The Young and the Restless: Victor needs better security.

On The Young and the Restless, Victor must contact the companies that handle private security and “less than legal” matters. His current team needs to be replaced.

The Young and the Restless: Fire them now

Since Ian Ward (Ray Wise) has been known to be back in town, Victor has had to enlist the help of his security team on more than one occasion. Headed by trusty Mortenson, played by John Rushing, the Newman security team has been tasked with everything from checking each car coming onto the ranch to following Ian and “Not taking their eyes off” of him.

That would seem like a simple command for a professional team — especially one that has taken care of many matters before, like turning a blind eye to the cage in the basement, illegal surveillance, search and seizure, and even locating Ian and bringing him to the Newman Ranch house. All of those things are not legal, but they were conducted efficiently.

But somehow, this presumably well-paid team has dropped the ball on some crucial — and critical — moments. While we don’t always expect precisely realistic events on our favorite sudser, the best security team on The Young and the Restless has given us some pause for thought.

For one, if they were “Not letting Ian out of their sight,” how in the heck did they miss all of Jordan's comings and goings from Ians' room? Despite Jordan's many disguises, she would have at the least attracted the attention of a surveillance team and given them something to report back. A simple listening device or bugging of the room with audio and video while Ian and Jordan were out would have recorded some interesting conversations and scenes. As soon as the voices and faces were heard and seen on the recording, no one at the ranch house would be under any illusions about who Ian was working with.

A constant vigil, as Victor had ordered, would have likely picked up the lifting and carrying of Sharon's body into and out of the motel room, which is not the easiest thing to hide, whether or not it was both of them or just Jordan trying to carry the dead weight of someone to the car. Since they were the ranch security and Sharon was missing — did they not recognize her car or at least be on the lookout for it? Small details, right? We must remind ourselves this is The Young and the Restless, not CSI. If the team noticed a mystery woman coming and going from the motel room, surely they would have followed her, which would have led to them to Crimson Lights, seeing Jordan being followed by Claire (Hayley Erin), meeting with Claire in the park a few times, and well, you get the picture: Any of that would have warranted a call to Victor.

Switched on like a power cut

Of course, nothing recorded or overheard with a bug or covert camera would likely be admissible in court; the team knows that, and Victor knows that. As we know from watching The Young and the Restless, at least some of the Newmans would have no problem with not letting any of this see a day in court, so Jordan or Ian would never darken their doorstep again.

But no, the security team missed Jordan's trips to and from the motel room. It made no effort to investigate at all, really. Next week, Ian somehow gets into the ranch house with nothing but a gun and a crazed grin. He calls upstairs to Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) to come down as he doesn't want her to miss what he is going to do to her family. Michael, Nick, and Victor are in the living room, on the other end of his gun but where is Mortenson? And how did Ian get there without being stopped by the guards? Is it another security fail?

Maybe it’s just bad communication, but it seems that the security team is about as switched on as a power cut. Had they been more effective or followed their brief, Sharon (Sharon Case) might have been found before she escaped by herself, and Ian and Jordan both would be sitting pretty in Victor's basement cage.

Watch full episodes of The Young and the Restless on CBS or stream on Paramount Plus.