wingwalker

4 minutes ago, AMCOLTLLover said:

i rewatched Kush's exit.. Poor fella left EastEnders for Holby City and BBC pulled the trigger on HC and axed it after the current season in 2022 Imagine leaving a show for another just to end up jobless after the current season.

 Daniel Cosgrove from Guiding Light, As The World Turns and All My Children says hello!  

I do believe it's the BBC that's pulling the episodes from all PBS stations.  They probably want people subscribe to BritBox, which sadly doesn't have any of the older stuff. Just the newer episodes from the past 90 days. The episodes are usually available to watch within minutes of the UK broadcast is ending. But current EastEnders is so much worse than the stuff from years ago. 

20 minutes ago, MichaelGL said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/16389614/eastenders-terrorist-bomb-plot-christmas/

 

While it probably won't play out exactly how many are thinking, regardless this REEKS of absolute desperation. If you have to resort this kind of stunt, then you are out of ideas. 

18 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

On this day ...

I remember when the original aired with Guy and when Will laid there dead, I thought  "Wow this is Guy's best work. He'd make a great Victim #3 on L&O SVU." 

Not surprised since there was rumors earlier this year that she was thinking of not renewing her contract.  This is going to be a big loss for the show. The show already major problem with the lack of long time characters and now they are losing another one. She was also popular with younger viewers.

Same. I still keep up with spoilers and watch the occasional clip, but I've stopped watching full episodes. It's just not worth my time anymore. The show is terrible. 

Jon Sen's contract should be up in either Nov or Dec, so hopefully at the very least we get an announcement of him leaving soon. They both need to go, but even just Sen leaving would be a good thing. 

Count me as another person that's glad the show essentially made EJILL canon today.   The show totally should have did a Will/EJ/Sami triangle.   Huge missed opportunity. 

That'll be sad if Sturm der Liebe gets cancelled. I loved Boris and Tobias as a couple. I was a bit peeved they brought back the actor that plays Boris as a straight twin brother instead of making Boris and Tobias the main couple for a season, since I don't believe they've ever had a gay couple as the "main couple"  but at least they did get a happy ending. Which is more than I can say for Olli and Christian when Verbotene Liebe was getting cancelled. 

6 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

I don't have Twitter so I can't vote....damn!!

 

Here's how the poll is going so far: 

Not sure if DAYS has did this before and I missed it, but they posted a bunch of questions on twitter asking viewers to answer. Sort of an impromptu twitter focus group survey, which I find curious.  Above are just a couple of the questions. 

Like the song from Sound of Music,  How do you solve a problem like Ben? 

Whoever wrote that, I do agree with some of their points. First, you have to accept that there's a certain segment of the audience that is NEVER going to like Ben. You can retcon every bad thing he did and they'll still hate him. Which is their right and ironically how I feel about DAYS' Ben (he's always going to be the killer that strangled Will) . LOL 

However, I also think there's a large segment of the audience that might hate Ben now or hate the writing, but could like him again, if the show committed to a course correction. That's where I fall at the moment. I used to love Ballum, not now. I still love Callum, but until the show puts in an effort with Ben, want Callum as far away from Ben as possible. 

They hit the nail on the head in that the writing for Ben is very imbalanced. They do focus far more on his bad traits than good. Has Ben made more of an effort to be a father to Lexi? Sure, but for every 1 episode we see him go a dance recital we have about 3-4 episodes where he's a terrible dad. Same with Callum. We'll get one or two episodes where Ben is a great boyfriend or husband, than for next 2 weeks treat Callum like dirt. It's hard to keep liking or supporting a character that's being written that way. 

It also doesn't help they that make Ben partially responsible for most of the bad things that happen and even though there's almost always some qualifier written in so that Ben's involvement is rarely as bad as could be, people are still tired of it. 

I'm not surprised. Almost everything gets rebooted, re-imagined, or sequalized. This is going to have instant brand name over a new show. It will be interesting to see if any past characters come back, how they handle the Scotland era that was mostly hated, and what the quality and tone will be. 

Today's DAYS episode wasn't very good. All stories I could care less about. Philip is a bore, Gwen and Drabigail are boring, could care less about Gabi and Jake. 

3 minutes ago, te. said:

They can't all be Charity Rahmer to be fair!

15 hours ago, te. said:

I'm not really sure why he'd think that makes him look good - those are his old co-workers after all on that show. You'd think he'd be a bit more gracious about it, but he and his wife kind of comes off as a toxic twosome unfortunately.

I tend to think he was asked, but he probably assumed that this was going to be another Chabby in Paris / Last Blast thing on the DAYS app, so seeing it actually blow up must be a bit of a "oh [!@#$%^&*]" moment for him. He probably just thought he wasn't missing much, plus seeing his recast get such a great reception after nine years in the role has got to sting a bit. As others had said, he probably thought whoever stepped into the role was going to get Guy Wilson'd.

I do love that this is a verb now.  

Soap Dictionary: 

Guy Wilson'd: To screw up a recast of a legacy character so badly, that the show feels the only way to fix it, is to kill them off. 

As for Freddie, On some level, I do get it. Being in the role for nearly 10 years and find out you can be easily replaced and most people don't miss you, probably is hard, but a lot of it is Freddie's own fault. His last 3-4 years he didn't look like he wanted to be there. He turned them down to do this, in an industry where recasts happen all the time. His video where he gave his blessing to Zach and wished him good luck should have been his last one. Doing his "review" was a mistake. I also see he has some video Q&A with Chandler scheduled for October,  I feel like that's going to be a mistake also.  I know it's for charity, but that to me still comes across as shady. You can't claim your done with acting, DAYS and give your recast your blessing, only then to try and still hang around like a bad smell. 

