This is not the end of the world

I know I’m late to this one, and I have been hovering around writing this post for a few days, but haven’t had the right amount of time to devote to it.  

This one being the firing of Deidre Hall and Drake Hogestyn.  

My reaction to this is not outrage or prophesising the end of soaps.  Rather it is somewhere between “meh” and “well, that was kind of overdue”.

Meh, because while reading Corday’s announcement of their departure – “will be offscreen from January for an unknown period of time” – I could clearly picture him walking down to the casting bank and taking out hedging insurance against ratings fluctuation.   That is the least convincing final, last ever, firing I have ever seen.  And would be even if this weren’t the same guy that fired half the cast a couple of years ago and then brought them all back AND the same guy that fired one of these same actors last year and brought him back again.  Hell, in this case he’s not even bothering to go to the “trouble” of “killing” the characters “off”.

And as for it being well overdue, I have been on record for a long time in saying that I thought Marlena and John were played out.  I thought John’s “death” last year was well done and a great send-off for the character that had been given not much to do for quite some time.  I thought that it also gave Deidre Hall the chance to actually give a decent performance for the first time in ages.  And had they sent Marlena travelling in grief afterwards, that would have been fine because they didn’t have anything else to do with her aside from being a parent to her kids, two thirds of whom are off-screen.  And while I have found Robo-John as amusing as the next person since his return, it wasn’t really a good enough reason to bring him back especially given it still didn’t lead to any truly interesting story for Marlena.

Don’t get me wrong, I have loved these characters in the past.  I was never a raving John-Marlena fan, but I enjoyed chunks of their relationship, and I’ve certainly enjoyed plenty (I might even say most) of their relationships with other people.  I just think that everything that could be done with these characters has been done.  And then some.  They’ve each been killed, lost their memories, been kidnapped, been killers, had affairs and happy marriages, multiple children, and, you know, ventured into the world of possession and exorcism.

And contrary to what I’ve been reading in some commentary, Deidre Hall is not Erika Slezak or Susan Lucci.  Her departure is not a symbolic end of the show.  Certainly during the later parts of the Reilly years, Marlena became the centre of the show.  But she was not an originating character, the show was worse for rotating around her, and Deidre Hall has – but for a few set pieces here and there – been miles from her best work for years.   And frankly, some of this show’s best, most beloved years in the mid to late 80s were the years when she was off doing prime time.

All of this is not to say that I am in favour of cutting the vets when times and money get tight.  Anyone who reads this blog on an even semi-regular basis knows that I am exceedingly pro-vet.  More importantly though, I’m pro-balance.  Not all new young characters who I can’t possibly care about, not all vet characters who are storied-out and left to do not much.  

On that basis it seems to me that John and Marlena are the obvious ones to go.  And Roman, if we’re making a list.  Days is blessed with vets.  Blessed with vets they seem to go in cycles of using, and cursed with vets who are in established unbreakable super couples.  But if you look at the big three, I maintain that John and Marlena are those to go.  

Bo and Hope have had a new vitality in the post-Reilly years, and as a Brady-Horton-Kiriakis combination, have plenty of family story to tell.  Steve and Kayla have a veritable mountain of story to mine given the amount of time they were off-screen even if writers have been spectacularly reluctant to do that anywhere close to the way it could/should have been done.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Stephen and Mary-Beth were the next heads on the block, but I would be so disappointed because it would be a huge waste.  As it has been for ages.  With Drake and Deidre I don’t feel it’s a waste.  I feel that they have done everything they possibly can with these characters.

Hell, they had to put his brain on a disk to write for him this time around.

Good story – which CAN be written within budget constraints - that’s all I want.

With or without Drake and Deidre I am not at all confident that Days can deliver that in the next 18 months of reprieve time they’ve been given.  As Tom Casiello noted, for some time now Days, onscreen and off, has appeared to be just existing day to day.  They’re not trying anything, it’s not in any way compelling, and I haven’t been moved to watch since August.  Not in an angry “I can’t watch this dreck anymore!” way, just in a “meh” way.  Days is not sufficiently interesting, or even offensive or controversial enough, to make me summon the energy to lift the remote/mouse and turn it on.

So all I can hope now is that the combination of (a) short-term renewal; (b) further budget cuts; and (c) removing some characters that no longer have much story left in them (be they vets or newbies) due to such budget cuts, will trigger something new and interesting in this show that I have in the past loved so much.

And, of course, I hope they build up to John and Marlena’s departure in a good way, rather than throwing them together at the last second and then having them sail off around the world while one of their close relatives is still dying in hospital.  Just by way of random example plucked out of the air.

Comments

[tripp]

Very well said. I can't get worked up about Jarlena's firing and think Ken has no real choice if he is forced to reduce budget by 40%.

Now other actors being let go...well that's different and I'm nervous but Jarlena going away is fine. I do hope they get a nice departure.

[becky jean]

I agree zara. I was never a major John/Marlena fan. I didn't object to them, but I wasn't particularly drawn to them either.

I hate that soaps cut vets loose without seeming to understand their value to a show, but I don't see a lot of story potential for these specific characters and I am not distraught at the news. However, I don't see any potential storylines coming up to keep me tuning in. I'm just about ready to remove the show from my program list.

[Nolebucgrl]

For me this was the best Days related news to come out in ages. John and Marlena have been played out for years. I agree, Dierdre Hall is not the Queen of Days that fans and some bloggers are pretending she is. She hasn't been a main character in years and when she has been on screen she's sucked the life out of her partners.

As to John, he should have stayed dead. NuJohn has been semi-fun but the storyline got dropped and became uninteresting and his hair became scarier and they inexplicably made him love her again and he was back to sucking too.

That said, I don't think anything is going to change on this show til they get a real writer, Higley can't even do the simple things well.

[Lisa]

I have to say that I pretty much agree. In fact, I'm always rather stunned that people think that Deidre Hall is a hallmark of Days. Perhaps it's because of the time period when I began watching in the mid 1980s. She was "dead" during a stretch of five or six years and so, no, I've never considered her essential. In fact, I've mostly considered her to be an annoyance. Drake was a constant fixture while I watched the show, but by the time they werent through a hundred incarnations of "John Black", I pretty much thought that his character had been reduced to a cipher and Hogestyn was never actor enough to overcome it. I was mostly done with DH when he ceased to be Roman.