How would you say "The Young and the Restless" in Latin?

I first got hooked on The Young and the Restless years ago while visiting my mother-in-law in Romania one summer, where she watched it daily under the translated title Tânăr şi neliniştit. 

The fact is, however, that the Romanians unofficially call the show "Victor," after the forceful central character Victor Newman, who so captured their imagination.

It may also be that the show became popular in Romania because the theme song is "Nadia's Theme," reminding them of their Olympic hero Nadia Comăneci.

I was personally charmed by the fact that the show was set in the fictional Genoa City in my native state of Wisconsin.

When I got back to the States, I learned that the Romanians were years behind the US in the timeline, but I quickly caught up. 

In honor of the upcoming 11,000th episode on September 1, and as a Latin teacher, I somewhat self-indulgently discuss the matter: How would you say "The Young and the Restless" in Latin?

Despite the Romanian translation into the singular, as a native speaker of English, I interpret the adjectives "The Young and the Restless" as signifying plurals. Note, for instance, we would say "The Dead are (plural) in our memory," but we could never say "The Dead" to mean "The single dead person I am thinking of."

Latin does not have a definite article. My professional position is that the best translation would be:

Iuvenes et Inquieti
The Young and the Restless

The Latin adjective/noun iuvenis is cognate to the English young, but we also have the derivative juvenile from Latin. The adjective inquietus, inquieta, inquietum very nicely renders restless, being composed of the elements in- (not) and quietus (quiet, at rest).

Congratulations to the producers and cast of The Young and the Restless on this milestone. I look forward to watching many more thousands of episodes to come. And so, as we would say in Latin:

Ad Multos Annos!
To Many Years!

Set in Wisconsin: Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Picket Fences, Step by Step, That 70's Show, and The Young and the Restless

The population of Wisconsin is 1.8% of the United States. Which makes it curious that so many relatively high profile television series have been set there.

Now, some shows truly required their setting to be in other states. I mean, you couldn't have set The Sopranos in Wisconsin and made it work. Obviously that had to be in New Jersey.

And you were never going to find a group of young people living in Wisconsin near the shore of Lake Superior that would have provided the entertainment value that people apparently found in The Jersey Shore.

And Dallas? Well, the name says it all.  

But why set a show in Wisconsin at all? Let's study the history of it.


Happy Days (and Laverne and Shirley)

I mean, Happy Days was not about Wisconsin. It was about nostalgia for the 50's at a time when America was reeling with the loss of the Vietnam War and wishing to return to a more innocent time not so long ago.

The sets for the show consisted almost exclusively of the inside of the Cunningham house and the inside of Arnold's Drive-In, places that could have been anywhere.

So, why place it in Milwaukee?

There is the concept, I suppose, of "Any Town, USA." And Wisconsin, begin so centrally located and already having such national recognition as the primary dairy producer, is the perfect place to set a story if you want the entire country to be interested.

Maybe there's even something Freudian about setting a show in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the place your milk comes from. And so, on a deep level, one can see it as if it is their primordial mother.

Happy Days ran from 1974 to 1984, and spawned a number

of spin-offs, such as Laverne and Shirley (1976-1983), which was also set in Milwaukee, until they had the show move its location to California for the final three seasons. In my opinion, that move was, as it were, "Jumping the Shark."




Picket Fences

From 1992 to 1996, the popular David E.Kelly series Picket Fences aired on CBS. While the show was filmed entirely in California, it was set in the rural town of Rome, Wisconsin. It was a small town drama, that dealt with a number of topics controversial for its time, such as homophobia. It won popular acclaim, evidenced by a total of fourteen Emmys.

Now, that would already be a lot of shows for a state with 1.5% of the US population. But wait, there's more.

Step by Step

Set in Port Washington, Wisconsin (25 miles north of Milwaukee), the sitcom Step by Step ran from 1991 to 1997 on ABC (and then moved to CBS for a final season). 

It starred Suzanne Somers and Patrick Duffy, whose character was, not surprisingly, a Packers fan!


That 70's Show

Running from 1998 to 2006 on Fox, That 70's Show was set in a fictionalized suburb of Milwaukee, Point Place, Wisconsin. The show was, of course, the launching pad for the successful careers of Mila Kunis and Aston Kutcher.

I went to high school from 1980 to 1984, and I was in Madison, not Milwaukee, so I can't confirm if the show really accurately depicted typical youth behaviors of the period/place.  

The Young and the Restless

By far the Wisconsin-set show with the longest duration is The Young and the Restless. It began in 1973 and is still going strong as of this posting in August, 2014.

