teacake

I feel exactly the opposite -- they are wasting two legacy characters and running them into the ground to prop Steve and Ava's love child, who shouldn't be a romantic character with his history of violence toward women. The scenes with Kayla were forced and skin-crawly. I don't believe she would ever support the kid who just held a knife to her neck dating her niece who has a history of being raped.

He did more than state his personal beliefs... the "charitable" foundation he created with his Chic-Fil-A fortune donated millions of dollars to organizations that oppose same-sex marriage rights and support gay conversion therapy. After the boycott, they drastically reduced their anti-LGBT spending, so it seems like the boycott served its purpose.

Ugh, thanks for reminding me. There was really nothing of Steve and Kayla's that Dena didn't shit all over. SN and MBE still have it, but I really wish they had never come back and I could remember their story the way it was. In general, I don't know why the show chooses to invest in a few big sets, instead of more smaller ones. Steve and Kayla's house was beautiful, but no one has really cared about them since Josh Griffith left, and they were never going to keep putting up that set just for them. For storytelling, a few smaller sets would go a long way. Me too. Maybe he's supposed to be "evolved" now, but it just seems out of character to me. I miss his passion.

Hope and Rafe shouldn't have gotten their badges back -- Hope should never have been a cop again in the first place after she was in prison for trying to burn Bo up in their living room. But what they did to Stefano doesn't make what Tripp did to Kayla and her patients acceptable. Kayla is one of the classic heroines on the show -- her attempted murder shouldn't be "easily overlooked." Especially not given the more appropriate comparison of Joey actually being sent away to prison for killing Ava, who actually did mean them all harm. To me, it all just comes across as a soulless mess.

Tripp should never be allowed near the hospital or patients after the way he almost killed Hope and tried to destroy Kayla's medical career out of revenge for something that didn't even happen. He's a danger to everyone around him.

Yes, and Kayla always seemed genuinely closer to people like Adrienne and Hope, who she hasn't really interacted with in ages on the show. She was very upset when Marlena "died" in 1986 and they overlapped some after she was found to be alive in 1991, but the story has never really given them a memorable bond.

Yeah, if it is supposed to be about those years, then it is strange that they never reference Kayla and Roman's sibling bond. Steve and Roman were parts of some of the same adventure stories, but I remember their relationship mostly as a brother-in-law one. Even Steve and Bo weren't the buddies that the show would have you remember... they were at odds for years. My unpopular opinion is that Steve was much more interesting as a loner. They could have used that again in 2006 or 2015, but never really tried. Bo and Steve's relationship is great because of the story it reminds me of, but I don't think the buddy/bro stuff is that interesting without it. The Kayla/Marlena relationship feels somewhat forced, too, although the show hasn't tied them together as tightly as Steve and John.

Yeah, I'm sure budget is an issue, but we can also look at the way a character like Marlena was handled in the past. She came on as an independent character, and I think only two of her relatives ever came to town, and neither became a fixture. She was mostly established through her friendships and romances. There are other characters like Steve whose families were brought in later, but who were originally established with friends and romance. Viewers do seem to resent new families these days. I think it's a problem for soaps, but that there is something of the chicken and the egg to it.

And pairing new characters with core characters used to be a good way to establish fresh faces. At some point around the last blast era, it seems like the writers stopped trusting the storytelling and started more often shoehorning new characters into biological connections with the core families, like the viewers wouldn't care about them otherwise. It has always happened to some extent, but now it happens 100% of the time. Eli, Tripp, Paul, Lani, Stefan, Chad, etc. etc. etc. It's become such an automatic thing that the audience doesn't even those intro stories with the new families to play out, they just expect the characters to be accepted so they can move along into stories.

Overall, the Last Blast SORAS. It screwed up a lot of time frames on the show, pretty drastically. I know there's a lot of nostalgia for those stories now, but I still think it was a bad idea to pair Shawn and Belle and stick with it for so many years. It ran too many of the relationships of the show through too few people. Just where my favorites are concerned, bringing Ava in 2015 and acting like Steve and Kayla had no story to tell without her, when they had just been reunited and had plenty of conflict to use. The writers have kept digging the hole without ever taking the time to rebuild what used to be a beautiful love story. It's so sad to see Steve perpetuating the cycle of abuse, and minimizing what Tripp did to Kayla, when that is what his story was once about overcoming.

It's so gross. The show wants it both ways, where Tripp is immediately part of the family he tried to undermine, but also can date Kayla's relatives. Kayla and Bo were brother and sister and Kayla has no relationship with his kids - not to mention no kids of her own on the show. Ciara just calls her "Kayla" like she's some random person. It's ridiculous.

When they tried this in 1989, SN was outspoken later about wanting the patch back. He has talked about how he had to get contacts for his non-patch eye this time around, but a lot of the characterization is based around it. I don't think Steve and Kayla have much good to celebrate in their lives, to be honest. As much as I'm a long time fan, their story in recent years has been hit after hit without any build.

