Michael

Craig's one of those characters who I'd believe was bisexual all along. It would be an interesting twist (if this is where they're going) that Nancy has known their entire relationship that Craig was bi and had relationships with men before her, but he's also loved and genuinely been attracted to Nancy this whole time. And they never revealed it to Chloe, who resents being kept in the dark.

They retroactively explained that Rex had joined Doctors Without Borders, too, so I guess it's possible that Kate and Roman didn't really have contact with him until he showed up. But they didn't explain any of this until Sarah had been gone for months and months. It does not feel like it should've taken THIS long for anyone to realize something was amiss.

2 hours ago, te. said:

To be fair, this exit created more drama in the sense that Xander moved on with Gwen because he thought he was dumped by Sarah, but at the same time he wasn't. So there's actually a love triangle there that's at least somewhat complex where no party is exactly wrong (well, except for Gwen for keeping Sarah's whereabouts from Xander). I don't mind them taking a while for Sarah to return tbh - I just hope this isn't another case where Sarah will end up popping in and out of the show a la Ali Sweeney.

Totally. I wish they'd actually accounted for WHY people didn't question Sarah's whereabouts sooner. If Maggie couldn't get a hold of her other than the odd text message, why didn't she contact Rex? Why didn't Roman or Kate happen to ask Rex, "Hey, how are things with Sarah?" during the months he was gone?

I guess they're getting story out of it now, but that exit was so weird and abrupt. Why couldn't they just have had her finally object to one of Xander's 12,000 crimes and go off to visit Melissa and clear her head for a while?

But every single pilot script that the big networks order gets published in the trades. Especially when they're based on known properties. It's as much news for the public as it is news for the industry.

I'm not even trying to defend... ABC or Kelly Ripa or anyone, but it's the way things tend to work.

3 minutes ago, reallyhateskateonlost said:

The announcement about another reboot never should have been made not until a few episodes were taped.

They bought a pilot script to see if they would want to move forward with shooting a pilot, after which they would've decided whether to write and produce more episodes or not. That's the traditional way that TV development works. (It's become more common for high-profile projects to get a straight-to-series order, where they start writing the whole season rather than waiting for the pilot to be shot and picked up.)

It seems as if they didn't think the pilot script was right for them or prohibitive to shoot or -- well, whatever reason they had, and who knows if they ever gave it a fair shot in the first place. But you'd never have multiple episodes of a primetime revival of a beloved property filmed before word got out to the media.

FYI the Covid compliance costs (extra team members on set, testing, etc) should be coming out of the established budget. Few shows have received a budget increase to account for those additional costs. I'm sure it's being factored in as budgets are being created for new, high-profile shows, but that factor has been a hit to most established/running shows.

Y&R still looks cheap as hell, though. And this is coming from a Days fan!

33 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

The full episodes of that used to be posted, but I think they were all taken down in that really big purge a few years ago. 

Yeah, I remember them being available, and then there was that huge wipe and everything was gone. So frustrating.

20 hours ago, victoria foxton said:

https://whathappensinsalem.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/wtf-wednesday-virtual-eden/     I can't properly explain it either. But the person that wrote this blog does a good job. Sorry i took so long to answer. I was searching for clips. But there are none.

That's my blog! It still irks the hell out of me how many old clips are gone. What I wouldn't give to watch that coronation massacre now and again...

They actually had Ciara and Ben reference the Virtual Eden story on Beyond Salem, which got me nervous that Ron would decide to do a redux.

This is so interesting, because I found TB to be a shockingly good recast for SJB precisely because she has kind of a harder, masculine energy, despite being so petite. There's something rough about her physicality and performances that I think really fits Carly. LW has generally done a great job and has obviously endured in the role, but there's always a SLIGHT missing link for me with regards to how Carly came to be so... "polished" is the wrong word, but it feels like she progressed between actresses without me really seeing it onscreen.

