[PhoenixRising05]

I am blaming most of it on Corday and the rest on the budget, previous writers, and the idiots at NBC

[JER Soaps Fan]

Corday, Hogan and the budget. Bar none.

Shelle's on the runs tory would have been a ratings WINNER had they gone to shoot on location in Hawaii.

It's not Zuckass' statement because I believe a very certain minority of viewers even knew about the statement.

[daysfan]

I actually put all of them put "other".

Hogan is the least to blame, but the only thing I do blame him for but only a little is not ending the Shelle on the run story.

[Mason]

I think they're all to blame to a degree, but I voted for Corday (duh), NBC/Zucker, the budget, and the previous writers (*cough*JERk!*cough*).

[KBT]

I would blame Corday mostly, even if it was Hogan's choice to not feature the Big 4 and shove new characters on screen plus allowing no balance whatsoever for a few months. Its Corday's show and he has been in the business how long now? I also blame the ratings system, there has to be a better, more accurate way to count these daytime ratings.

[Keith]

While Corday is the common thread, no one creatively involved in this show is NOT to blame, barring actors. Most of the creative decisions go back to Corday. For whatever reason, probably pressure from NBC, Corday fired his best team since before Reilly in Brash and Cwickly, mainstays on the show for years. Their replacement was also a mainstay with the show, and Brash and Cwickly were merely demoted. Their replacement was also the most atrocious idea person in the world and her writing team from breakdowns to script writers did nothing to promote her ideas. Higley went on to do a little more of the same at One Life to Live, which is also stuck with an idiotic EP who wouldn't know something good if it wagged in his face.

By the time her run on Days was over, NBC was prepared to pull the plug, putting Corday in a very, very bad position, They offered one chance. Get Reilly, and your show will live. It's no secret that Reilly created great buzz for the show during is run in the 90's. Since, however, he'd led a ratings failure, and his general creativity wasn't enough to give "Passions" the credibility many said it deserved. Still, NBC executives left Corday with no choice. Rumors have it that Corday HATED this and interefered with Reilly, who once more created buzz for the show. Corday's said interference led to Reilly's creative lapse, as well as being stretched too thin, rumors stated. After 3 years of stagnation and stalemates, Corday fired Reilly, presumedly against NBC's wishes, and hired Hogan Sheffer, an Emmy winner and critically acclaimed writer.

For the first time in recent history, Corday did something for his show instead of buckling under the thumb of his brainless bosses. Beth Milstein came in and wrote a transition period which harkened back to the good old days. Hogan came on and he did brilliantly through December. Then, something happened, Days fan insist. As a Days fan, I'd be willing to agree that Hogan's shift from nearly perfect balance, and generally great stories, to absolute crap in almost no time at all should raise some red flags. And now, after three months of being force fed that crap, Corday has come out and blasted his NBC bosses for basically sealing the fate of his show by promising cancelation come 2009, and now we, the fans, have promise of Bo, Hope, John, Marlena AND Doug & Julie, plus Tony and Stefano.

Corday's biggest problem, however, is believing that he can't depend on characters from 15 years ago, and if he does what interviews suggests and lets go Stephen Nichols, Mary Beth Evans, Matthew Ashford, and Judi Evans, I don't think many fans would be forgiving. I know I wouldn't. What Corday fails to see everytime (and this can not be blamed on NBC executives) is that people have generally not been happy since the early 90s. Reilly created a new generation of Days fans, myself included, most of which came to long for what Reilly had continually failed to create -- a show about family values, full of good, gritty drama, that wasn't afraid to try new things. Reilly did some of these things, and did many of them well during his first stint. But the fact that Corday seemed so afraid to let him is enough to want to make any fan slit the good ole EP's throat.

We want to see everyone interact with everyone. Because, when we do, we avoid things like the past three months, even with superior writing, where there is stark stagnation and raging repetition. We no longer wish for stories of mind control and whackiness. We don't mind a little camp. We're perfectly willing to suspend disbelief for a story, but after Reilly? We have no wish to go off the deep end again, especially not at the cost of character identity and familial relationships, which soap operas have always meant to have been based upon.

For the above, I blame Hogan. Steve and Kayla's story is not theirs (or anyone else's in the direction Days had been heading since he first came on). Sami and Lucas should have never been thrown back together the way they were. Lucas has never been defined as a character since before 2000, but we all love Bryan, and we want to see it. While their current story promises great drama, not unlike S/K, it falls flat 4 days out of 5. As many have said before me, ever since January, we keep seeing the same group of characters and yet we don't even get to slow down and see point a, point, b, and point c, but only a to c. The on the run story was great up until the cruise ship, and then got good again briefly on island #1. Afterwards? We suddenly had these newbies shoved in our faces (and considering how long this Belle and Shawn had been on, it was like watching a show of newbies the way they held their airtime).

