te.

I agree - with DAYS having such a tight budget and slightly oddball production model, I don't see them bringing in someone from the outside unless they all of a sudden decides to up the budget in a significant way (which won't happen - the only reason it survives is because it produces so much content for Peacock at a cheap price). I also don't really see any experienced outside producers wanting to deal with DAYS's production model and pocket change budget.

The Empire Valley story really falls apart the moment Ben finds those satellite parts, because first of all it's just bad writing - had the truck not stopped Ben would've never found out (Something That Happens For The Sake of Happening writing), but we're also supposed to believe Ben would recognize that the satellite parts are too high-tech and something weird is going on.

Peter has more or less retired from acting and makes his living elsewhere...

Could be, could also be like a lot of bullies Alarr knows who to suck up for and who he can abuse on set. It wouldn't surprise me if he has cast members he's playing nice with, especially those with imagined clout. I doubt we'll ever know.

Yep, now that it's reached proper mainstream coverage beyond industry press I can't see how they can keep him. I get the feeling that the reason the PR team was fired wasn't as much for budget reason but that Alarr wanted to keep track of this story potentially leaking.

As much as people like to think that anything changed with MeToo and the likes, you can bet that any actor that goes publically and against the grain will be labeled "problematic" behind the scenes and even if Alarr goes there will still be people there that will be disgruntled by his firing in the upper echelons. I don't blame any actor for not speaking out no matter what "clout" they have as all of them have been fired at one point or another.

This is kind of blowing up as Daily Mail is now reporting on it - I just don't see how they can keep Alarr.

I mean, one of the actresses is blatantly Camila Banus, so that's hardly hard to guess considering she's more or less walked twice now. I wonder if this is why Kristian Alfonso also took the opportunity to leave abruptly post-covid.

I'm shocked that they, I don't know, just get rid of Alarr? Surely, his contract can't be that airtight? On the other hand, I'm not sure how many people would want to work with DAYS's ever decreasing budget, but really, wouldn't it be better to take a chance of an unknown at this point? Hell, in general an issue with daytime is that the same people just cycle through the shows again and again and again...

I think it's more down to the fact that Colgate were obviously the ones preserving the tapes before then and NBC just continued their practice of wiping the tapes for re-use once they bought it, probably not giving much thought that these episodes weren't being preserved by Colgate anymore, especially since it wasn't sold internationally and NBC weren't persuing that option at the time.

I think it's more that they saw Thursday as a dead-end slot where no new shows could succeed and they had two comedies to premiere late in the season (Bagdad Cafe and Sugar & Spice); obviously they weren't going to put those up against NBC's monster line-up and they probably had hoped that Dallas might have enough pulse left to improve the Friday 10PM slot. Falcon Crest was dead anyway so they just threw it under the bus.

I don't think we need Paul in the mix to be honest - as you said, as a character he's not that interesting to begin with and it's only CS that makes him good. Colton clearly is up for more than a recurring part, so it makes no sense to me why they won't put him on the canvas with Will and Sonny gone. Leo just isn't very rootable for a proper love triangle. I don't think anyone takes him seriously - the only time I could ever see him with a love interest is when he's finally being sent off somewhere and it would probably be some rich sugardaddy.

Yep, I've also wondered if the original treatment that Jacobs presented to CBS only initially had the Fairgate, Avery and Ward households and that he just tacked on the Ewings when CBS wanted to spin off Dallas. I think they early on tried to do slightly "youth" focused storylines with the Wards, but I think because they couldn't really fully separate Ewings / Wards by an age difference (the Wards being obviously in their 20s still) it just never quite worked out for them since Ewings just inherited the "young married couple" thing (despite Val and Gary being in their early to mid-30s but don't tell Joan Van Ark that).

I don't get why anyone would want to replace a shitty app with a possibly worse one.

Ditto. I don't expect much, but I will say that the breakdown writers often come to the rescue. Having spent co-vid watching Dark Shadows, Peyton Place and other bits of old soaps, I think people forget how consciously vague soaps often left things and it was up to the viewers interpretation what happened. Of course, a lot of that had to do with broadcast standards, but I wonder when the whole demand for that "we need to know every detail as to what happened and we need to know it now" started? I tend to see this sort of vagueness as soap tradition rather than laziness. But I also feel the same thing for leaving soap characters fate up in the air for a bit (like with Sarah, SaRenée crapa side) isn't a bad thing because soaps are designed to keep going so there's always time to solve plot threads in the future.

I wonder if they at that point wanted to involve Ray in the "who's the daddy?" storyline but ditched it?

I tend to mock Aaron a lot, but he clearly did have a great eye for picking up unknown talent and seeing beyond them being "green"; it's something where I feel the Lorimar soaps often failed at - as I said, I find the casting, especially in the latter parts of the series, very bland or just plain miscast (Leigh Taylor-Young comes to mind, who is just too likeable to play a spoiled rich bitch like Kimberly Cryder was meant to be). Sasha Mitchell was such a disaster as JR's bastard son - you would think they would absolutely hold extensive casting calls to get such a pivotal part cast and they come up with the one who gave Andrew Shue acting lessons.

Heather was pretty shaky in early Dynasty and Aaron invested a lot into her; somehow I doubt the Dallas producers would've done that.

Watching season 11 I thought Dack might've made a good Casey Denault. One of the biggest issues in the later years is that the casting is insanely bland for the most part, but then again all Lorimar soaps seemed to have this issue. If there's anything where Dynasty had the upper hand on them it was in the casting department, which was usually spot-on there with a few exceptions (even if they didn't utilise them well).

To be honest, DAYS has been on the brink of cancellation for 15 years now that I fully expect when the nuclear holocaust comes those that'll be left standing is cockroaches, Cher and Corday somehow plotting the next plan to "Save DAYS".

God, season 11 is really awful, despite not necessarily needing to be - technically, the Ewings losing Ewing Oil and having to rebuild is a decent storyline, but it's handled... so odd. And all of a sudden we have an appearance by a madam and AIDS reference (topical!). Cliff's storyline with Dandy Dandridge is just furthering his decent into comedyville - I get where they were going with it (breaking Cliff's illusion about Digger), but it just doesn't work especially as I don't recall Cliff really changing (mostly because Dallas is allergic to change unless it's forced upon them as VP's departure). Obviously, Pam's departure because she's so vain (a dig at VP?) is awful no matter how you look at it - funnily enough, unlike when Bobby died, the Pam effect was actually instant on the ratings, giving them a low season premiere with the episode where "Pam" takes off her bandages and disappears as the highest rated episode of the season. Even if they had pulled it together and written a decent season I feel like the ratings would've plummeted regardless, but maybe they at least would've stayed stable in the lower top 20 for a while.

Boo! We want Dena! We want Dena! Now everyone else shout: "We want Dena!"

Since I always say that be careful what you wish for, so if Ron's replaced by Dena Higley I would just laugh. Christ.

Oh, I don't blame them - I think both initially agreed to do Beyond Salem though and the logistics of filming that probably looked different than doing the regular show. I fully blame Ron for not changing it into something more satisfying for long time fans and not some cliffhanger for BS4 (that'll never happen) and that might or might not be followed up on.

I think the biggest issue is that this was clearly the planned storyline for Beyond Salem 3 folded into the show (even down where you can speculate if some scenes were specifically filmed for that). I have no doubt that it would've too ended with Bo in a coma, leading into possibly Beyond Salem 4. I just think they were way too lazy to change it and Kristian / Peter probably weren't willing to film the regular show properly. I honestly hope they don't go the alcoholism route with Shawn and he's "just" on a bender; the show doesn't need more alcoholics / addicts.