Days 2000-2009

[JackPeyton]

Okay, so i am super bored at work and ended up watching a bunch of randomness from the 2000's on Days.

And wow, what a mixed bag. Overall? Awful. But it had some highs, and a lot of lows. So i decided to ramble on about it and hopefully yall will chime in. This is just off the top of my head.

The Good-

Hope/Lexi baby swap. That Mother of the Year ball was fantastic!

Nick & Chelseas romance.

Belle & Philips affair.

Tonys return & Stefanos will.

Lucas & Sami first falling in love.

Austin & Sami's wedding in vegas.

Mia/Sami/Nicole baby swap (the actual swap, graces death, the truth)

The Salem Stalker (the killings, up until like Tony)

Johns death (ummm, the hit & run)

The Mixed-

Nicole/Colin/Jenn/Jack/Sami/Brandon. I liked that all these characters were mixing it up, it was cute and fun, but it had zero depth and was all pretty much fluff and filler of time, it seemed.

Larry Welch & Billies return (Good idea, bad play out)

Salem High (it had some good moments, like the last blast dances, and brought good drama with shawn/belle/jan for a moment, but it was on far too much)

The Bad-

Greta/Jack/Jenn

The Black Gloved Hand

New Salem/Melaswen

Aliens in Salem

Touch The Sky

Santeen

Willow

Brady & Chloe: The Musical

[quartermainefan]

I only started watching Days in 2004, but I found 2004-2006 to be a lot of fun. I never saw a soap like that, and it led me to start watching Passions. I think the island thing gets a bad rap. Yeah, it undid the whole story, but any story that has a villain with magnetized floors so he can trap the heroes while he gloats about his plan can't be all bad. And a force field! What other soap had a force field? Or a skeleton smoking a cigar?? I loved all that crap. And then after it ended with a sword fight during a volcanic eruption (!) the entire crew gets attacked by the world's biggest tidal wave! Where's your sense of fun, people?!? Irwin Allen only wished he thought this stuff up.

Jan Spears? Love her. Sami as Stan? Loved her/him. Everybody in Iraq of all places? How can you not see the insane genius of it all? They were in Iraq and Tony was running the show there! Where was Saddam? I think the episode that really showed me how insanely entertaining it was was when I think it was evil Marlena jumped off her terrace but just so happened to land right on Sami down below.

[JackPeyton]

Oh. My. God.

The horror. Of... all of that! lol. It was so painfully bad.

I do give them credit, Sami as Stan was a brilliant way to write out your show star without losing the character or recasting the role.

Jan Spears #2 was FANTASTIC.

[remos]

I loved Musical Broe

[darraholic]

ITA with mostly everything Jack.

I loved Larry Welch's return though. I thought it was very well done. I'd also put "The Gloved Hand" into the mixed category.

[Sindacco]

The Good

Hope and Lexie Baby Switch: Loved Lexie turning into a villainess.

Colin Murphy's murder: Best "Whodunit" Days ever did.

Hope and Zack's kidnapping/Larry's return: Lots of twists and turns.

Greta's Coronation: Big climax to a long storyline.

Terror in the Skies: Good catastrophe event.

The Mixed

The Gemini Twins: Loved Tony's return and all his stuff with John and Marlena, hated the way Cassie and Rex were introduced.

Tropical Temptation: Hated the teens taking over the show but liked the second half of the story when Victor, Nicole and John got involed in the action.

The Vendetta: Liked the early part with the gloved hand, John and Marlena going to Italy, EJ shooting John, John's hit and run, plane crash from Ireland. Didn't like that the Tony we had seen for the last 15 years were changed to Andre, the whole backstory being about Santo and Colleen played badly by James Scott and Alison Sweeney, John and Marlena being backburned until John was killed, Sami and EJ as the heroes, Tony having no problem getting back to civilization after spending 20 years on an island, Benjy's death as an afterthought/shock value, Sami, EJ and Lucas going in and out of the hospital all the time.