The Young and the Restless is filmed entirely at CBS studios in Hollywood, but it is set in Genoa City, Wisconsin, which actually is a small town a bit on the Wisconsin side of the border with Illinois (but the city depicted in the show can't possibly be the Genoa City of reality).

Again, why was this set in Wisconsin to begin with? It's the saga of competing family dynasties running cosmetic companies, which, as I recall, has never been a big industry in Wisconsin.

And yet, somehow, placing this story in Wisconsin soothes a viewership from coast to coast. 

I first got into watching the Young and the Restless while in Romania. My mother-in-law watches it there religiously, although they are three years behind the US in the episodes they watch. So when I first got hooked and came home and started watching, I was shocked to find that no marriage was intact from the timeline I was accustomed to!


Wisconsin-Based Television Shows

How to finally explain this curious phenomenon? In the words of Blaise Paschal, "Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point." (The heart has its reasons that reason knows not.)

And so, in the final analysis, I'm not exactly sure why Hollywood producers choose Wisconsin as the setting for a show.

I guess, Wisconsin is this place that so many of you have never been, and yet have heard so much about. And that's because anyone from there, myself included, just never stops talking about it.

Keith Massey was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He has his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Biblical Hebrew, with a minor in Arabic. After 9/11, he served as an Arabic linguist at the NSA. He is currently a Latin teacher at a public high school in New Jersey.

Keith is the author of Intermediate Arabic for Dummies. His fiction novels follow the adventures of Andrew Valquist, roughly patterned after himself--a man born and raised in Wisconsin who gets pulled into the world of international intrigue. 


Keith's novels are A Place of Brightness, Amor Vincit Omnia: An Andrew Valquist Adventure, Next Stop: Spanish, and In Saecula Saeculorum.

Young and the Restless: Canonical and Legal Commentary Time!

 

In episode 10237 of the Young and Restless, the second half of the fantastic memorial service for Katherine Chancellor (Jeanne Cooper), Paul Williams (Doug Davidson) and Christine “Cricket” Blair (Lauralee Bell), spontaneously got married in the wake of the letter Mrs. C had arranged to be delivered to Paul. 

Paul Williams

It was deliciously romantic and we're all thrilled that these two finally tied the knot, again. The problem is, as the event was depicted in the episode, it was neither valid under Wisconsin Civil Law, nor under Roman Catholic Canon Law. 

Now, I was born and raised in Wisconsin.

Christine Blair

And I happen to enjoy the field of Canon Law. So I watched the episode in bewilderment, realizing the legal and canonical disaster that had unfolded. I'll explain exactly what the issues are and then suggest an easy fix they can write into some upcoming episode to solve the legal problem.

Problem One - Solved

Michael Baldwin

Now, the writers were aware that Paul and Christine could not be married without a marriage license. And so they wrote in a line delivered by Michael Baldwin  to the effect that the County Clerk had issued and would rush over a marriage license yet that afternoon. That will permit the couple, two witnesses, and the officiant to sign the license and file it to be recognized as a valid civil marriage. But the legal problems surrounding this spontaneous wedding run deeper than just the detail of getting that license.

Problem Two

Father Todd, Paul's brother (played by Corbin Bernsen, son of the late [and dearly missed] Jeanne Cooper), is ostensibly a Roman Catholic priest in good standing residing in Michigan. Some states permit an out-of-state officiant to preside at a civil ceremony so long as they are licensed to officiate at a wedding in their own state.

But that's not Wisconsin law. According to Wisconsin Statute 765.17:

Any member of the clergy … who is not a resident of this state may solemnize marriages in this state if he or she possesses at the time of the marriage a letter of sponsorship from a member of the clergy of the same religious denomination or society who has a church in this state under his or her ministry.

Lauren Fenmore, Paul's former wife

Father Todd has to identify where he's from in that paperwork. When he sends in the license without that letter of sponsorship, it's going to be kicked back, informing him that he was not authorized to officiate at a wedding in Wisconsin without that letter. And even if the County Clerk is very lenient (as he or she apparently is) and allows Father Todd to get that letter of support after the fact, Father Todd will run into serious trouble getting one. Here’s why.

