Michael

They get a completely separate licensing fee from Peacock for Beyond Salem. If they aren't doing a separate miniseries, there's no money to redirect to the main show.

I wish we could 'like' posts here, but thank you for the tags, @victoria foxton! This is awesome and I can't wait to dig in.

I liked Jaime Lyn Bauer as Laura, but obviously it was a huge retooling of the character. They de-aged her by a decade, and her mental illness became her primary characteristic -- it would've been nice if they'd had a long-term goal of building her back into who the prior Laura(s) had been, but they basically just let her be "Jennifer and Mike's mom who spent many years in a sanitarium."

I always thought that would've been a great reason to explain her animosity toward the Hortons.

Such a good point. Mike has had some important/interesting stuff over the years, but he's always wound up a solid B-player. David got the bigger stories in the 70s and early 80s, Weiss's late-80s version was never THE guy in a major supercouple story when that was what ruled the era, and Critchlow was the definition of a supporting player until his last year or two when he had the Carrie pairing. And he's only made one brief appearance this century! This is a character they should have recast and prioritized in the early or mid-2000s, especially since Carrie returned broken up from him anyway. He'd be a little old for what the show needs now, and I shudder at the thought that they'd wind up pairing him with Kate, but he'd be a nice presence to have around. Have him take over the COS position from Kayla, usher in a new Jeremy and maybe a teenage kid we've never heard of... hell, you could try him with Nancy, once a rival of his, in a little supporting story.

MSL has seemed a little thirsty to return, but so did Miranda Wilson, and look how that worked out! I'd happily take Anne back either as a fun background character or if they actually deepened her backstory, like they had started to do with her crush on Lucas at the end of her run. I also fear what Ron would do with her -- it's such a runaway train once he gets his hands on someone he considers "funny."

Of course! Didn't mean to imply otherwise. I've just always found the casting for that family kind of absurd because they kept adding elements and retcons, and it didn't visually track based on the parent combinations we were presented. And of course they've never played any kind of Latina identity for Nicole (despite some shoehorned-in dialogue in recent years re: food, I believe) or any sense of Brandon discovering that he was not Hispanic/Latino but was actually Black.

This is where it gets tough for me, and maybe why they've held off recasting the character. Cedeno is Afro-Cuban, but... Brandon isn't. He's the child of a Black man and a very clearly white woman. Nicole and Taylor are half-Mendez, so their casting has always been off, too. Obviously it's the result of making stuff up as they were going along (and not caring enough about the specifics of race in casting), but do you proceed with a Brandon who seems visually consistent with the prior one -- and part of that story was that he hadn't had reason to question whether he was Paul's son until adulthood, so he wasn't clearly a different race -- or with one who actually is the race the character is supposed to be?

I think you could easily fold in someone like David Fumero as Brandon Walker. Or they could really make an effort to adjust the casting to reflect him being Abe and Fay's son. I know Cedeno had an Afro-Cuban background, but he always read more like Paul Walker's kid than Abe's.

I could see them doing a heavier arc for Will and Sonny, like a two-week thing the way Sami just did (or another Peacock miniseries), but I don't expect Will to be in consistent story otherwise. He's going to pop in and out for the time being. As for the ending of BS, I was shocked that Burton kinda showed up and acted! I don't give two sh*ts about Harris as a character, but there was actual effort there.

They've stopped doing that because it was making production insane. That's why VK, Marci, Lamon, and Sal all recently exited. They're using Will as much as they can with Chandler's schedule restraints, but I don't expect them to build big story around recurring players very often for the foreseeable future.

The Bope material today was really nice, and I love that they sprang for the song (and wove it into the Hong Kong gala). That said... we did all this in 2016 during Hope's standalone episode at the Horton cabin. Angel Bo appeared to Hope. Grown-up Angel Zack was there. Even Larry Welch was there to be an ass for a minute. And Bo and Hope had a goodbye dance to "Tonight I Celebrate My Love." So if this is the extent of the reunion... what was the point? I'm holding out hope for some progression tomorrow.

Kassie was cast as Eve several years before Ron came anywhere near Days. They approached Charlotte Ross first, but she wasn't available to go on-contract.

Stefano saved her and had her cryogenically frozen until Rolf later developed the technology to revive her. Standard explanation. I thought Episode 2 was a lot less rough than Episode 1. Andrew's a cutie, too. And this was a fun use of Eileen. They also didn't club us over the head with the Chris K stuff, which helped.

That was fine. They're all fine in isolation. I just feel like they club us over the head with them, and I was watching with my fiancé, who soaks up a lot of Days because of me but isn't a fan, and those things almost always strike him as weird little moments that take him out of the narrative if he's gotten into it. I think a few are fun, for sure, but they sometimes create entire scenes out of them when a quick throwaway line would work. Also the new Joey... is kind of hot? Wasn't expecting that.

