Vee

Not buying it, but if it's for real you have to wonder what spurred it.

Mandip Gill has confirmed she's done along with Whittaker, who has confirmed she's shot her regeneration sequence. The next special involves the Sea Devils, which is a nice blast from the past. I have not finished Flux (a.k.a. "Floox") yet but I hear Chibnall predictably cocks up the ending - I guess I'll catch up.

I don't agree, I think it was a mistake to kill virtually all of them. DAYS' poor use of many of those excellent actors is on DAYS. Maggie especially had a second life with Victor, no matter how tired folks got of that in the last decade.

I thought she was psychotic, and I really liked Liza Huber as Gwen.

That was how I felt. As a slasher movie buff I was pretty into the story as a simple concept, and it was to Reilly's credit that he could still get major eyes on the show and buzz for it. But the actual storyline (except for the ominous, doom-laden lead-ups to 'murders' like Jack, Abe, Roman, etc.) was amateurishly executed on virtually every level. The dialogue and plotting was kids TV-caliber, and it was clear he took a perverse glee in what he was doing to really beloved characters. The thing with Maggie being bludgeoned to death on livestream or whatever, while ahead of its time, was horribly done and so crass. There were ways to do that kind of storyline - even a fakeout, like it all turned out to be - in a classy but also shocking and creepy way. As equal parts a soap and horror movie fan, it deeply disappointed me how it turned out. And it was obvious it would be Marlena, because Reilly was always obsessed with Marlena. And no matter what anyone says I absolutely believe he would simply have blamed the Devil or something again in the original plans, and expecting the audience to go with that with all those people dead would have been unconscionable and despicable. I loved Frances Reid blowing the whistle on him and Corday and calling it a rewrite because the story tanked.

Oh, I detested her. But I liked Lindsay, always.

Nor should you! I bet Julianne Moore would get behind some sort of effort to restore and preserve those years at least.

It was, yes. Whatever your personal struggles, I don't think you'd ever countenance putting out the kind of hateful bigotry drag disguised as camp Reilly regularly was producing by the end of PSSNS. It was him vomiting his demons onscreen in the darkest ways to me.

I also don't think you'd be caught dead putting stories like "the He/She" onscreen.

Looking back on Passions, the bible on paper actually had a lot of forward-thinking ideas - several key minority families and one that was mixed (Lopez-Fitzgerald), differing class strata (including the Bennetts simply being middle class, something that does not happen today). It was the execution which was, for me, unwatchable from Day 1. And I hung in for awhile!

I swear one of these days you are singlehandedly going to get P&G to put up some sort of archive of ATWT and I hope I'm there to see it, lol.

I was watching early-mid '90s AMC, OLTL and GH at the same time as DAYS and it was clear there was no comparison re: class and intelligence onscreen, especially with the second two shows. DAYS was junk food for me, with some incredibly sexy couples or characters I loved (Bo/Billie, John and Marlena, Kristen, etc.) and a rich gothic atmosphere. I made that distinction even as a kid, but by the time college rolled around the luster had worn for me because I had watched the rollout of Passions live, and woof. At the same time, Reilly's '90s DAYS also had rich themes, layers and above all scorching sexuality, even when the scripts increasingly failed it. I think any interview with an industry pro who talks about Reilly's skills and talents, even today, makes it clear there was much more to him we simply don't know or understand, and I think he learned from the best and did some spectacular work at DAYS, which caroline and I have discussed before a few months back - and probably even at earlier shows, like the dream team of writers at GL in the early '90s. I also think what we do know about him, his personal obsessions and demons, later bled out onscreen in the worst ways and helped deconstruct and destroy his talent later on. But that's me. Do we? They seemed pretty clear to me, lol! Marland's desires and drives also often shone through onscreen from what I've seen, but it never seemed toxic, fucked-up or hateful.

I was 12 or 13 when I first started watching DAYS. I loved a lot of Reilly's first run, then and now, and he absolutely saved the show and made it rocket to the top for a time; I also felt, then and now, it got stupid and juvenile well before its end. And I had no illusions about him when he came back, because I'd watched Passions. By the 2000s he had deteriorated on a lot of profound levels, and you could never put on his kind of show today because his work became downright crass and bigoted. That being said, nothing I said upthread re: fans has anything to do with anyone currently in the discussion.

Good for you bringing this back @Errol, when CBS/Sony is clearly hoping to bury it.

caroline and I have been over some of this before and I'm spent as far as my old DAYS investment goes, so all I'll say is it's nice to see attitudes change on JER. Some of us were talking about Reilly's weird evangelical beliefs and psychosexual issues damn near 20 years ago here, and that was back when folks who were far too loyal to the show they grew up watching still felt he had some kind of brilliant plan for the tacky-ass Salem Stalker. It was always bad. Anyway: The man was not well, carry on.

