Vee

Hey, I'll never claim to be well-versed in the current youth set on this show. I just know when I try to keep track of them or what they do when I do watch a lot of it just blurs together in my mind. I do quite like Linsey Godfrey but I was under the impression at least half the audience hated her and Sarah at this point. I'm very skeptical of Carson Boatman's skills below the level of his pecs and nipples, but maybe he can surprise me. I do think Jason Cook should be begged to return. The level-up was glaring when he did briefly right before or after Bo's "death" in the 2010s. And I think bringing back Jeremy (I haven't seen the actor) and Theo are a step in the right direction. Maybe Tate and Holly are great, who knows. I just think they have to make a lot of these young characters as individuals pop more beyond just musical partners. That would be a start. (And however good Ari is I still can't get over Will and Gabi now being positioned to be very young grandparents for this YA daughter - I mean, come on.)

Van is not in that department. I do think he is working hard though and has done fairly well, and it helps that they hired a hot guy for him (even if I wonder if ol' Marco is doomed, as he's now complicit in Baldo's murders). The intimacy level and overall authenticity of his playing a gay man - even if Carnes presented a different side - helps a lot.

I don't think Mulcahey was teasing Sonny and Nina at all. They had next to zero interaction if not zero. It was very abrupt, lol. Whereas Drew and Nina (and Willow) was being built. I don't care about Sonny and Nina at all and it's never made much sense to me but it would at least be more watchable than Sidwell's wife.

She's not, but we'll never see her again lol. Not a big enough name for him either. Krista Allen! That's who it might be.

Frank has since brought back his share of randos solo, but if Ron was still here it honestly probably would've already happened. He still had a lust for bringing back obscure characters at DAYS too.

Great, now I'm flashing on which Friend of Frank or ex-ABC/CBS star he'd bring on for the role.

I'm perfectly capable of applying critical thinking without noted encouragement. I'm not reverse-engineering (that's the term you're looking for here) anything. I'm quoting Megan's own unpublished memoir. I can pull it up verbatim if you like. Now you can say 'well, McTavish is lying/exaggerating' if you wish. And that's fine. It may even theoretically be true. But as I said in my above post, that single instance wouldn't account for the many, many other cases of stories like these in the industry - and they're not just being pushed by unemployed actors or former HWs with personality disorders. There are many firings that are nuanced BTS decisions involving either personal enmity, purely professional business calculations or some mix of both. And then there are some that are, yes, purely arbitrary and based on spite. All we are saying is that it's not an either/or binary. As ever, you are not the first person on this forum whose keen intellect has seized on this nuanced concept.

My grandpa was still pretty sharp and vital to 99, so I am very glad if Don is giving him a run for the title.

Your problem is that this is a thesis in search of background. You are putting forward the idea that many of the stories of spiteful firings are actually much more nuanced decisions re: BTS mechanics, money, etc. The latter is certainly true for many firings and hirings on daytime, and it's likely that some of the stories based around personal beef are untrue. But there's also a wealth of stories in soaps - from writers, from actors, from various people who would know, not all of them purely self-serving - about this stuff just coming down to personality conflicts or who rubbed the wrong exec or writer or whoever the wrong way, and yes, spite. Which, let's face it, happens all the time historically in daytime. And not just daytime. Both of these motives and outcomes coexist in this industry. Acting like we're all too provincial and gullible to see the truth is ignoring a mountain of other evidence. And the stories about Irna didn't start with the old story of falling up the stairs, either.

They have something of a GH problem in that there's too many kids and now they're all getting too old. To their credit they play them all much more than GH does theirs, but you can't play them all and I am never gonna care about some of these people lol. My advice would simply be to pare the younger set down to core personalities who you can build into actual characters, as opposed to jigsaw pieces fitted together. Like, you don't necessarily need blonde Claire and blonde Allie on the show at the same time. I don't care about Daniel and Nicole's child or even Brady's lol. Maybe the Nickelodeon twunk playing Tate has improved a lot, maybe one of them is a great actor so maybe one of them can stay, I dunno! But I'd be pretty merciless about these people at this point. And this isn't just about the twentysomethings or teens - you have Stephanie, Belle, Shawn, Phillip, Chad, J.J., Gabi (who I've never cared about and has had nine lives as is), etc. to figure out as well. Johnny has a nice body but what does he actually offer? Can you reposition him or recast? Maybe Chanel's great, who knows. How many times can Brady and the latest Phillip recast argue with their senior relatives about the imaginary DAYS companies? Boy, I dunno.

Literally half of Megan's memoir is about how she killed people off due to spite.

I just don't want to jinx it, since I thought Kathryn Hays looked wonderful on this show maybe a year or two before she ended up in assisted living not long before her death.

