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Just wait, they'll probably create a new character for Roger Howarth to play. Like Franco's twin Branco, an annoying soap opera journalist.

Now would be a good time to bring back RH as Todd Manning and have him start flirting with Carly again.

Controversial opinion, but I actually think that GH's male cast isn't that terrible. All the "pets" that have been mentioned (Michael Easton, Roger Howarth, and even Wes Ramsey) are talented actors stuck playing poorly-defined characters in idiotic storylines that too often still fall into the Guza-era trap of assuming that morose and growly = deep.

Yes, I think Labine's GL was the absolute nadir of that show. Even when it got bad at times in the 2000s (like under Conboy/Weston), it was never THAT bad. Labine took the existing problems with the show (the emphasis on the mob and San Cristobel) and actually made them worse, to the point that I found the show almost unrecognizable. And the characters I normally like were written in such a way where they became insufferable (e.g. Reva, the savior of refugees).

Yeah, the show's treatment of Carly is one reason why I haven't watched a whole episode of GH in years. (I normally just catch up with the show via recaps and YouTube clips featuring my favorite characters, who don't include Carly these days). In some ways, I think Carly is a very similar character to Sami on DAYS, except there's no shortage of characters who will call Sami out on her crap, and the writers have a good handle on Sami's many psychological problems. With Carly, it feels like the GH writers want to depict her as a "fierce" heroine, so they sidestep any real engagement with her serious character flaws, which would make the show far more interesting. Some of the blame might go to Laura Wright herself. On Guiding Light, her Cassie was a similarly obnoxious and entitled "heroine" who didn't really gain interesting layers until Wright left and Nicole Forester started playing her.

You're so right! Back in his younger days, Wes Ramsey was genuinely appealing as Sam on GL. It's actually a skill to play a rootable "nice guy"; Josh Swickard (Chase) does it well, but very few of the other younger male actors on GH have been able to project that kind of warmth and personality. That's Wes Ramsey's skill set, and I agree that he could have pulled off a sensitive nice guy character like Lucky really well. But he's completely wrong for Peter, just like the guy who plays Cyrus is completely wrong for that part. It's frustrating, because GH has a lot of the elements to be a great soap, but then someone (maybe Frank Valenti) keeps making these mind-bogglingly bad decisions.

I think the show was supposed to be preempted for some kind of hockey game back in January, but when that got cancelled, the episode order was affected. So the actual "Friday cliffhanger" for last week aired on Thursday, when Rafe discovered Sami in Charlie's apartment. And that was followed up in the "Monday" episode, which aired on Friday, and had a lot of scenes with Rafe interrogating Sami.

I also liked the Abby and Gabi scenes, and I thought that Stacy Haiduk was making some fun acting choices as Kristen-as-Susan and as Susan-as-Kristen (even if it made Lani seem dumber than dirt for not catching onto the disguise). The one part of today's episode that really bothered me was the sentimental stuff between Gwen and Jack; I'm irritated that the show has rushed this important part of their storyline. I feel like there should have been weeks, if not months, of conflict between Gwen and the father who abandoned her.

Happy about the Kyle Lowder news. I think his take on Rex is strangely charming, and I loved the scenes between him and Sarah in Paris the last time he appeared.

If the show wants to write a real storyline for Shawn and Belle, rather than have them serve supporting roles in Claire's stories, I think they should lean into Martha Madison's frigid hausfrau vibe and do a story where Belle loses her libido and ends up pushing Shawn away. Then he might turn to Chloe (or whoever) for comfort, which eventually turns into sex. If the show really wanted to be daring, the person he'd turn to for comfort/hot sex would be Paul, and eventually we'd get the big reveal of Belle shrieking, "You slept with my brother!"

You've got a point. Although Mike Manning is 33. And I think he's consistently made acting choices which have elevated the material. I'm just disappointed because DAYS had a chance to keep an interesting, multi-faceted villain on the canvas, someone whose villainy is easy to understand because the show has taken the time to place it in a relatively realistic psychological context. Compare that with a character like Christian/Evan, who's now back on the show and is also played by a good-looking, fairly talented actor, but whose behavior is near-incomprehensible to me; that character seems to only be a villain when the plot twists demand it.

