All: Ryan Gosling talks "Days of Our Lives" "Deidre Hall" and the soap genre

I don’t know. Rewatching during the lockdowns gave me a new appreciation for the earlier part. I think the story with Kate/Billie/Austin/Curtis was well told, and bringing Laura back during the trial was fantastic. Carly buried alive was incredible. The entire Roman/Marlena/John story culminating with Belle was also pretty good. Sami’s villain origin story with her mother issues, Alan, bulemia, and kidnapping Belle was a good run of stories.

Characters like Kristen and Peter, Billy Reed, etc were awesome. It starts to fall apart for me around Maison Blanche. While a fun story and I was thrilled Hope was alive, Roman was at that point too harsh and childish, and the rot of characters only existing for the plot and starting to get stupid starts to settle in. The Desecrator was spooky and gothic, and the initial Marlena reveal was shocking. But that story began the full shift into camp and characters being stupid, constantly talking to themselves out loud, etc. and they just all got dumber and dumber.

As much as I loved Bo and Hope, it was very sad when Billie realized she wasn’t going to get her happy ending there. So they were doing something right! And she didn’t hate Hope like later on. It was nuanced.