The Salem Stalker: Liked the early parts of it with Bo and Hope being attacked during the Basic Black fashion show and Abe and Jack's murders. After that the story turned more and more into a joke.

Melaswen: Poor rewrite of the Salem Stalker but I liked the action.

Alex North: Wayne Northrop rocked as a bad guy but the story was poorly written.

The DiMera/Kiriakis war: Good but too short with no real payoff.

The Bad

Touch The Sky: Jermey and Jett, that says it all.

Sami as Stan: It was the perfect time to backburn Sami for the first time since 2001 but instead we got one of the most awful stories in the show's history.

WillHOw: Eww.

Garden of Eden. I understand that Peck and Morris considered leaving the show.

Sami in witness protection: It was the perfect time to backburn Sami for the first time since 2001 but instead we got one of the most awful stories in the show's history + a one note character played by a Passions "actor".

Love is Blind: Belle, Mimi and Cassie dating a mysterious hunk that turned out to be Kyle Brandt's Philip.

In the House: The show couldn't afford the Spectator set anymore so Dena Higley came up with the brilliant idea of having Jack and Jennifer host a tv-show in their home, interviewing random guests. You could see how bored Matthew Ashford was. And the theme song, Who's in the house now, who is it, who is it, who's in the house now? You're watching the Jack and Jennifer show yeeeeaaahh.

The Love Cage: Jan Spears, Charity Rahmer's Belle, Jason Cook playing angry and growing his hair out, Kyle Brandt's heavy breathing/open mouth/drooling while giving Martha's Belle massage/kiss/whatever.

That's what I can think of right now.

[Cheap21]

Lexie as a villian was the best thing about that decade. Her story and scenes were gold. The last part of the decade was pretty underwhelming. I had tuned out by the time they had brought the dead people back

[quartermainefan]

No, you mean "Oh My God! It was so bad, it was good!"

[Michael]

The absolute worst, to me, was 2007-2008. The end of 2006 had such momentum, as Hogan's stuff really kicked into gear, but by that summer, it was just so unengaging and stupid. I know I watched most of the summer of '07 because of the Brady-DiMera feud, but the Colleen-Santo stuff fell flat, and there was so much messy crap going on at that time. Touch the Sky was stupid, the neverending Belle/Shawn/Phillip crap was boring (even if they finally make Martha Madison and JKJ click, which was a nice surprise), the Colleen Brady reveal was idiotic and ultimately changed nothing... and then the strike happened and it all got even more awful. The plane crash at the end of 2007 was really good, but it was such a small piece in the midst of a lot of weird, random crap.

2008 was probably the year, of the 14 I've been watching, that I watched Days least. I just didn't care. I would read casting news and forums. There was that whole bizarre period where they couldn't or didn't play John/Marlena or Bo/Hope at all, as a "test" or something, and then the Ava Vitali crap and... I don't even know. It just all runs together. I'd actually be interested to read a timeline of what happened then, because it all blurs together so much for me now. I remember John's death and liking a lot of what they did with Marlena during that time, but there was also that strange Paul Hollingsworth stuff, and the really forced Trent Robbins thing, which should have been good. And they destroyed Nick Fallon while pushing that horrible Chelsea/Daniel story.

It was like, at the end of 2008, something clicked, and the show started making sense again. Brady was back and in Nicole's orbit, Nicole was faking her pregnancy, Rafe was introduced (and that worked, at the time), and they moved Melanie into Maggie's orbit.

2008 just feels like such a weird lost period to me.

[JackPeyton]

No, not at all. I wish.

Do you remember RoMar coming to the airport and John/Kate were there getting ENGAGED and they kept missing eachother in this airport for like 8 episodes. Awful. Just awful. And jacks 43 deaths, to bad none of them lasted.

I did like the escape from the island, the first time, before that damn castle.