11 hours ago, Skin said:

 

I think I understand this more, after walking away for a bit, and reading your response. My statement was admittedly hyperbolic. That being said I disagree with the argument that you can't measure show engagement, fan engagement and general viewing behavior and enthusiasm as an indicator for impact. I just completely disagree with that notion. This is the foundation for Nielsen existing, why Q scores for television series exist, why net promoter scores are used to understand engagement with services/products/television, why market research is a thing and why the ratings themselves are used to direct advertising dollars. It's all more or less borne out of fans willingly sharing their viewing habits and what television series they watch, and using that information to extrapolate how larger audiences feel about their specific shows, in order to measure attachment to the content they are viewing. That's basically what surveying in essence is. We can certainly derive and measure interest from many of the things I laid out in my previous arguments. 

 

 

I think I am understanding the reaction at this point. I was making two separate points (1) EJ and Sami created a response in Days fandom that was notable and generated interest that was unlike her other pairings and (2) In my opinion they were better suited for each other from a narrative perspective. I saw those two statements as exclusive and separate, and not a combined joint statement. My bad for not making those two points separate and clarifying that in my post I guess. I thought the paragraph break made that overt, but it wasn't read through. 

 

I completely get the idea that there are fans in the middle who could care less about shipping, but that also kind of makes my point. Ambivalent watchers don't care either way. Of the two pairings audiences responded more to EJ and Sami from the sources of evidence I already provided. Of the two pairing options the EJ/Sami pairing generated more enthusiasm, interest and excitement. From that response they received significant attention to outside soap viewers and achieved primetime notability. That, is my main point, those indicators are not arguable. That doesn't make them a "better" pairing by itself, it just means they generated more interest and were the more interesting (*ah that controversial word again!*) couple for soap and general audiences. Again using the "interesting" qualifier as a proxy for attention-getting and popularity/notability I guess :shrug:

 

 

Yeah, that's my personal opinion and is separate from the "interesting" statement. I get it, thank you for explaining this to me, because I didn't get why people weren't connecting the dots. 

Thanks for clarifying! The two distinct points make perfect sense on their own.

2 hours ago, Skin said:

 

I honestly don't know how else to word it. When I look at the definition of interesting here is what is defined within the term: 

arousing curiosity or interest; holding or catching the attention.

 

The word fits. They aroused more interest in the show then Lumi did at that point in the story (or really ever). This was referenced multiple times in MSN, TV Guide and in Soap Opera Weekly publications back when soap magazines were still a thing, and were still of interest to the viewing community.

 

Soap interviewers would even interview Bryan Datillo and ask him what he thought about the EJ/Sami pairing generating more fan mail/interest than Lucas/Sami did at that time. Datillo even had to respond to the fact that a lot of fans liked them as a pairing even though he was part of a rival ship. All of this was way back in 2007, 5-6 years before EJ and Sami even got together.

 

Listen, I don't really care if people like EJ and Sami, that's not the point I am trying to make. I am simply saying if you loved them or hated them, they generated a level of interest not seen by any of her pairings since the turn of the century. I don't care if you prefer Lumi or Ejami - that's not the conversation I am even remotely interested in having. You preferring one ship over the other - is an opinion. But there are things that are measurable and you can determine based on quantifiable facts. If your barometer is fan sites, tweets, fan mail, music videos, YouTube screen clip views, publication space on magazines, or even mainstream media attention like having 5 minutes dedicated to them on the Colbert show, or whatever else floats your boat the answer is pretty definitive and clear. At the end of the day EJ/Sami generated all of that on their own, and it made the pairing notable and standout amongst all her other pairings. That's not something her other pairings replicated. That's objectively a fact. It doesn't bother me if other posters like Lumi more, because that's not what's being talked about. You can hate a pairing and still acknowledge that they had a huge impact on the show and beyond. I just did a few posts back with Phick.  

 

 

You are mixing quality and personal preference with interest, which is not my point. You are looking for a value statement, which is antithetical to what I am talking about. I am not trying to define if someone is "better" or not. I am trying to gauge interest, engagement and fascination and measure that within context. 

 

The bolded definitely does speak to their impact. It's a direct and quantifiable number of what people are willing to engage with and find interesting. You can bet any intellectual property and television series will want to capture what is causing a reaction for their viewers and that they will want to understand fans relationship to the material that they are writing and producing. Television series want to trend, they want the news publication publicity and they want awareness of their shows. Writers would rather you hate or love something, then feel ambivalent about it. 

