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Today's episode really showed off how good DAYS is at writing for couples, because it showcased the very different dynamics between Chad/Abby, Jake/Kate, Sarah/Xander, Eli/Lani, and Justin/Bonnie. I was especially impressed by those short Jake/Kate scenes 

28 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I thought the acting was on point though, but I was surprised. I thought Tripp was going to be furious with Charlie but he acted all good and noble.

 

I'm looking forward to their future scenes

I keep wondering what their long-term plans are with Charlie. Today's episode went a long way toward humanizing him again, but still, after his rape of Allie and drugging of Ava, it's hard to see how they'd be able to keep him around. Great acting by Mike Manning, though. He's totally believable as the resentful, neglected younger brother, even though he's actually 6 years older than Lucas Adams. 

25 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Lastly, Cady McClain has made me forget there was another Jennifer. They need to go ahead and recast Hope if they can do as well as they did with Jennifer. Melissa Reeves (and Kristen Alfonso) was checked out for years. It’s so strange how quickly she fit in which isn’t easy for a legacy role like this. I find myself looking forward to her scenes and actually paying attention. I hope this becomes permanent. 

In true DAYS tradition, they should just cast Crystal Chappell as nu-Hope. 

Excited that we're going to get some more Tony and Anna scenes! I assumed there were only here for the holiday. 

23 minutes ago, Faulkner said:

Oh god...so many ATWT examples would fit this thread...

What about any of the actors who played Craig with Yvonne Perry's Rosanna? 

2 hours ago, Faulkner said:

For some reason, I just can’t see Susan Flannery’s middle-aged Laura screwing Mark Valley’s Jack in a psych facility on DAYS. Might be just me LOL.

Yes. I've never seen the 1970s episodes where Flannery played Laura, but just the notion of Susan Flannery playing the mom of Melissa Reeves' character has always made me laugh. I can't exactly see the family resemblance! 

Speaking of the Horton women, I can't imagine Marci Miller's Abby having an affair with EJ or lying about sleeping with Austin. 

2 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Marci Miller kicked ass today. I hope she keeps this up. I've been waiting for that slap for a while now. 

I really loved those scenes too. I think the show is smart to let Gwen reveal the truth about her deceptions and her motives one little nugget at a time, because each time you get these terrific confrontation scenes. Emily O'Brien really excels at those monologues, and Marci Miller was also doing a great job of reacting to her in a believable way. 

I only tune in periodically, so I could be totally off-base here, but it strikes me that part of the problem right now is that, for a show entitled The Young & the Restless, very few of these characters are actually restless. A few months ago, I saw a 1973 clip where you saw that restlessness on full display, embodied by unhappy rich wife Kay and striving social climber Jill.

But when I tuned in the other day, the only restlessness I saw, as well as the only energy, came from Phyllis spazzing at Nick about going to see Chelsea. The other scenes I saw were sedate and stilted, like they came from a video teaching foreigners how to politely communicate in the US workplace. There was a jargon-filled scene where Nate reassured Adam that Chelsea would get the best medical care, which seemed designed to deflate any exciting dramatic conflict between the two characters. (The dialogue acknowledged that they had conflict before, but this was quickly brushed aside). And there was a similarly weird scene between Victoria and Kevin, where they both shared the information that they were happy with their current jobs. Most of these people seem to already have what they want, and I'm left wondering why I should care about these passionless corporate drones. 

27 minutes ago, Chris B said:

A B&B/Y&R crossover should be more meaningful and high stakes than this. I’m just gonna say it: Summer and Kyle are boring characters. The show has pushed them, but they are both dull.

 

I know that a lot of regulars on these boards wish their soaps brought back more "legacy kids," but Summer and Kyle are perfect examples of why that's not always a good idea. They are both extremely bland, as though the writers working on their characterization just wrote "Nick and Phyllis' kid" or "Diane and Jack's kid" and stopped there. Given who their parents are and what they would have witnessed growing up, the two of them should be far more interesting and psychologically complex. But post-Bill Bell, Y&R doesn't seem to have much interest in writing that kind of intergenerational psychological drama. 

17 minutes ago, ranger1rg said:

And the plan is to pair her with Ben? Sorry, but that’s making a bad situation even worse. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see Ben with LESS than nu-Claire.

Yeah, RSW needs a story that better suits his particular, uh, talents. Like "Broke and devastated after the loss of Ciara, Ben becomes a male escort." 

5 hours ago, Antoyne said:

Oh god we had smug Super Hero Serial Killer today . Can’t Ben just leave town now and go find himself. His character serves no purpose and I can’t imagine anyone wants to see him with nu-Claire. Honestly I don’t want to see nu-Claire with anyone or even see nu-Claire at all.

 

I love that the Salem brain jumped from

Anna to John.

You skipped a step: Abby had the Salem brain for a day when she finally figured out that Gwen is not her friend.

Totally agreed about Ben and nu-Claire being the show's weak links. That material just didn't work at all for me, and I thought there was something creepy and sexist about the way the show kept trying to build suspense with those bedroom scenes. Frankly, I think they would have been better off to just briefly show Claire and Charlie having good sex, but then Claire later feeling regret and anger once she learned she'd slept with her cousin's rapist. 

Speaking of Guiding Light, I know a lot of people hate this couple, but this scene has stuck with me for the past 12 years, partly because it's one of the examples of how the acting, writing, and directing styles of the Peapack era could sometimes come together to produce something that felt like good indie cinema. (Of course, other times they produced incoherent low-budget crap, but for me, that was part of the fun of tuning in to those "experimental" final years of GL; you never knew whether the experiment would be a success or a disaster, you just knew it would be memorable).

