Michael

11 minutes ago, Vee said:

It's Griffith's brand, or was at the time. It worked at OLTL in the '90s and then it didn't really since. I think some of the darkness or grit he introduced worked initially for DAYS because he was so different from their usual writers, as the idea of the serial killer mystery was viable (until they killed Will) and the show got a lot more atmospheric. But by the time they'd gotten to Ciara being raped, Bo's permadeath (for now), Jigsaw is John's dad from Vietnam and Hope executing Stefano - woof. And now of course he's totally burnt out.

A noticeable problem with both him and John Aniston now. I never understood why they brought Stefano back in the late 2000s or early 2010s just to have him sit around the house haranguing E.J.

Griffith's tone worked (for me) for the first few months. It was perfect for the serial killer story, but the balance of the show was immediately off. The entire thing was the Necktie Killer and Hope/Aiden, with random interludes of stuff like Daniel and Nicole blowing the budget by dancing to John Legend's "All of Me" in the Pub. But yeah, the darkness worked, and then it was the entire show and so oppressive and miserable. I thought he'd turn Y&R into a bloodbath, and instead he turned it into... uh... whatever this boring-ass mess is. 

Mascolo came back pretty strong in 2007, but they were having all those weird contract issues in '07-'08 where they'd have to bench vets for months at a time, so he was there, then he was in a coma, then he was back, blah blah. Didn't Higley love Mitch Lawrence? You'd think she would've leaned into writing Stefano at least more like that than the riveting tale of a supervillain with diabetes.

I love Maggie Horton and absolutely believe Suzanne Rogers has a place on this show. I loathe Maggie Kiriakis. But I'm glad she continues to have a presence (and a job), and it's an easy course correction -- they had her with the Hortons more since Suzanne returned from leave, and she was great there. I know they're now in a tough spot tossing her into scenes as Victor's mouthpiece for Titan, likely because JA can't film, but it just underscores how much of being with Victor is not who Maggie is -- which would be interesting if they addressed it instead of ignored it!

The scenes of Hope killing Stefano were very, very strong in isolation. But like so much of Days (and especially Griffith's Days), it was all predicated on some flimsily established premise that she thought Stefano was responsible for Bo's death, even as we were seeing that Deimos had something to do with it. I don't think it helped that we could all see how feeble Joe Mascolo was. That wasn't the show's fault, per se, but it affected how the scenes read. The bigger problem was the fallout and the cover-up, as mentioned upthread. There was probably a way to pin it on that disgusting André without Hope and Rafe coming off so hypocritical and awful, but that would've required nuanced writing, which was in short supply. I think we were all just so tired of the nonstop darkness by that point, too. We went from watching Will Horton be strangled onscreen to Bo dying of a brain tumor to Eric killing Daniel in a DUI to Hope shooting Stefano to Ciara's rape in like three months. (And yeah, I agree that the rape was THE THING that should have sealed Griffith's fate. It was disgusting, distasteful, and worst of all, pointless!)

Hope felt like a random choice to kill Stefano, too. I guess Marlena got to do it with the 1985 shooting *and* injecting his IV in 2008, so she got her shot. Lol. Roman as an idea is interesting!

I think they have chemistry, too.

I found it interesting initially to have Hope completely lose her [!@#$%^&*] after the trauma of Bo's death/Aiden's betrayal. The story of her being the one to shoot Stefano dead was interesting, but the execution was so, so bad (and such an obvious way to push her and Rafe inorganically) -- so instead of playing into the interesting darkness that KA has, it played up that awful, brittle side of her that Hope has yet to return from.

25 minutes ago, Vee said:

That was so baffling to me. I liked the entire setup of that story and the outline, and then he was behind a table? WTF?? This is the kind of thing DAYS does all the time, like that weird-ass cabin thing, they've been doing it for so many years. They fùck up literally any idea you throw at them with the day to day execution, and that goes back to so many creative regimes before and after that one that I tend to think is institutional. Everything gets dumbed down to kids TV level.

It was dumb! He couldn't have... been scared and run out of the building and been trapped under a tree or something? I dunno. It was so ridiculous.

15 minutes ago, carolineg said:

I actually think Stefano was trying to kill Marlena and she and John were going into hiding, but somehow Bo, Hope, Carrie, Rafe ended up there as well.  Carrie definitely wasn't supposed to be there, but got stuck for some reason.  Then the group just pretended to be dead to buy more time and figure out what Stefano was up to.