I can't really agree with you there. I'm a relative latecomer to DAYS; I didn't start watching regularly until Crystal Chappell rejoined in 2009. And one of the reason I couldn't get into the show before was because it focused too much on insipid white-bread couples like Shawn and Belle. Brandon Beemer is nice to look at, but I've never found Shawn very interesting. And I only like Belle in the stories where she's feuding with her family (like the story about Marlena's living will). The only purely "good" character on the show I find interesting to watch is Chloe, because she is exceptionally kind and well-intentioned, but she also has huge blind spots. Like right now, she is basically seducing Brady away from Kristen, but doesn't even realize she's doing it.

I also really hope they don't kill off Charlie. Just put him in a coma and have him wake up with what seems to be amnesia. And have him seem to be a totally changed man (...but is he really?). The story practically writes itself.

I don't care for Ben and Ciara at all. But that was one hell of a cliffhanger in today's episode.

Judge for yourself:

Only DAYS, with its Dick Tracy rogues' gallery worth of criminals, could make an episode that cut back and forth between three separate sets of characters in either prison or police custody. (Plus, a guy who's in the hospital after being shot by a completely unrelated set of criminals. And finally, a serial killer who was formerly on death row).

Wow. I knew that JER's writing had become crappy by the early 2000s. But I didn't mean it so literally.

See, maybe it was because I had incredibly low expectations going into those scenes, but I didn't actually hate them. I thought RSW was really making an effort to give inflection and meaning to those Shakespearean lines, which is something he doesn't always do with the blandly expository dialogue he's given on DAYS. In fact, it was a disappointment when I got to Friday's episode and Ben was back robotically reciting lines like, "Claire, I don't know how, but I'm pretty sure Ciara was having the same dream at the very same time." I'd actually prefer if, from now on, they could just have Ben recite various Shakespeare lines instead: "Claire, we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep... To sleep – to sleep – perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.’"

The extended promo actually looks a LOT better than the 15 second one. I'm all here for the Abigail/Gabi team-up against Gwen.

One unfortunate effect of those "food poisoning" scenes is it made me wonder where Ciara goes to the bathroom if she's locked 24/7 in a glass cage with only a bed. Does she have a chamber pot under the bed or something?

Maybe Ron had COVID when he was writing this. After all, one of the main symptoms is a loss of taste. Seriously, though, I have a feeling that the show is having to do a lot of rewrites on the fly due to the behind-the-scenes pressures of shooting in the midst of a pandemic that's hitting LA especially hard. For instance, I have trouble believing that the show intended to write a wedding for Steve and Kayla with none of their close friends or family in attendance. Or what about that weird absent scene in Wednesday's episode, where we never see the actual action climax of the kidnapped twins storyline? We just have Lani and Eli walking in the room telling us that they escaped, overpowered Vivian, and took her gun. That reeks of a last-minute rewrite when they couldn't stage the scene they intended.

Hmmm...something tells me that Robert Scott Wilson and Victoria Konefal aren't going to be asked to join the Royal Shakespeare Company any time soon. But at least they looked like they were having fun. And at least they were reciting Shakespeare's lines, rather than lines from fortune cookies.

So now I'm wondering if killing off Laura was a hasty rewrite due to behind-the-scenes issues. Maybe Cady's short-term contract was finishing up, and she didn't want to renew, so they had to come up with some reason why Jennifer would leave Jack, despite their recent reconciliation. Regardless, it's a big loss, one that leaves a hole in the show. Are Doug and Julie going to be the only ones living in the Horton house now?

Or maybe we'll learn that JLB's Laura was all along an imposter who was locked away in the mental hospital with the real Laura Horton and stole her identity. Paving the way for the real Laura to return, played by Susan Flannery as a no-nonsense, out-and-proud lesbian who wants nothing to do with the Horton clan.

Not that I'm defending this decision--it's a terrible misjudgment--but I feel like Laura's character assassination happened a long time ago, sometime around the late 1970s after Susan Flannery vacated the role and they had Laura go crazy, becoming the "bad psychologist" to Marlena's "good psychologist."