Days of Our Lives: November 2021 Discussion Thread

[ranger1rg]

That doesn’t mean the WRITERS were clueless — it works when the actors playing it perform as if they’re not in on it.

Good camp (like John Waters’ stuff) is written by those who ARE in on it. When we laugh, we’re in on it with the writers, and the product is good stuff.

If it’s campy and the writers weren’t in on it? Bad camp. That can be enjoyable to watch but will never make the movie or show quality.

[Paul Raven]

Bill Bell's Days was way campier than anything Ron could attempt.

The beauty was that it worked on a number of levels so we laughed and cried at the same time.

Kinda like Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 50's.

[DynamiteKiddo]

Jim Reilly!  lol.  I know he has his fans (seems a fair amount of posters recall his first run fondly here) but I'll never not think of almost his entire body of work as the most simplistic drivel.  '93-'95 had some effective gothic mood going on with Maison Blanche, The Possession, and Aremid, but the overly repetitive scenarios and dialogue really detracted from the overall atmosphere.  And his earlier complex stuff with J&M's affair and Curtis Reed's murder mystery I largely attribute to riding off Sheri Anderson's coattails.  And I'm not saying that he wasn't in on the joke--clearly Laura, Vivian, Sami, Celeste, Susan, etc. were supposed to be wacky . . . but for all the stuff that was supposed to be funny, there was just as much (if not more) "serious" stuff that could be hilariously bad.  But come, like, '96, I think he got lazy and was parodying himself, but I bet he was living his best life with the Underground Paris City, 100 ED characters, etc.  I sometimes also wonder if he had some kind of contempt for the genre.  And then 2003-2006 was a special kind of hell.

RC, otoh, misses the mark often and leans way too hard into "camp," but I never get the sense that he's intentionally sabotaging the show (at least on "Days," there were moments on OLTL and GH that made me wonder lol).

[victoria foxton]

 

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[AbcNbc247]

Yeah. The original possession was campy, but the difference is was that it wasn’t played for laughs. It was meant to be serious. I always think back to the fight between Stefano and MarDevil where Stefano gets thrown off the balcony. That wasn’t played for laughs at all. That was a knock down drag out fight.

And it did seem like RC tried to do something similar in the scenes where John found out that Marlena was possessed again, but then he brings Susan in and that just messes it up. 

[koos]

Ron doesn't seem to know any more about soap operas than David Kreizman.

[carolineg]

Yeah and Marlena's crimes weren't campy like this either.  The church desecration, the falling chandelier, Kristen being tied up naked, etc were all creepy not silly like bringing random characters back from the dead.   Marlena/DH played Marlena's fear and confusion seriously.  I am not getting that now.

I know Susan is supposed to play the Celeste part in all this, but they aren't the same character.  Celeste wasn't a comedic character.  And honestly, does anyone even find Susan funny?  They write Susan like she is mentally unstable or slow instead of eccentric.

[TEdgeofNight]

Eileen Davidson is wonderful! I'm watching her on both Days and Y&R. She brings it everytime.

[AbcNbc247]

The possession scenes were good today, because they weren't being played for laughs. If only they would just keep at that momentum from day to day, then there wouldn't be any problems with it. Thankfully, Susan wasn't in it that much.

And I don't like Gabi either, but Rafe, Ava, and whoever really got to give all the Gabi bashing a rest lol it's like the way everybody was talking about Sami back during the fight for Henry's custody. Like, that's your family member lol cut back on all the trash talk.

[SFK]

Yes, I remember him saying years ago, “Camp doesn’t know it’s camp.” Waters’ films are campy but more satire than camp. Liza performing Quiet Love is camp.

[Soapsuds]

Today's show was pretty good minus the Rafe stuff. I fast forward all of his scenes. I would've rather have seen the continuation of Johnny getting undressed from Friday.

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by Soapsuds

[AlexElizabeth]

I roll my eyes so hard whenever an episode starts off with Gabi and Jake in the bedroom. They're almost as bad as Ben and Ciara. I swear all Gabi does is yell. She's so damn annoying. Can we stop with this crap about how Gabi deserves the mansion? No she doesn't.

And then there's Ava cooking in Rafe's kitchen again. Surely he's going to choke on something eventually, right? RIGHT? Oh, Ava loves Rafe.

The writers remembered that Nicole has a husband named Eric today. You know, the guy she should be hung up on. Not Rafe. I enjoyed the EJ/Nicole scenes even though Nicole's outfit was kind of ugly.

"You're possessed by the devil again?! I thought it was like the chickenpox and it could only happen once." LMAO!

[Bill Bauer]

I think Waters was trying to defend his movies from being labeled as simple "camp" by splitting hairs about the definition of camp. However, few people would argue that John Waters movies aren't campy or that he was was innocent to the fact that he was making something intentionally bad. I'm talking about his early material. 

Edited November 22, 2021 by Bill Bauer

[Faulkner]

Yeah, Susan Sontag made the distinction between “naive” and “deliberate” camp. John Waters would mostly fall into the latter category.

[Soapsuds]

In case you missed any part of it.

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