If Corday has excuses for any of this, I'm done with listening to them. This era of TV watching is not full of patience, and I learned something in high school about real life. Excuses mean nothing. If you don't have the budget, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Most of the older characters that are so familiar with the show love it enough to take paycuts. Some already have. Hogan and Corday alone is a dangerous combination because of these facts alone. Add to that NBC's extreme longing to pull out of the Daytime soap business (something they've been tryign to do for DECADES), and we have a bad, bad, bad formula.

[DAYSfreak1987]

I blame a good 75-80% of it on Corday, and the rest on the budget, past writers (hello JER), and the a$$wipes at NBC.

[Ponz]

Whichever way you look at it, Corday and Sheffer are BOTH to blame. If it was Hogan's idea to backburner the "big 4", Corday should have stepped in and vetoed it. Four-time Emmy winner or not, no executive producer worth his salt should give a HW that much free reign.

And even if Hogan has been instructed to write for certain characters, the stories are still his. Corday may have demanded cheaper newbies but Willow, Jed, Duck & Gabby were/are Hogan creations. It was Hogan's idea to have Kayla remove John's kidney, Sami plot to murder her rapist and Elvis dominate the canvas. Corday sucks as an EP but there's no way that creative mistakes like these can be spun as his fault.

This post has been edited by Ponz: 17 April 2007 - 08:51 AM

[PhoenixRising05]

Hogan takes a bit of blame but it's even hard for me to say that. If one is forced to abandon their plans and write story for only a certain amount of people, then how can you expect their heart and energy to be in it? Hogan is human and it probably deflated him that he couldn't go ahead with all the stuff he was excited about and I think we will seeing some of the things he wanted to do when the changes are made. I am sure Hogan tried to get into his writing after Corday got his ass in the middle of it but I can totally see why things still didn't come off well.

As far as newbies, I can only blame Hogan for Willow and Nick. Gabby and Duck are totally Corday. He had the vets backburnered and he was bringing on his cheapies to try to enhance story and further build up the twenty-something cast. It's similar to what he did in 2001 with the teens and all the characters he added then and was forced to drop later when ratings went down too much. Willow and Nick are Hogan's, Gabby and Duck are not. I wouldn't be surprised if Duck was Corday's way of adding an older male's presence to the show during thr absence of the vets in an effort to shut people up.

Hogan could have made what happened a little more exciting but I know the same would've happened to me if I was forced to do what I didn't expect or want to do. He also probably didn't have alot of time to change gears and write all this too as I think this was all Corday's way of making the show cheaper and wedding the vets out so he has people to cut later on without the show dying. If successfu;, it was his way of telling NBC or some other network that they can make cuts and be cheaper and those cuts would be the vets. They would either be cut down or taken off entirely.

[Ponz]

PR, I think you will like this theory on the crisis.

Not saying I agree with it but this person makes good points.

http://nospoilerdays...piracy-theories

This post has been edited by Ponz: 17 April 2007 - 03:30 PM

[PhoenixRising05]

That's interesting, Ponz.

Thanks for posting it. I do like it. There are some aspects I don't agree with but I do like it overall so thanks for the link

[Keith]

You know what? I think that theory is the best one I've ever heard. Sheffer may have his faults, but given Corday's history... it's plausible. Especially the "experiment" factor. All three front burner stories kind of require some part of the big four to be truly dynamic, and they've been MIA. If the reason is what we're reading in that link, it actually makes some sense. I mean, Corday sending the DHs off last summer had to have a purpose, right? And if it wasn't to save money now, maybe it was to save money later. He knows all four have been off the show before (well sort of; Bo's never really been absent, just recast) and wants to see if the show can stabilize without them, therefore opening the budget and avoiding bigger problems. But he was wrong. Dead wrong. And now he's coming to the wrong conclusions and pointing fingers, instead of conceding his own fault. It's no different than his interference with Reilly in 2004. The April Fools meeting and no returns happening until late May? Reilly obviously had to rush to write something for people he wasn't counting on having back, and then suddenly we've got all these triangles (which while a JER staple, I don't think JER would have gone that overboard on his own). Not saying I don't place any blame on the writers. His team could have certainly done this in a far superior way. Even without the big 4, the same people didn't have to interact in isolation, and that is/was a BIG problem.

[maconrich]

I'd have picked all of the above and maybe Wyman tossed in for good measure