This was cute. I really enjoy the intention and the history-loving energy they having going -- I just wish they'd scale back on the inside joke stuff by 50% or so. Megan's re-entrance, for a relatively nothing character who has not been mentioned in a meaningful way in almost 40 years, was pretty well done!

I think only in the context of "We share a son." It was SUPER weird to bring her back (and have her fixated on Justin) without explaining much about her relationship with Alex or what their lives had been like. I know they cancelled a casting call for Alex around the time MF came in, so who knows what the plan was?

Alex is Justin's son with Anjelica Deveraux. He and Adrienne primarily raised Alex, though. (We've never really gotten clarity on how much contact he had with Anjelica over the years, which was a weird missing piece from when she showed up fixated on getting Justin back.) And yeah, he's being played by Robert Scott Wilson, who's about to exit as Ben.

Sometimes they actually force it a little TOO much. They had Abigail talking about needing to save "my cousin Sarah" even though we'd hardly ever seen the two interact. At this point, it's more that there are several different branches of the family, all grown out from Tom and Alice. I'm not super-close with my third cousins, but they're still family. And they still feature the Horton house prominently, with Julie and Doug living there now that Jennifer and Jack are only around part-time (which is an actor issue for Jennifer, not the show's choice). There were significant scenes in that living room on Tuesday's episode in which Julie learned about the history of Juneteenth, which is important because she has a Black grandson and Black great-grandchildren. It's more an evolved version of the family, but I really do not feel like the Hortons have been purposely minimized in the last few decades.

Yeah, I'm not sure why this is becoming a narrative. Obviously they've made some mistakes, but we have Lucas, Allie, and Sarah all with the last name Horton onscreen and in story right now. Will is recurring. Ciara's around for the time being. Shawn is in the middle of a story. Abigail just died, but you know they'll undo that at some point (which is a whole other issue). Eli has been minimized because of the actor's availability, but he's in story, as is Julie, an original character. The family tree is spread out more than it used to be, and there are branches missing that could be filled in, but it's not like the family has been wiped out.

You're thinking of Nicholas Alamain, son of Carly and Lawrence. Victor Webster played him at the end of the 90s when they over-SORASed him. The character came back briefly in 2011 for Carly's exit, with his age sort of reset to where it should've been.

Kate Mansi left in spring 2020, when Abigail went off to the treatment facility, and Marci Miller didn't return until Sept 2020. Marci wasn't on contract when she returned, and then they wrote her out for months during 2021 to accommodate her maternity leave. Abigail was "in Boston helping pack up Laura's [!@#$%^&*]" for all of summer 2021. She's only been back on-air (and on contract) since Sept 2021.

Now that we're pretty sure she doesn't get DECAPITATED, I don't really mind this. The issue with Will's death was that he was the first major gay character on the show and we watched him be brutally murdered. Abigail being found dead? Meh. I know they're trying to make it seem permanent, but they already had her "die" in a plane crash in 2016, so... whatever. They've been writing a part-time Abigail for like six years on and off. Ciara being part-time has held Ben hostage and resulted in a [!@#$%^&*]-ton of scenes where it's just the two of them in bed or "schmoopy"-ing each other. Sami's ins and outs are causing them to twist stories and characters into pretzels constantly. I have no idea how they're going to navigate Will being on recurring, but I'm sure it'll become exhausting at some point. So whatever. "Kill" her off for now, if they want to write for Chad. Frankly, I'd just have written him out, too, since J&J's family seems to be naturally receding from focus, but if they wanna write for him... whatever. Now, will the story be well written? Probably not. And will she be back? Of course she will. I long ago stopped taking any grief seriously on this show, which is part of a larger problem. But if they aren't chopping off the head of a legacy character, I'm just kind of meh on the whole thing.

I thought Jordan had been pretty upfront about what Clyde did to her. I remember being pissed that Kate stayed with Clyde after learning that, given her own history of abuse (and Billie's) at Curtis's hands. And I'm pretty sure they addressed that angle during one of Clyde's prison breaks after Jordan returned in the last few years. Maybe Ben never found out, or Jordan wanted to shield him, but other people did know at some point.

People definitely looked older in the past -- I'm sure some of it is because we present-day viewers see them as 'old-timey' and as younger versions of people we know as 'old', but styling was very different. Think about the fact that Tamara Braun (Ava) just turned 51, and Frances Reid (Alice) was, I believe, 52 when Days premiered in 1965. Lauren Koslow (Kate) is 17 years older than Frances Reid was when Days premiered. Styling was very different, and it makes a huge difference. Mickey of the mid-60s doesn't read as being 33 (I think that's how old he was when the show premiered). He feels, I dunno, 45?!