How The Young And The Restless And The Bold And The Beautiful Are Connected

At one time, CBS was full of soap operas in the afternoon. However, when the network canceled both "Guiding Light" in 2009 and "As the World Turns" in 2010, it was left with only two soaps — "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful." Both shows seem to exist in the same fictional world.

Both "Y&R" and "B&B" are also typically the top-rated of the four remaining broadcast soaps on the air in 2022, with "Y&R" being the number one soap almost consistently since 1988 with one exception in March 2020 just as the coronavirus pandemic began and more people were home all day to watch television, according to Showbiz411. However, the same network and top Nielsen ratings aren't the only ways these two classic soap operas are related. In fact, the connection between the two daytime dramas goes back to their births.

In 1973, longtime soap scribe William J. Bell — who learned his craft from the mother of soap operas, Irna Phillips, and was a head writer for "Days of Our Lives" — finally decided to create his own soap, along with his wife, Lee Phillip Bell, a well-known Chicago talk show host. Originally titled "The Innocent Years," it was "The Young and the Restless" that finally made it to air as a 30-minute soap, expanding to an hour in 1980, something Bell fought in a losing battle.

In 1987, the Bells created a second soap opera for CBS based on the Los Angeles fashion industry. The working title "Rags" turned into "The Bold and the Beautiful" when the show finally made it to air in the 30-minute format Bell liked so much and has stayed that way to this day. William J. Bell passed away in 2005, while Lee Phillip Bell died in 2020. Their son, Bradley Bell, both produces and writes "The Bold and the Beautiful" today.

In 1990, naughty nurse Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) arrived in Genoa City and quickly fell for Dr. Scott Grainger (Peter Barton), who was married to Lauren Fenmore (Tracy E. Bregman). When Sheila got Scott into bed and became pregnant, she never told him she miscarried, stole Lauren's newborn, and passed the baby off as her own. That started Sheila's reign of terror on CBS soaps.

Eventually, she was presumed dead on "The Young and the Restless" but then popped up again on "The Bold and the Beautiful" as a young Rick Forrester's nanny. Sheila wormed her way into the Forrester family, marrying patriarch Eric Forrester (John McCook), and torturing as many people as she could over the years. In 2021, she returned to the scene once again to announce she was the biological mother of Steffy Forrester's (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) new husband, John Finnegan (Tanner Novlan). In 2022, she has decided it is now her mission to ruin Brooke Logan's (Katherine Kelly Lang) life.

As her husband Scott was dying on "The Young and the Restless," he urged Lauren to make peace with Sheila, who he believed was a changed woman living in Los Angeles. After Scott died, Lauren Fenmore tried to grant his wish and moved out to LA. That is where she learned Sheila was as evil and loony as she was when she was living in Genoa City.

However, Lauren figured she needed a fresh start in life and decided to stay in LA anyway and began working for Forrester Creations, meaning "The Bold and the Beautiful" had a brand-new character on the canvas. While working for the fashion house, Lauren met and had a romance with Eric Forrester, but eventually chose to return to Genoa City where she married lawyer Michael Baldwin (Christian J. Le Blanc) and had another son named Fenmore. Lauren has traveled back and forth between the two soaps for brief "B&B" appearances over the years, but remains a "Y&R" character.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the original Sally Spectra (Darlene Conley) was one of the most flamboyant women on soap operas. Although she was BFFs with Lauren when that character lived in LA, she remained mainly a "The Bold and the Beautiful" character. In 2017, Sally's niece, also named Sally Spectra (Courtney Hope), arrived on the scene determined to revive her aunt's fashion house. After a series of mishaps in LA, Sally moved to Genoa City and became a "The Young and the Restless" character in 2020.

However, Sally didn't forget her "Bold and the Beautiful" roots in 2021 when she traveled back and forth between soaps developing a scheme to get Summer Newman (Hunter King) out of town. That also brought Summer to Los Angeles, along with Summer's boyfriend, Kyle (Michael Mealor), as the two soaps did a few episodes worth of crossovers, proving once again that "Y&R" and "B&B" do indeed exist in the same fictional world.