All righty, I'll bite and place the brunt of the blame on Reilly (surprise!) but also plant some blame squarely on Corday, which is where I think we're getting what's on screen right now.

I would love to have seen Missy Reeves' reaction to the dumb sequence where Jack comes home, only to find a fake Jennifer... refresh my memory, but didn't we hear her dissatisfaction with that? She might have made noises about leaving following that sequence.

It wouldn't surprise me if Jason Cook left because he wanted to be paired with Farah Fath on screen, but Reilly wanted to reunite Shelle. I don't wanna go into the whole Shimi/Shelle business, but it was obvious from his comments that he wanted the story to go in another direction.

I think the longest time Sami was backburnered was the time she was off the program in 1995. Ali was written out solely for storyline purposes, to return at the most inopportune moment (disrupting Austin and Carrie's try at the altar). It made for good storyline. I can't see any other time she was backburnered other than the infamous Langan mess of 2000.

Steve and Kayla's comeback was badly handled. Kayla said she couldn't come back to Salem because it reminded her of Steve. Fair enough. But then Steve makes his appearance known to Jack, amnesia and all, and Jack rushes back to Salem and says Steve's alive. That's mistake one right there. Kayla should have been allowed to see Steve in surprising fashion. Shortly after the reveal, we were forced to watch Steve go back to Cincinnati and relive part of his past, which included a wife (or did it?), instead of immediately getting to where the heck he was all those years (and don't tell me EJ was entirely responsible for this, because that's a major and totally unacceptable rewrite of history).

Bo and Hope had a major storyline that was, for the most part, well done. It veered off course when Patrick got into it, but Hogan corrected its course and brought it to a decent conclusion. Do they deserve to be off the front burner now? The jury's out. I do think seeing them off screen for longer stretches does impact a viewer's ability to enjoy the show, as it does with John and Marlena.

The balance is key. You have to have the vets on screen for good periods of time while you're introducing the new characters. Making Nick Marie's grandson and Jessica and Joshua Fallon's son was a nice touch, but we don't see any more Hortons because of this. And where the heck ARE the Hortons? You're not going to get the famous Marie and Bill back because Lanna Saunders and Ed Mallory both died, and the second most famous Bill (Christopher Stone) is also dead. Recast Mickey if you're not going to get back John Clarke (who probably told Corday where to go and how to get there after the Salem Stalker plot began to unfold). You're not going to have Alice in storyline until her death, so put something in place.

Seeing characters like Willow, Jed, Gabby, Duck, and others would have been nicer if we'd had the balance to go with it.

I think the longest time Sami was backburnered was the time she was off the program in 1995. Ali was written out solely for storyline purposes, to return at the most inopportune moment (disrupting Austin and Carrie's try at the altar). It made for good storyline. I can't see any other time she was backburnered other than the infamous Langan mess of 2000.

In the 10+ years that Ali has been on the show, she's only been backburnered twice... and both of those times combined only equals about six months of backburner status.

The fans really do love her, though. There's alot more who watch for her than I think everyone realizes. Backburnering her would make the ratings plummet even lower, IMO.

Oh, I agree. It's Ali's acting that makes Sami the fan favorite that she is. Heck, I don't even consider the first time she was backburnered in 1995 because Reilly wrote her out for storyline purposes by having her run away. Now Langan? That's a whole other story.