And such a diverse number of opinions points out how we all view the show, and our favorites. You cannot bring back favorites without getting rid of a few characters. The show only has room/time for x amount of characters. The new writers inherited a serial killer story. And that kind of story doesn't play well with strangers as the victims. By that, I mean background ones........i.e. bartender at TBD, nurse at hospital, babysitter for kids...........
I think, with the young people, the show is doing a good job of letting us get to know them all gradually. Joey & Ciara have gotten the most airtime so far, but we would all be complaining if half the show was Salem High School antics/conversations.
I am definitely in the camp that thinks the Aiden story has been poorly handled. Yes, Rafe mentioned how Aiden was beneficiary to Hope's ins. policy, but nothing said about him doing it, or why. She already had given him $100,000, with no one knowing. And now, she took even more out of her trust fund to pay off Malcolm, but someone else has the money. She won't give info to the police, she is entirely too wrapped up in this revenge thing about Bo, which leaves her children very vulnerable and ...lost.
We have had a lot of flashbacks, some romance (instead of the usual slam, bang, thank you ma'am, porn sex we had been having) and except for Brady/Theresa, it has been really nice. We had nasty via Andre', Kate, serial killer mystery, including danger with some fantastic acting by those involved, adventure. And mostly, nothing is dragged out for 6 mos or more.
Actually, it is nice to see Caroline more than once a month, same goes for Roman, even though he really has no story. But she does. However, as noted, the new writers really had tons of bad stuff to fix, and I like the faster pace. But that doesn't mean we have to ignore explanations. With the holidays coming right after the anniversary, again, it has been difficult to really move on, but am sure that into January, we will be really getting into whatever the new head writing team has in mind for Salem.