DAYS: Leading Actor Possibly Leaving

[KMan101]

I like James Scott and MarDar have really made EJ interesting to me again. I've really enjoyed him. I wish this was the EJ we've had but I'm so burnt out on the character. We NEVER get a break from him. Ever! I wonder if they wanted to cut his episode guarantee and he wanted more money?

Regardless. I do hope he stays but I'm not upset if he goes, either.

[AllMyDaysatGH]

I loved EJ in his early days on the show then under Dena he just became so pathetic!! Despite the terrible writing I always thought JS did great. In the last month the new writer's have brought EJ back to his roots and made him interesting again, I was loving me some EJ again! And I am so looking forward to his upcoming story! Now he might be leaving I hope a deal can be reached with JS and DAYS. From his quote he seems optimistic so I will be to ;-)

[ER Tosh]

Hope he stays on. Yes the character is kind of burnt out and im not really a fan of EJ as a romantic lead type but I like him when he is in the antagonist role.

[juppiter]

EJ has brought the Dimeras to the 21st century, I think he's an integral part of the show and I was not even watching Days when he came on. I've only seen him whenever I've watched Days sporadically over the last few years. But he's great in the role and very attractive and I do think they need him. It'd be bad to lose EJ.

[Skin]

Losing a leading man who challenges her, checks her and puts her in her place when she sorely is in need of it? The one great thing about EJ being on Days (when he was used effectively and not lusting after Samantha) was the fact that he called Sami on all of her bull and made her reap exactly what she sowed for the better part of a decade while playing with Brandon, Austin, Carrie, Lucas and everyone else in the entire town. He was the one person who could put her in a corner and tell her to sit her ass down. That validated the characters existence right off the bat. There needed to be an equal, a rival to Sami who could temper her and that's what EJ is. He is the only character that makes Sami act like a semi-normal human being for once in her life and not like the batshit insane schemer she has been since she was twelve acting out because her parents divorced or some other nonsense. It's entirely because of him that Sami gets to play Salem's beloved heroine (which bleh, but still) and has evolved into a different character instead of AS going on 40 and perpetually being stuck acting like a 17 year old girl from 1995.

[Antoyne]

Yeah and he raped her.

[Khan]

Oh, Lord.

[Cheap21]

He's not done yet

http://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/james-scott-negotiations

[DRW50]

That's what EJ *should* have been, but I don't think it ever worked out that way. Thanks to her story with him, she spent all of 2007 sobbing. Their stories together since then have basically been him alternating between being her tortured soulmate and her own personal Scooby Doo villain.

Sheffer defined this relationship, and his definition of it was that a woman who wants to have sex with a "real" man can only do so at gunpoint, pleading and in tears for him to not do this to her. And that is just about impossible to undo.

[JackPeyton]

They are not equals, they are not rivals. She has been trashed beyond repair in order for the show to have their bad guy and sell him as their hero to. Not to mention while he sat her in that corner and told her to sit down he raped her, tortured her, faked her daughters death, hired a man to terrorize and rape her, and said it was all out of love. She is far from acting like a normal human being when around him. If this was 2007 I would agree with what you said, but none of that has been the case from then on.

[electrorat]

James Scott leaving would make me believe that TPTB are actually serious about fixing the show.

[JaneAusten]

Aww Skin you know I love you but its funny how you see this about EJ yet your vision is so clouded when it comes to JR on AMC some that I don't disagree with. EJ is just another in a succession of putrid leading men Sheffer created or morphed. Victor Newman, Adam Newman, EJ Dimera,Craig Montgomery, I'll add Todd Manning to the list even if Sheffer did not write for him. He tortured and raped Sami how is that rootable.Then add a succession of terrible acts he continued to plague her with. I think if the relationship would have developed as you stated both characters could have had a long complex even interesting life on this show. Sami could have stayed maybe not villianous but an anti heroine and EJ could have been an interesting complex greyer character for the long haul. I think he's her best acting partner on the show. AS is not a very good actress and playing a heroine is certainly not her strength but she did up her game with him and was a much more interesting character when he started. Not only is EJ pretty much ruined so is Sami.

