Michael

I agree with you, but I think there's a huge value for Peacock in having a show that compels people to reliably open the app every single weekday.

That's where I'm at. I think GR is pretty good! He's certainly funny, and he's shown depth in Leo when it's occasionally been written. I thought Beyond Salem 1 did a nice job of keeping Leo as a shady schemer but also warming up the main characters toward him, so it made even less sense when they all came for him, guns blazing, back on the main show when he turned out to be Craig's boyfriend. They keep teasing growth and then regressing him, and there's just this obnoxious sense of self-satisfaction about all his dialogue. Leo is someone who should be an Ivan-level character who's instead the new Daniel.

Leo has become excruciating. WHY is this tertiary joke character getting soooooo much focus? What story is this even advancing?

Maura West was the first one that came to mind for me, too.

This strikes me as exactly like last time. For whatever reason, they're parking the character for a bit with an open-ended exit. You have to remove her from the contract cast credits if she's not on contract. That doesn't mean she won't return (Sarah will return in some form, given how she left), and when she does, she might be on contract again. But they won't just keep listing her as a contract cast player if she wasn't on contract during the episodes that are airing...

I have completely lost track of which kids belong to whom on this show. Is this Ridge's last kid? Or does he have another one somewhere? Jack is the one that is actually Brooke's kid but was supposed to be Taylor and Nick's? Where is that child?

Well, that's disappointing. I was beginning to regard her as a really shrewd bit of casting.

I think Brady is pretty played-out romantically, too, but I could also see a use for him as more of a middle-aged dad. SORAS Tate, bring in Parker, keep Brady and Chloe together trying to make this crazy blended family work (with that little demon Rachel in the mix). I like EM a lot -- they've just thrown a LOT of love interests at him. To his credit, he's made most of them work at least somewhat, but it's resulted in a character without much of a throughline or evolution.

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?