Vee

I didn't buy Kelly and Dylan together again when he came back. They'd put too much into Brandon and Kelly and into the many, many mentions of Brenda and Dylan being back together offscreen over the ensuing years. That whole period for 90210 was very bizarre, even by the standards of their later years. Brandon abruptly leaves 4-5 episodes into Season 9, and Val abruptly leaves a week later as Dylan returns and Vanessa Marcil arrives all in the same episode. I'd love to know wtf was going on there, but the dishy tell-all interviews with some of the personnel at the show that have surfaced in recent years don't seem to discuss that stuff.

I never thought either MW or GG were very good, frankly.

I thought either Aaron or Fox didn't want it because she was already a big 'serious' star on Ally and they felt it was brand contamination. I may be wrong. I don't think the mention of Alison on the reboot was personal to Courtney (who I love) because tbh they gave virtually every old character who appeared a dark, cynical fate - all of them turned out to have grown into purely careerist vipers out for themselves, all of them had some angle they were trying to play against the new cast because their own fortunes had gone south. Which I suppose is true to Melrose's characters and to L.A. to a point, but it's not what I wanted to see for Jane, Jo, etc. years later. I may have misphrased it, it's been so long. IIRC, Amanda was receiving either phone calls or faxes from Alison drunk and struggling in Atlanta. Sam overheard this and schemed to get revenge on Billy and Jennifer, and I believe she faked messages from Alison to Billy asking him to come be with her. She was found out, Billy and Jenn stayed together, etc. Alison's fate was never mentioned again. I always assumed it was personal from JER.

As I've said before, Chloe has had every demeaning story short of being abducted by aliens or joining the Klan. A recast ain't gonna fix it. Phillip and Chloe have been spent characters for years IMO who burnt through a ton of bad material by Higley and co., and I say that as someone who really liked Nadia for a long time. They need a long, long rest. Brady isn't far behind and I say that as someone who thinks Eric Martsolf is sexy as hell.

They were writing lines about Alison being a lonely drunk in Atlanta even during the final seasons of the original show, lol. I was sure they would have Billy leave to be with her, but instead they used Alison's drunken faxes from out of town as a plot point at the end of Season 6 to make Sam scheme against Billy and Jennifer. So Alison is just hanging out there, and Courtney didn't even get to cameo as a drunk barfly in the final episode like she wanted.

It can't be worse than the time Frank and Ron tried to bring back 'the brownstone' and it lasted about four weeks and looked like a kids TV playset.

This is Luke and Tracy we're talking about, so faking one or both of their deaths would just be another Monday for them. That is my first assumption, that it's part of some scheme. But if it's not and it's real, I can't imagine why they'd do it now. I have to see what they've done to Sonny's penthouse lol

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).