Exactly. Unlike others, I don't think the Higley/Tomlin model after they dumped Dee and Drake - where they would push hard on these very mid couples like the many loves of Daniel Jonas, or Nathan Horton and Melanie or whoever (and again, I liked Molly Burnett lol) while cutting costs - was the answer. A lot of those people were interchangeable or just boring. And I see a lot of that with the young people today too. But I think there has to be a re-investment in building out the individual characters as more than just spare parts to be fitted together. John, Bo, etc. were iconic because of the synthesis of strong or charismatic actors with fleshed-out roles. Same with Carrie, Billie, Sami, etc. Then you can start to see what works again overall for the show. Right now it's just musical chairs and most of these characters fade out to me as indistinguishable from each other. There's no major personalities like we had in the '80s and '90s. How are Gabi and Ari that different from each other (putting aside the fact that it is insane that Will and Gabi now have a practically grown daughter, and I'm still not totally sure who Tate and Holly are, let alone Allie or... what is the name of Belle's kid)?

Quality work on Sean Freeman's IG:

I've really been here for Andre repping for Dani with the family at every turn. Particularly Nicole and Bill.

But nobody seems to talk about them today. I just don't see any of them approaching '80s/'90s level. Putting aside the more systemic issues like Corday, or never getting over the Jim Reilly era and not ever knowing how to leave it behind, I think DAYS' fundamental error in the romance department in the 21st century - and it's one they can't easily escape - has been either trying to either stay the supercouple machine in an era that really isn't suited for it, or trying to ignore it and just create a string of interchangeable couples. The first part was the issue in the past but I can't really tell which is the bigger problem today, in part because I watch infrequently outside of John's death. I suspect the latter. Like, I would argue that something like Spencer and Trina on GH got more heat and attention in its moment in the sun than any young couple DAYS has had in years. Chad and Abby, Will and Sonny, even Lucas and Sami who I adored, none of them have compared. So when I hear about Johnny or Brady or Chanel or Gabi or J.J. or Chad or Stephanie or Belle or whoever swapping partners again my eyes kind of just glaze over and I lose interest. Like, none of these characters are iconic unto themselves like their predecessors in the '80s and '90s. A lot of them just don't have much meat on the bone as solo individuals. But maybe I'm totally wrong. If not though, maybe that's why they're so devoted to hanging onto the senior supercouples in the way they have. They know the weight of characters like Marlena or Patch/Kayla, or J&J or Bo and Hope in their visits, backstops a lot of this stuff that just feels like white noise to me. I don't know what the solution is there. I don't think you should try to pretend it's the 80s and make every couple a supercouple, but I also don't think a lot of these musical beds are that thrilling.

I know of no soap that generated as many supercouples in one decade as DAYS. GH came close but not that close. Unfortunately the only DAYS couple I can think of in the last 20 years that came anywhere near that was E.J. and Sami, and that was built on him raping her at gunpoint in a midsize sedan on the side of the road.

I am much more likely to critique repetitive or circular scene construction (which is an issue on all the soaps atm and certainly on BTG, which loves to state and restate points in the classic B&B and Bell style). I just don't have an issue with the couple using metaphor to refer to them getting older, I don't need to check the HD screen to see if Mike Manning has a few stray gray hairs lol.

This is approaching CinemaSins criticism. They're referring to getting and feeling older because of being in the marriage a long time and raising children together.

We all know plenty of gay men think they're ancient at 30.

Pratt doesn't work on this show, and Carlivati was just a BDW.

Jesus. What a bullet dodged.

The same Britt logic as the nonsensical Bobbie's situation where she whines to Carly about water pressure and rent. You chose to not live with rich Cousin Nina rent-free! You chose not to take the money Nina freely offered you! Nothing is stopping you! Shut up! I legit would be a little interested in Sonny openly getting involved with someone a little wild and sketchy like that though lol. Outside of another mobster like Claudia it's rarely happened. And it would beat the umpteenth round of someone like Turner, Alexis, Reese, etc. getting hot flashes while going 'Mr. Corinthos, we cannot be involved because of the Laws' as they undo their blouse.

Yeah, I peeped some of Ehrich's psychotic break last weekend when a friend notified me. Posting nudes and dick pix (and more, to say the least) while doing whippets live and streaming on social media, saying insane shít. It was making Michael Nader's low points look chill. I think his whole meltdown went on for several days. Honestly I was waiting to hear he got committed, arrested or turned up dead. Dude is not well.

I remember Jamey's last breakdown episode being pretty solid. I will reserve judgment on today. It couldn't be as painful as some of the first few weeks where Ron had Dani charming her way into the Hamilton house with the security guard (and not for the last time, sadly).