DAYS: YOUR PLAN TO SAVE DAYS!

[Days4Life]

That would be a good start. Everything is too blue collar right now. Most of the scenes are at the Brady Pub, the police station, or the hospital. It needs to be mixed up with the elegance of the Kiriakis mansion, the sophistication of Chez Rouge, the warm hominess of Alice's kitchen (Doug and Julie need to move into the Horton house with Alice). Resurrect Basic Black and Titan and give us some style and pizzaz. Anna and Kate as competing business owners would be a lot of fun; they could even get Billie out of the dull security business and give her back Countess Wilhelmina. The women are being underused as most of them are apparently unemployed right now. Billie, Kayla and Adrienne are the only ones with jobs. The men all seem to be police officers--either officially or unofficially (does Steve get paid for the help he gives the Salem PD?)--and that's boring. I'm sure there are other jobs available in Salem.

The newer characters need to be incorporated into stories with vets, not lumped together on their own, in some kind of contrived setting like we had all summer. I can't stand Stephanie in scenes with her age group, but I enjoy her interactions with family. Same with Jeremy--he was very good last week with Kayla, and I'd like to see him in scenes with Bo and Hope, Doug and Julie. I don't understand why TPTB continue to shove newbies down our throats like they do, instead of introducing them gradually in a multi-generational story that would get us interested and invested over time. That's my biggest frustration right now.

[RuAsRuAnAu]

If Leann Hunley wants a contract, give it to her before it is too late.

Back burn all characters under the age of 20.

Salary cut for all actors under the age of 20.

[StevieM]

How about bringing back Matthew Ashford and letting him shine. Write him as a lead, not supporting character. Write him dark and conflicted, not like a comic buffoon. It's been done before, and he was the most popular actor on daytime. It's amazing that S&K are being given the chance to lead that J&J were denied for 5 years, even though J&J had more fans behind them IMO.

Steve

[MichaelGL]

I always thought that Hogan would do wonders with the character of Jack Devereaux. Especially now that we're seeing so much of Steve.

[StevieM]

I don't know...Hogan's writing team compared Jack to Nick Fallon. He looked kind of ridiculous when he returned in April, just a dad who butt into his daughter's love life. And I heard that Hogan convinced KC to let Matt go along with Missy. Besides the story J&J fans have wanted forever--Abby learning about the rape--would be all about Kayla and Stephanie.

Steve

[Ponz]

Not keeping Jack around was a fatal error in making S&K palatable to the post-92 audience. Jack would have grounded the characters in the present and appear less like two random people shoved onto the frontburner at the expense of other vets. Instead, Hogan stupidly surrounded them with unfamiliar faces (Benjy, Adrienne, nuSteph) who the younger audience have no more reason to care about than they do S&K. Hogan is obviously a fan of Nichols and Evans but his self-indulgent forays into S&K's history have done them no favors.

[MikeGoldy]

Well, Steve and Kayla were very important to Jack and his evolutuion, so don't be too hard on them With out Steve and Kayla, there couldn't be any Jack and Jennifer. But, I totally agree that it was a mistake letting Jack go when Steve and Kayla had just gotten there. You know, it would have broken the heart of a lot of Jack and Jennifer fans, but they just should have separated J&J when Missy left, which would have enabled Jack to go back to the tortured character he once was. Jack COULD have been a mover and shaker in Salem again, his history with Steve and Kayla could have been explored; and eventually a new love interest for Jack; maybe Billie, even some mystery woman from Steve's past, who Jack clashes with. Unless Corday really liked Judi Evans, it seemed silly to bring the Adrienne character back, when Jack could provided more story.

[david]

With Edward Scott as the new co-executive producer, we have seen some people from the Y&R staff coming to DAYS : Kathryn Foster, Noel Maxam and Marnie Saitta, and that's a very good point.

Don't you think he should now hire people from the Y&R writing staff ? The first name I think of is John F. Smith. He would be great as new headwriter. He knows how to built mysterious BUT REALISTIC storylines.

Here in France, we see the Y&R episodes from 2004. The Cameron murder mystery would have been a perfect storyline for DAYS.

His storylines also are important to the history of the show : Katherine being Jill's mother has rejuvenated the feud between the two characters. He could dig into DAYS history to built its future and not create many new characters with no link to the past.

Because the major problem is for DAYS as it is for every soap is to have good storylines. They can be mysterious, romantic, deal with social issues, but they have to be good. And to be good, you must have good writers.

[billyjill]

It's not about being too hard on them, it's just logistics. When Jennifer came back she had only been gone five years (well, two or three but I always block Stephanie Cameron out of my memory) , but they still gave her a lot of scenes with Alice and Hope so that newer viewers could understand who she is. And they introduced Jack back later in context of her. Viewers had a hook with both of them, here's Salem's sweetheart suddenly single and not just a little cynical about love ... and here's that ne'er-do-well who wants back into her life. There was a hook and the introductions were properly paced respective to how long they'd been gone.

It's not that Steve and Kayla aren't wonderful characters, they really are and the actors are amazing to watch, it's just that they were new to a lot of people. It was a good move giving Kayla those scenes with Bo last summer/fall but that stopped before new viewers were invested enough to long for her and Steve to reunite. And then they waited too long for them to start wondering what happened in the missing 13 years, and when they got around to it it was/has been underwhelming, really that had the potential to be such a great umbrella story. And still does IMO if there was a writer who wanted to write it. But frankly, there isn't. Hogan likes MBE but he doesn't get the couple in my opinion as he didn't create them himself (actually it's not that he doesn't "get" them so much as he isn't giving them the storyline that he should). He has show little interest in getting to know the past of Salem beyond just a superficial level. And before Hogan, Steve and Kayla's return was unfortunately caught in a writer transition. So yes unfortunately the return has been less than it could have been, but call me an eternal optimist, I still think they could do a lot with that potential now if they wanted to. You just know they don't want to. His writing for them has been the best of the older couples but he still sucks at romance.