All I can say about the pension story is I was really excited about John/Marlena returning and then that's what we got lol.  Days doesn't ever to well with business stories and John's business has always been vague at best.  I would have preferred a bread and butter adventure story with them to be honest

...

I always laugh when Sami goes apeshit crazy on John and Johnny was just hanging out hiding from everyone.  Listen, if I was Johnny, I would hide from my parents too.  It's one of those things you remember so well because it was that stupid.

Yeah, I canNOT remember why they were in the safehouse. I'm sure it was dumb! That was pretty shortly after John and Hope returned from Alamainia, which was a whole other ball of nothing. But I don't think those threads were connected. 

20 minutes ago, Vee said:

I thought the whole fraud story with John, etc. started out well; I actually thought it was topical given recent white collar crime IRL. I loved Carrie's role (Austin's was forced because I don't believe Austin knows math, but what are you gonna do). But like most things, it was a story DAYS was not equipped to do. And yes, since it was obvious it was Stefano just like every bad guy on this show always had to be Stefano while he was alive (and occasionally after), there was an airless element to it.

I do think that story, like many others, was strung out and then dropped, just as many others were simply curtailed. That definitely doesn't mean every story that creative team wrote was stifled brilliance (case in point: Ian Buchanan, Alamania, etc.). But I think we've watched DAYS do crazy eights around any kind of functional, halfway sophisticated storytelling so many times in the last 20+ years that I never trust them to execute. And whatever the writing regime, historically that problem has gone back to Corday's anxiety and his longtime coterie, as well as possibly Sony/NBC.

I liked the beginning, too. There just wasn't much to it after that. And I have no doubt Corday was sticking his hands in the pot pretty early on. It just felt to me like the appearance of a sophisticated story without the actual storytelling. 

Something definitely shifted around January of MarDar's run, too. A lot of those initial "stories" wrapped up quickly, and we moved into other phases. But their first month or two definitely felt like a Days I wanted to watch, and then I almost felt guilty admitting I was bored as hell by the time the Pub got shot up and everyone thought Johnny was dead and it turned out he had just been... under a table for days?

53 minutes ago, carolineg said:

I am pretty sure they all wanted Stefano to think they were dead for someone convoluted reason.  Someone correct me if I am wrong.  I feel like they were in that safehouse forever and were just having the same conversations over and over.  I remember we would actually watch Marlena reading a book or Bo playing cards.  Riveting.

That pension story was really weird.  I still don't understand why that was the story that they brought back Jarlena with.  It wasn't terribly exciting, you know John didn't do it, and it just ended with no pay off as you said.  Plus they had Austin/Carrie heavily involved and both of them literally had to change entire careers to make it work.  Austin is a forensic account now?  Sure, why not.  Did John ever get his money back?  I have to agree with you that MarDar may not be as good as we think.  The bones of that story weren't even very good, so interference or not, it wasn't an exciting idea.

I think you're right that it was Stefano-related. 

That pension story was terrible. I can see how it SOUNDED good, which was my thing with MarDar. John and Marlena return! Stefano has a plot against them but it isn't some crazy sci-fi thing! Carrie and Austin are pitted against each other professionally, which pushes Carrie toward Rafe and reignites the Carrie/Sami tension! The basic ideas sound good, but it was pedestrian as hell in execution.

That resolution was embarrassing, even for Days. I believe they were in a safehouse, though -- they wanted everyone to think they were dead (I cannot remember why), so they got stashed in some safehouse and spent the whole time canoodling and [!@#$%^&*]. So for a while, they were just hanging around doing nothing. It was only toward the end, when the bomb became known, that the situation was dire. 

I'm not sure MarDar's stories were as interfered with as is rumored. It was, as stated above, all setup. They came in with that story of Stefano framing John for stealing employee pensions or something, and it went on for MONTHS and then just ended with, like, Stefano telling the truth and it was over between commercial breaks. Every single thing they wrote wound up like that. It's tough for me to believe there was absolute brilliance planned and then it all wound up so flat and pointless -- we all know Corday gets nervous, but I'd kill to see what these "incredible stories" were supposed to be. We were still operating within the parameters of American daytime drama in 2011-12, after all. I really liked the start of their tenure, and I do think they helped restore the core of the show after the messiness of Higley's final year or so, but it was a sloppy, sloppy show with poor balance and weird callbacks to the past that meant nothing.

