DAYS: Behind the Scenes, Articles/Photos

[Vee]

God, that's so DAYS. For years running. I just do not understand how this show functions. Every advance has another five steps back with dumb shít like this happening at random on any day of the week.

[carolineg]

I don't think these characters would just sit around making out and canoodling instead of trying to help themselves.  Well, actually John/Marlena probably would, but Bo and Hope are smarter lol.  

[Michael]

That resolution was embarrassing, even for Days. I believe they were in a safehouse, though -- they wanted everyone to think they were dead (I cannot remember why), so they got stashed in some safehouse and spent the whole time canoodling and [!@#$%^&*]. So for a while, they were just hanging around doing nothing. It was only toward the end, when the bomb became known, that the situation was dire. 

I'm not sure MarDar's stories were as interfered with as is rumored. It was, as stated above, all setup. They came in with that story of Stefano framing John for stealing employee pensions or something, and it went on for MONTHS and then just ended with, like, Stefano telling the truth and it was over between commercial breaks. Every single thing they wrote wound up like that. It's tough for me to believe there was absolute brilliance planned and then it all wound up so flat and pointless -- we all know Corday gets nervous, but I'd kill to see what these "incredible stories" were supposed to be. We were still operating within the parameters of American daytime drama in 2011-12, after all. I really liked the start of their tenure, and I do think they helped restore the core of the show after the messiness of Higley's final year or so, but it was a sloppy, sloppy show with poor balance and weird callbacks to the past that meant nothing.

[carolineg]

I am pretty sure they all wanted Stefano to think they were dead for someone convoluted reason.  Someone correct me if I am wrong.  I feel like they were in that safehouse forever and were just having the same conversations over and over.  I remember we would actually watch Marlena reading a book or Bo playing cards.  Riveting.

That pension story was really weird.  I still don't understand why that was the story that they brought back Jarlena with.  It wasn't terribly exciting, you know John didn't do it, and it just ended with no pay off as you said.  Plus they had Austin/Carrie heavily involved and both of them literally had to change entire careers to make it work.  Austin is a forensic account now?  Sure, why not.  Did John ever get his money back?  I have to agree with you that MarDar may not be as good as we think.  The bones of that story weren't even very good, so interference or not, it wasn't an exciting idea.

[Dion]

  Thought I'd bring the Billie discussion over here from the March thread as it really is quite interesting.

No worries @Gray Bunny

As you would have seen from my write up you were actually on the right track regarding a Faux Bo doppelganger, it's just that it happened a year after RKK took over.

  

Marlena's brief bout with amnesia and homelessness with Wendy always struck me as a little weird considering how quickly it played out. Usually her perils go on for months and months and months lol.

I guess it was a dramatic way of revealing the pregnancy to the rest of the family and thus prevent her from having a secret abortion as she had planned but I'm sure she'd already decided to keep Belle just before getting mugged.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Dion

[carolineg]

Yes.  It was always so random. Marlena got mugged and knocked in the head and just forgot who she was?   Was it Wendy's introduction? It seems weirdly out of place for Marlena's character and that time frame. Marlena already had a ton of story going on.  Wendy kept saying she knew Marlena wasn't homeless, so why didn't she do more to help lol.  Wendy is actually an interesting character.  It might be the fact LV left abruptly, but she had a lot of story possibility and her and Jonah just disappeared one day without resolving any of it lol.

Anyhow, I don't really think there is any suspense in Marlena thinking about abortion.  That would never had happened.  Her lies to John about the conception date always make me laugh.  Was she just hoping John couldn't count and it would all work out for her in 9 months?  I could see saying the conception date was later than it was, but not earlier.  That seems like a hard lie to get out of.  It's an actual a period where Marlena is a bit unlikable, which is interesting.  She's deceiving Roman, deceiving John, pretty passive aggressively ending the affair, but still keeping John around, and just letting her 15 year old daughter keep her secret.  I don't think we are supposed to think Marlena is unlikable, but she kind of sucks at this point.

[Michael]

I think you're right that it was Stefano-related. 

That pension story was terrible. I can see how it SOUNDED good, which was my thing with MarDar. John and Marlena return! Stefano has a plot against them but it isn't some crazy sci-fi thing! Carrie and Austin are pitted against each other professionally, which pushes Carrie toward Rafe and reignites the Carrie/Sami tension! The basic ideas sound good, but it was pedestrian as hell in execution.

