Panopticon

Now there is a show I would watch!

To my shock I have two nice things to say about the latest episode. First, I got warm fuzzies from John going all paternal with Lucas while Steve played wise elder statesman. Second, Anna is a joy and a treasure and of course knows her way around the options when it comes to ashes. This concludes my positivity for the year. See you in 2024 maybe.

Honestly it’s been so long it wouldn’t even be particularly noticeable if Jensen hadn’t been so successful/recognizable elsewhere. “Oh Eric was more slender and prettier 25 years ago as a teen… who wasn’t…” Speaking of 25 years ago, that promo is the stupidest one I’ve seen since Austin and Greta were stuck in the Garden of Eden.

I just keep thinking about this picture. When she was opening her gifts from Tim, she chose to wear a cute, age-appropriate, mainstream dress. A dress that shows her knees (and then some). A dress that shows her collarbone (and then some). A dress that fits closely and is cut to flatter her really very nice young figure. She knows that soon she will need to submit to Tim's directives about what she wears. She knows that Tim would not allow her to wear this dress. She knows that Tim will rant and rave and call women names if they wear dresses like this one. And yet, she wore it. She wore it knowing that, most likely, she'll have to spend the rest of her life talking about how horrible she was to have worn such a dress, and how grateful she is to Tim for saving her. (Hey... at least she didn't cause an ungodly divorce by mowing the lawn in a bikini. So far as we know.) She wore it to unwrap a Gilead-esque monstrosity three sizes too big. The dress Tim requires that she wear to hide almost every inch of skin, and certainly every curve, now that she belongs to him. Maybe she figures that a dress is just a dress (spoiler alert: it's not). But there's still a certain cognitive dissonance.

Well done Kayla-- she actually got slightly younger from her earlier runs on the show (when her birth date popped up as both 1959 and 1961, matching the two actresses who played her). That made sense with Bo popping up in 1983 aged 19 to Hope's 17... if he was born in late 1963, making Kayla two to four years older made sense. It probably helps that not only was Stephanie never SORASed, but didn't have kids of her own as a young adult.

I think Ron has had many problems with pacing in his writing, both on Days and OLTL. That said, I think he waited as long as he possibly could with Chad moving on. Either in this thread or the other one we were recently comparing the timeline with the so-called glory Days stories, and Chad is actually at the far end compared to Bo moving on from "dead" Hope and Rojohn moving on from "dead" Marlena. Same deal with dragging the kids into it too-- little Shawn-D was complaining that he wanted to be a family with Carly from the moment he met her, and Carrie worked overtime propping Olivia-Diana-Yvette.

That poor, poor girl. Tim is bad even by fundie standards. He now has a target at whom he can direct his hyper-concentrated anti-woman vitriol and she can never, ever escape.

Oh dear god. I knew Ron was open about, say, giving lines to Chanel that were originally meant for Destiny Evans, but the David/Leo thing hadn’t occurred to me. But you’re clearly correct. Annnd, NO. Ten thousand times no. Not in this universe or any other. Tuc Watkins was a gem in that role and cannot be replicated. All David Vickers imitators are annoying, excruciating, and must die in a fire. (Also: my iPad has not forgotten its OLTL fandom, because I tried to type “Vickers” and the autocorrect went for “Vickerman.” And to Ron’s credit, the Vickerman premiere was a truly glorious if campy soap moment. Hold the diploma!)

Bonus points if Allie also secretly resents Lucas for not fighting for custody of HER as a kid the way he always fought for Will. Instead, Lucas ceded control to Sami and Allie has implied several times that she really didn't care to be dragged around while Sami chased after EJ. Double bonus points if the topic of rape finally has Allie/Johnny learning on camera exactly how they came to have different fathers. I would ten thousand times rather see them grapple with that than love triangle over Chanel or anyone else. But even without any of that, I love it when Days has the nerve to show a character who isn't evil but just... isn't that cut out for day-to-day parenting. I always had a soft spot for Anna, who adored Carrie but knew well and good that Carrie would be better off with her father and assorted step-parents. I also found it interesting that Gabrielle gave Eve up for adoption not for typical soap reasons (blackmail, physical fear of the father, etc.) but because she didn't want to raise a child if she couldn't have a romantic relationship with the father. And Allie is still so young. If the show lasts, how would it be for Allie ten years down the line when she feels ready to be a mom, but knows she wasn't a great parent to her firstborn?

It’s a little dark but I wouldn’t mind the show highlighting the ramifications of Allie never wanting that kid in the first place. She didn’t consent to his conception. She made three separate adoption plans after being impregnated via rape… only for Sami to gleefully sabotage all three. Allie ended up raising Henry only because Sami had the power to say “you raise him or I will” and Allie didn’t want Sami dragging Henry around the way she did Allie.