2 hours ago, Vee said:

Does anyone know what exactly the deal was with Ian Buchanan's debacle of a character? Didn't the big reveal of him supposedly being Stefano's 'real son' (and not E.J.) only happen a day or so before McPherson and Thomas left, and then immediately got undone? It all seems so bizarre and unnecessary. I seem to recall some talk of IB being intended as a replacement on the canvas for the ailing Joe Mascolo (good luck!), but I still don't understand what was originally planned there or at what time.

That story meandered for like the entirety of the McPherson/Thomas run. I've never been able to tell what was planned and what was, "Oh sh*t, we have to wrap up all these different threads really fast." Ian didn't appear to have much to do with the DiMeras for the bulk of his time, aside from bedding Kate because, well, she's Kate, and he was involved with some power struggle at Titan (maybe as a way to mess with Brady, who was with Ian's ex, Madison?). At the same time, they'd also set up this whole secret truce between Alice and Stefano where she was keeping the secret that EJ wasn't his son or something. Brynn Thayer played the back of Susan's head one day on a phone call and told Hope about this. Then, that spring, there was a Who Killed Stefano? story, which started out pretty fun and epic. I think EJ wound up the main suspect but it turned out -- VERY RANDOMLY and quickly -- that Ian had framed him, and they tossed in some flashback of Santo DiMera to explain that Ian thought Santo was his father and he was the rightful heir to the DiMera fortune, and something something EJ was really Stefano's son and Ian had just kidnapped Stefano and it was over very fast, and then Joe was back on as Stefano, but not in Salem and always seated, for a good year afterward.

I do think the intention was to build up Ian as the new big bad, but none of this felt unified.

Okay, I actually gasped. 

12 hours ago, dc11786 said:

I was a lapsed viewer who had come back in the fall of 2008 when they started the baby switch. Watching day to day, the show didn’t feel dark at the time in 2011 because it had been (to varying degrees of success) tried to move away from the camp it had come to be known for in the past decade. In hindsight, I can see now 2011 was a dark year. 
 

Chloe’s stint as a prostitute had come after a bout of post partum depression mixed with an ongoing custody battle with (an offscreen) Phillip regarding custody of Parker. Chloe, as I recall, stumbled into prostitution. She went to bed with Quinn and he paid her. When she realized the money she could make, Chloe made the choice to enter. During the Parker paternity secret, Nathan Horton alluded to the  fact that he thought Chloe could possibly be addicted to sex. The affair with Daniel during her relationship with Lucas was purely physical in the beginning. I didn’t mind the prostitution story because the trajectory Chloe had been on, but I don’t think it was as well plotted as it could have. Add in the addition of teenage Kinsey thinking prostitution would be a fun way to make some cash and a serial killer offing prostitutes and it only got bleaker.

Similarly, Carly’s drug addiction seemed to be a continuation of the road that Carly had been on for the past year and a half. Her marriage to Lawrence had been at the very least emotionally abusive and, if they hadn’t already, Bo and Carly were ending their relationship because Bo had rekindled his feelings for Hope when he helped her escape from prison. Also, it was clear from early on in Carly’s return that her better match was Daniel, her child’s father, who was now interested in Carly’s friend Jennifer. Carly’s personal life wasn’t in a good place. If I remember correctly, the breaking point for Carly was dealing with the death of a young male patient and then dealing with the revelation that Vivian was in contact with her son, Nicholas, who proceeded to hang up with her when she tried to talk to him. My issue with the addiction stuff was it didn’t really go anywhere. Abigail learned her secret early on, but Carly was able to keep her quiet. There seemed to be some setup for Carly’s negligence to lead to serious injury with Brady after he had been conked on the head, but that seemed to be hinted at but never followed through.

The problem with Marlene McPhearson and Darrell Ray Thomas was they dumped everything. Core cast and story, but also significant shift in sets and the elimination of supporting characters. Java Cafe and Cheatin’ Heart were both dumped in favor of Common Grounds. The hospital seemed to be used less. Lots of scene were in the square. Also, Higley and Whitsell had a group of recurring characters (Tad, Kinsey, Fr. Matt, Maxine, Justin, Adrienne) who were barely used or not used at all. It was too much of a shift. The week of the Horton Town Square was the week of the returns as well as the week after “All My Children” had concluded. Viewers who tuned in were treated to returning faces but basically no stories. The only major thread that was carried over was Daniel and Jennifer’s relationship. Everything else as I recall was just starting which made things very slow. 
 

