ALL: Imposters/clones/impersonate

[Contessa Donatella]

OMG, you've got me laughing! And, yes, Paul Rauch really fought HARD against the clone but it was a CBS exec who had this stupid idea so he lost royally & for his loss we ALL paid the price. Well, maybe it was good for Bethany Joie Lenz but it certainly was VERY BAD for everyone else!!! 

[janea4old]

I remember this!  It was so convoluted.  This was before VCRs and internet, and I didn't have soap mags, and nobody I knew watched soaps, so I was trying to follow along by myself and figure it out while it was airing.  He's the bad guy, no *he* is the bad guy, no wait, what? Oh!

[Lye-C]

Don’t speak for everyone. The clone story was the only time I tuned into The Guiding Light.

[Contessa Donatella]

This speaks for itself. 

[Lye-C]

They got the demo they were targeting.

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[Mitch64]

To each their own, (hey, no shame....I loved Brent/Marion and Nursery Rhyme Stalker and everyone seems to HATE those..) but did you stick around? 

 

[Lye-C]

No. If they had had another sci-fi/supernatural story I probably would stuck around. Instead I got more into Sunset Beach. 

[Mitch64]

I think there is the rub...people jump in to watch a car crash..uh, out of the ordinary storyline, and then jump ship..meanwhile, the audience that has been there for years leaves as they feel the storyline has compromised the show (hence they grafted the mob and dumb island storyline and they couldn't get out of them...a lot of loyal viewers left, and they were stuck with the Mob/San Crud/Kimmer is the best actress EVER and I will write in if she is off two days in a row.." crowd. 

I know..I jumped in to see what all the fuss was with the Salem Stalker on Days, and I stayed to watch the car wreck play out as I had no vested interest, and then they got to  Melaswen and the reveal didn't make any sense..I left. 

[Lye-C]

Well, Melaswen was a rewrite forced upon James Reilly by Ken Corday. That’s why it didn’t make much sense. I was a longtime viewer and I wanted all those characters to stay dead. JER specifically chose characters that viewers were very familiar with but who were no longer essential to the show, which was a brilliant move and way better than other soap serial killer stories where there’s one “major” victim and the rest mostly day players.

[Mitch64]

Hmmm, you really wanted Alice Horton choked to death on a donut..and felt that the original cast member matrairch was.."not essential?" (Though I heard Doug and at least Alice was "killed" after he had to change the storyline.) 

Everyone talks about what a genius the guy was but I thought his Days (at that time) was a piece of cr@p and watched it like an Ed Wood movie (though I will never regret watching it when Marlena fell off the terrace and bounced off of an awning and landed on a SCREAMING Sammi..if only it had killed her. So I would love to see what the original story was and how it would end. (his pet, Marlena a serial killer..I don't think so..) 

Sorry, went a bit off topic..."how bout those Marlena clones??" 

[Liberty City]

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 Don't even try. 

[Vee]

The Salem Stalker did one thing well - it got eyeballs on the show. JER was very good at that. He wasn't very good at much else after the '90s.

The deaths were often played for laughs and executed in the most cartoonish way possible, both script-wise and in embarrassing production value. You got to watch essential characters brutally slaughtered in comic ways while knowing the writer was giggling his way through it. I am a big fan of slasher movies; I think a serial killer story on a soap can be a lot of fun and good when done well and I am all for one that works right. (Some portions of the Music Box Killer story on OLTL a year later, ironically featuring Matt Ashford as the culprit, did a decent job.) But the SS as executed was just exploitative trash.

This extended to the character and dialogue work, the endless dream and fantasy sequences, the 'clues' and omens that went nowhere. JER wrote for sub-literate children after he left DOOL the first time, not that the dialogue was in great shape before he left (everyone talking to themselves or monologuing about exposition non-stop). In the early 2000s a lot of young fans online gave him an immediate pass because of their memories of their childhood. But once the millennium hit it was all his Catholic guilt over sexuality and fetishes, all his psychosexual obsessions with rape, gender, misogyny, the Church, etc. all at once, all the time. It's a fascinating subject for an academic paper but as a soap it was unwatchable. Nothing JER did onscreen at PSSNS in the last years of his life could ever make it to air today, nor should it. And the Salem Stalker was a precursor to torture porn. Just nihilism, because he clearly was wrestling with some of that at the core of his nature.

[Contessa Donatella]

Great recovery after a VIP rant! Nailed the dismount. 

[Mitch64]

Ha..thanks! I still like the idea someone up thread came up with, "What are the Marlena clones up to?" and would love for them to do a very special episode once in a while to check in on them..is it too meta to ask to have one clone be an "actress of a certain age" on a online soap..seeing her reading a script and screaming "WHAT...I'M the killer..who writes this CRAP" 

[Contessa Donatella]

You are on a roll today, giving me laugh after laugh. Reminds me of JFP saying she would never name names about Frankie's murder & then a month later she's screeching to Locher that "It wasn't me, it was the writers!" about 4 times in 20 minutes!