Ironically, the only place I think Stacy is actually that popular is a subset of Twitter. Again, talented actress, and I do think Kristen has always had layers. Just not the kind of layers to justify what the show has attempted to do with Kristen via poor writing, which is defang her and then reverse themselves with a 180, repeatedly. The show isn't capable of reinventing the wheel with Kristen. If they were I'd have been open to it, as I was with her when they originally did the time jump. But they couldn't pull it off and they haven't done it. Eileen can play layers too, the current show just isn't interested. They thought they could make a 'new' Kristen with a new actress, and instead failed to write it. Now IMO people are conflating their admiration for the actress trying to elevate the material with a legitimately good attempt at remaking the character. But DAYS hasn't delivered it. This is something Ron has done with many villains at other shows, BTW; he falls in love with a character or actor and tries to slowly make them more palatable and rootable, usually by slanting or skewing the writing and cutting corners. In doing so he often turns initial audience favorites into overpropped messes. It happened at GH with Obrecht (among others, and some characters at OLTL as well), it happened with Gwen at DAYS and in a different way it's happened with Kristen who was an actual established character prior to him, which was a bridge too far for his usual schtick. And whenever it flops he goes back to the factory settings. Kristen is no different.

I do too, and I thought he did a fine job the last time I saw him onscreen maybe a month ago even if the material was a bit shopworn. I had no idea the kid was actually autistic, and when I saw the promo still above I frankly thought it was typical GH of overdoing a beat when the boy was doing a fine job onscreen with it before. Goes to show I am often an idiot, but anyway.

Well, that's my foot in my mouth on the first day of the year; I thought it was just tacky direction. Good for them (and him).

[tacky comment retracted; I thought they were poorly directing this kid]

If the writing was there to support an impossible recast with a talented actress, I would give it more of a chance. I gave it a chance, the writing isn't there, so it didn't work. I don't see any new Kristen that works; I see a idea that has never been effectively executed, never will be with the current poor writing, and probably can't at this point. And when they're already shivving her by regularly bringing Eileen back, I don't see a point in continuing.

It wasn't even that - they let Kerwin go near the end of the show in the summer of 2011 to do Viki and Clint, IIRC. It happened as an outgrowth of the Echo affair storyline. I had seen it coming years before though, after Ron made a point to drop an incongruous Viki/Clint easter egg into Viki and Charlie's pre-wedding celebration in 2009, when they found an old wedding gift from Asa for Viki dating back to her first marriage to Clint, saying 'you are a Buchanan and always will be.' Clint was at that point enmeshed as the inevitable loser in the emerging Bo/Nora reunion storyline while engaged/married to Nora himself, and was not being teased with Viki again in any way; that took another two years. Ron plans and waits, these days generally way too long lol. But back then I already knew, even though he'd created Viki and Charlie, done a wonderful job and was clearly committed to them on some level, that he had the nostalgia bug and probably intended to get her back to Clint sometime, somehow. And eventually he did. But anyway, that's wildly OT. HNY!

GH has followed suit over the last decade with its PowerPoint opening. I've binged a lot of Marland these last two years and I agree, they should never have dumped that theme - I've thought it again and again.

And in fairness, with Viki and Clint it was not the same. Not just because Clint Ritchie was long dead at that point and Brian Kerwin had been quite popular as Charlie (I was pretty sore about Viki and Charlie's breakup, as that was probably both Ron's best couple and best story at OLTL), but because Jerry verDorn's Clint was a markedly different iteration, having inherited the mantle of his father he had defied throughout his life. I felt it made thematic sense for the character and was very well played by JVD who sold it to the hilt while keeping Clint's humanity, but it was a divisive change in the character and the Viki and Clint who reunited at the end of the network run were very different characters than they'd been when together. I felt the chemistry and combustion, the searing intelligence between Slezak and verDorn worked, but not everyone agreed. It's not quite the same thing as the supercouple legacy of Deidre and Wayne Northrop, the original performers at DAYS. I think you can tease Roman and Marlena and still play out those beats, romantic and otherwise, strongly with the original actors, but for me it would end in Jarlena because I think that is where both the heat and investment has been for so many years. People mock Deidre and Drake and at times justifiably, but they headlined those product ads (I can't remember what product!) a few years ago for a reason; they are iconic, and I just could never buy Marlena going back to Roman for good at this point unless John were dead. ETA: I do agree Kristen has never gotten over John. What is really interesting was the suggestion that some part of John was still fascinated by her, hence taking her to bed a few years back during Eileen's second contract run. I never thought they'd go there with his character.

It would also be a nice button on the original story and that overall era's plotlines, to have Northrop's Roman back to conclude what was, for him, unfinished business. Roman leaving Marlena and the 'sin' of her affair with John was a major catalyst for her eventual possession that left her open to Satan. I don't feel anything with Josh Taylor in the role can ever be considered fully dealt with. Having WN back would allow them to reexamine all of that period and put it to bed. I'm not saying you need to reunite Roman and Marlena because I love John and Marlena and the fact is at this point they're endgame and that's that, but you can make a go of teasing the audience while also resolving old, old stuff properly. Every story Ron has ever done with DID has proven he doesn't understand DID.

A thread: This is a new one on me. I've never seen any of the Golden Girls break.