Khan

You know, given how popular Sami/AS was in the '90's, I wouldn't be surprised if Corday/Sony/NBC didn't at least consider spinning her off onto her own show. Especially after her schemes against Austin and Carrie were exposed. That would have been the perfect opportunity for her to leave Salem and start over in a new town as a single mom trying to change her ways. You could have even had her become the Carrie in a new triangle with a guy from a prominent family in town and another girl who schemes, like Sami did in Salem, to keep them apart.

If only we could say the same thing about Meg Ryan.

Nah, GH is a lost cause. Frank produces that show quickly and on budget. Until something occurs that forces him out of that EP chair, ABC's gonna see to it that he goes nowhere.

LOL!! Exactly. The grisly murders were awful enough. The big "PSYCH!" at the end just made things worse. I loved almost all the SSK victims for nostalgic reasons, but if I had been in JER's tight-fitting, Catholic shoes, I wouldn't have undone any of the murders. Not even Doug's or Alice's. The audience has to believe that what they're seeing on-screen is really happening. Otherwise, like you've said, @carolineg, they just can't invest themselves; and if you can't get your audience to invest in the stories you're telling, then what the hell are you doing telling them? But, you know, I don't believe it took much arm-twisting to convince JER to scrap his original plans for the SSK story, because I don't think he cared much at all about what happened to DAYS or even to PASSIONS by that point. He was likely too burnt out, too sick of network interference, and too overwhelmed by his personal issues to give much of a [!@#$%^&*] about how the writing looked.

Well, let's put it this way: I wouldn't say "no" to a story like Vincent/Valerie, because, as I've learned, you never shut off any creative avenues. (Except, of course, when those avenues lead to literal demonic possession. That's simply a bridge too far for me.). But you damn well better believe I'll do everything in my power to see that a story about an intersexed blackmailer who gets pregnant by their own father is told with the utmost class and sensitivity. And yes, I wrote that last sentence with the straightest of straight faces. All I can say is, compare the Salem Stalker to the "LOVING Murders," and I say THAT as someone who never liked that storyline OR the ones responsible for it.

Well, we can speculate about JER's inner demons, but unless and until we get the definitive account, either from him or from someone who knew him intimately, that's all it is: speculation.

Whereas I threw in the old towel by, oh, episode two, I think. Huh? Was that addressed to me, or to someone else?

That's what I've heard (and long suspected). He was gay, but because of his religious convictions, he never could fully express his sexuality in healthy ways. I get it, because I'm the same way. I'm torn all the time between being gay and being a Christian, even though I know that Christ is likely to forgive me (as if I needed to be forgiven for what God made me!) and to understand that "love is love." But I also like to think I see women as something more complex than either madonnas or whores, and that people don't automatically go to Hell for cheating.

You really have to wonder what sort of demons drove JER. Because, as morose as ATWT became during Doug Marland's final days, you never questioned whether Marland was an all-around well-adjusted individual.

True, but if I could go back in time and choose between wanting DAYS to end and wanting JER to come in and save it...? I think I'd choose differently this time, lol.

True. But that just shows to go you how much P&G's relationship with its' soaps had evolved -- or, rather, how it had DE-volved -- over the decades. I doubt P&G ever looked at their shows as anything more than tools to sell their product lines, but at least SFT, EON, TEXAS and others had men like Bob Short and Ed Trach in their corner. But ATWT and GL were basically on their own by the end, and it showed.

I'd vote for Shelley Curtis. When she produced DAYS in the '80's (w/ Al Rabin and Ken Corday), it was very Bell-like with its' emphasis on romance and emotion, it just moved quicker than Y&R and had more fantastic storylines.

Well, that's an unsettling thought, lol.

I was a teenager when JER's much-heralded first run began, and let me tell you: even then, I found it simplistic, juvenile, not at all what DAYS used to be or should have been, and an almost clarion-like call for help. I would say it screwed over Drake in the long run, too, because it's clear (to me, anyway) that Drake has struggled for years and years (and years) with how to portray someone that's more a concept (a romantic, brainwashed mercenary with a sketchy, elusive past) than an actual human being. Hence, the really bad acting that's emanated from him since then. Well, it's one thing to shake up an ailing show with a serial-killer storyline. DAYS had gone to that well many times before. But the ways JER was dispatching some characters...? It was sick, and it smacked of the guy delighting in sticking it to everyone -- Corday, Sony, NBC, the actors, the fans, everyone.

Same. I kept up with it through synopses and the occasional watch, but it was so, so hard to witness what Christopher Goutman had been allowed to do to the show by a sponsor that no longer cared. Still, even under THOSE conditions, I felt like ATWT still had life in it when it ended, and that all it needed was a new regime and for P&G to gaf again. ATWT didn't have to go away forever (which was more than I could say about GL).

Ah. Kind of like how GH snatched Denise Alexander away from DAYS before they really knew what to do with her. Of course, GH didn't resort to turning Lesley into a villainess the way DAYS did with Kristen. They just gave her a long-lost daughter. Especially when Drake wasn't exactly unpopular as Roman. As much as I love Deidre Hall, I really feel like she forced TPTB into an impossible situation with the "Tale of Two Romans" crap. Honestly, I would have been happier just to keep Drake as Roman.

One name: Donna Mills.

