Y&R: Kids Caught in the Middle of Eff-ed Up Adults Who Only Want What's "Best" for Them

So it was child custody day on Y&R... Karen, Neil, and Tyra were in court regarding Ana, while Billy, Chloe, and Cane were gearing up for their throw-down over Delia. Things seemed to be going Karen's way until Neil stood up at the end "to say something." Who wants to bet he has something to say about the stability of their marriage? Or the total instability... caused by him, incidentally. I usually like Neil, but lately he has been a royal jackass. Poor Karen.

I have mixed feelings about stories like these. On one hand, real-life courts still tend to favor mothers, which may not always be fair. But on the other hand, soaps often make an extreme effort to create messed-up mothers they can take children away from, like Chloe and Tyra, even though soap fathers are usually equally wack and unstable. For confirmation of this phenomena, see the case of Meg, Paul, & Eliza on ATWT.

And this has been bugging me for some time -- can Ana please stop calling her foster parents Mr. Neil and Miss Karen? They're hardly strangers at this point, and especially because of the Devon connection, every time she says that it ends up feeling like some weird racial, class-based throwback that just gives the whole thing an uncomfortable dynamic. So just stop it already, writers!