Michael

I think they have chemistry, too. I found it interesting initially to have Hope completely lose her [!@#$%^&*] after the trauma of Bo's death/Aiden's betrayal. The story of her being the one to shoot Stefano dead was interesting, but the execution was so, so bad (and such an obvious way to push her and Rafe inorganically) -- so instead of playing into the interesting darkness that KA has, it played up that awful, brittle side of her that Hope has yet to return from.

It was dumb! He couldn't have... been scared and run out of the building and been trapped under a tree or something? I dunno. It was so ridiculous. Yeah, I canNOT remember why they were in the safehouse. I'm sure it was dumb! That was pretty shortly after John and Hope returned from Alamainia, which was a whole other ball of nothing. But I don't think those threads were connected.

I liked the beginning, too. There just wasn't much to it after that. And I have no doubt Corday was sticking his hands in the pot pretty early on. It just felt to me like the appearance of a sophisticated story without the actual storytelling. Something definitely shifted around January of MarDar's run, too. A lot of those initial "stories" wrapped up quickly, and we moved into other phases. But their first month or two definitely felt like a Days I wanted to watch, and then I almost felt guilty admitting I was bored as hell by the time the Pub got shot up and everyone thought Johnny was dead and it turned out he had just been... under a table for days?

I think you're right that it was Stefano-related. That pension story was terrible. I can see how it SOUNDED good, which was my thing with MarDar. John and Marlena return! Stefano has a plot against them but it isn't some crazy sci-fi thing! Carrie and Austin are pitted against each other professionally, which pushes Carrie toward Rafe and reignites the Carrie/Sami tension! The basic ideas sound good, but it was pedestrian as hell in execution.

That resolution was embarrassing, even for Days. I believe they were in a safehouse, though -- they wanted everyone to think they were dead (I cannot remember why), so they got stashed in some safehouse and spent the whole time canoodling and [!@#$%^&*]. So for a while, they were just hanging around doing nothing. It was only toward the end, when the bomb became known, that the situation was dire. I'm not sure MarDar's stories were as interfered with as is rumored. It was, as stated above, all setup. They came in with that story of Stefano framing John for stealing employee pensions or something, and it went on for MONTHS and then just ended with, like, Stefano telling the truth and it was over between commercial breaks. Every single thing they wrote wound up like that. It's tough for me to believe there was absolute brilliance planned and then it all wound up so flat and pointless -- we all know Corday gets nervous, but I'd kill to see what these "incredible stories" were supposed to be. We were still operating within the parameters of American daytime drama in 2011-12, after all. I really liked the start of their tenure, and I do think they helped restore the core of the show after the messiness of Higley's final year or so, but it was a sloppy, sloppy show with poor balance and weird callbacks to the past that meant nothing.

That story meandered for like the entirety of the McPherson/Thomas run. I've never been able to tell what was planned and what was, "Oh sh*t, we have to wrap up all these different threads really fast." Ian didn't appear to have much to do with the DiMeras for the bulk of his time, aside from bedding Kate because, well, she's Kate, and he was involved with some power struggle at Titan (maybe as a way to mess with Brady, who was with Ian's ex, Madison?). At the same time, they'd also set up this whole secret truce between Alice and Stefano where she was keeping the secret that EJ wasn't his son or something. Brynn Thayer played the back of Susan's head one day on a phone call and told Hope about this. Then, that spring, there was a Who Killed Stefano? story, which started out pretty fun and epic. I think EJ wound up the main suspect but it turned out -- VERY RANDOMLY and quickly -- that Ian had framed him, and they tossed in some flashback of Santo DiMera to explain that Ian thought Santo was his father and he was the rightful heir to the DiMera fortune, and something something EJ was really Stefano's son and Ian had just kidnapped Stefano and it was over very fast, and then Joe was back on as Stefano, but not in Salem and always seated, for a good year afterward. I do think the intention was to build up Ian as the new big bad, but none of this felt unified.

Okay, I actually gasped.