The most vocal folks who were adamant that they let Matt stay without Missy were from within the J&J fanbase so they can't use that excuse.

[MikeGoldy]

DAYS just used the excuse that they wanted to give Jack and Jennifer a happy ending by writing both out together, because they just wanted to get rid of Matt. DAYS has never cared what the audience really wanted Still, I think a lot of people would have been upset to see the possible end of Jack and Jennifer as a couple, but Matt could have easily made a new couple work. It's always been odd to me that with how popular he really was during the Jack and Jennifer years, they have never treated him with respect. It's not as if he isn't a good looking guy, so he certainly could have been a leading man, even with the way Reilly wrote Jack and Jennifer during the Valley-Cameron years.

[billyjill]

Probably upset, yes you're right, but in my opinion that's kind of the good kind of upset because that implies an investment. People were probably upset when Hope was killed off but it led to a story later that got new fans into the Bo and Hope couple. In this case they could've recast Jennifer later if they wanted to put the couple back together at a later time and Missy still didn't want to return (which IMO they should eventually, but maybe I'm biased), and then if fans don't take to the recast they can deal with that then. At the very least that could give us five more years or so.

Matt's a great actor who hasn't been given the lead in pitifully too long. Yes he was incredibly popular, I was looking at old magazine clippings last night and there's a lot of puzzled queries as to how they could possibly have let him go (1993ish), and then the mags wondering how long another show could possibly wait to snatch him up, and musing over how big a consideration his popularity was when GH finally did. The thing that happened was that JER was the absolute worst fit for Jack and Jennifer, they were smart characters whose dynamic was based on internal conflict and realistic marital/relationship problems, not pie-in-the-sky overwrought plot-driven nonsense. Matt fought for the integrity of Jack as then-producer Langan started plotting out changes in the direction of the character even before Reilly came along, and being an actor who argued wasn't going to fly with either TL or JER, who everyone knows is a far cry from an actor's writer. At the time Matt would've hated playing the generic hero under JER, but I bet if you asked him *today* he'd have suffered through it in retrospect, knowing as he does now how expensive things get when your kid gets cancer. C'est la vie, unfortunately.

That's probably the kernel of the reason J&J/Jack fans can get so grouchy, it's like 15 years of idiocy. It's not that they fired an actor that wasn't pulling it in the star power department. Undeniably Jack and Jennifer were the biggest thing on the show in by 1991, as other huge stars were getting rotten treatment and were either fired or being driven off. Langan wanted to fire Matt as early as that, and they got the terrible Hawk storyline out of that, and then the show actually took it upon themselves to suggest Missy get pregnant so they could use it in the storyline to backburner them for most of 1992, and then in 1993 he was still so popular despite the last two years and they still let him go. Any wane in his popularity came after the ill treatment and not before, so that should be remembered when asking what caused what. That he still has such a loyal following goes to show how much people believe in what he can do.

Anyway, if he were to come back I'd need to see TPTB show a glimmer of intention of doing right by the vets first. I'd need to see signs of creative vision and direction for the show stocked in its traditional appeal and proper soap considerations, and I haven't been seeing that.

[Sonja Witthaus]

Bring back Jack and Jennifer

[StevieM]

Jennifer didn't need to leave Jack. And she didn't need to "die." Just tie her to a radiator in the Gaza Strip.

Steve

[Ponz]

I'm being hard on Hogan, not S&K. I respect what the couple means to DAYS history, which is why I think their return warranted more careful planning from TPTB. The bottom line is that the characters were (and still are) strangers to the vast majority of the audience. You can't just throw them on the frontburner, dig out a few 80's clips from the archives and expect people to invest in the couple. Even Langan understood this when he re-introduced J&J in 2000 and they had been off for a much shorter period than S&K.

[MikeGoldy]

I agree with all you are saying. And it is sad how it has all gone down. And truthfully, of all the "fan bases", I find the Jack and Jennifer one to be the most normal and rational. Just my opinion guys, so fans of other couples, don't hate me! Anyway, I was a huge J&J fan back in the day, and then through the years, I grew tired of them because of the writing. And then, I grew annoyed with Missy, because I felt she was phoning it in, while Matt seemingly gave it his all, regardless of how awful the story was. And though he complained in years past with the writing, his last couple tenures on the show, he was so gracious and I have a lot of respect for him for that. Having seen Hogan's work on ATWT, Jack would seem to be a character he would love to write for. Even if they took Jack to a dark place if Jennifer left him, his coming back from that darkness as he finds a new relationship, could have had the same impact of the initial Jack and Jennifer relationship. So, as to how to save DAYS; family, romance, mystery, characters you can connect to, and then shocking over the top storylines that bring viewers in, because everything else is based in reality. I still think DAYS can surive. I'm thrilled Chloe is coming back, because she has history with the show, and I really think she has the Vanessa Marcil thing going for if she is given the chance. She and James Scott would be perfect together. Oh, and bring Jack back, and pair him with Billie. I really believe it would work.