Before headwriter Josh Griffith exits stage left, The Young and the Restless may be bringing about the end of an era: the death of Jack Abbott.
In Friday’s episode, Diane got the upper hand on Laurence, and she and Kyle headed home to the Abbott mansion. There, Jack was making one foolish mistake after another. First he was telling loco ex-wife Patty that the jig is up, then instead of having her arrested, he ordered her to leave the house.
Instead of do as she was told and count herself lucky that she wasn’t being sent up the river, Patty got dressed and gave the object of her obsession the ultimate goodbye kiss — stabbing him as she did so.
In Patty’s warped mind, this wasn’t the end. “I believe in the afterlife,” she said. “I believe in love. I believe in light.” She also was certain that they’d finally get to “be together forever just like we’re meant to be.”
Scarier still, in the scenes from next week that the soap aired at the tail end of Friday’s episode, Jack is nowhere to be seen. Arriving at the mansion, Diane and Kyle can’t fathom where he could’ve gone… and then they hear a crash from upstairs.
Is Jack really a goner? Unlikely. But you have to admit, it would be a helluva shift for the show, if the Abbott family’s patriarch was to follow dad John to the grave. Peter Bergman has played Jack since 1989, when he replaced the late Terry Lester and utterly made the role his own.
Whatever happens, changes are coming for the show following Griffith’s exit.
