te.

IMHO, Days should shut down until March since people are testing positive left and right, and it's obvious that pretty much everyone bar maybe some hermit will get infected with omicron (which seems to be a mild strain). They have enough episodes in the can.

Doug wasn't aware that he was possessed by the devil and Marlena in the original story wasn't aware, so I guess not.

Cindy, Felice and Jackie should've gotten their own spin-off.

Since it's become an article: https://www.soapoperanetwork.com/2022/01/general-hospital-greys-anatomy-group-of-abc-shows-pausing-production-return-due-to-omicron

I've never liked it when shows literally turn babies to teenagers overnight like what happened with Belle and Brady. On top of everything, it did screw with timelines because Belle's conception was so central to Sami turning bad. I always liked the approach they took with Will and Shawn - small bumps up in age, but nothing drastic. Will's not turning into an insta-teenager probably helped with Sami being able to be a "young" main character for so long - I'm glad they didn't age up Will in the mid-2000s like they originally planned. And yes, Belle and Brady should've definitively been slowly aged up, maybe they could've hit teenage years in 2005/6. A young Belle having a teenage crush on Shawn, now in college, would've been a decent way to play it.

Eh, I wouldn't mind if they made Lucas and Sami have a long-distance relationship - all his other pairings have bombed and he works better as a supporting character to other people to bounce off.

https://tvline.com/2022/01/05/greys-anatomy-omicron-season-18-production-delay-covid/ Here we go again...

Exactly. It's not AS's availability that is the problem and it's not like the show is suffering from not having enough characters with potential stories to tell. They can have hurricane Sami waltz into town every couple of months without her leaving other characters in limbo. I thought they did an ok job with that when Sami returned for Eric and Nicole's wedding. Honestly, I wouldn't mind a recast if I felt like Sami was *needed* in town permanently, but she's really not.

I've said it before, but Belle should've been like ORK's Claire - not evil, but slightly unstable and a bit of a wreck after all the trauma of her childhood. If I were in charge right now I would recast MM - not that I have anything against Martha per se, but there should be a visible age difference between her and Sami. It's just plain odd when they bring up stuff like Sami kidnapping Belle or watching John and Marlena boink on the conference table - was Sami a toddler when this happened?

Yup and with omicron so contagious it's a question of when productions will start shutting down again.

I think they can still use her, they just need to stop using her in ways that keep other characters hanging in limbo. With that said, I wouldn't mind a Lucas / Sami long-distance thing since all of Lucas's other pairings have bombed anyway.

Honestly, Alexis seemed more bemused about Sable and Dex boinking. She cared, obviously, but not in the way that she was going to fight Sable to get him back.

Well, Mimi was recast for The Last Blast webseries...

Honestly, at this point just bring Cady in full time if Melissa Reeves doesn't want to do the show. I get it, co-vid blaha blaha, but the canvas has an empty hole with Jennifer and Hope gone.

Sami wasn't the heroine in the mid-90s?

I don't really think the "Melaswen" storyline and undoing all the deaths was really worth it in the long run to be honest, but I guess once you kill off the matriarch by choking on a donut, you have no choice (though I'm 100% sure that episode was re-written to feature Alice dying). But I think in general that soaps shouldn't undo deaths unless there was a real opening to it in the way they "died" - to bring it back to current DAYS, I don't think it'd be worth undoing Laura's death as much as I wish Ron didn't kill her off.

I think the fact that there's a subsection of Passions' Wikipedia titled "Sexual violence" says it all. 💀

I was referring to the role CC occupied in the press/media rather than on the show - she was fairly popular with the press and general public, so I think they brought on Eileen in hope that she would fill that void.

I'd assume they knew Crystal Chappell was leaving at the time they were hiring Eileen, so they were probably hoping she would take off as a young female romantic lead since Carly had actually managed to become popular despite being an obvious Hope replacement. Of course, she really didn't become the popular female romantic lead they were hoping for which probably allowed JER to make her batshit crazy instead.

I think the plan for The Salem Stalker storyline was very simple - first, do a shocking storyline to drive the ratings. Two, get rid of cast members/characters he felt he had no use for and free up characters that had been stuck in couples for decades. I think it's fairly obvious he did not originally plan for the Melaswen stuff, so I'd be curious as to how he was going to make Marlena innocent (no way he was going to write off his precious Marlena).

I hope we go into February sweeps with Marlena being pregnant by her grandchildren's Satan babies, violently shooting them out in the middle of the Horton Square where the Satan Babies attack and eat various useless characters faces. In the aftermath, Kristen finally becomes the talk of the town when she opens Face-R-Us and sells masks to the Salemites who got their face eaten, while Marlena is cast out of town wearing a boulder around her neck. Go JER, or go home Ron.

Indeed. I don't mind Stacey and if they want to make her a long-term viable character on the canvas then I say why not since Eileen isn't interested in doing it full time. Hell, I thought making her and Lani friends was a good idea to ground her character a bit, unfortunately it seems like Ron can only switch between two extremes with Kristen and it's not working. I think he (and the show) needs to decide if they want her long-term in Salem and be able to mix it up with others, or just have pop-in visits that Sheila usually is on B&B. If it's the later, then they might as well give the part back to Eileen because I feel like she can do more subtext with the character because of her long history with the show.

I don't think it's Lindsey - I think you can sort of see an Adam's apple and the brow seems to pronounced for it to be a female.

They actually made a christmas movie called "Middleton Christmas"?!

To be fair... Bart is actually a memorable character and one of the more recognizable DiMera henchmen, so that's a no. I'd say Ron should go digging in the Anderson family tree for pure randomness.