Days: Deep Soap: How Days is thriving by ignoring conventional wisdom

[Sylph]

Besides the point. We've established that already. Like, 150 times?

Horrible "real" daytime writers mixed with network executives who are wannabe writers = lethal combo.

[Sylph]

Yes, of course. In that — she is wrong! D'oh.

I watch cr*p shows for camera/photography etc. Like that kitsch flood of deliriously colourful photography, CSI: Miami. Awful, love it's in-your-face COLOUR!, camera filters, aerial shots and all.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Yes, and yet we're supposed to believe the trash she writes is credible?

So sad the soap press is in such a horrific state, but then again, it's very much reflective of the industry. You can't expect something credible when the industry it's supposed to reflect no longer is, and has never been really.

You think Bible was making that point?

But again, you and I both know Bibel would still be writing for soaps and kissing the ass of her hack boss if she were still employed in daytime.

[Sylph]

'Cause underneath a pile of bull, you sometimes find something OK.

Subconsciously.

[JackPeyton]

SB's first few blogs were fantastic. Then... i dont know what happened. Not so much this one, but in many previous blogs i feel that she just kind of thre it together. I really notice it with DAYS, she will bitch about something that doesnt make since, when on a few days previous episodes they explained exaclty what she was complaining about.

Bellcurve, i agree that soaps shouldnt copy days look. If i turned into most other soaps id be like "wow, this is some cheap ass [!@#$%^&*] (aside from oltl, whos sets look the cheapest and most tacky to me). Y&R or GH could never get away with looking like days does. But i dont have an issue with it at Days because days has always looked like this, IMHO, except now there are just fewer sets.

I agree, but i wouldnt say dreck. Days is just a differnt animal than any other daytime show. Y&R has such a strong identify, as have the abc soapas and the p&g soaps and even B&B, but days can change on a whim and fans accept it (if they dont, they tune out i guess). Days doesnt have an identify. Thats why the current throwback style is working, IMHO. Honestly, i have gone to the paley center for media and watched 70's days and current days would fit right in. its basic, its simple. the few sets, the few stories, etc... i honestly think days is classic soap right now and thats whats making it work.

For example, soap fans always bitch about baby swaps and love triangles and other things soaps overdo. well days did a baby swap that was perfectly plotted and planned. it was predictable, but it was thrilling to watch because at the center of it you had two women. the story was about the women. it wasnt about the men in their lives. no, they were not strong independent powerful women. both are rather needy and somewhat pathetic to be honest, but it was still about them. and even mia. you wanted sami to find out the truth about the swap, you wanted mia to know what happened to her baby, yet you didnt want nicole to lose it all. it was a good simple classic soap opera storyline that you couldnt get anywhere else. what other show offered that?

Y&R tried to rip it off yet failed as theirs was about shock and awe, not the human emotions no matter how hard the actors tried.

Days isnt for everybody. I can easily see why some would hate it. But for me, and obviously many others, its working.

That said, other soaps should try to rip it off but instead figure out what made it work and try ti see if it would work for them. But the will not. Why? Well because Days, the undisputed soap opera success story of last year, didnt do this willingly. They were forced into it and got lucky with good plotting.

Yes, this is all extremely biased as i am a days fan and loving the show right now. But im honestly not some crazy fanboy. Ive hated the show many times and have tuned out. I bitch when i see something worth bitching about.

[Ann_SS]

What Bibel and so others miss that Days is doing something new that does appeal to women in the 18 to 49 women demo like me which is that almost every story is driven by women characters. I can't think of one Days story that revolves around a male character or promotes their point of view over the woman's perspective. The male characters mostly react to the women's actions. Every female character has a female friend to confide in so when Chloe visits Nicole in prison it doesn't come out nowhere. A Biggest Loser fan who tunes into Days can appreciate Sami. In contrast, the DTWS fan who might have tuned into GH to see Kelly Monaco would roll their eyes at Sam. Overall, I think that Days is doing good things, but it is being pushed by the network's interference and helped by Ali Sweeney's popularity. I bet the network looked at Days' improved demos and thought that they were okay, but it was the symbiotic relationship with Biggest Loser that made it easier for them to renew Days.

[Rakesh]

No way can I credit TBL and Ali for DOOL's success. She's been TBL host for many years and DOOL's ratings have been shitty. Ever since the arrival of GG and EE, that is exactly when DOOL's ratings started to go up. Passions fans obviously followed the show's leading men to DOOL. As for how the ratings are doing right now and for the past few months, that's gotta be the great writing.

[Sylph]

Remember that episode of Heroes when Claire talks to Zach and says: I am so depressed!

That's how Bibel comes off to me and why I think the whole thing plummetted into depths. Somewhere along the line she also lost any confidence she had (if she ever truly did) and it all become...

Agreed.

