Days: March 2023 Discussion Thread

[Antoyne]

I’m the exact opposite. I despised Chelsea and Melvin. I preferred the first Chelsea. I always thought it was weird they paired her with like her uncle or whatever Max was to her. Hated that couple too.

[carolineg]

Bless you for putting together this montage of awesomeness. CS has just loads of charisma with everyone he interacts with.  CS also is super believable as Drake/John's son.  Not only to they have great chemistry as father/son they have similar mannerisms.   He's the only John child I truly like.  

I can't really remember the first Chelsea/Georgia.  I know she exists, but she wasn't memorable to me.  I do think the show put Max in some of the most awkward borderline incestous pairings and it was weird.  Melvin did a really good job at playing Chelsea as slightly unlikeable, but also rootable IMO.  Again, I preferred her and Nick as a couple to any one else she was paired with.  Like 45 year old Dan....

Edited March 21, 2023 by carolineg

[Antoyne]

Didn’t Max exclusively date his relatives?

[carolineg]

I think he dated Mimi who was not his relative lol.  But I think Farah Fath was on her way out, so it went nowhere.

[Antoyne]

I legitimately have zero recollection of that

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[Vee]

Yeah, Hogan Sheffer was big into pairing Max and Mimi and Chelsea with Nick, his creation. He talked these story plans up with real game in the soap press, and openly mocked DAYS' tendency to pair up cousins and relatives like Max and Chelsea. I was all for it as well as his planned Mimi/Max/Abby triangle.

Cut to a couple months later: Farah Fath quits. Nick sleeps with Chelsea's mom and begins a series of spiraling stories designed to humiliate him and marginalize the character that end in insanity. Max and Chelsea are eventually re-paired and written off together. All with Sheffer still at the show. I don't think those were his ideas, I blame Corday. Not that Sheffer is an untouchable genius by any stretch of the imagination, and he did a lot of bad shít at that show too, but I liked many of his early ideas at DAYS (not the E.J./Sami car rape!) and I think he got run over trying to do anything intelligent with the show post-JER. He was not the first nor the last.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Vee

[carolineg]

I don't think it was very memorable and they are low key related through her marriage to Shawn, so it does track as far as his type.  I want to say he dated Mimi in between the times he dated Stephanie and Abby. 

I hated the way Nick was portrayed during that time.  Chelsea/Nick was a sweet romance, but the show kept pushing the narrative that Nick was so awkward and geeky and then he sleeps with Billie.  I guess it's better than him being an actual psycho over Gabi, but the show really did Blake Berris wrong.

[Vee]

I absolutely adored early Nick. It was inspired material, and they took pains to show he was not a pushover or a schmuck just because he was a geek. Then they destroyed him in record time. I never got behind Dark Nick because I hated how the show had fùcked over a character who was not a stereotypical DAYS hunk. He and Rachel Melvin were great together.

[carolineg]

I am sure there were numerous behind the scenes changes that effected Nick's trajectory (I honestly don't recall because Days changed writers so often), but in hindsight it seems like such a bad decision for a legacy character (even if I side eye calling Jessica a legacy character because she was the worst).  I think Blake Berris was good with whatever material he was given and even good with the recent Heaven stuff, but it's a shame they destroyed the character because he would fit well on the canvas now.

[Antoyne]

Nick would be perfect to still have on the canvas now. Talk about a character assassination for no reason. 

[DRW50]

Sheffer was always much, much, much better at talking to an adoring soap press than he was at writing. Anything he said, I never believed. I wouldn't be surprised if he got bored with Nick fast, especially given his love of pigs like EJ, or Hunt Block's Craig on ATWT.

Edited March 21, 2023 by DRW50

[Vee]

I just think there's room for both Sheffer's many flaws and the long, long, long-running institutional issues at DAYS, particularly in that era where Corday would micromanage and whenever in doubt, always rehire Dena or Gary Tomlin.

[ranger1rg]

This HAS to be the worst set on any daytime soap. Seriously, I think it might be one of the all-time worst.

[carolineg]

I think BB's Nick was just such a unique character that Corday got scared.  He wasn't a traditional hunk, so I believe it was easier to phase him out over continuing to develop him.  The show gave him the prison rape story BEFORE GH's Michael, so there were ideas there.  It was just a very odd shift to homophobia and craziness and it would have been a lot better to explore the reasons he had these issues.  I think it was just too complicated for several different writers to take on.

[Vee]

I think Corday was scared of doing anything very different than the usual Reilly-esque playbook they'd been working out of almost nonstop since he first left, and that is initially what they were trying to do. When his power and that house style was threatened by first Sheffer and then Ed Scott we know what happened. Similar mess with McPherson and Thomas a few years later. Not that any of those runs were exactly works of genius, but you could feel, see and hear it any time you'd watch something potentially smart get the DAYS treatment by the time it made it to air - production-wise, editing-wise, music-wise, story-wise. It isn't until the Kristen return IMO that the show began to change its typical rhythm a little bit, and even now it's still insane.