Michael

7 minutes ago, carolineg said:

I can see your point.   I just felt day to day a lot of the dialogue got very stale and the show would build up to a climax that just wouldn't happen unless it was sweeps.  

Oh, totally. That's where I think the execution could have been much stronger. By his 2000s run and the latter half of Passions, the dialogue was legitimately a parody. 

18 minutes ago, carolineg said:

Well, there are a lot of good things I can say about JER.  I loved the way he wrote John/Marlena.  I loved his events.

But pacing was never his strong suit.  Everything lasted forever when a few clear conversations would have changed the entire story.  It did dumb everyone down.  

Although I do still love the era.

I have really fond memories of and feelings for that era, even though I can now clearly see its drawbacks and failings. But I disagree about pacing, to some degree. I thought JER did an excellent job of building and sustaining suspense. The particulars usually turned out to be dumb or, uh, credulity-stretching, but I thought the overall long-term nature of the show worked and it's something I DEARLY miss today. 

35 minutes ago, Lye-C said:

Personally I loved how Gothic the show became under Reilly. He was also great at writing romances, payoffs, and pacing. Carrie and Austin are my favorite couple because of him. The original Gina story was compelling as hell. I also loved when characters would talk to themselves. Those were the days! 
 

Heck, I can still quote certain dialogue to this day, like when Laura told Kristen “the only thing you’ve given birth to is deception!” We need that heightened, stylized dialogue back.
 

Now the show moves far too quickly, the dialogue is terrible, there’s no romance or compelling couples, and no exciting stories. The last good one was the possession sequel. 
 

I had hoped that MarDar were going to be JER 3.0. They were his protégés from his first run and Passions.  Marlene replied to my tweet and told me JER was her mentor. Sadly, the show we got was nothing like JER. The day-to-day writing was good and felt like classic Days but the stories were not there. John and Marlena’s big comeback story is a Bernie Madoff knock-off? Sooo boring! And to this day they still don’t know EJ framed him for embezzlement. And don’t even get me started on how they used the vile Rafe to come between Carrie and Austin and completely wasted Patrick Muldoon!

I went on a bit of a tangent there, lol 

Definitely agree about the tone and the dialogue. It's weird to be getting stories currently that have most of the same trappings -- the masks (which I'm sick of), fake deaths, etc. -- but the dialogue and production kind of feels... humdrum. And while they occasionally still hit it, it often feels like they're trying to emulate that specific tone and it misses. 

Don't get me wrong (and I know you won't agree with me here): I like a lot of the more down-to-earth stuff we've gotten in the years since JER, and there's plenty I appreciate about 2006-present. But there were hallmarks of his writing that I think did work well and don't get the credit they should because of the over-the-top trappings. I actually think, at its absolute core, JER's pacing is very classic soap!

I never had that hope for MarDar, for whatever reason, and I'm kinda glad because I thought their year absolutely sucked. It was the epitome of "good on paper and terrible in execution."

Ken Corday's incompetent and damaging leadership rears its head once again. Absolutely disgraceful how poorly he handled this and allowed Alarr is go on like this for years.

1 minute ago, soapfan770 said:

If I recall right from an interview JER gave to his buddy Michael Logan at TV Guide at the time, the original plot was supposed to involve witchcraft and Stefano and planned a early 2005 reveal, but he didn't elaborate further than that.  

Hmmmm. Interesting!

The rewrite was so bad that I remember feeling like they might as well have just put up a title card that said, "FORGET ANY OF THIS HAPPENED!" It didn't even make sense within the retcon.

10 minutes ago, Lye-C said:

Melaswen was a retcon. The dead characters were supposed to stay dead but unfortunately Corday forced JER to bring them all back because he wanted his pals (Reynolds, Rogers, Taylor) back on the show. 

I really just want to know what the plan would've been going forward. JER would've written Marlena out of the killings somehow.

Now that you mention it, I could easily have seen Chrishell as a more effective Taylor.

18 minutes ago, Liberty City said:

It's giving me visions of when Natalia Livingston was cast as Taylor and they fired her before she even aired, and it semi-backfired. Another downside of being six-to-eight months ahead tape-to-air (or now tape-to-release).

Oh, I thought she was dreadful. She and EJ were sniffing that damn scarf for however many weeks she was in the role. She was just no match for Nicole at all, and her "sweetness" came off as cloying and fake instead of a real counterpoint to Nicole's scheming and impulsiveness. 

Recasting with Braun, who has a totally different energy from both NL and what Taylor was supposed to be, didn't really work anyway, but they kind of twisted Taylor into a harder-edged character to fit her. The whole thing was a mess.

20 minutes ago, j swift said:

I disagree with the consensus that nothing is happening.  I'm not attuned to the credits, so I don't notice too much of a change, as I doubt the average viewer could tell who wrote a certain script.

Paulina has cancer.  Johnny got engaged.  The Pawn story has shifted Konstantin into a more mysterious guy.

We've also gotten much character exploration from Everett, Chad, and Stephanie that I've appreciated.  The common criticism that Days is too plot driven certainly does not apply currently.  And, if you're a fan of adults talking about mature issues like drugs, commitment, and loss, this would be the place to find that type of dialogue. 

Something is always happening in Salem.  The population is in constant upheaval.  It is just the pacing and inscrutable character motives that annoy me at times. 

I see what you're saying, but I don't feel any momentum at all. Paulina has cancer and she's just kind of... huffing and puffing and talking to about three people about it. The scenes where she found out (offscreen!!!) left me totally cold. Johnny and Chanel got engaged with, like, zero story after a rushed reunion, and aside from Paulina and some forced interactions between Johnny and Stefan/Chad, no one has reacted to it or had an interesting perspective on it. (And I appreciated what they were trying to do with Chad and Johnny, but it felt so abrupt.) Technically things are happening, but it all feels very dull and directionless.