[DeliaIrisFan]

But that's the point: Writers who have been on staff with a show for years have a much better sense of what makes that given show unique than their bosses. That's one thing even the almost universally despised Dena Higley has going for her, having been with the show on and off for decades. The networks don't want soaps to be unique...they've been trying to homogenize them since at least the expansion of most shows to an hour in the 70s, and their favorite tool has been focus groups comprised of people who have barely watched the show before. NBC was probably the worst offender by the time it finally fell to a one-soap lineup. The last time it had a daytime programming department, it was one big circle jerk: The ratings went up during Reilly's first stint at DAYS, and executives who may or may not have even been watching the show apparently decided that the most superficial elements of what he was doing 1) were responsible for the increase and 2) would work equally well for any other show. So, AW suddenly dabbled in vampires and evil twins, SB premiered to focus on the banal love lives of pretty people who couldn't act, and eventually both shows were canceled and replaced with Reilly's own Passions. Which was in some ways a different animal than Reilly's work at DAYS, and supposedly attracted enough 12-17 years old viewers that it was a commercial hit for a while (especially since it was produced on the cheap). So then when DAYS started to falter, it was decided that Reilly should resume control over DAYS as well and be responsible for writing two hours of TV a day. We know how that turned out, and a few years later, Passions was canceled and DAYS came within an inch of being canceled. Compare that string of acts of desperation - which led to AW going off the air anyway but as a shell of its former self and two new shows premiering at great expenses and not even lasting a decade - to what DAYS has done and it just begs the question of whether a suite of highly paid executives was needed to come up with such strategies, which seem so boneheaded in retrospect. As an AW fan, in hindsight, I would have rather NBC just cut AW's budget to a sustainable level and left people who had a history with the show more or less alone to keep doing what they've been doing for as long as possible.

That said, I do think there are other writers, possibly some who are already on staff, who could honor DAYS's history while doing something a little bit fresh and new. I tuned in to see Carly and Vivian again, but it soon became apparent that the main conflict between them was that Carly was searching for a long lost child and Vivian was trying to prevent her from doing that and was ready to kill her, if necessary. I'm sorry, but all of that already happened two decades ago! Now, at least Higley is not desperately trying to shock viewers with trash like gay serial killers brutalizing women, like at OLTL, when she probably knew the network was having a focus group next week and was trying in vain to keep a bunch of people who couldn't care less about the show on the edge of their seat because her job was on the line. I have not seen anything remotely offensive or smacking of desperation on DAYS. But I have to believe that there is a way to strike a balance between being consistent with a show's history and not directly repeating it.

[Aaron]

It absolutely *astonishes* me that this show is thriving...

I'm old-school. Like others have said, give me a good, solid classic soap opera and I'll watch. I don't care about fancy sets or stunt casting or flavor-of-the-week storytelling. I'll show up and watch.

But DAYS isn't that. DAYS throws every single see-it-coming-a-mile-away soap opera cliche on the screen, wraps it up in HORRIBLE acting by screechy "hair models" and vets who have LONG since lost their edge. There's nothing at all compelling going on right now. It's all plot, plot, plot, plot, plot. And weak plotting at that.

That's not to say it doesn't have POTENTIAL. There's ample opportunity there for some from-the-heart storytelling, romance and light comedy. It needs a better writing team and directing team.

I keep hoping something will surprise me and not go exactly the way the story would have gone in 1986, but it's just not happening.

And this is daytime's "success story."

Breaks my heart, honestly.

[JackPeyton]

But, in the past few seasons TBL has blown up to have the best ratings its ever had. meanwhile, Sweeney has established a strong fanbase outside of days via TBL, talk shows, various other things.

I am not saying its due to her, but the fact that NBC pimps out Days hardcore during TBL and her outside of daytime fanbase im sure helped add to it. As did the passions cast, as did new of CC coming, as did good plotting and a compelling storyline. As did various other things (other shows ratings dropping, for example, and nbc actually promoting days, and perhaps more people being home in the daytime).

You can not say because of any one thing the days ratings went up. Its a combo of many things.

[bellcurve]

+1

[DRW50]

A lot of the occasions where big hyped writers came to DAYS, it didn't ever work. You would hear, "Listen to that wonderful dialogue," as the stories were in the crapper and the ratings soon followed. I think the show probably most needs structure, which it hadn't had in ages until the past year or two. I agree the show needs a lot of improvement and has also lost steam lately but I don't think acclaimed names or attempts to be unexpected would pull the show up. In some ways I think the rigid formulaic tone may help keep viewers, as it's similar to old school soaps. They can't really afford to be like Y&R, which can get away with the most half-assed ideas, pass them off as "fun", and not lose viewers because they have the timeslot and the good reputation of Bell's many years of work.

[Cat]

Perhaps we are over-intellectualizing things here? Ann SS made agood point about women being at the center of Days' major SLs, and I would agree with her on that. But perhaps it is just as simple as giving fans some stability after years of upheaval. Honestly, I love lush production values, gorgeous lighting and emotive background music as much as the next person, but there is a reason I am watching Days before Y&R and B&B, and that's because I am being consistently entertained by the characters. Victor Kiriakis is one good example.

I concur with JackPeyton that what worked for Days would perhaps not work on other soaps. You can't showhorn the same template on six other, very different soaps. I suspect, though, that Days no longer tolerates a lot of behind-the-scenes diva behavior and excess fat that plague many of its more self-satisfied rivals.

[JackPeyton]

Complete word to all of this.

Soap operas are about women. Days has women at the center of everything.