te.

I feel like DAYS could be called out for a similar thing whenever Brady, Eric and that other dullard I keep forgetting about is on the cast

It's just a writing goof I'd guess. Plus would you trust ole' lughead to keep track of such things?

The Terrible Twosome is Officially Dead (well, they moved to another show):

YAY! I'm so happy because I've been nervous about this all week.

Welp, glad he's off DAYS at least, but now the terrible twosome is reunited.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. BTG creating a better flow for CBS and bringing viewers back on is a good sign!

I audably gasped when I saw that living room! Just yikes: Maybe we're supposed to read it as Bill being a complete pushover and completely leaves any decorating up to his current beau? I hope / think that there might be more to Pamela than just being Dani's best friend. I think she briefly mentioned being a writer? Maybe her husband can be filthy rich and eventually become nemesis to the Duprees for whatever reason once Silkpress Sheila is done with her revenge.

Pretty much. I think a lot of the other weaker actors have some leeway since they can always write less for them or try to adjust the writing a bit - even Ashley's lughead boyfriend only really needs to reach "Soap Opera Meathead" type of acting to be okay until he has to actually cry or something (and hopefully they'll just off him before it comes to that). Martin is a pretty unforgiving role to put in the hands of an inexperienced actor unfortunately. Still, give him 13 weeks and see where we're at after that. It's at least not Charity Rahmer levels yet. On a related note, maybe it's knowing that they had some production issues with lightning, but that looked so much better on Monday's episode. I agree with those that are saying that Colby Muhammad is a find - not that I necessarily want them to expand on her role too much at this point but she's delightful. I'd wouldn't mind for her and Vanessa to function as recap characters (not to each other, obviously) at this point before they let them off into their own storylines.

I agree, though it did feel like we really need a dining room set to the DiMera mansion. I've felt that before (it feels like it would be in the next room to the living area).

I'm not sure if it's the fact that people are wild about the sets themselves, but more the fact that we have a lot of them, they're somewhat distinct from each other and none of them really looks cramped. I do think they probably did stretch the budget with doing so many sets that some of them are probably a bit more on the basic side, but then again that can be fixed as the show goes along. If I'm going to guess - she knows Naomi because Naomi's husband is a cop and Ashley's long term boyfriend is a firefighter. Naomi is also the one in the family who chooses to live outside "the gates", so it makes sense she'd have more blue collar friends. There also seemed to be some common ground with Ashley's mom knowing Nicole's Majordomo (?) Mona.

Our Family Honour always sounded mega-soapy from the description alone, so it'll be interesting to watch this later. It debuted in the season when soaps seemingly started to falter after a five year dominance, so it looks like it's an example of something coming onto the scene way too late. ETA: Mark of Cain was the 9th episode out of 13. The ratings are interesting - it had a random spike in late December with the 12th episode, presumably because Falcon Crest was off for the week: https://tvtango.com/series/our_family_honor/episodes

Chuck Pratt interview: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-still-the-place-191057736/episode/secrets-of-melrose-place-with-chuck-269342030/ Funny he and Chip Hayes have entirely different memories of the show's odds in season one, with Hayes claiming it had a 22 episode order from the get-go and Chuck saying definitively not. I'd probably trust Hayes more on this though since he was a producer.

I'm already pretending I'm in the opening credits - either Lauren Buglioli or Trisha Mann-Grant. I won't settle for anything else but being the town gossip OR the Silkpress Sheila!

Did You Give The World Some Love Today, Baby?

I love how Marlena is giving horrible advice. Are we sure she's not possessed by the Devil again as a last hurrah from Ron?

This was how Swedish soaps used to run - a fall season and a winter/spring season. Break for summer / Christmas, cliffhangers for each run. That was great.

I think it's worth to remember that Vanessa was meant to be black from the casting calls - I guess they landed on Lauren Buglioli eventually and thank god for them being colour-blind, because she's hilarious as the town gossip. But yeah, all the other white actors are a bit white bread with a bland American cheese (which is the worst cheese in existence) at the moment. It's a race to get out of the bottom as the Spice Girls once sang...

Come on SWEDEN:

Eh. As a non-black person, I feel a good soap is a good soap. And having pointless scenes with Ashley talking about how amazing it is to be a Nice Nurse Who Loves Nursing didn't exactly enhance my experience. Although, scratch that. It did make me like Dani's trainwreck of a life more and Silkpress Sheila's manipulations (sorry, Martin and Smitty, you get none) - so maybe it did work. Oh Val Jean, you clever you...

Yup, plus her scenes with Chad and Doug 3 are really good.

Eh, I feel there's a time to go meta and your introduction week isn't it. I mean, I'm sure Val Jean has more story and intent for Derek / Ashley, but it does feel like that was more a The Powers That Be pushing for the white couple to be featured a bit more in the premiere to show off. But we might end up pretending that it was intentionally meta so that's good enough lol 🤩

TBF, I don't think you can really compare these shows against each other, mostly because producing a soap in 2025 is entirely different from doing so in 1997 or 1988. Budget, demands and what "the suits" want is completely different. "Beyond the Gates" had to deal with an entirely new to soap crew as an example. Plus I feel like some of the weaknesses were probably network mandated - ie giving Ashley / Derek a story despite them not having a logical place yet because they want to make sure the audience know there's a white couple in there too.

Yes, and of course I get it. There's inevitably a lot of bad faith discussions about it ("woke", "DEI", what-not), but that of course isn't my point. I think that if you've been walking in an absolute desert for 25 years and the best source of water have been muddy puddles, of course getting a fresh drink of water is going to be the tastiest thing you've ever had. Is it though? I don't know, but for me the dust usually needs to settle before I give a fair judgement of it. Add that I wouldn't want to sell this as - "the best first week in soap history" - to anyone who've never watched soaps. Then again, the first thing I'd remind them is that daytime soaps are marathons, not a sprint.

I think that a huge part of the Martin / Smitty situation is that they're - or rather Martin - is trying to push themselves into a heteronormative box of being "Respectable Gays". It's an interesting storyline in itself and it ties into why Smitty is a "homemaker". I'm not sure if they'd ever go there in the current climate, but relationships not being a one-size-fits all would be an interesting route to go down but again, I doubt that would happen. But at one point I'd like them to at least adress that gay relationships aren't necessarily just something where one takes on the traditional "man" role and the other takes on the "woman" role.

Erm, I guess I like any Julie scenes at the moment so there's that.