McPherson and Thomas completely axed the hospital, which I always found to be such a weird move. We occasionally saw some weird hospital room set -- I know Bo had some health crisis while Hope was in "Alamainia" (smh) with John -- but we didn't see that main nurses' station area for a whole year. Melanie, who was a nurse, started doing Botox at the spa, and Kayla was working behind the bar at the Pub. Maxine didn't appear for the entire year. We got the main hospital set back, like, the first week of Tomlin and Whitesell's return, as well as Melanie greeting Maxine. (Also, hi!) McPherson & Thomas's stint really should have worked. I don't know what level of interference there was, but there were no stories being told. It was just a lot of setup. Everyone was getting new, random job offers, many of which went nowhere. It felt to me like a lot of well intentioned and poorly executed fan service. And I wound up liking a lot of what McPherson did with the AMC reboot a year later! Justin/Adrienne seemed to get the big supercouple push, though I've always regarded them as a secondary supercouple, and then Jack/Jennifer were there, so that era kind of stretched itself into 1990-91. But you're right -- by the time Tanner and Molly were being pushed as the Next Big Thing (or a Thing at all!), things had really nosedived. This was also an era where, for the first time in over a decade, Days was telling love stories with characters who had a lot of onscreen history, often in a second or third "big love" -- you had Marlena returning and being torn between Roman and John, Bo moving on after Hope's death with Carly, and even Kayla and Shane turning to one another. Totally different sort of storytelling than they'd done in the 80s.

Dario! (I knew what you meant, lol.) I knew there was another quick exit that I couldn't figure out. McPherson & Taylor brought Jack back, though. He arrived as their run began. In retrospect, and not having seen Anna's intro, it's tough for me to imagine Roman having been with Anna at all!

Thanks! I've been seeing buzz about it on boards and Twitter but couldn't find anything substantial. Ha! "Stephanie returns, played by a man, since Susan Flannery didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about appearing feminine for the last decade of her run" or some sh*t. I do wonder if it involves Phoebe...

Chappell/Carly left in September 2011, I'm pretty sure. The big reboot with the launch of Horton Town Square was late September, like the week of the 25th or so, and they spent the weeks leading up to that ushering out a lot of people. Carly went into rehab at some point during the summer, and she left for Europe with Nicholas (played briefly by Cody Longo) -- this was right around the time that Tamara Braun's Taylor improbably left for Dubai or something with Vivian and her forgotten pimp son, Quinn (who then returned a few months later), and they put a quick stop to Chloe's prostitution storyline and shored up her character as best they could before quickly sending her packing, too. It was one of those very clear transition periods. I think Chloe was the only departing character who overlapped with the "reboot" at all -- I remember her final scenes being in the Town Square with Brady and Nicole. Then John, Marlena, Carrie, Austin, and Jack all showed up during the HTS opening. Ha! I think John is a P.I. now, technically, which suits him more than the ISA stuff. I'm shocked Ron hasn't tried to be clever and pull some Chris Kositchek redux with JT...

I've come to kinda-sorta like JT's Roman as the mumbling barkeep who's always like, "What da hell are these morons up to now?" And he does decently in Dad Mode with Ali Sweeney and Christie Clark and Greg Vaughan. This just... isn't the Roman Brady of 1982 or 1992. The further away from RealRoman the portrayal gets, the more it works for me, which ain't right but it's okay (to bastardize Whitney's words). I'm trying to think of another once-iconic daytime character who lasted decades but just sort of became this third-tier dude hanging around.

I always kinda wondered about that. Carly was GONE the week before the DHs waltzed back into that Town Square.

Absolutely chilling. They half-assedly threw JT's Roman at a lot of women. In addition to Billie, he had that bizarre one-night fling with AZ's Nicole in 2006 (after which she vanished for two years), and they even teased him with Bonnie when she'd mellowed out a bit once Sheffer took over.

I could 100% see Wayne Northrup's Roman and Lisa Rinna's Billie having been a cool pairing circa the late 90s. Love that idea. Josh Taylor and Krista Allen dressed up as cowboys on an ISA mission, however...

Carly and Billie didn't overlap in that era. Carly went out with the big "reboot" that McPherson & Thomas ushered in, and Billie came back the following spring (2012). I think they were more excited to get Lisa Rinna and to be using the Countess Wilhelmina name than anything -- there was never much plan for her.

Do we have ANY hints what this "twist" might be? I'm intrigued even though I find the show unwatchable.