Quinn came back for a single cycle and left in February 2012 to be with Taylor. I don’t remember if it was ever made clear what the purpose of his return was. I know he operated the spa in the square which was suppose to act as a retail space for the cosmetic wars, but I don’t remember if they chemistry tested him with anyone. 
 

Part of the problem is “Days” was able survive the cast purge of 2008-2009 because the stories were relatively stable. Major characters were being written out, but, for the most part, their stories had already been minimized so the impact wasn’t as big. The people who were really front burner during the purge were Marlena and John and there were enough other stories going that the loss didn’t feel as glaring in terms of story canvas as it would have in 2011 when basically every single front burner story was concluded without some sort of natural progression that shifted characters in directions based on the immediate aftermath of the previous stories. 

By comparison, when Tomlin and Whitsell came back as headwriters, the new stories were more built out of the old ones. Nicole’s pregnancy with her relationship with Daniel while Rafe claimed to be the father led to Jennifer, still grieving Jack, to worry about Nicole taking advantage of Daniel leading to Nicole’s fall in the Horton Town Center, which led to Nicole going to work at the church with Eric. Gabi’s scheme involving Andrew her fake stalker led to Chad going to Melanie and Gabi sleeping with Will before connecting with Nick while they both worked at Brady pub. There was still some sloppiness (Kristen’s initial reintroduction was haphazard) but the stories gelled by December. 

McPherson and Thomas completely axed the hospital, which I always found to be such a weird move. We occasionally saw some weird hospital room set -- I know Bo had some health crisis while Hope was in "Alamainia" (smh) with John -- but we didn't see that main nurses' station area for a whole year. Melanie, who was a nurse, started doing Botox at the spa, and Kayla was working behind the bar at the Pub. Maxine didn't appear for the entire year. We got the main hospital set back, like, the first week of Tomlin and Whitesell's return, as well as Melanie greeting Maxine. 

(Also, hi!)

McPherson & Thomas's stint really should have worked. I don't know what level of interference there was, but there were no stories being told. It was just a lot of setup. Everyone was getting new, random job offers, many of which went nowhere. It felt to me like a lot of well intentioned and poorly executed fan service. And I wound up liking a lot of what McPherson did with the AMC reboot a year later!

9 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Just to go in adifferent direction, I was thinking about the 80's supercouples

Roman/John/Marlena

Bo/Hope

Shane/Kimberley

Steve/Kayla

Each had their time in the spotlight.

When Roman and Marlena married, Bo and Hope were ready to take over and so on.

So throughout the 80's Days had at least one supercouple in the midst of angst with others at various stages of their relationship.

And with other couples in the background-Pete/Melissa, Neil/Liz etc

All of the supercouples featured a Brady and had action/adventure elements.

By 88 with Steve and Kayla wed, there was no similar template couple ready to step up.

Mike/April, Justin/Adrienne,Jennifer/Emilio etc didn't have the same larger than life appeal.

So that era was over, either by design or poor planning. It got to the point that Tanner/Molly were being pushed.

Who could have been the next supercouple?

Days was fresh out of Bradys. 

Justin/Adrienne seemed to get the big supercouple push, though I've always regarded them as a secondary supercouple, and then Jack/Jennifer were there, so that era kind of stretched itself into 1990-91. But you're right -- by the time Tanner and Molly were being pushed as the Next Big Thing (or a Thing at all!), things had really nosedived. This was also an era where, for the first time in over a decade, Days was telling love stories with characters who had a lot of onscreen history, often in a second or third "big love" -- you had Marlena returning and being torn between Roman and John, Bo moving on after Hope's death with Carly, and even Kayla and Shane turning to one another. Totally different sort of storytelling than they'd done in the 80s.

2 minutes ago, victoria foxton said:

I thought you were talking about her first run. Carly, Diego, Taylor, Quinn and Jack were all let go By Marlene Clark Poulter and Darrell Ray Thomas Jr.

Dario! (I knew what you meant, lol.) I knew there was another quick exit that I couldn't figure out.

McPherson & Taylor brought Jack back, though. He arrived as their run began. 

3 minutes ago, carolineg said:

Early Roman/Marlena is amazing.  They are so likable.

I honestly don't see Roman (Wayne's version) in a triangle with mother/daughter.  He seems too blue collar and pragmatic for that.  I honestly had a hard time picturing him with Anna.  She seemed way too glamourous for him (no offense to Deidre as Marlena is glam as well, just more down to earth)

In retrospect, and not having seen Anna's intro, it's tough for me to imagine Roman having been with Anna at all! 