I don't think EJ/JS leaving the show matters in terms of Sami anymore. I realize AS is popular but the character as she is is just dull. Nicole is about the only female on this show with any potential at this point and she's a character who could benefit from being pulled away from EJ. Sami married with a nice yet dull character has really just dulled the character down. And I dont think adding Carrie and Austin back into the mix is going to help much. Nor do I know that becoming a working women will. BUt I also don't think keeping EJ around benefits or hurts her anymore same for him.

[aMLCproduction]

Thats something I will never forget and the reason I hate when they tried to pair the two up. Praying EJ leaves!!

[Skin]

I still say it's better then most of her "relationships" have been the last two decades. All of Sami's relationships adhere to the same plot over and over again.

A. Fall in love with someone who doesn't love her.

B. Scheme to get him, usually doing some unspeakable act that would disgust them if they knew about it.

C. Lie, lie and lie about said scheme in part B so she can keep him.

D. Someone finds out and blows Sami's house of lies down like a deck of cards

E. Sami sobs for a couple or months, plots revenge on the person who revealed her untruths until she finds another man who is in love with someone else and the cycle starts up all over again.

Say whatever you like about EJ but he bucked the trend of Sami's usual relationship. I don't ship them together because I am not that invested in soaps these days but EJ is by far a more interesting character then Lucas, Austin, Brandon, Rafe, etc. ever were for Sami because he pushed her, challenged her and wasn't afraid to give back to her everything that she gave back to him. Sami is not a heroine. She is the classic soap bitch who has no qualms with running everyone over so she can get what she wants. She needs a villain to counter balance her or else the entire Sami character is just an endlessly depressing cyclical case of Freudian problems.

The rape actually doesn't bother me because I more or less believe Sami is a sociopath. She raped two men before If I am not mistaken in the forms of Brandon and Austin, yet it doesn't mean anything because it was "male rape". No one contested those pairings yet because it was a man who raped a woman everyone goes off to their corners and shrieks about the horror of it all. Please Sami is no wilting flower. She gave as good as she got, there is no crying foul just because in one instance she was the "victimized party" instead of the antagonist. Yet even as a victimized party she still was the one who set up EJ that December night and also tried to burn him alive in a cabin. Yeah I'm sorry poor, sweet, kind, pure, ingenue Sami just doesn't work at Days at all.

I don't even think it's contestable that Sami acts more like a normal person should since EJ has been in her sphere. She is an actual parent now instead of a woman who wanders around town cooking up inane schemes to get back at whoever wronged her. She isn't the social pariah she was for such a long time and she isn't a teenage girl who is constantly trying to trick men into being with her and constantly lying to try to keep them. Even if you hate EJ there has to be some acknowledgement that he has matured her. Before he came in she was still scrapping with Carrie over Lucas and Austin and blackmailing Lexi into making her sister think she couldn't have healthy children. Now she has a family who doesn't revile her and actually like her and is in a committed relationship with Rafe even though soccer mom Sami is boring as hell to me but progress is still progress. Her motivations and reasons for the things that she does is also a lot more logical rather then "I am going to make John's life a living hell because he broke up my parents marriage in 1989".

EJ benefits from having a character who is just as deplorable and selfishly motivated as he is (in this case Sami). On AMC I don't think there are characters who were ever as bad as JR was with the exception of perhaps Billy Clyde Tuggle and Ray Gardner and in both of those cases they were killed off rather quickly and never given as much importance in the show. On Days there are so many characters who commit so many continuous wrongs for such selfish reasoning that a character like EJ fits more readily then a character like JR does on AMC.

[KMan101]

You know, I don't get why twitter/facebook/websites are so quick to "break news" without it actually being true. It's getting REALLY old. LOL. Seriously.