Problem Three

Now, the wedding we saw was just your classic ceremony in

Danny Romalotti, Christine's ex-husband

which Paul and Christine used the traditional marriage vows generic to all traditions. It was not a civil ceremony. And it better not be, because Father Todd is not authorized to perform a civil ceremony at all. Roman Catholic chaplains are given special permission by their bishop to perform marriages that do not have canonical validity in the Catholic Church. This permits them to minister to members of the armed services who are not members of the Catholic Church. But outside of that narrow exception, a Roman Catholic priest cannot officiate at a wedding that he knows does not have canonical validity. So, if Father Todd tries to get a fellow priest to write him a letter of support for a civil ceremony, he'll get no where fast.  If the Wisconsin bishop learns that one of his priests issued a letter of support for such a thing, the priest would likely face some type of censure or even canonical penalty. In short, if he values his career at all, he's not going to touch this matter.

Problem Four

But again, by all appearances, Paul and Cricket's wedding was not a civil ceremony such as Father Todd can't perform. 

Avery and Nick at the Wedding

It looked like a religious ceremony, presided over by a priest who identified his authority to perform the ceremony as "the power vested in me" and even declaring “Those Whom God Hath Joined Together Let No Man Put Asunder.”  And let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Paul and Christine have each already, behind the scenes and, of course, never mentioned on the show, obtained a Decree of Nullity for their previous marriages to other people. This would render them "Free to Marry," to use the canonical term. There is also the very real possibility that the only valid marriage either of them ever contracted was already their previous marriage to each other and that this marriage was never annulled. In that case, getting remarried civilly is a legal necessity, but the Church still considers them married anyway.

But even if they are free to marry, this was still a non-canonical ceremony.  According to Canon 1118, if there is even one Catholic party in the marriage, they need to obtain permission from the diocesan bishop to hold a wedding outside of a church. A priest alone can't just bend the rules and perform a valid wedding in the park. You are free to believe this is a silly or stupid law, but it is, in fact, the law that governs the ministry of Father Todd. Worse yet, Father Todd performed a non-canonical wedding inside the diocese of a man who is not even his own bishop.

Canonical Fix for Problem Four

Now, it has happened in the past that weddings were conducted non-canonically. Maybe Father Todd screwed up, but the Church doesn't make Paul and Christine suffer for his errors. The bishop can give the permission for an out-of-church wedding after the fact and then issue a decree making the marriage valid retroactively. This is called a Sanatio In Radice (Healing from the Root; Canon 1163). In other words, validity is retroactively extended to the marriage all the way to the "root" of the invalidating cause. So, while the wedding was invalid the day it happened, once the necessary permission is obtained and the Sanatio also granted, it's a valid marriage from the beginning.

Conclusion: No Way Out for Father Todd

So here is the Catch-22 that Father Todd is in. If it was a Catholic wedding, it's invalid by Canon Law and that's the reason no priest will issue him the letter. If it was a Civil wedding, he's not permitted to perform such a thing in the first place and that's the reason no priest will issue him the letter. The Church is the least of Father Todd's problems. It's Wisconsin Law.  And it doesn't seem likely that he will be able to fix the problem.

How to Move Forward

I propose to the producers of The Young and Restless that a short scene such as the following will fix the problem.

[Setting: The Police Station]

Kevin: Congratulations again, Paul. You and Christine are just such a lovely couple. I always hoped you two would eventually tie the knot, again.

Paul: *laughs* Thanks, Kevin. Turns out we ended up getting married to each other for the third time later that day.

Kevin: What? Why?

Paul: When we were signing the paperwork later, we discovered that my brother needed some letter ahead of time from a priest in Wisconsin in order to be an out-of-state officiant. So later that evening, to make it all legal, we just stopped by the house of one of my judge friends and re-said our vows.

Kevin: Got it. Well, I'll still always see that magical moment at Chancellor Park as your real wedding.

Paul: Oh, me too, Kevin. Me too.

This little scene will quickly address the problem, establish the wedding as legal under Wisconsin Law, and avoid the intricacies of the Canonical causes behind the legal snafu.

Congratulations Paul and Christine!

Thanksgiving in Latin

Young and the Restless actor and Francophone Christian Le Blanc just tweeted:
I'm fascinated to learn here that French has preserved from Latin the idiomatic pairing of the verb ago, agere, egi, actum (noun derivative actio, actionis) with the noun gratia, gratiae (French descendent grâce) to arrive at the phrase "to give thanks." (gratias ago, I give thanks, gratiarum actio, Thanksgiving,

As a Latin teacher, the verb agere is an endless pain to explain to students. They reasonably just want to know what a Latin word means. And in the case of this verb, I have to tell them that agere is translated quite differently depending on the object it takes.

If you agere a chariot, it's "driving a chariot." If you agere thanks, it's "give thanks." If you agere business, it's "do business."

Another fun one is the verb gero, gerere, where you either "wear clothing" or "wage war."

Happy Thanksgiving to all.