I posted the following on Michael Fairman's site, and it's pretty much a re-iteration of what I've posted before, but if I may - I'd like to post it again. If it's an issue, moderators, please remove the comment.
The “new” writing team at Days has their work cut out for them, no doubt.
1. STOP taping for 4 months & assess the situation. When you resume taping, have no more than a 4-7 week lead time from tape to air so that if something is resonating with viewers, it can be incorporated more & if something is making them tune out, it can be scrapped.
2. Get RID of some of the new & newish characters that aren’t working. Serena, Eve, Paige, Ben, Clyde, Anne (or make her not so snipey & explain that she hates the Hortons because Bill had an affair with her mom & broke up her family (but she’s not a Horton), Maxine (or pair her with Abe!!!) and Theresa LEAP to mind. Some long-term characters can be written out as well & their deaths could be utilized for some dramatic impact (which Days SORELY needs) – Roman and Maggie are prime candidates for this, in my opinion.
3. Set up John and Marlena as the happily married couple – much like Tom and Alice were back in the day – and KEEP them together in Salem. NO MORE sending John to Europe or Chicago. Enough is enough with that already.
4. Get back to character-driven storytelling, drama, intrigue and romance. Enough with the bed-hopping and bringing on character after character because the writers would rather see who THEY want instead of writing for who VIEWERS want.
Also, the show needs some structure – give us a hospital board & meetings once a month-ish with Kayla (chief of staff), Marlena (head of psychology), Daniel (chief surgeon), Maxine (head nurse), Anne (human resources), and Victor, Kate & John as financial contributors.
The cop-shop/city structure: Abe (Mayor), Roman (or Hope) (Commissioner), John (Chief), Rafe (informant who doesn’t carry a badge, but knows all the rules of the police as well as the streets), and a few recurring officers that can be utilized and/or killed off as storyline dictates.
A newspaper/TV station: Philip (Owner), Kate (Chief of Finance…or some such title), Jennifer (Editor), Nicole (free-lance reporter), Eric (photographer), Abby (field reporter). Nicole & Eric tail Rafe around to get a story. John (as chief) butts heads with Philip about how a case is being handled & reported). Jennifer (as editor) gets into it on occasion with Roman/Hope on how a case is going.
New nurses can be brought on with Maxine saying at a board meeting that Nurse DoGood has been hired in the pediatric section, a reporter can be cast… There is a LOT MORE that can be done to bring newbies on in a way that makes sense other than shoving an empty coffee cup in their hand & pushing them into the Square as the director yells “Action!!” which is what it seems – to me anyway – they’ve been doing.
Plus, this would provide a better avenue to tell storylines based on the characters rather than changing characters personalities to drive the storyline. If a new character works, find a way to keep them. If not, they buy the farm in a crime that is solved by Salem’s Finest.
Days – literally – has a golden opportunity with the 50th Anniversary approaching, they need to check their ego’s at the door and bring back some sorely missed characters — Bo, Jack, Steve, Philip, Belle, Shawn D, Claire, Vivian, Ivan, Gene, Don Craig, Craig & Nancy, Calliope, Bill…etc – leap to mind here as well. And not just for a “Hey, hello!” scene – bring some of them back for a few weeks & others back for extended umbrella-storylines that have lasting impact with the show.
Days & the powers that be at NBC and Sony need to really look at social media – not just the Days Facebook page, but at twitter as well as some message boards and see what & who viewers want and take it from there with a notion of where to go for the future. Crossovers for Days actors/actresses to some NBC primetime shows wouldn’t hurt either.