DAYS: Behind the Scenes, Articles/Photos

[carolineg]

Isn't it Gabe that convinces John to be a priest?  Wasn't pre-possessed Marlena pro John being a priest as well?.  I remember her and Kristen saying it was his 'calling'.  Which, no it's not, if he doesn't remember it.   Instead of Tanya I guess John was off screen knocking Tori up.  

[Dion]

I'm not sure. I'm a bit murky on this period of 94...Like I only know Tanya from the clips and I tend to watch them at random lol.

[carolineg]

Yeah. I get that. There is a lull between maison blanche and the possession where john and crew aren't doing anything exciting and Kristen and John have the same conversation about 10000 times.  Even in edits that period is tedious and I skip ahead usually too lol

[Michael]

I love Maggie Horton and absolutely believe Suzanne Rogers has a place on this show. I loathe Maggie Kiriakis. But I'm glad she continues to have a presence (and a job), and it's an easy course correction -- they had her with the Hortons more since Suzanne returned from leave, and she was great there. I know they're now in a tough spot tossing her into scenes as Victor's mouthpiece for Titan, likely because JA can't film, but it just underscores how much of being with Victor is not who Maggie is -- which would be interesting if they addressed it instead of ignored it!

The scenes of Hope killing Stefano were very, very strong in isolation. But like so much of Days (and especially Griffith's Days), it was all predicated on some flimsily established premise that she thought Stefano was responsible for Bo's death, even as we were seeing that Deimos had something to do with it. I don't think it helped that we could all see how feeble Joe Mascolo was. That wasn't the show's fault, per se, but it affected how the scenes read. The bigger problem was the fallout and the cover-up, as mentioned upthread. There was probably a way to pin it on that disgusting André without Hope and Rafe coming off so hypocritical and awful, but that would've required nuanced writing, which was in short supply. I think we were all just so tired of the nonstop darkness by that point, too. We went from watching Will Horton be strangled onscreen to Bo dying of a brain tumor to Eric killing Daniel in a DUI to Hope shooting Stefano to Ciara's rape in like three months. (And yeah, I agree that the rape was THE THING that should have sealed Griffith's fate. It was disgusting, distasteful, and worst of all, pointless!)

Hope felt like a random choice to kill Stefano, too. I guess Marlena got to do it with the 1985 shooting *and* injecting his IV in 2008, so she got her shot. Lol. Roman as an idea is interesting!

[Vee]

It's Griffith's brand, or was at the time. It worked at OLTL in the '90s and then it didn't really since. I think some of the darkness or grit he introduced worked initially for DAYS because he was so different from their usual writers, as the idea of the serial killer mystery was viable (until they killed Will) and the show got a lot more atmospheric. But by the time they'd gotten to Ciara being raped, Bo's permadeath (for now), Jigsaw is John's dad from Vietnam and Hope executing Stefano - woof. And now of course he's totally burnt out.

A noticeable problem with both him and John Aniston now. I never understood why they brought Stefano back in the late 2000s or early 2010s just to have him sit around the house haranguing E.J.

[Bright Eyes]

It's sad that it has come to this for Victor Kiriakis. This show hasn't been truthful about the horrible person that he is and the people around him have suffered for it. He is not the type of character that should pass away in his sleep. He is a villain. A hateful, misogynistic, narcissistic abuser. He should have been killed off at some point, not get to potentially die on his own terms like he's Tom Horton.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Bright Eyes

[Michael]

Griffith's tone worked (for me) for the first few months. It was perfect for the serial killer story, but the balance of the show was immediately off. The entire thing was the Necktie Killer and Hope/Aiden, with random interludes of stuff like Daniel and Nicole blowing the budget by dancing to John Legend's "All of Me" in the Pub. But yeah, the darkness worked, and then it was the entire show and so oppressive and miserable. I thought he'd turn Y&R into a bloodbath, and instead he turned it into... uh... whatever this boring-ass mess is. 

Mascolo came back pretty strong in 2007, but they were having all those weird contract issues in '07-'08 where they'd have to bench vets for months at a time, so he was there, then he was in a coma, then he was back, blah blah. Didn't Higley love Mitch Lawrence? You'd think she would've leaned into writing Stefano at least more like that than the riveting tale of a supervillain with diabetes.

[Vee]

Higley never wrote for Mitch (thank God).

[Michael]

In my mind, she had, but I'm realizing she just set Jessica's gross DID backstory in motion, huh? I had conflated that with Mitch having been around.

They've softened and un-softened him so much over the years that I have whiplash. He's never quite been the supervillain Stefano is, and I think there's a way to play him as this unscrupulous businessman without Maggie constantly having to give him a pass on stuff like putting hits on people and harming their own family members. 

[victoria foxton]

 

  

Edited March 22, 2022 by victoria foxton

[dc11786]

Things like this are why I struggle with the idea that MarDar was this trailblazing team who had corporate interference ruin their stories. This stuff with Johnny was from November sweeps basically month 2 that they were working off their own story. The problem was Johnny missing was a catalyst for Sami and EJ to have sex so that Will could catch them and we can replay all of that story from the 1990s. Will catching them was all that mattered. That’s why the follow to the actual shooting/Johnny being missing didn’t matter. It was just sloppy storytelling. Also, we never learned who shot up the pub. You knew it would have been a disgruntled cop but playing the beat of this person being caught was something that would have resolved some issues. 
 

in my opinion, MarDar’s struggle came from a failure to understand how to play story beats in order to flesh out something from a situation to a story. Then may have known how to start and end, but the day to day stuff was painful even from the beginning. I blame this from years of working with Reilly who could stretch a moment to no end. Also, they underwrote a lot of things. After spending nearly 3 years no longer being the show that overused flashbacks, there were constant flashbacks again. 
 

People can criticize Tomlin and Whitsell, but they knew how to tell a story that played beats, utilize emotion, and had payoff. It didn’t hurt that the script team had a very P&G feel. I think the first year or so of their return was amazing because there was an investment in outcomes and the show had a ripple effect. There were definite misfires (Jordan Ridgeway, the Elephant statue), but the strong was strong ( Nicole/Eric, Kristen/Brady, Sonny/Will/Gabi/Nick). 

[Vee]

I don't think there's any excuse for the nonsense with Johnny. But I also think it's systemic. There's at least a half dozen attempts over the last 20+ years at at DAYS to tell smarter stories, but the details get bogged down in the most remedial level silliness or weird plot points in the day to day (like Johnny turning out to be... hiding behind a table??). That to me goes back to the power structure at DAYS and the hierarchy in place that executes. I could be wrong, but I feel like we've seen it again and again under multiple HWs. Good concepts get turned into Fox Kids-level stuff.

That doesn't excuse stories like Ian McAllister or the Alamania caper, or other things either (the meandering use of Billie, the weird Alice/Stefano nonsense). It was far from an unrealized triumph, lol. But I just think certain things got murdered in the crib by the way DAYS has worked and dumbed everything down on the daily for ages.

[Dr Neil Curtis]

What I liked most about the MarDar era was the introduction of Madison James and linking her to Sami/Eric Colorado time with Frank & Martha Evans. It’s been a while since they introduced a good new character like that. 

[carolineg]

I think it's interesting to hear more about Sami/Eric's time in Colorado because so little is known about that time or even how long they were there lol.  I could take or leave Madison, but it was a good intro.  The show probably got rid of her too soon, but her backstory got weird quick.

[asafi]