1 hour ago, soapfan770 said:

No real substantial hints aside Krista Allen praising the twist in a tweet when she got the script and an interview with a line producer(?) who talked about how big it is and mentioned some people wouldn’t like it.   That’s all we have so far. 

Thanks! I've been seeing buzz about it on boards and Twitter but couldn't find anything substantial. 

1 hour ago, Vee said:

Zombie Stephanie! We all know it's coming.

Ha! "Stephanie returns, played by a man, since Susan Flannery didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about appearing feminine for the last decade of her run" or some sh*t. 

I do wonder if it involves Phoebe...

Chappell/Carly left in September 2011, I'm pretty sure. The big reboot with the launch of Horton Town Square was late September, like the week of the 25th or so, and they spent the weeks leading up to that ushering out a lot of people. Carly went into rehab at some point during the summer, and she left for Europe with Nicholas (played briefly by Cody Longo) -- this was right around the time that Tamara Braun's Taylor improbably left for Dubai or something with Vivian and her forgotten pimp son, Quinn (who then returned a few months later), and they put a quick stop to Chloe's prostitution storyline and shored up her character as best they could before quickly sending her packing, too. It was one of those very clear transition periods. I think Chloe was the only departing character who overlapped with the "reboot" at all -- I remember her final scenes being in the Town Square with Brady and Nicole. Then John, Marlena, Carrie, Austin, and Jack all showed up during the HTS opening.

15 minutes ago, Khan said:

In a perfect world (of my own design), Chris, John and Roman would each own a third of Brady's Fish Market Pub.  Roman might be retired from the police force, but Chris and John would still have their regular jobs (whatever they are, lol), and all three would take turns tending bar, with an able assist from a young, male barkeep not TOO unlike Woody Boyd on "Cheers."

Ha! I think John is a P.I. now, technically, which suits him more than the ISA stuff. I'm shocked Ron hasn't tried to be clever and pull some Chris Kositchek redux with JT...

I've come to kinda-sorta like JT's Roman as the mumbling barkeep who's always like, "What da hell are these morons up to now?" And he does decently in Dad Mode with Ali Sweeney and Christie Clark and Greg Vaughan. This just... isn't the Roman Brady of 1982 or 1992. The further away from RealRoman the portrayal gets, the more it works for me, which ain't right but it's okay (to bastardize Whitney's words).

I'm trying to think of another once-iconic daytime character who lasted decades but just sort of became this third-tier dude hanging around.

1 minute ago, carolineg said:

*I have to giggle that CC was out the minute DH was back in.  I still think they hate eachother from the 90's.

I always kinda wondered about that. Carly was GONE the week before the DHs waltzed back into that Town Square.

2 minutes ago, Vee said:

The Roman/Billie thing with Krista Allen and JT has never left my dark thoughts. I always thought that was so gross. WN and Lisa is another story, somehow.

Absolutely chilling. They half-assedly threw JT's Roman at a lot of women. In addition to Billie, he had that bizarre one-night fling with AZ's Nicole in 2006 (after which she vanished for two years), and they even teased him with Bonnie when she'd mellowed out a bit once Sheffer took over. 

I could 100% see Wayne Northrup's Roman and Lisa Rinna's Billie having been a cool pairing circa the late 90s. Love that idea. Josh Taylor and Krista Allen dressed up as cowboys on an ISA mission, however...

Carly and Billie didn't overlap in that era. Carly went out with the big "reboot" that McPherson & Thomas ushered in, and Billie came back the following spring (2012). I think they were more excited to get Lisa Rinna and to be using the Countess Wilhelmina name than anything -- there was never much plan for her.

Do we have ANY hints what this "twist" might be? I'm intrigued even though I find the show unwatchable.

I've made peace with the idea that Billie Reed is now basically Lisa Rinna. They've saddled her with the improbable law enforcement career for two decades now, and while it's never felt "right" for the character to me -- the suggestion upthread that she would own a nightclub/restaurant sounds so much more like who Billie Reed should be -- it's what we've got. They might as well go for the camp of "glam superspy Billie Rinna" or whatever that we got with her 2017 run and Beyond Salem. I wouldn't want it all the time, but it's cute for what it is.