I agree that we're getting more scenes focused on character and relationships, which is great, and it can make it interesting on a day-to-day basis, but since Tate, Holly, and Nicole went offscreen, most of it feels sort of random and... well... like filler. Those in-between beats and moments that don't explicitly push story are necessary for a good soap, but they need to be attached to some kind of drive, too. I feel like that's missing in every area other than Ava & Stefan's Big Drug Adventure, which is the least interesting story featuring the least interesting characters. The Konstantin/Pawn stuff had me curious at first but it just feels like more of shoving John and Steve together in some weird revisionist history and it doesn't have enough shape yet. The other day, John and Steve said something about no one had mentioned "the Pawn" in years and that's why John is so rattled, and I'm like... this comes up at least every six months when they give J&M a walk down memory lane.

I do find some of the Everett stuff intriguing, as you mentioned, but it's so attached to Stephanie and this narrative that she's got some unbelievable catch that it takes me out of it. Maybe when we get more on the Jada connection, it'll pick up some steam, but I think this Stephanie has been way overplayed in a succession of uninteresting, chemistry-free relationships, so that factor is dragging the interest level down for me, too.

I think the overdose itself was in Carlivati & Quan's plans, so the scabs executed it, but then they put that story on ice because they're not really doing anything huge or canvas-changing during the strike material. But it's taken the most compelling story on the canvas (the drug story) and shifted its focus from Tate, Holly, and their families to... Ava, Stefan, and Harris, which is an absolutely hideous trade.

On 1/22/2024 at 4:04 PM, Lye-C said:

 Andre was originally the son of Stefano’s brother and his wife. In 2015 he was retconned into being his son and that was never explained. That was courtesy of Griffith/Higley.

The 2015 retcon was so lazy. Andre just walked in and was like, "Since I found out I'm your son, Faaaaaatha..." I get why they did it, but it was so empty and frustrating. 

It's crazy to me that they've never explored André's backstory in any specificity. What was his original face? Who's his mother and how did Stefano wind up being his father? 

8 hours ago, carolineg said:

No  Not really it seemed like it may have been gearing up to her possibly being Sam or just a random psycho, but it was entirely dropped.  I don't think it helped that Andrea looked visibly older than Deidre because of work and stuff (no disrespect to Andrea who seems to have aged very naturally).  I didn't think they looked that much alike in the 70's.  They are mirror twins, but I also don't think anyone in town would have been fooled by Hattie.  Their voices are even very different.  I think it was just a gimmick. 

Thanks for responding. That was my recollection, too. She had the surgery and then... nothing happened.

I loved the setup of Marlena returning to hosting a radio show, and it really did feel like they were building to something. I found Langan's run to be full of elements like that. Things would get set up, built, and then either dropped entirely or forgotten for a while before there was a random conclusion.

Did the original Hattie story ever go ANYWHERE? Did she even get an exit during Andrea Hall's run?

On 1/9/2024 at 3:46 PM, SamandWillowFan said:

Was Sean Matthew?

I believe so, yeah. 

Wondering if he could be Parker Jonas.

13 hours ago, AMCHistory said:

…and we actually had a talented and charismatic actor with Micah Alberti. He was very “Tad Junior” in his swagger. The actor was polished, but it took so long to figure out what to do with Jamie that Micah was already Primetime bound by the time they figured it out. 
 

I love that Justin Bruening and Alexa Havins met on set, but in terms of acting chops the next Robert Redford he was not…

With Bianca Montgomery front and center for so many years on AMC, you have to wonder why the writers never gave her half-siblings Molly and Mathew a meaningful storyline. Both had so many roots on campus. They were clean slates that the writers could have taken anywhere. And because their parents were not related to everyone, they were ripe for romantic pairings across the canvas. 
 

Molly’s cancer and Matt’s conception storyline was such a big storyline on the show. It would have been nice to see it come full circle by seeing what happens in a sibling relationship like that. 

I had totally forgotten that they brought on Matthew as Sean in the mid-2000s. I can't remember a damn thing of consequence he ever did, though.

5 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

And as much as I like Tripp, I gotta admit, he is such a Mama’s boy

Which doesn't even make sense considering he barely knows this woman!

The stairs disappeared about a decade ago. The larger Town Square was only around for maybe a year and a half; as mentioned above, the last thing I remember there of any significance was Nicole falling down the stairs and pretending Jen had pushed her, causing that miscarriage. We've had that condensed HTS set ever since. 

I somehow have NO memory of Dave returning for that 2000-04 stint even though I was watching pretty diligently during that time!

7 minutes ago, Dr Neil Curtis said:

Not Mia. She was a brunette. I remember her being the one to tell Brady about Chloe’s secret life. 

It was Kinsey or Kinzie or something like that. 

10 minutes ago, Antoyne said:

Lord when you put it that way. Weren’t three of those pregnancies in the last 12 months?

Just about! I still have no idea why they did that Jada/Eric pregnancy, although I appreciated that a female character chose to have an abortion and hasn't been made to suffer for it. (One could argue that being paired with Rafe is the ultimate suffering, but you know what I mean.)

You'd think Eric, the unemployed 50-year-old who did prison time for vehicular homicide, is publicly drinking even after that, and has impregnated four separate women in half a decade, would be the problem with the adoption...

Okay, this is an unexpected treat! 

This is the unhinged soap news I didn't know I needed today. What in the WORLD.

Days bungling a personnel situation? Shocking...