Y&R: Two In One

First up, last Friday's episode of The Young and the Restless, which picked up where Thursday's show left off, with the surprise return of Philip Chancellor IV from his tour of duty in Iraq. On Friday, once he'd received the effusive greeting from the women in his life and told them he now goes by the nickname Chance (which will spare us from having to say III or IV to differentiate between Philips, at least), he spotted his not so dead father across the room.

At first, I assumed that his mother, Nina, had already filled him in, since he didn't show the slightest bit of shock, but instead just called out an almost angry sounding "You!" As we soon found out, though, Chance had no clue that his father was still alive until he saw him standing there, yet he remained completely unemotional about it, to the point of shaking Philip's hand and telling him that it was nice to meet him.

Chance noted that he'd seen a lot of people die but never seen someone come back: what was Philip's secret? Katherine quickly changed the subject, saying that they could talk about that later. Chance did make a few more mild inquiries, like how long Philip had been in town, did anyone else in the family know he was alive before this, and who was Cane, really?, but he remained oddly detached.

In the middle of all of this, Philip got the call letting him know that he was not a carrier of Huntington's Disease, which meant that Chance couldn't have it, either.

Later, after Chance had left the room, Nina, Jill and Katherine discussed the soldier's calm attitude and attributed it his military training. They also talked about telling him the truth and Philip interrupted to tell them to back off:

"Don't rush him, don't fix him. Let the kid be. I mean it, I don't want you driving him away, like you drove me away."

Oh, man. Get over yourself!

That was all that happened on Friday, but it was a bit surprising, to say the least, to see Chance have basically no reaction at all to finding out his father was very much alive.

On to today's show. Philip showed up at the Chancellor mansion to see Nina and his son, only to find himself crashing his half brother Billy's birthday party. Since they hadn't had a chance to talk since Philip's resurrection, Billy took the opportunity to tell his brother that he understood the pressures he'd been facing and had escaped them himself, just in a different way. At this point, of course, Billy doesn't know that his brother left because he's gay.

Nina suggested that she, Philip, and Chance have lunch together, but Chance quickly bowed out, telling them that he was still tired and had some unpacking to do. After Nina and Philip left, Chance got to know his Uncle Billy's ex, Chloe, who asked him what he thought of his Dad and if he had any memories of him from before he 'died'.

Chance told her that having just met the guy, he doesn't have an opinion one way or the other about him.

Over lunch, Philip told Nina that since Chance would barely look at him he was either hiding a deep anger towards him or just had no interest in getting to know his father at all. Nina asked Philip to give Chance time, saying that he'd come around. Philip wondered how Chance would react to finding out that, on top of everything else, his father was gay. Nina assured him that their son would be okay with it, but Philip seemed unconvinced.

That was all, two pretty low key episodes as far as this story goes. It will be interesting to see where they go from here with Chance. His detachment is a twist I didn't expect, so I'm curious to see what it's leading up to. I'm also hoping to see Chance dealing with having just returned from war, since no one comes back from combat and blithely resumes their former life without any issues.