Michael

That's how I feel about Heather, too -- which is actually not too far from how I felt about Carole later in her RHONY run. She's high on her own supply and has lost sight of why people liked her in the first place. The whole black eye thing was horrible Housewifery and annoying as hell, and the way she handles confrontation is bizarre (though kind of fascinating from a psychological perspective).

Yeah, JL filmed some kind of short stint, and the recast happens when that concludes. It's interesting they got JL at all if this was the plan, honestly. This show is... something else.

The Whitney/Heather drama is NOT working. It was exhausting last year, it was exhausting on RHUGT... I feel like they think this is some Bethenny/Carole [!@#$%^&*], and it is not.

I think they just saw a plane crash as a more "powerful" ending for Victor, the same way they didn't have Stefano just pass away in his sleep. (Yes, they completely fumbled the ball with Joe Mascolo's final appearance, and the Hope/Rafe/Andre part of his final "death" was a mess, but having one of our heroes shoot him to death was a decent idea.) I don't for a second think they are even considering recasting.

Dylan Patton came to mind immediately for me, as well.

@jam6242 Thanks for pointing that out. I have absolutely no memory of him or his character, but that's awful on its own, and to think it was tied to Days is horrific. Alarr didn't come onboard at Days until 2003, so I'm not sure his stint overlaps enough to know for sure, but it's truly horrible if so.

I feel grotesque even typing this but... is there an actor in Days history who died by suicide prior to 2017? That feels like the most identifying detail in that blind. I believe the allegations about Albert, but that blind sounds even more dramatic and dire than what we've heard from the Days set.

This is such a cycle with Corday, too. I mean, not to this degree (that we know of) -- but every Plan to Save Days is like, "I hired someone, put the show in their hands, and one day I came in from the golf course and turned on the show and it was unrecognizable! Who knew that checking in once every six months could have that result?!"

The haircut thing (which is absurd and abusive but less salacious and traumatizing) made me think of the kid who's been playing Joey. He had longer hair on Beyond Salem and then showed up with shorter hair on the main show, but they've shown him less and less since that first appearance...

The fact that he's still there and not even suspended is grotesque.

I think it's pretty natural to want to make sense of stuff like this, especially when we see these people on our screens every day. And there's a relatively respectful way to speculate without being crass ourselves, tagging actors in tweets, etc. So I hear you!

I feel a little icky speculating on such upsetting situations for the victims, but I'm pretty sure (based on a lot of context clues) that the actress in the love scene is Martha Madison. She wiped Days from her socials a few months back and seemed to be going off-contract, and it didn't seem to make any sense.

Absolutely ridiculous this was allowed to go on for so long. This has been known for years. Corday burying his head in the sand is disgraceful.

This has been a long time coming.

I guess they felt they needed to address it in *some* way in order to bring those characters back to the show, but yeah, your explanation probably makes a lot more sense. Do we even know for certain if the Kevin who's on GH now actually has a daughter named Livvie, or was that all erased (or "erased" by the magic ring) during Ron's revisit of the PC stories?

I completely forgot about that aneurysm thing (which never got resolved, right?)! Good grief. Were Johnny and Allie born when John was briefly "dead" in 2007? That might've tainted Sami's judgment when she named the kid, LOL.

They've gone back and forth sooooo many times. In 2002-03, Sami had gotten to a good place with John, and then JER returned and she randomly hated him again. The way I see it now, it doesn't take much for something to re-ignite her fury at him -- like when she caught him and Paul "digging up Will's grave," but after Marlena got shot at the wedding and almost died and Belle was foaming at the mouth to pull the plug, Sami and John seemed to have gotten to a better place.

As always on Days, there have been some, uh, follicular choices going on there.

Thanks for the explanation. I think I tried to read a recap once and my head started to hurt. I remembered Stephen Clay being a part of the original vampire stuff on PC (he was a rock star or something) -- it's a shame they couldn't tie it all together in a more cohesive way. That kid who played Rafe Jr. was awful, LOL. And killing Alison that swiftly was so bizarre.

I think the way they introduced Alex -- even apart from the casting, which obviously irritated many people -- was just way, way too heavy-handed. I know they wanted to set him apart from Ben, but the wardrobe, the glasses (and the constant chewing on them), the lounging-around-in-his-great-uncle's-living-room-naked-with-Sloan... it just all felt very "Look how much this COOL GUY loves SEX!!!!" to me. Add to that the limp, forced pairing with Stephanie -- which entailed him bumping into her once, becoming "besotted" with her (which looked more like stalker-y obsession), and then him having to learn the basic concept of sexual harassment -- plus the inconsistencies about his upbringing, which have made it tough to get a handle on the guy because we're unclear on whether Adrienne raised him, if he was ever close to Anjelica, whether or not he and Stephanie were raised as cousins, etc. And I hate this forced rivalry with Maggie and him having to call her "Auntie" every 30 seconds despite never having met this woman before last summer. Basically, I think the ideas work when you articulate them the way that you do above, @j swift, but I don't think the execution has lived up to that very often.

Thanks! I have the haziest memory of watching Lila's funeral and them being there, but that's all. I'm almost tempted to do a deep dive into the follow-up that GH did in 2012-13, but also... scared.

Love reading all the recollections in this thread, so thanks. The entire 'book' era of PC becomes a blur to me after the first 3-4. Didn't Lucy and Kevin appear on GH like a year after PC ended for Lila's funeral? How was the continuity from PC handled at that time?

The backstory of that family has always been perplexing, and they never explained why Taylor was using Raines when we first met her. It would've made more sense for Nicole to be using a different name than her whole family, but Nicole, Fay, and Brandon all used "Walker." I guess the real answer is that it was cobbled together as they went along.

It's supposed to be the "Salem River," right? Which is a long-established thing, but on this show, I assume their definition of "river" is about as accurate as their definition of "townhouse" (that place is a condo at best). Basically, there's water somewhere.

Yeah, they could really use a bar a la the Cheatin' Heart or a café like Java Cafe or Dot Com (but, uh, update the name either way). I'm glad they're using the Bistro a little more, but a fine-dining type of place has been missing for a long time, too. Everyone's always slurping down chowder at the Pub or eating at that one table in the Town Square.