You're making my point for me, though. I'm not disagreeing that Sami and EJ, as a pairing, generated great interest. I was responding to statement such as "Sami and EJ were a thousand times more interesting than Sami and Lucas." That is not a quantifiable thing. You CAN definitively state something such as, "The ratings for Sami and EJ's wedding were ten times higher than for Sami and Lucas's wedding," or "Sami and EJ's fan event drew ten times more people than a Sami and Lucas event," but you can't measure something like 'interesting' or 'compelling' in a concrete way. It's your (perfectly valid!) opinion that Sami and EJ are/were a more interesting pairing than Sami and Lucas, and that's fine. 

For the record, I don't really have a dog in this fight. I enjoyed Sami and Lucas a ton, but I didn't like how Hogan's quick turn into making Sami more of a traditional heroine wound up transforming Lucas into an Austin-lite character. I agree that Sami and EJ had great chemistry and made a big splash, but I found the storytelling for them wildly inconsistent and unfocused, likely because there were almost yearly writer changes and because... Corday. But I have no way of definitively declaring that one pairing was objectively superior to the other. And there were probably a ton of less vocal fans (like me) who didn't really care which one emerged as the victor, because I don't necessarily watch the show for couples and just want the storytelling to be interesting.

Did Sami and EJ garner more outside press for the show? Very possibly, and that's a statement you could make, given the "data points" (as you put it) to back it up. Of course the show wants people to be talking about the show and its content. But you took my example about reactions to Daniel on Twitter and totally twisted it -- mentions and conversations do not necessarily equate to something being "better," which is exactly what you say in your response before completely contradicting yourself. You're right that, in a broad application, "interesting" means something has garnered attention. There are plenty of things that have outraged and annoyed people into posting on social media that would technically count as being "interesting." And while you say you aren't interested in declaring something better or worse than something else, that's exactly what your posts about EJami vs Lumi seem to be aiming for. You say EJami are/were "more interesting," and then you go on not to give examples of why/how that's the case, but instead talking about how and why her pairings with Austin, Lucas, and Rafe didn't work and why her pairing with EJ did. Whether or not they worked isn't the same as whether or not they interested people or got attention, so I hope you can see why people (not just me) are confused as to what point you were trying to make.

1 hour ago, Skin said:

 

I know this, I am saying the reaction from audiences was something not seen since that period. From fans, and non-fans alike.  

 

 

No. It's really not. Not when we have data points which attest to this point as a fact by how audiences reacted and engaged with them to demonstrate the effect and impact of them as characters. EJ and Sami had more engagement than any of her other pairings ever have. You can hate the pairing all you like, and still be able to objectively come to that same determination and ultimate conclusion that they caused a reaction that was not seen by Days in quite sometime. What caused that level of impact? Interest between and with these two characters. 

 

I hate the pairing of Phylis and Nick - however I can't deny that the pairing was much more interesting in 2005 than Sharon and Nick were, even though I liked Shick more than Phick during that time period. I also can't deny that Phick completely changed the course of those characters and those characters within their orbit since their affair. The impact of that couple is undeniable, even if I don't like or care for it. 

What are these data points you speak of? You seem to want to establish something objectively, but "more interesting" is not something that we can objectively measure.

Also, Sami and Lucas's heyday (2003-07, roughly) pre-dates Twitter or social media as we know it. Sami and EJ's relationship largely coexisted with the rise of those venues for fan feedback. So it would be tough to do a one-to-one comparison on that, anyway.

And a million people a day tweeting that they hated Daniel Jonas didn't mean he was objectively a better or more interesting character than, say, Bo. People were mentioning his name because they hated him. X number of tweets or whatever mentioning EJami don't necessarily speak to their overall impact (and I don't know if tweets are what you're referring to, because you haven't gotten more specific than "data points").

On 1/18/2021 at 3:35 PM, soapfan770 said:

The funny thing about RC’s Mike is how they initially teased him with getting paired up with Marlena in late 1994 to the point maybe a dinner date was involved? I can’t remember except Mike being indirectly involved with DiMera at the same time. 
 