15 minutes ago, Gray Bunny said:

The thing about Billy Flynn (and this is the same thing I've noticed about Y&R's Joshua Morrow, but to a lesser degree) is that something about his acting showcases the fact that he, as an actor, knows his character is being manipulated and lied to. I just don't believe the words and the anger (not to mention the smirks and nearly breaking character and laughing, it seems) his character is spewing because we can see that he actually knows what's going on. It's hard to explain... do you get what I mean? 

 

I agree that Billy Flynn is the real weak link in this storyline, You know that saying about how 90% of acting is reacting? In his silent reaction shots, he often looks checked out, like he's just waiting for the turn to speak his line. 

But the women are really bringing it. Both Marci Miller and Emily O'Brien were on fire today. 

I just read about the storyline she'll be appearing in, and as an infrequent Y&R viewer, I have to ask: why does the show give so much airtime and story to Chelsea?

There are characters where we'd really care if they had a stroke and were paralyzed, and that would impact a lot of the canvas. I mean, think if they gave that story to Victoria or to Phyllis or even to Chloe. But with Chelsea, I don't know what viewers will care, apart from the Chelsea/Adam fanbase. 

1 hour ago, Vee said:

Murray Bartlett?? Murray Bartlett's not tryna come back to daytime!

Probably not. But a steady paycheck is a steady paycheck. 

If the show wanted to go for an Aussie EJ, they should just cast Murray Bartlett instead. 

13 hours ago, Taoboi said:

Hmmm I could see that. But I could see her with James Read as well.

 

Now that I think about it...Alexis does not have anyone right now since all her men are dead, do she?

 

 

I guess this will never happen because apparently the actors dislike each other in real life, but I always thought Alexis and Jax made a really good pairing, even though they never consummated their marriage of convenience. 

Extended promo is up. Anyone have any guesses as to who might have stolen Lani and Eli's twins?

Cool! I hope she has some scenes with Kate, along the lines of "You slept with my husband AND my daughter's husband? You bitch!"

Anna's really been a lot of fun to watch the past couple of episodes. I especially loved the scene where she's teasing Kate. I think she and Tony are best in small doses, but I hope the show continues to bring them back periodically, not just during the holidays. 

37 minutes ago, KMan101 said:

Yeah but Gwen has been here since June. It's time to reveal her motivations. Ron wants the "omg" moment but instead he needs to let us in on her better. Of course I feel the same as you, she has to be or should be Jack's daughter somehow. But at the same time, it's time to clue us in. I'd rather be with her on the journey than watch this [!@#$%^&*]. But that's me. Truthfully I don't even know if Ron has a solid plan.

 

Charlie arrived in October and by December was a psycho with his motivations revealed.

 

I'm glad you think it all makes sense. But you know why fans seem to care a bit more about Charlie (besides the washboard abs)?? Because we KNOW HIS MOTIVATIONS and WE CAN UNDERSTAND HIM. Folks are tiring of Gwen. Why? Because we don't know her real motivations at this point.

I hear what you're saying. I just think it's tricky from a storytelling perspective. Of course, the show could have let us in on Gwen's backstory and underlying motivations at the same time she told Dr. Rolf. But then, regular viewers would have had to suffer through weeks of flashbacks and scenes where Gwen talks to herself about her backstory, in order to bring infrequent viewers up to speed on why she's so determined to ruin Abby's life and Jack & Jen's marriage.  

Anyway, Emily O'Brien is fun to watch playing a kind of female Iago, full of "motiveless malignity." So I don't mind waiting to get the backstory that will no doubt humanize her and make her more sympathetic, but perhaps a little less fun.  

38 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

It rhymes with pay corn.

Well, that is one of the few genres where being wooden would be an asset. 

If the Top 5 airhog characters on this list perished in a bout of mob violence, GH would be a much better show.

On a brighter note, thanks for putting in the work of compiling this list! It provides a really interesting look at how GH is using (or in some cases misusing) its sprawling cast. 

6 hours ago, allmc2008 said:

Are you the new troll?

No. I'm someone who's been lurking on the SON boards for about a decade, but only decided to start posting during the pandemic, when I started getting back into watching DAYS on a daily basis. And I'm also someone who's observed the dynamic on these boards, where the few people who are actually enjoying the shows they're currently watching get chased away by regulars who only want to engage in negativity and constant moaning about how the soaps were so much better in "the good old days." 

But in the spirit of getting along, I'll tell you some of the things that aren't working for me on the show right now:

--The whole Jan Spears story seemed poorly paced, with little suspense, and the resolution was weak. (I'm still not even sure what happened to Jan: is she in a coma or something?) On top of that, Belle and Shawn aren't especially compelling characters, so I had a hard time caring about the obstacles to their wedding, especially since they've had a common-law marriage for well over a decade.

--Nu-Claire continues to be a weak link in the Charlie storyline. It would be so much more fascinating if ORK were playing her, because then we'd get to see Charlie and Claire as kindred spirits, obsessive crazies who are both trying to reform (in Charlie's case, not very successfully). 

--Ben seems utterly superfluous, and RSW is still a much weaker actor than most of the other younger men. In his place, I'd rather have someone like Casey Moss back full-time. 

3 minutes ago, JAS0N47 said:

 

Yeah, Days doesn't have much of a budget anymore, so now they've cut pretty much anyone who was at the 2.5+ guarantee per week, down to just 2-per-week guarantees. 

 

I'm sure the top actors aren't too happy about that, but I think it's actually to the show's benefit. It's too easy to get burnt out on certain characters if you're seeing them 3 days a week or more, and it can cause writers to either burn through stories too quickly for those characters or pace them glacially as JER did.