already complete, meaning it will not run out until the fall.

Since more Americans are home during the day due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ratings for the daytime soaps have been the best in years. Y&R averaged 4.21 million viewers for the week ending on March 23, the best since April 2019, reports TVLine. B&B averaged 3.66 million viewers, its best since March 2018. GH pulled in 2.57 million viewers, its best in two years, while Days had its best week since February 2019 with 2.24 million viewers.

Photo credit: Monty Brinton/CBS