Yes, to all of this.

[quartermainefan]

The escape from the castle was great only because Roman's daughter Cassie escaped with them, but mysteriously never made it to Salem or ever was seen again.

[Titus Andronicus]

The second half of 2008 drove me away. I liked the first half and could even deal with Ava. The restart of John Black was good and it was the best I'd seen out of Marlena in years. The plane crash was quite well written. I didn't like Colleen and the umpteenth changing of John's history, but I understand they were trying to clean up the mess of the past 17 years. Same with "Tony"'s reemergence in 2007.

Jan Spears #2 was awesome. She made the teen set worth watching. Her pairing with Nicole was pretty good, too.

I loved the return of Larry Welch, but that's a pretty limited timeframe. I rewatched some 2002 clips leading up to it and oh, boy, is the writing terrible. Billie getting shot is the first thing that pops into my mind. They also made a mistake with making John an ISA member instead of letting him stay a lone wolf.

I liked Glenn and Barb, too.

Speaking of awful - Santo and Colleen. Absolutely no imagination and just an asinine way to tie the families together.

[Sindacco]

She made it to Salem. We saw her on the plane with Roman, Marlena and Jack. Her last scene was with Rex and Kate at Alice's Bar.

By doing so they created alot of new mess. John should never have been made Santo and Collen's son. He should have stayed Daphne's son and Tony's half-brother. And Tony should have stayed Tony, making him Andre was the easy way out and it had already been done before.

Larry came back before Billie was shot. What exactly was so terrible about the writing?

[Mitch]

Oh you underestimate the creativity and drive for realism that JER had, Marlena didn't just land on Sami, that would have naturally killed them both, instead Marlana just happened to "bounce," off the building's canopy (hilariously narrated by that bad John actor "Look, there goes Doc, she is going to..fall...no wait, she bounced off the canopy..lookout SAMI" and filmed using Electra Woman's old special effects of Dee Hall in Ricky Ricardo pajamas superimposed falling, with legs and arms flailing just so we got it) and THEN fell on Sami! Who promptly bounced back up, bitching that freakin annoying squeal of hers! If I would have been in college, Days would have been appointment smoking pot while watching with friends TV.

And you are sooo right, I loved Melaswen much more then the SS..that story got boring and depressing by the time she got to Alice (though I will always hold a special place in my heart for Tom Horton's disembodied pissed off head chaseing Marlena out the front door!) and Melaswen was just the ticket to perk things up. You also forgot that 90 year old Alice Horton was fit as a fiddle despite being presumably drugged, shipped in a coffin, plopped on an island (though in an exact replica of her house, presumably with air conditioning) and being bulled over by the world's biggeest tidal wave. That broad was one tough mother!!! I truly think that was the last time a soap was really, really, really entertaining.

As for the Stan thing, Sami was WAY butcher then him!!!!

[JtSmarts]

GOOD

Chloe/Phillip (2000)

Lexie Turning Into A True Dimera

Early Sami/Brandon

The Coronation

Larry Welch Kidnapping Hope Saga

Las Vegas Wedding

Lucas and Sami 2003-2007

Belle/Phillip Affair

Chelsea's Redemption

Shawn's Death

The Real Tony's Return/Anna

Nick Fallon

Nicole's Return

Jan Spears Return

Mixed

Saved By The Belle Salem Style 2000-2002

Carrie and Austin's Return

Endless TRiangles and Quads from 2003-2006

Melaswen

Max/Chelsea

The Ford Decker Storyline

"Jawn" Black

BAD

Nearly everything involving EJ Dimera

The Destruction of Sami Brady

Marlena and John's Exit

Underuse of Steve, Kayla, Jack etc

Tropical Temptation

Making Rex and Cassie Roman and Kate's Children

Iraq/Stan Storyline

Touch The Sky

The Ejami/Safe Triangle

Santeen/ Rewriting again of John's Parentage