Michael

That Stefan/Brady moment actually made me laugh.

I think they mentioned last fall that Parker is in boarding school. Prior to that, he had been in NY with Nancy and Craig because Chloe "didn't want to pull him out of his school" or whatever. Amazing how easy parenting is in Salem!

Pretty sure that photo was taken at the 50th anniversary celebration in 2015.

Sloan's entire reason for coming to town was Paulina and Chanel. Paulina has said a LOT about Sloan (whether one considers it warranted or not). She also paid off the authorities to rule Sloan's mother's death an accident, while Sloan blames Chanel for the death *and* Paulina for the cover-up. Paulina has been wholly unsympathetic to the fact that this woman lost both her parents.

I wish I could join them!

This one seemed so ridiculous in 2008, but it actually works for me these days. They just really skipped over that whole "Hey, you put flesh-eating bacteria on my face" business in favor of "Uh, Sami is annoying, right?" Then it actually upset me when they gave them tension over Daniel (UGH) a few years later.

This is an absolute f***ing disaster. How can the financials at Y&R be worse than DAYS?!

I'm assuming fans want to give them a biological kid. Much crazier stuff than that has happened on Days, but it's a tough sell that pushing-50 Nicole, who could not carry a baby to term in 2008 or 2012, would somehow be able to do so now.

Biologically she is Nicole's daughter with Daniel, but Chloe carried Holly to term after Daniel's passing.

I think a huge part of it had to do with Nicole's standing at the time. They'd brought her back as a vixen-type, paired her with EJ (which was a popular pairing, but EJami was clearly the focal pairing there), and built this narrative about her desire to be a mother and essentially losing three children: the baby she miscarried, Sydney once the switch came out, and Daniel Rafael (BLEH) when she fell down the stairs. So there was a ton of rooting value, and she was primed for a redemption arc. GV's Eric showed up and felt like a handsome, decent man who was actually brought on *for* Nicole, but his standing as a priest and her self-destructive tendencies were their obstacles. It was a great setup, so I think it was more what Eric *represented* for Nicole than some actual great love for the past. She essentially had a chance, after 15 years of f*ck-ups, to reclaim the Good Thing that she'd tossed away for five million dollars a decade and a half prior. The writing and comings-and-goings since obviously haven't landed all that potential nearly as well as it could have been handled, but I totally get where and how the myth of it all took root.

Why are you so sure that she was fired? I'm genuinely curious if you know something we don't.

Yeah, it appeared that her contract ran out and she stuck around for a few more weeks on a non-contract basis to play out Allie's exit. But I could be wrong! It feels pretty obvious onscreen that there was an abrupt shift away from Allie/Chanel to me.

I don't think she was fired. She chose not to re-sign. It also sounds like they are generally doing shorter contracts these days, though I'm not entirely sure why.

It wouldn't shock me to learn that Days is the most-viewed original series on Peacock in terms of sheer numbers, simply because there are five new episodes a week. Technically, yeah, it'd be getting a lot more eyeballs on it because it releases a lot more episodes than anything else Peacock is producing/releasing by far.

I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend.

Was this Ben Hogestyn playing Lucas?

Yeah, I don't think Nick is literally Satan -- I think it's yet another form Satan is taking. It's still ridiculous! If Blake Berris is open to returning, can't we just say Jessica had twins and her DID had recurred so she gave one away or something?

Those are very good points, too! Something has definitely shifted.

I got the impression, watching this week's episode, that something is going on with Alexia. We all know she's dealt with a LOT in her life -- which makes her a really compelling Housewife -- but I do wonder if, now that she got the wedding, she's not as happy with Todd as she wants to project, and she's lashing out at others as a result. There's a meanness and irrationality to her attacks this season that feel like they have to be coming from someplace else. It's jarring to see side-by-side scenes of her supporting Frankie and those of her refusing to exhibit any logic or humility in picking fights with Adriana and Nicole.

I could be wrong here, but I THINK the residuals for characters that a writer created doesn't apply quite as broadly as fans have been led to believe. In primetime, there's something about how the writer who wrote the teleplay in which a recurring character first appears -- NOT the showrunner -- receives residuals any time that character appears in a subsequent episode. But those payments stop if and when the character becomes a series regular. So if episode 5 of season 1 introduces a quirky clown, and that clown is also used in episode 12, the writer of episode 5 gets a residual payment. But if the clown is such a hit that they make him a series regular for season 2, the residual payments no longer apply. I do not think it applies if a new character is brought on as a series regular from the get-go. Don't quote me on that, but I'm fairly certain there's provision of that nature. Daytime is a different beast, obviously, and there's a head writer, breakdown writer, and script writer all with their hands in the pot for any given episode. And lots of characters are introduced AS series regulars -- i.e., with a long-term contract -- so I'm not sure how that would impact residuals for daytime characters and writers. I've been both a script coordinator (the person who tracks these appearances and submits the invoices for them) and a writer who has received the payments, and this is as much clarity as I have, which tells you how confusing it all is!

Yeah, if we ever got rid of Heinle, we'd probably get Rebecca Budig as Victoria or something. I don't really think Christie Clark would've been the right recast in 2005, or even now. She just projects a different air than what Victoria is supposed to be. I've always wanted to see Clark play a REAL bitch with an edge, though! I wasn't watching Y&R during her brief stint, and I can probably guess the answer, but what did people think of Sarah Aldrich as Victoria?

I was going to say -- this is the first year that the episodes are reliably available on a streaming service almost simultaneous with their premiere on the network. There are likely plenty of folks who either no longer even get Bravo or, since they don't watch it night-of, just fire it up on Peacock on Thursday or over the weekend. I do think the shows will continue to evolve, as some elements become outdated, and certain cast members or full franchises will be left behind in the process, but that's always been the case.

Oh, I agree. It's all so retroactive and ridiculous. There's just nothing to distinguish them from one another anymore besides loving Anna, and I guess that Tony is nicER or sillier or whatever. They're just not even really characters to me.

It's weird. I find Thaao so supremely unappealing and yet am glad Tony's around and used. I never understood why they killed off Tony in 2009. What was the point of that colossal retcon if we lost the "real" character not two years after they brought him back??

The entire Tony/Andre run onscreen is a big soup of nonsense. And because so much of it was actually Andre-as-Tony, Thaao basically always plays them the same. I'm glad Tony and Anna have ended up together and I respect the history there, but he always come off as so smarmy and gross. When Johnny was tied up in that mausoleum with his arms up above his head and his biceps bulging last year... I thought Andre was going to devour him, the way he was practically salivating with each syllable that snaked its way out of his mouth. And I know Andre is the "bad" one, but since the performances and wardrobe and everything are basically the same because their entire beings have to be the same to facilitate all the switcheroos... Tony comes off as grotesque to me, too. That period of a year or two where they tried to sell Andre as a normal character and romantic lead was insane. I'm convinced that Kate's subsequent pairings with Gilles Marini's Ted and Brandon Barash's Jake were to make up for putting Lauren Koslow through that era. If they'd wanted Andre (a two-time serial killer!!!) around, he had to be a villain. Like, a real, dark, in-the-shadows villain. And they've never in all these years addressed who his parents actually are/were, how Stefano is actually his dad, or what his original face looked like.