When Will told Johnny that his dad is hard guy to say no to, I got flashbacks to EJILL. Will would know, the way he used to lust after him. 

I watched today's episode. First time watching DAYS in over a year, mostly for Will.  Even though I don't really know what's going on, I actually thought it was a fairly decent episode. 

Will was in it more than I expected. I figured we'd get 1 scene, and we got at least 3. Johnny asking Will if he did anything fun this summer and Will only mentioning a trip and not mentioning doing drag made me chuckle. I know why (this was filmed before Beyond Salem), but I laughed nonetheless. 

Doug locking people in freezers, grabbing people's asses...I might have to keep watching just to see what's going on with him. 

So I just watched some of Freddie and Alyssa podcast. Blaming directors and producers for your acting? If he got notes telling him to not go full anger, it's because he was a crappy actor. 

I do remember show attempting to make Sonny more of a ruthless Kiriakis businessman, which I thought could have been an interesting direction, but Freddie couldn't handle the material and sucked at. 

He's clearly upset and jealous that people instantly loved Zach. He was probably expecting fans to react how they did with Guy. Well with Guy, we got a downgrade. With Zach we got a long overdo upgrade.  Zach's a better actor than you Freddie. 

I hope DAYS never asks him back. Move on Freddie and live your life as a grifter in Florida. 

I don't have any specific story ideas. I do have some general suggestions to help improve the show. 

First off, the crown jewels of any soap opera is it characters. That's why people tune in every day, week after week. We've seen these characters be born and grow up on our screens. The show has forgotten that. There are so many characters that have been damaged by the writing, trying to fix the ones you can, should be first priority.  There also a lot of deadweight that needs to go. There's also too many new characters and they keep adding more. If you haven't watched EE in 5-10 years, you wouldn't recognize half the cast. 

I wouldn't necessarily bring back a ton of characters, because trying to relive or recreate the past won't work either and returns don't spike ratings anymore, but bringing back a few, could help in the long run, make the show familiar again. 

Way less stunts. One every once in a while is fine, but it has to be something you've been building up for a long while and will have long term aftermath. Viewers aren't idiots and no longer fooled by cheap tricks. Viewers want substance. The show needs to be character driven again. The stories should fit the characters, not the other way around. 

I know that Christmas season has always been big for EastEnders and is tradition, but the show needs to recognize, the TV landscape and viewer habits have changed. Having 1 or 2 big stories for Christmas is fine, but dragging nearly every story out to Christmas and New Years needs to stop. Stories should be climaxing all year round. You need to give viewers a reason to watch all year, not just 2 weeks in December. 

More balance. Either everyone is miserable and nobody happy, or there's nothing going on at all. Need to try to stay in between. Not stretching out stories, like I mentioned above, would help with this. 

The one story suggestion I would make is, drop or drastically reduce the gangster/mobster element of the show. Yes, there was always a crime element to EastEnders, but it was never supposed to be a Soprano's rip off (which ended over 10 years ago, so it not even a new show to copy). Watching Phil Mitchell who is in his 60s and has a heart condition, almost every month, take down some new villain  (who are sometimes half his age) knowing that he'll always win, escape jail, or whatever life threatening situation he's in, is boring and lazy. Gone are the days where a football match is going to stop so that people can watch to see who shot Phil.  And turning his son Ben into a younger, less competent version of Phil is one of the worst decisions the show has done. 

The misogyny on this show needs to be addressed. I don't mind one or two misogynistic characters, especially if they get called out, because there are people like that is real life, but of the soaps I watch, this has one of the most anti-woman tone. 

Issue stories. I do think soaps have an advantage. In theory, you have way more time to play out all the story beats compared to a show that only puts out 10-15 episodes a year, but EastEnders has gone way overboard. At one point, I feel like there was 3 or 4 going on at once. They are rarely written well and they never show long term commitment. 

Based on the overnights, the show so far didn't get any ratings bounce from the Janine's return or all the promotion they spent money on. I think the show reputation and brand is so damaged at this point, it's going to take a miracle to turn around this show. 

The show is slightly better lately, but that's not nearly enough, nor do I think it's going to last. None of the spoilers or stories coming up sound all that good or interesting. 

5 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

See this is why I'd rather Will and Sonny have their own spin-off on peacock. That way all the clutched pearls will realize this is a Will and Sonny soap with their friends featured and not featuring the same boring drivel.

The main show will not write for them because of the clutched pearls.

I'm two minds about this. On one hand, a spin-off on Peacock would have more freedom, on the other hand, the gays should be allowed to be on the mothership like any other couple. The LGBTQ community should have representation on the main show, Karens be damned. 

A Pride Event with no characters in the episode at all. Same week DAYS gives us a gay shower scene and drag competition.  Hell has frozen over. 

Also, well done Oates and Sen for pissing away much of the promotion and hype you spent money on in less than a week. 

26 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

Beyond Salem: The Hortons "Will and Sonny Horton"

Starring:

Chandler Massey

Zach Tinker

 

Guest Stars:

Christopher Sean

Greg Rikaart

Billy Flynn

Spencer Neville

Additional cast to be added later

Let's throw in all the gaggle of gays. 

Brant Daughtery who played Brian. 

Jesse Kristofferson that played Neil. Will's first gay kiss. 

Tyler Seller who played Brent, Sonny's old climbing buddy that tried to lure Sonny away from Will. 

The gay male stripper dude from Paul's stag night that was confused why Paul would ever want to marry someone as boring as pre-Zach, Sonny.