Rebecca’s.

Yes, Olivia was Amy Yasbeck’s character. Amy Yasbeck occasionally comments when she’s tagged by those classic Days accounts on Twitter… corrected someone who claimed Olivia died and said Olivia should come back. (Which actually might have made sense when Orpheus’ kids were running around since Olivia was their aunt who attempted to raise them.)

And about the same as John waited back in 1987 when Marlena had her longest-lasting “death.” Marlena’s plane blew up in April, and John hit the sheets with Diana for November sweeps. Though Bo probably takes the prize for sleeping with Emmy almost before Hope’s body was cold after her cruise of deception death. (Or would have been cold if she’d really been dead…) Of course that was a bit different since Emmy wasn’t Bo’s “real” replacement love interest and he did wait some months for Carly.

Wow, that promo made me glad I don't have Peacock for so many reasons. And I'm a person who actively adored Nick Fallon in his original, pre-villain run: Nick/Chelsea is probably a top-five favorite couple of all time for me.

Re: Kayla being buried alive, could it be when the research lab where she worked exploded and it took the rest of Salem days to realize what happened and dig her out because she was supposed to be out of town?

I thought Days wasn’t available on the free tier anyway?

I hate the Gwen nonsense, but I would rather Jack shipped his widowed son-in-law with his niece than his brother-nephew with his niece. The Alex/Stephanie thing is such a slap in the face to Adrienne. And bouncing between cousins is pretty mild by Salem standards. Jack did it himself back in the day, and Jennifer/Melissa were much closer than Abby/Stephanie.

Could Adrienne be for Kayla? They were very close during Adrienne’s original run in the 80s.

She was Babe of the Week for both Captain Kirk on Star Trek and Little Joe Cartwright on Bonanza back then. She’s been all over pop culture for a long time!

This is so sad. It’s true, but it’s sad, since I would put Matt’s performance as Jack circa 1988 up there with the all time great Days performances.

Oh. If Harris managed to kill Ciara, maybe I could find it in my heart to like him after all. I'm willing to expand my horizons and try something new!

The time I most liked Jarlena best as a couple was in Aremid. I was pulling for them hard back then and was truly happy for their big wedding a few years later. There was a letter written by John—stolen by Kristen of course— in which he told Marlena that she’d been in love with other men and he’d been in love with other women but she had a hold on his heart. I appreciated that John was able to acknowledge their other loves without cutting them down because his love for Marlena could stand on its own, unthreatened. But it seemed like that’s changed over the years. Theirs is now so much the twuest wuv that ever wuved that all other loves must be forgotten or rewritten as monsters (I’m a bit salty about the Diana thing). Now that they’re a greedy steamroller destroying everything in their path, demanding to be the center of attention always, I don’t look forward to seeing them.

5000 episodes is certainly worthy of celebration. The little problem is, in those 5000 episodes Marlena has done All The Things multiple times. She's been dead over and over. She's nearly died over and over. She's married John umpteen times and had umpteen triumphant montages. So trying to celebrate her 5000th episode with more of the same falls flat. The big problem is, in recent years John and Marlena have gotten All The Things while other characters got leftovers at best. They never take a break from the front burner. They have a pattern of being more important in the younger characters' lives than the younger characters' own immediate families... even when the immediate families are right there. And they spent too damn much time feting a serial killer who strangled their grandson, murdered their son's longtime girlfriend, murdered their longtime close friend's granddaughter, etc. So when the 5000th episode rolls around, there's a certain sense of "feels more like five million." I wish that for the 5000th, one of Marlena's grandchildren had asked to write a mini-biography for a school project. Cue flashbacks as Marlena gives a sanitized version of her life. The kid goes home happy, and John arrives to say "well, I hope you left out..." and cue flashbacks to the stuff Marlena couldn't tell a child. Or something like that. Just not more "ten course meal for Jarlena, scraps for everyone else." That's not a 5000th episode. That's every damn day.

I don’t care for Steve Burton as an actor (I don’t deny that he’s wildly popular but I don’t see the appeal). I ALSO don’t care for Harris Michaels as a character. Not when the teen version apparently felt guilty about pushing Eve to a near-successful suicide attempt, and not when the adult version thought that his past with Eve was something to snigger about. He’s somehow simultaneously boring and loathsome, which is actually quite an achievement.

It irritates me every time I’m reminded that Harris Michaels is supposed to be relevant. For Marlena’s ex-lover…. Richard Cates! He knows that she’s now more supportive of serial murderers than she used to be and would like another chance with her as long as they’re both dead. (To be fair Richard Cates actually had a way higher body count than Ben did.)