Returns and Story Comments

I’m still upset with how Martha Madison has been treated by Days. She’s really become Belle for me and I think she deserves a lot better than this. I wonder if they will recast since Brandon Beemer is still on contract as Shawn. They both have really grown into their roles and I really think there’s so much untapped potential with them. They really can be the next Bo and Hope.

Besides JPL as Phillip, Louise Sorel is coming back as Vivian next week too. Really looking forward to her return as short lived as it may be.

I wonder how long Jen Lilley is going to stick around. I do think that Emily O’Brien can be a great replacement for Jen as Theresa. I think too many fans couldn’t get onboard with Gwen.

Now, I’m just curious as to what they’re going to do with all the leading ladies departing the show? We’re losing Belle, Chloe and Gabi soon. There’s not enough actresses currently on the show to pair up with all these leading male characters.

The show never did seem to know what to do with the "Teen Scene" from the late 90s/early aughts; with the exception of Brady, and even that's questionable.

And it's disappointing too, because somehow they peaked too soon, giving the kids some pretty great adventures and love stories back in the day, and then neglecting their character development or very existence for the last 20 years; with some pretty fleeting moments of something usually stupid; like Jan waking up from her decades long coma still obsessed with Shawn and then wearing a Belle mask to sleep with him...

I always thought it was a mistake to give Shawn and Belle a baby so early in their relationship. The one exception was when she was played by Alina Foley and played opposite Robo-John - the scenes with those two were adorable. But apart from that, the show hadn't had a chance to truly explore the dynamics of Belle and Shawn as individuals post-high school, let alone an adult couple, both actors get recast and suddenly they're a couple in their very early 20s with a bay; and the show has no idea what to do with them other than stick on a boat and ship them off into the sunset.
Worse still was then aging Claire to adulthood, while her parents were supposed to still be comparatively young (too young to have had her) and at the expense of still not developing Shawn or Belle.
It's like they decided they'd missed the boat on Shawn and Belle, might as well just move on to the next generation and hope for the best; and then that blew up in the face spectacularly too...

And Philip, and Mimi. I'd even include Jan to some degree; they really went off the deep end with her. She could have been good as the next generation of female antagonists; especially once Heather Lindell took on the role. I always thought she did some excellent work in her performance; at least of what I saw of her on the show. Don't know how it went with her return.
Rex and Cassie got the shaft too; they were late to the scene, as it were, but an infusion into that group. Their origins aside, I always liked Rex and Mimi and hated how they screwed that relationship up. And Cassie fell off the face of the earth.
Plus Stephanie, Max, Chelsea and Abigail, who were close behind the Last Blast crew. Three iterations of Stephanie and it sounds like they still don't know what to do with the character.

Jesus, when I started the reply I was just thinking of Philip, Mimi and Jan and then more kept occurring to me. They've taken so many cracks at the next generation of new characters over the last 15-20 years, and where are any of them now?


What did Rex vs Xander do? I try to keep tabs on the weekly descriptions, but I definitely don't follow a lot of the nuances as well as I used to with so many new characters; and the descriptions always being coy.