DAYS: Discussion for the month of June

[DRW50]

I wish we could see some 70s DAYS as the descriptions I've read of that era don't seem to involve wacky characters. Did that start with Calliope? Then JER built on them with Vivian, Bart, Ivan, Susan and the Banks siblings, among others. I think this worked for JER, at least in the first run, because they needed a counterpart to all the high drama, but the second run seemed to have fraying edges (and the best, like Vivian, were long gone). Non-JER writers have had a few of these types, like Craig and Nancy, but I think the show is probably better off moving away from them since it takes a lot of time and effort to make those types of personalities exist as anything more than bad jokes.

I think one of the reasons the show struggled over the past 4-5 years was the awkward transition. DAYS had so many different eras which were prominent for people, and they lingered on. The supercouple era. The action/adventure era. The JER camp and gothic era. The show seemed to be suffocating under the weight. So now they seem to have finally cast most of that off and they're trying somewhat of a new direction, which seems uneven, but is working better than most of their attempts to keep one foot in the past.

I usually hate psychic stories on soaps, it's usually gone within a few months (the one I hated the most was Nadine Cooper on GL, as she got psychic powers just for a sick joke of a final scene where she realized she'd been seeing her own murder). As odd as the idea seems to give Bo psychic abilities, I'm glad they're sticking to it. And Peter Reckell can probably pull it off.