The Soapgeist 2/1/10

[Michael]

I totally get the criticisms about Days feeling a little hollowed out and not as thrilling as it once was, and yet... I'm enjoying it more, and more consistently, than I have since probably 1998.

I do miss the days of watching it just to see what kind of fuckery JER would try to put over on us -- when Chelsea was the human version of Toonces the Driving Cat, and Hope would talk about how she'd eaten lunch 3 times because she LOVES TO EAT!!!, and people would spend entire weeks wandering around going, "I know what's going on here!" when they had no [!@#$%^&*] idea -- but JER's second run was rarely enjoyable for me to watch as a show. I never cared what was going to happen, and it was a lot of soulless pawn-moving. That retread of Sami/Austin/Carrie/Lucas was the absolute nadir. Just bland, awful, no one even seemed to care what was going on because it was so stupid.

I guess at least now, everything feels like it has a point. Out of necessity, characters have to interact outside their immediate storylines. A lot of it is Soap 101, but I find that strangely appealing in an era where Y&R is a trainwreck. And whoever's running the ship at Days loves not only referencing history, but playing with it in the story without twisting it up and taking a dump all over it. It's not where I expected Days to be in 2010 (and I really wish they'd pipe in some background noise here and there...), but there's something solid about it.

[JackPeyton]

i dont get the hollowed out thing. i feel like the show as whole has much more heart and activity than it has before, esp as a community. I do get the less thrilling thing tho. But i dont mind it at all. It was only thrilling for episodes here and there at random.

You are right, pretty much all of it is soap 101, but its working. Perhaps because its the one thing no other soap is able to do. long term plotting with basic soap opera elements. it builds up to moments - like Sami finding out the truth and slapping Nicole, twice and now hopefully this wedding.

Its not a perfect soap by any means, but it is damn good and i enjoy it every day its on for pretty much the full show. even the slow points have been infused with character development. also as you said, its out of necessity.

[EricMontreal22]

I didn't see much of this period, but that about makes sense with what I expect from the man who wrote Passions. Throw in endlessly repititive dialogue and scenes and a snails pace, and I dunno how anyone could find random WTF moments "thrilling"

[AllMyDaysatGH]

LOL! I started watching in 2003...right when he started his second term, around the time when the Stalker murder's started happening. It was SO crazy during that time, but I couldn't miss the show I loved it!!

[JackPeyton]

Mimi having to be "punished" for her sin of having an abortion was redic.

[EricMontreal22]

JER's morals and ethics--at least as displayed on his shows--have always struck me as weird. He has a strong, hardcore Catholic guilt streak that comes close to puritanism, thigns that even Irna Philips would have found ridiculous, and yet he relishes in pulling out shocking, often sexual twists (of course the crossgendered, bisexual, psycho killer on Passions being the obvious one there). I guess that's why so many people think of him as camp, LOL.