Rinna's 2012-13 run was... something. They brought her back with a lot of energy, and I think people appreciated that she was back in the mix with "Countess W," as they were calling it, but like everything under McPherson & Thomas's pen, it just kind of fell apart into nothingness. She wound up still being ISA (I think this was secret at first?) looking into EJ for some BS, and of course they limply toyed with throwing her at Bo AGAIN, and they had her give Daniel [!@#$%^&*] over being with both Chelsea and Kate -- which was fun for a minute but then started to look like they'd pair them. Then she just sorta hung around town for another six months. Her exit, which was all about her basically telling Kate, "You're a shitty mom and I'm accepting that, and I guess I love you anyway but I can't be around you this much," was surprisingly nuanced.

I can totally see the comparisons between Reckell/Bo and Loprieno/Cord, btw!

Just now, carolineg said:

Frankie was always my thought too for Billie!  Shame they never tried that.   I remember thinking JA's Eric and KA's Billie had chemistry.   I feel like JA's Eric was mostly wasted as well.  Considering how iconic his character should be he never did much.

 

See, I liked their breakup.  Billie left with her dignity intact.  It was coming crawling back to Bo time and time again that hurt the character.

Frankie/Billie was RIGHT THERE. There was definitely chemistry between Ackles and Allen, too. It did seem like they never quite knew what to do with Eric. The initial story with Nicole tanked -- it was too focused on (very green) Arianne Zucker. Throwing her at Lucas and then Victor was really smart, but it left Eric out in the cold. His pairing with Greta was cute but always felt like D-story consolation prize material. 

And I'm with you on Bo/Billie. When LR's Billie left, it was a great conclusion to that triangle. Bringing in Krista Allen and making her pathetic and borderline-insane over Bo really boxed the character in, and then Pinson's Billie showed up years later STILL fixated on him. But there was definitely a point where Bo winding up with Billie felt like as viable a resolution to the triangle as him winding with Hope, which is pretty impressive.

3 minutes ago, Vee said:

That has been the biggest issue, and yes, they should've invested in someone else for Rinna (or Pinson, in a pinch). But they never have, they just treated the recasts like her mother: The town mattress.

Absolutely.

I like Julie Pinson a lot, I loved her on PC where she had the same energy as Lisa. But Julie Pinson got plugged into too many forced roles on too many shows, most especially ATWT, and that includes using her as a sort of shadowpuppet version of Rinna on DOOL. Billie had no agency as a character after LR's original run and that really hurt Pinson too. These days when people bring JP up I just roll my eyes, sadly, because she's had enough ill-conceived runs on enough shows. It's not her fault. But no, no one has ever compared to Rinna for me or ever had the same stature in the role.

We were posting at the same time, but I'm with you. They had the opportunity to restore Billie a bit to her pre-Allen character -- Pinson brought a bit of grounded earthiness, and you could buy that her Billie was a former addict who'd been raised by Curtis Reed and had scraped together a life for herself. But they just made her such a LOSER all the time. 

I've been writing my own text-based soap, Footprints, for fun/writing practice since 1997 (I was in junior high and it was terrible the first few years!). I also work as a writer in TV -- not daytime. Am I allowed to take issue with the writing on a show I watch?! 

(For the record, I'm not advocating for Jamey, or anyone, to be fired, but this conversation took quite a turn.)

And I get the general spirit behind "if you don't like the entertainment you're being served, create something you love!" in theory, but like... if I go to a restaurant and order filet mignon and it sucks, I should be able to declare that or send it back without being obligated to go butcher a cow and make my own.

Late to the party, but it baffles me that they never tried ANY of the Billies in a legitimate way with any other love interest. Krista Allen got tested with JT's Roman and Ackles' Eric, plus the flirtation with Nicholas... Julie Pinson got teased with Max, Patrick, had the fling with Nick... and then when LR came back in 2012, they played around with her and EJ and her and Daniel. But it's like no one could conceive of a Billie who wasn't an accessory to Bo/Hope. 

The idea of putting her with a grown Dougie LeClaire in the 90s or 2000s intrigues me. They also could've cast a Mike Horton for her at any point in the last 20 years, and the most obvious pairing in the 2000s would've been to put Pinson's Billie with fellow loser-in-supercouple-love Frankie, whose portrayer was also married to Pinson.

Abigail also already had a faked death in 2016. Around and around we go...

The Cheatin' Heart was used pretty prominently up until 2011. Then it morphed into Sonny's coffee house (Common Grounds???), which was "remodeled" into Club TBD (stupidest name ever, which is saying something), which later became Doug's Place 2.0 and then Julie's Place. They completely swapped out the set when it turned into Club TBD, though.