I've made peace with the idea that Billie Reed is now basically Lisa Rinna. They've saddled her with the improbable law enforcement career for two decades now, and while it's never felt "right" for the character to me -- the suggestion upthread that she would own a nightclub/restaurant sounds so much more like who Billie Reed should be -- it's what we've got. They might as well go for the camp of "glam superspy Billie Rinna" or whatever that we got with her 2017 run and Beyond Salem. I wouldn't want it all the time, but it's cute for what it is. Rinna's 2012-13 run was... something. They brought her back with a lot of energy, and I think people appreciated that she was back in the mix with "Countess W," as they were calling it, but like everything under McPherson & Thomas's pen, it just kind of fell apart into nothingness. She wound up still being ISA (I think this was secret at first?) looking into EJ for some BS, and of course they limply toyed with throwing her at Bo AGAIN, and they had her give Daniel [!@#$%^&*] over being with both Chelsea and Kate -- which was fun for a minute but then started to look like they'd pair them. Then she just sorta hung around town for another six months. Her exit, which was all about her basically telling Kate, "You're a shitty mom and I'm accepting that, and I guess I love you anyway but I can't be around you this much," was surprisingly nuanced. I can totally see the comparisons between Reckell/Bo and Loprieno/Cord, btw!

Frankie/Billie was RIGHT THERE. There was definitely chemistry between Ackles and Allen, too. It did seem like they never quite knew what to do with Eric. The initial story with Nicole tanked -- it was too focused on (very green) Arianne Zucker. Throwing her at Lucas and then Victor was really smart, but it left Eric out in the cold. His pairing with Greta was cute but always felt like D-story consolation prize material. And I'm with you on Bo/Billie. When LR's Billie left, it was a great conclusion to that triangle. Bringing in Krista Allen and making her pathetic and borderline-insane over Bo really boxed the character in, and then Pinson's Billie showed up years later STILL fixated on him. But there was definitely a point where Bo winding up with Billie felt like as viable a resolution to the triangle as him winding with Hope, which is pretty impressive. We were posting at the same time, but I'm with you. They had the opportunity to restore Billie a bit to her pre-Allen character -- Pinson brought a bit of grounded earthiness, and you could buy that her Billie was a former addict who'd been raised by Curtis Reed and had scraped together a life for herself. But they just made her such a LOSER all the time.

I've been writing my own text-based soap, Footprints, for fun/writing practice since 1997 (I was in junior high and it was terrible the first few years!). I also work as a writer in TV -- not daytime. Am I allowed to take issue with the writing on a show I watch?! (For the record, I'm not advocating for Jamey, or anyone, to be fired, but this conversation took quite a turn.) And I get the general spirit behind "if you don't like the entertainment you're being served, create something you love!" in theory, but like... if I go to a restaurant and order filet mignon and it sucks, I should be able to declare that or send it back without being obligated to go butcher a cow and make my own.

Late to the party, but it baffles me that they never tried ANY of the Billies in a legitimate way with any other love interest. Krista Allen got tested with JT's Roman and Ackles' Eric, plus the flirtation with Nicholas... Julie Pinson got teased with Max, Patrick, had the fling with Nick... and then when LR came back in 2012, they played around with her and EJ and her and Daniel. But it's like no one could conceive of a Billie who wasn't an accessory to Bo/Hope. The idea of putting her with a grown Dougie LeClaire in the 90s or 2000s intrigues me. They also could've cast a Mike Horton for her at any point in the last 20 years, and the most obvious pairing in the 2000s would've been to put Pinson's Billie with fellow loser-in-supercouple-love Frankie, whose portrayer was also married to Pinson.

Abigail also already had a faked death in 2016. Around and around we go...

The Cheatin' Heart was used pretty prominently up until 2011. Then it morphed into Sonny's coffee house (Common Grounds???), which was "remodeled" into Club TBD (stupidest name ever, which is saying something), which later became Doug's Place 2.0 and then Julie's Place. They completely swapped out the set when it turned into Club TBD, though.

Craig's one of those characters who I'd believe was bisexual all along. It would be an interesting twist (if this is where they're going) that Nancy has known their entire relationship that Craig was bi and had relationships with men before her, but he's also loved and genuinely been attracted to Nancy this whole time. And they never revealed it to Chloe, who resents being kept in the dark.

They retroactively explained that Rex had joined Doctors Without Borders, too, so I guess it's possible that Kate and Roman didn't really have contact with him until he showed up. But they didn't explain any of this until Sarah had been gone for months and months. It does not feel like it should've taken THIS long for anyone to realize something was amiss.