[Vee]

I thought the whole fraud story with John, etc. started out well; I actually thought it was topical given recent white collar crime IRL. I loved Carrie's role (Austin's was forced because I don't believe Austin knows math, but what are you gonna do). But like most things, it was a story DAYS was not equipped to do. And yes, since it was obvious it was Stefano just like every bad guy on this show always had to be Stefano while he was alive (and occasionally after), there was an airless element to it.

I do think that story, like many others, was strung out and then dropped, just as many others were simply curtailed. That definitely doesn't mean every story that creative team wrote was stifled brilliance (case in point: Ian Buchanan, Alamania, etc.). But I think we've watched DAYS do crazy eights around any kind of functional, halfway sophisticated storytelling so many times in the last 20+ years that I never trust them to execute. And whatever the writing regime, historically that problem has gone back to Corday's anxiety and his longtime coterie, as well as possibly Sony/NBC.

[Dion]

I think Wendy's first appearance was just prior to that - IIRC She went in labor and Jonah delivered her son Benjy. Wendy ran off - eventually meeting Marlena, while Jonah and Austin were left to look after Benjy.

You make an interesting point about Marlena's behaviour during this period and you are absolutely correct. That said, I do dearly love the hot springs saga where Marlena actively manipulates John into joining her in the springs by staying underwater for a tad too long and making it appear that she was in trouble (all the while Rebecca and Roman are fast asleep none the wiser lol) and then confesses her manipulation going into graphic detail about how she knew John would see her as she knew he would go to the window for air after making love to Rebecca because he would always get so hot after sex lol!

Funnily enough Mardevil would pull a similar stunt two years later by having it appear that Marlena was drowning at the Horton Cabin.

[janea4old]

 

[Khan]

Voiceover Guy: "This is gettin' GOOOD."

Who died and made YOU Clarence?

[Michael]

I liked the beginning, too. There just wasn't much to it after that. And I have no doubt Corday was sticking his hands in the pot pretty early on. It just felt to me like the appearance of a sophisticated story without the actual storytelling. 

Something definitely shifted around January of MarDar's run, too. A lot of those initial "stories" wrapped up quickly, and we moved into other phases. But their first month or two definitely felt like a Days I wanted to watch, and then I almost felt guilty admitting I was bored as hell by the time the Pub got shot up and everyone thought Johnny was dead and it turned out he had just been... under a table for days?

[Vee]

That was so baffling to me. I liked the entire setup of that story and the outline, and then he was behind a table? WTF?? This is the kind of thing DAYS does all the time, like that weird-ass cabin thing, they've been doing it for so many years. They fùck up literally any idea you throw at them with the day to day execution, and that goes back to so many creative regimes before and after that one that I tend to think is institutional. Everything gets dumbed down to kids TV level.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Vee

[carolineg]

I actually think Stefano was trying to kill Marlena and she and John were going into hiding, but somehow Bo, Hope, Carrie, Rafe ended up there as well.  Carrie definitely wasn't supposed to be there, but got stuck for some reason.  Then the group just pretended to be dead to buy more time and figure out what Stefano was up to.

All I can say about the pension story is I was really excited about John/Marlena returning and then that's what we got lol.  Days doesn't ever to well with business stories and John's business has always been vague at best.  I would have preferred a bread and butter adventure story with them to be honest

I totally forgot about Austin being involved with that story lol.  Austin's intro and early stories were all over the place (besides Carrie). lol

I love that hotspring scene.  It's very sexy and if I had any complaints about the affair it would be that I wish it lasted longer and they hooked up more lol.  For all the fallout, it should have been more than just a couple of times.  Anyway, Marlena's bad behaviour doesn't last long.  To her credit, once she finds out John's the father she immediately tells him and gives him full access to Belle.  It is a little jarring to see how quickly John goes ALL IN with Kristen though. 

I always laugh when Sami goes apeshit crazy on John and Johnny was just hanging out hiding from everyone.  Listen, if I was Johnny, I would hide from my parents too.  It's one of those things you remember so well because it was that stupid.

Edited March 22, 2022 by carolineg

[Michael]

It was dumb! He couldn't have... been scared and run out of the building and been trapped under a tree or something? I dunno. It was so ridiculous.

Yeah, I canNOT remember why they were in the safehouse. I'm sure it was dumb! That was pretty shortly after John and Hope returned from Alamainia, which was a whole other ball of nothing. But I don't think those threads were connected.