For obvious reasons. No, there isn't, lol. But, that might be due, at least in part, to my lack of understanding over how Kristen came to be in the first place. Did DAYS create Kristen first, and THEN they hired Eileen Davidson? Did ED even audition for the role? Or, did DAYS hire ED, because she'd been popular for years on Y&R, and THEN created a character for her? If it was the latter -- and I've often suspected that it was -- then it wouldn't have been the first time DAYS had hired a popular star from another soap without having a real character for her to play (hi, Genie!). However, as Genie's DAYS stint taught us, it takes more than sheer "star power" to make a new character "pop." ETA: Yes, ED's Kristen "popped," but, IMO, she popped for all the wrong reasons: Susan, Penelope, Sister Mary Moira, Thomas and all the other lookalikes that I'm forgetting. Sorry, it's late, and I probably should be in bed. Not necessarily. Roman could have easily flipped out over losing first his identity, then his wife, to John. It's a bit SEARCH FOR TOMORROW-ish, but at least Wayne could have gotten some good scenes out of it. As I keep saying, all I wanted from JER and from DAYS was a fair fight. Let Marlena be caught emotionally between John and Roman, and then let her tell you, as the writers, where her heart truly belongs. Don't go in with preconceived ideas of who is endgame and who isn't. Just let the characters tell you where they want to go. Because this is a very, very, VERY peculiar situation. Even for a soap opera. Even for DAYS. If, as the story unfolds, you see that too much time has passed, and that Roman and Marlena are attempting to recapture a past that cannot BE recaptured (which makes sense, given everything that had happened), then, fine, let Doc go back to John. But, do it in a way that respects Roman, and respects the audience who still loves him. Make it a priority to maintain the essence of Roman Brady, as played by Wayne Northrop, even as time and circumstances have changed him (as they should). Whatever you do, DON'T be lazy and make Roman the de-facto heavy in the triangle (the dull and unreasonable husband who can't or won't accept that his marriage is over) just because you think John's peen is magic. Let Roman and Marlena be adults about this: they can see that they're growing apart, so they mutually decide to separate, before John and Marlena can have airplane sex. Marlena reunites with John, and either Roman leaves town, or he stays and "works on himself" (attends therapy, addresses issues stemming from his years of imprisonment, etc.). ...OR... If that's simply too damn hard for you, then, yes, just accept that the triangle is ridiculous on its' nose; let Doc chase after and coo over John's junk; and then, once you've acknowledged that years of torture have caused him to break completely from reality, have Roman go full-on Sam Reynolds and kidnap Jo Marlena before meeting his grisly demise in the woods. Simplistic and melodramatic? Yes. But, so was much of JER's writing for the three. Same. Even then, I knew that the supercouple/action-adventure formula of the '80's was played out and that DAYS needed to change direction. However, I never expected them to change into THAT, lol. If anything, I felt DAYS should have returned to basics, like GH did when Claire Labine became HW.

Which is ironic, because the premise surrounding THAT triangle was so ridiculous and so only-on-DAYS that it dictated that someone, either John or Roman, become less-than-good in order for it to work. To put it another way: for years, John (and everyone else) thought he was Roman; now, he's not. Marlena, who was once presumed dead, is back, and she's torn between her husband, who's also back from the dead (...I guess...), and the man everyone THOUGHT was her husband, including himself; and who's really more like her husband than he isn't. Now, try spinning something real and nuanced out of that, lol. It barely made sense, because DAYS hasn't been written intelligently since the Carter administration. And I say that as someone who loved this show back in the '80's.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your perspective on Kristen completely. You love Kristen and you want her behavior ascribed to a genuine pathology. As someone who grew up watching Douglas Marland's work on GL and ATWT, I think it's only natural to want to understand why someone like Kristen behaves the way she does. It's just that I don't think Kristen has ever been a strong enough character, either as a "saint" or as a "sinner," to support the deep-dish thinking. She was very thinly drawn in the beginning, which made it easy for a hack like JER to turn her into a wacko later over John's penis.

Not necessarily. Kristen and Marlena could have both been "good" people caught in a no-win situation over John. Unfortunately, it's been AGES since DAYS was the type of soap to do that kind of sensitive, nuanced, character-driven drama. And JER...? Well, like @KLN says, he tended to see things as black-and-white. Plus, I don't think enough time had passed after Patch's "death" for viewers to accept Kayla moving on with anyone, let alone her ex-brother-in-law. Or, maybe enough time had passed, and I'm just blurring it all together in my mind, I dunno.

RE: Shane/Kayla -- Perhaps, if their respective spouses (Kimberly and Patch) were both dead, or presumed dead, audiences might have accepted the pairing. But, the truth was, Kimberly was still very much alive, so it seemed like a slap in the face when you had Shane literally saying he had been with the "wrong" Brady sister all along.

I don't think Kristen Blake DiMera is a tragic anti-heroine. She's what happens when you don't know how to write a "good" character in a way that's interesting.

She doesn't. Delia was infinitely more layered as a character than Kristen. She wanted so desperately to be a part of the Ryans, because her own family was so messed up (schizophrenic father, mother who made a living selling subway tokens, etc); and she manipulated the family, who wanted only to love her, and constantly painted herself as a victim (against Mary, against Jillian, against Faith, against anyone who threatened her shaky status within the family), because it was easier than growing up. I don't know what the hell Kristen wants. Regardless of who's playing her at the moment.

I still wanna know whose idea it was to pair those two up in the first place. Like, did we not learn our lesson from Shane and Kayla?