It’s Soap Opera 101, The Young and the Restless. The way to make viewers care about a new character is to connect them to a character we already care about. Make the character we care about care about them, and we’ll start to care about them. It isn’t rocket science. Y&R fumbled that basic play with Nate Hastings and Elena Dawson, and now they are about to fumble it again with Nate and Audra Charles.
Nate Hastings and Audra Charles: New In Town
When Nate (Sean Dominic) first arrived in Genoa City, he was thrust into a flirtation with Victoria Newman (Amelia Heinle) and a role as Victor Newman’s (Eric Braeden) doctor, which led to him helping Victor to fake his death. That was a great start. While fans may have had warm memories of little boy Nate and his parents, Olivia Hastings and adoptive dad, Malcolm Winters, adult Nate needed to earn his place back on the canvas.
Unfortunately, the relationship with Victoria fizzled before it really started, and Victor quickly kicked Nate to the curb once he didn’t need to exploit him any longer. This led Nate to a relationship with Elena Dawson (Brytni Sarpy), herself a relative newcomer.
When she cheated on Devon (Bryton James) — a character viewers were invested in — with Nate, neither one exactly endeared themselves to the audience. As a result, their romance drew a collective yawn. As did their equally anti-climactic breakup.
Not Learning From Your Young and the Restless Mistakes
Nate’s flirtation with Imani Benedict (Leigh-Ann Rose) also went nowhere for the same reason. We didn’t care about them individually, and we didn’t care about them as a couple. And now the show is looking to go down that same road again by pairing Nate with Audra (Zuleyka Silver).
We like Audra. We’ve written about how much we like Audra. And we like Nate. We’ve written about how much we like Nate. But we don’t care about either of them enough individually to be invested in them as a couple. We barely know Audra. And despite how long he’s been in town, it feels like we barely know Nate. Flesh them both out more through other relationships before giving love a try. Trust us, it will be better than way.
The Young and the Restless airs weekdays on CBS. For an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.
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