Killing a woman, no matter how evil she was and having to live with it puts Tripp exactly equal with Joey, though, and he has paid far less. He hasn't had any of Joey's crippling guilt (or maybe Lucas Adams just isn't equipped to show it), and he has had no real consequences. And he has what he did to Kayla on top of it, and no one seems to think he should be held accountable for any of it. Karma would be Pamela's son coming to town to get revenge on Tripp. Kayla didn't do it to save Stefano, she did it to save John. If she hadn't, Stefano's hack would have removed it without regard for John's life, like was done to Benjy for his liver. She wasn't manipulated by her concern for anyone but John.

I did, because I was always waiting for the ISA to come cash their chip in with Steve for helping him cover up the murder, and never understood why that card wasn't played. This story makes no sense, and if the cover up falling apart was a problem, surely half a dozen more deaths would also be a problem. I'm still not swallowing the Tripp Kool-Aid and think this was a missed opportunity to kill him off (and finally have him suffer some actual consequences for the shit he pulled with my Kayla).

I can't decide if this show is awful, or just awfully boring. I haven't really watched much at all since last fall, maybe even before that. Tuned in to see the S&K scenes on Wednesday, which were sweet and decently acted, but more or less content free. The dialogue is completely generic and still manages to run afoul of their history at least half of the time. And John's actions make me sick to my stomach. I'm sick of the DAYS' gaslighting and telling us people love and care for each other, while showing them hurting and abusing each other.

I watched some of it -- I remember doubting GG"s wife's jealousy was anything but for the camera. Nadia's mom was the best.

The rumor was about Kristen Renton, who played Morgan Hollingsworth when Stephanie and Chelsea were in the sorority. She was briefly paired with JKJ's Philip. IDK if it was true, but I always took it with a major grain of salt, since it was mostly pushed by fans of another of Philip's pairings. There was a lot of change in focus and direction on the show around that time. The producer in the rumors was Ed Scott who had been at Y&R for many years before he came to DAYS. Re: the blind item, nothing would surprise me in Hollywood, but Massey won several Emmys before he was let go, and now he's back. And how much continuity has there been BTS since the early 2000's? I wouldn't rule out some incidents coming to light at DAYS but IDK about this one.

I agree with all of this except I have never seen any chemistry between Lucas Adams and Mary Beth Evans, and not for MBE's lack of trying. LA has never made me think that his character sees Kayla as a person or thinks about her at all, and that is the biggest problem with the story. She is just a prop for his bullshit "redemption".

Steve's comment today that Tripp has "nothing to be sorry for" reminds me of something that was said about one of these sexual assault cases... If it was such a small thing that women shouldn't be upset, how was it big enough to ruin a legacy? If Tripp has nothing to be sorry for, how is he on the hook to be blackmailed for something that is big enough to destroy the life of the person he was trying to hurt in the first place? It's really gross.

It seems like a way to avoid writing other characters with accountability for their actions. For me, making a hurting father into more of a villain in the story than the person who pulled the trigger is really uncomfortable. I wish DAYS would tackle these issues more responsibly, if they have to hot button topics like police shooting a black teenager. There's a lot to unpack in the issue and what they are doing with it seems pretty backwards, IMO.

Disgusted by the Tripp/Steve scenes today. Why is Steve so insistent on making excuses for what Tripp did to his wife, and speaking for Kayla? The show trying to make Tripp into the victim here is absurd, because he's never been held accountable for what he did. And these scenes are getting repetitive. This is the problem with the whole story for me. Kate's guilt is much more believable than Tripp's ever was, he hasn't admitted what he did, so everyone acting like she's horrible and he's Jesus for suddenly wanting to protect the person he was content to destroy five minutes ago doesn't wash.

I agree with that... I only think that the intervening years, and the time that they tried to play with the EJ/Sami connection while not acknowledging the rape, is part of the narrative too..

The problem for me with all of these stories (Sami/EJ, Kristen/Eric, Steve/Ava) is not seeing that original scenario was rape, but that the show doesn't commit to playing it out that way. The show eventually came around to letting Sami talk about the situation as rape, but there was a lot of meantime where that wasn't the case. Eric was raped by Kristen, but the reveal of the tape of it in the church it played like he had done something scandalous. Ava coerced Steve into having sex with her, but the aftermath of it played like cheating (Steve even asked Joey if he was jealous). The show always tries to have it both ways. It wants to have these sex scenes without having to write the characters as accountable for the choices that allow them to happen. But there is nothing salacious about rape, and trying to use these rape scenarios to steam up the screen muddies the waters, even if the characters sometimes say the right things.

Unless I missed something -- which given how much I've been watching is totally possible -- Hope doesn't know what Tripp did to Kayla. They talked at Abby's bachelorette party, but it was just about how Kayla should tell Steve that she was angry about Tripp and Joey. (Which she never did).

Yeah, the material has been bad, but I'm setting the bar a lot lower than redeeming it single-handedly. I thought LA brought some energy to the creepazoid material and leaned into that, but he was pretty flat in the aftermath, and didn't do much to show layers or bridge the different versions of his character. LOL. He blocked me during the Sabrina stories on GH, and I agree. The dynamic he creates on social media is kind of gross.