Meet Young & Restless’ Surprising ‘New’ Billy Abbott

We’d seen the parallels before. They would have been impossible to miss, right? They’re both impulsive guys from an extremely wealthy family, and they both carry a strong belief not only that there is nothing that they can’t do but that there is nothing that they can’t do better than anybody else. But not until this week’s episodes of The Young and the Restless did we really, truly get it: Kyle is the new Billy Abbott.

Which is odd, because we still have the OG Billy, as entitled and arrogant as he’s ever been (yes, despite his support of Chelsea during her worries over Connor). So we’re not super sure what the soap is going for here. If it was a person, we’d say that that person has a “type”: wealthy brats with a habit of feeling slighted if five minutes pass during which they haven’t been patted on the back. But storywise…

Yeah, we’re stumped there. We’ve already watched as Kyle clashed with Uncle Billy about their piece of a pie that’s large enough to feed an entire planet. And we’ve heard them go on and on about how brilliant and capable and deserving they are. But… so what?

Isn’t the show just retelling the story of Billy leaving Jabot in an “I’ll show you!” snit because he wasn’t the biggest of the big kahunas? We didn’t care whether he got a corner office the size of our home then, and we don’t care whether Kyle does now. More exciting, and aspirational, would be seeing a new Victor Newman, someone who comes from nothing and nevertheless makes something of himself. Someone who has to fight every step of the way. Someone who wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. That, we could get behind. This… this is just another poor little rich boy ignoring the world at his feet because he’s too busy having a tantrum.

Heck, Young & Restless didn’t even have Kyle use his saved-up allowance to start his own company to prove his mettle. He took advantage of Victor’s deep pockets to stick it to Mom and Dad. Wow. What cunning. Wealthy dude lets wealthier dude hand him a company with change he found in his sofa cushions.

On the plus side, at least in this business story, the stakes are personal. Kyle wants to hurt Jack and Diane, and he is. All the while, Victor is loving it, because Kyle is far too cocky and self-absorbed to consider that the only reason he has the job that he does isn’t because he’s the most amazing businessman this side of a Monopoly board, it’s because his hiring will wound the Black Knight’s opponent. 

Our hope is that in the end, Glissade fails miserably, and Kyle is forced to admit that he’d probably be in over his head if he was put in charge of a piggy bank. He goes crawling back to Mommy and Daddy, who say, “Yeah, dummy, we tried to shield you from that fact. We can’t rehire you now. We’d look like idiots!”

Needless to say, Victor will have had Kyle blackballed in Genoa City’s ultra-busy business community. Sharon won’t even take him on at Cassidy First — and she was ready to work with the ex-husband who let her believe that her baby was dead! But she will let him ring up orders at Crimson Lights. Yup, overnight, Kyle becomes a have-not. Maybe then, he as well as we could learn what he is really made of — and whether it’s more than millionaire DNA and a solid-gold chip on his shoulder. Maybe he will shut up and listen rather than speak, move rather than dig in his heels, appreciate rather than demand. Maybe then we’ll care what happens to him.

Review the below photo gallery to follow a timeline of Kyle’s life.