RC Mike and Carrie interacted briefly for Alice’s funeral in 2010 but as I recall because Mike had been revealed to be an abusive/neglectful father during the 2007 Jeremy story the show left his 2010 return be open ended and have him be undeserving to be there ie he didn’t get to see Alice before she passed.

That wasn't really how the post-2000 stuff with Mike played out. I don't believe they ever said he was abusive in any way to Jeremy, just that Jeremy was an a-hole and they implied that he and Mike weren't super-close or that he felt like he hadn't gotten enough attention or something (which felt at odds with the fact that he seemed to have left the show to go back to Israel to help raise Jeremy). But it was all pretty vague, and when I watched it, it never really felt like an indictment of Mike as a father. 

In 2010, RC wanted to return for Alice's funeral but had some other commitment, so they shot his stuff separately. Because he wasn't filming at the same time as the other returns, he couldn't attend the actual funeral, so they had Mike get into a car accident on his way into Salem. He mostly appeared at the hospital and had scenes with Lexie, Jennifer, Bill, and Carrie. He and Carrie seemed to get some sort of closure on their relationship, but it was bittersweet. It wasn't anything amazing, but it was done pretty respectfully and certainly wasn't some kind of punishment toward Mike/RC. He got a final solo scene to say goodbye to Alice, too (I think as he was leaving the hospital, but he might've made it to her grave).

I read Jean Rouverol's book three or four times in the 2000s. It's excellent! Obviously outdated now in terms of some of the specifics, but it's great. Totally worth picking up if you find a copy.

On 7/19/2018 at 9:17 PM, j swift said:

Neil also had a sorted past with Carlo Forenzo in another backstory.  Carlo was Don Diamont's first role. Neil had gambling debts to Carlo's family and they tracked him down but not before Carlo and Liz had an affair.

I think that was the story where the Alan Jackson thing came out, but I'm not sure. I've seen it described different ways, but that was definitely the period (like '83?) where Neil's "true" identity was revealed. I need to do some research!

Does Neil Curtis from DAYS fit this one?

For his first, oh, ten years on the show, he was "just" Neil Curtis, doctor and cad. I'm pretty sure viewers met his father and his cousin (Johnny?). In the 80s, there was some reveal about his actual identity being "Alan Jackson" and that Neil Curtis was either a stolen identity or an alias. I might have it wrong and Alan Jackson was the alias, but from what I've read, it didn't track, and the existence of Curtis relatives didn't make sense with what was revealed later on.

9 hours ago, cassadine1991 said:

She was in the castle, I think 

Cassie was in that stupid castle with Jack. She made it back to Salem (Alexis Thorpe filmed, like, one or two episodes). When Rex left town, there was mention that he was going to live with Cassie.

Did Susan Martin really just vanish? I know the recast wasn't well liked, but it sounded like she pretty decisively left Salem to be with Eric Peters and their daughter, Annie. Was that just something they said after the fact? 

At least Holly on GL got that ending with Ed. It was rushed and odd, but it was nice to have a final note for the characters. I was also glad that AMC brought Brooke back -- having her around for the final months was lovely.

Thanks for posting that! Must've been such a weird time for viewers, with the amount of cast turnover going on in those years... 

Thanks for posting that. I'd never read it, but it's interesting how even-keeled JER comes off there. As ridiculous as his show got, I really and truly believe that he knew EXACTLY what he was doing during that first Days run. It just had such an energy.

WUT.

Thanks for sharing the episodes and that interview, guys!

Those John/Marlena fans asking questions really come across as so obnoxious. It's also funny to see feedback from the early days of Nicole, calling for a recast or for her to go entirely.

Another DOOL history project on my blog: I've started a revised history of the show, minus SORASing -- but substituting age-appropriate characters for the ones who appeared onscreen. (For example, Kristian Alfonso still shows up in 1983, but she isn't playing Hope, who's still only 9 at that point.) I've done 1965-79 so far, and the rest will be coming shortly...

I got my hands on 13 of the 14 "Soaps and Serials" novels that were published in the 80s, retelling stories from the first decade or so of Days, and did a blog post with recaps, reviews, curious findings, etc. The write-up is here, for anyone who might be interested.

I would be, too!