5 Years Later - Are the Soaps better or worse?

[All My Shadows]

I just realized...one of the few saving graces of AMC in 2006 was absolutely no Greenlee whatsoever...except for maybe tons of flashbacks that were unnecessary.

[Michael]

Five years ago was the spring of 2006, which was the beginning of a weird transitional time for DAYS. That was when we got the news that Hogan Sheffer was coming aboard, and Beth Milstein began interim head-writing, and there was all the 'Koala Barf' business. So there was a lot of fun, interesting stuff as JER's stale stories were swept away and a bunch of promising new stuff took its place. Just prior to that, though, the show was a bunch of dead wood. Zach's death was good, but there was so much unfocused garbage. The Alex North story was an incomprehensible disaster; Billie spent like six months raping Bo when he was out of it; Kayla was just wandering around asking Steve if he remembered anything yet; that Sami/Austin/Carrie/Lucas story was a hideous, lifeless rehash of a ten-year-old story. It was almost uniformly atrocious, and it managed to be simultaneously unfocused and so narrowly focused that nothing was a surprise.

The transition to the new writing regime was so exciting. It was the last time, prior to late 2009, when I got really excited about DAYS. But that all fell apart within a year, when we got the Colleen/Santo show, Touch the Sky (and the destruction of Chelsea/Nick, the best young couple this show had intro'd in years), Shelle on Tinda Lau, and more. So I guess that mid-2006 transitional period was very exciting, and there was tons of potential, but in retrospect, it was sort of artificial because very little of it delivered. For that reason, I'll go with now as being better.

[Cheap21]

I posted this in the video thread. AMC exactly 5 years ago

[Gray Bunny]

Agreed. 2003-2006 (i.e. Reilly 2.0) was DAYS at its all-time worst. But wasn't there like a few good weeks/couple months between Reilly FINALLY being dumped from DAYS and Hogan Sheffer joining that we had a lovely woman by the name of Beth Milstein who crafted some lovely wrap-ups to storylines? Cuz Lord knows the first half of 2006 was complete and utter CRAP! And then we had hit-or-miss with Sheffer's work in the latter half. But yes, there was that period where they tied up bad storylines and gave good pay-off to them, and started telling new tales in the meantime.

Oops should've read your post first. Agreed!

[darraholic]

DAYS is much worse. Actually, 2006 was a good year for DAYS. Probably my 2nd favorite year after 2000 behind 2002/03.

[JackPeyton]

Days, by far is better.

AMC is perhaps better, defiantly equal.

The rest? Much worse.