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Days: May 2018 Discussion Thread


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I guess that depends on your perception. I've never known a UK soap to portray DID before, they probably have on one that I don't watch, maybe Hollyoaks? But I doubt they'd be able to do it justice in the same way because Days at 38 mins per ep 5 days a week has really been able to explore the Abby storyline in such a deep sense. I think it's been fascinating, it's one of the best soap stories I've ever seen. I totally get why people would find it annoying if they've seen it all before though.

 

I like the way the American soaps don't court a load of controversy for such controversial stories like this. The UK soaps would get stick.

 

I feel like the US soaps explore storylines and characters better because they have more air-time. That can be a negative too though, some stories and scenes feel dragged out and things don't move quickly sometimes. Days offers a very different experience to the other soaps I watch IMO.

 

I think you have to hand it to the actors too. They're given such ridiculous and difficult material to act out but the girl who plays Abby has been awesome.

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The US soaps don't get negative media attention because most major US media has not paid serious attention to our soaps in approximately 20-25 years. It's not like the UK where there is still major investment - production value, media and in many cases creative talent is bottom of the barrel here. There have been a slew of exploitative, vile sexual abuse, rape and mental illness stories.

 

DID is a pseudo-diagnosis of a possibly fictional disorder, but it used to be great fodder for story.  One Life to Live - current DAYS headwriter Ron Carlivati's alma mater soap - pioneered the DID story using the decades-long travails of its matriarch Victoria "Viki" Lord, who suffered from the illness since the show began in the 1960s in a series of storylines. The gold standard of the DID material is the admittedly-controversial 1995 story written by Michael Malone and Josh Griffith which revealed the true root of Viki's disorder: Molestation by her long-dead tycoon father Victor, whose mysterious demise (long blamed on Viki's nemesis and stepmother, Dorian) had been a running thread for over 20 years, until it was finally revealed one of Viki's alternate personalities killed Victor.

 

That is where DID stories should have ended on OLTL, and on most soaps. Instead it was used to excuse every bit of bad storytelling and launch terrible new ones. Subsequent writers had Viki's daughter Jessica also develop multiple personalities of her own, claiming the mentally ill Viki had dragged her to bars as a child, leaving her vulnerable to being raped by pornographers - something grotesquely wrong and impossible as we'd watched Jessica grow up onscreen. When Ron Carlivati took over the head writing position he tripled down on DID stories, doing stories identical to the one he is now doing with Abby on DAYS. In both cases the true personality is helpless while the 'fun' new personality is allowed to romance multiple men. With Jessica, she reverted to childhood and slept with another man who knew she was not in her right mind and found her thinking she was an underage teenager to be a turn-on. This character impregnated her and when Jessica reverted to normal, Carlivati positioned the man as her 'true love' and vehemently argued with fans who called this rape. Stop me when this sounds familiar.

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That Jessica storyline sounds awful! I'm intrigued by the Viki one though. Though I'm only really interested in Days as far as US soaps (apart from maybe ATWT and GL, shame they ended).

 

I do think the Abby story has been written well though.

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Oh, Viki's story is definitely worth tracking down. Even as a kid I knew enough of the hints from my mama to know that Dorian vs Viki was the main drive of OLTL but I never knew why. I did like their rivalry (Dorian being framed, David getting her in time for her to make a grand entrance, Dorian's payback on Viki through her son Joey, the Joey/Dorian romance) and then Tommy pushed Dorian down the stairs...and then Jean Randolph who was the favorite of the alters to me and her characterizations and how ES played her was so fascinating to me as a kid. But Erika did so well with all the alters and they were so layered and complex. It's worth seeing. 

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Friday and Monday's shows......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

 

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The scenes between Paul and Will today were....

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Tripp in that apron  

 

Tripp preparing a meal for the woman he loves

 

Theresa/Brady/Eve......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ   Can someone tell me why I should care?

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