Line #18 YMMV/DaysofourLives


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** Marlena Evans Black and her daughter Belle Black: A popular fan interpretation of the characters are that they are selfish jerks who play their romantic suitors against each other so she can have TWO men loving her at the same time.
3	** Jennifer Horton, once the NiceCharacterMeanActor reveal happened in the mid-1990s, when Melissa Reeves was revealed to be having an adulterous affair with a co-star. Jennifer went from the plucky girl next door who's pure heart was such that she was able to redeem a rapist who argued IN COURT that a man can rape his wife and it not being rape, to a self-absorbed hypocrite who mocked her husband's post-traumatic stress disorder from having his life destroyed by the [=DiMeras=] and who was bed-hopping with strangers whenever she thought he was dead.
4	** Sami Brady: Cold-blooded sociopath or fucked up teenager who went though the trauma of losing her mother as a child, being raised by a father who turns out to be an imposter (after being told originally that he had plastic surgery) and then being reunited with her real dad only to watch her mom cuck her dad with Fake-dad and try and pass off their bastard daughter as her real dad's and then gets raped by a college-age guy who she thought was her friend and calls her a liar when he gets arrested, plus out that he only was her friend because he wanted to rape her half-sister!
5	** Kate Roberts: The only sane woman in a town of fucked up families who wants protect her son from the lunacy of the city and Sami Brady (whom the whole town knows is crazy and evil), or a cold and ruthless matriarch who seeks absolute and total control over her son Lucas to make up for how she abandoned and forsaked her other children.
6	** Daniel Jonas: Is Daniel a good-hearted, laid back doctor who sometimes make a bad decision in his personal life or a serial homewrecker who will do whatever he needs to if he has the hots for a woman?
7	* ArchivePanic: Over 14,000 hour-long episodes produced to date, with ''every single one'' still existing? Check.
8	* AudienceAlienatingEra: Years and several writing regimes later, there are still critics who assert that the show never recovered from Reilly's initial tenure as head writer. But even fans who liked his original run will generally agree that his second tenure in the writer’s room (from 2003 to 2006[[note]]A period which saw Reilly pulling double-duty on ''Days'' and fellow NBC soap ''Series/{{Passions}}'', the latter of which he created, serving as head writer and consulting producer on both shows. With ''Series/{{Passions}}'' being easily the goofiest and most self-aware soap on the air at that point, much of the same DenserAndWackier spirit ended up on ''Days'' as well.[[/note]]) was a dumpster fire, even if they did enjoy Chelsea Brady and the gloriously nonsensical Salem Stalker storyline.
9	* BrokenBase: This happens with any soap opera regarding couples, story arcs, etc., but the original tenure of head writer James E. Reilly is still controversial. Supporters will argue he breathed new life into a show still reeling from the effects of the 1988 writers' strike and point out that quite a few of his characters (e.g. Sami Brady, Kristen Blake, Lucas Horton, and the Reed-Roberts family) are still present and popular in the modern day. Detractors claim his use of supernatural and other unrealistic (even by soap standards) elements derailed the story and alienated longtime fans, and/or that he relied too much on shock value, [[NegativeContinuity ignored continuity]], dragged out storylines, made an incoherent mess out of backstories like John Black's (including the retconning of "Roman Brady's" origins to reveal that John had just assumed Roman's identity) and Tony [=DiMera=]'s parentage, and reduced characters and their motivations to [[{{Flanderization}} two dimensions, at most]].
10	** Reilly's second tenure kicked off with the notorious Melaswen arc, possibly the single craziest storyline in soap history, where various beloved characters were apparently murdered by a SerialKiller, who seemed to be revealed as the very-beloved Marlena, only to have an epic FakeOutTwist where all the characters were actually abducted to an island (which was built to be an exact duplicate of Salem). Everyone agreed it was preposterous. The division was between fans who felt it was SoBadItsGood, others who were upset at the shamelessness of the audience manipulation, and some who were just relieved that nobody was actually dead.
11	* CreatorsPet: Belle, Shawn-Douglas, Daniel, Melanie and the whole Hernandez clan are characters this has been thrown at over the years.
12	* DieForOurShip: ''Days'' couples tend to have very passionate fanbases. The Broe vs. Phloe (Brady and Chloe/Philip and Chloe), Shimi vs. Shelle (Shawn-Douglas and Mimi/Shawn-Douglas and Belle), and Lumi vs. Ejami (Lucas and Sami/EJ and Sami) battles come to mind. And God help you if you think Jennifer Horton should be with anyone other than Jack Deveraux.
13	* DracoInLeatherPants: Jack Deveraux, Steve Johnson, E.J. [=DiMera=].
14	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
15	** Jack Deveraux was originally envisioned as a typical rich jerk that would serve as a RomanticFalseLead for Steve and Kayla, as many other couples have had before and after, and the character was so destined-for-nothing that they went through three actors in less than a year (Joseph Adams, James Acheson and Matthew Ashford). Eventually, however, the character found the right actor (Ashford) who provided him with so much depth and humor, that while the couple he was interfering with was gone within the next couple years, Jack Deveraux wound up spending more time on the show than either of them combined (while Mark Valley and Steve Wilder assumed the role during the mid-to-late 1990s, fans associate the character with Ashford's portrayal most).
16	** The same can be said of Lucas and Sami. Originally the meddling little siblings of big couple Austin and Carrie, respectively, they wound up lasting longer and becoming much bigger than both of them. Sami eventually ended up the main heroine.
17	* FridgeHorror: So, in 1996, Sami's neighbor kidnaps Will and sells him on the black market because she thinks he'll be better off. But here's the thing: Will is gay. He might have been sold to someone who was extremely homophobic and would not have accepted Will. Or he might have ended up in a country that's extremely homophobic. So, it's a very good thing he was found!
18	* HesJustHiding: Despite WordOfGod that any characters killed off from now on will ''stay'' dead, most fans are refusing to believe this about Stefano, given the myriad of times he's returned from the dead. Such a rule didn't really stick again and they even ran a story where Rafe and Shane made it look like Stefano was alive when they thought he wasn't. At least until they saw a picture that wasn't a part of their plan of what appeared to be Stefano alive. This was presumed to be the last official plot for Stefano now that his actor, Joseph Mascolo, passed away in December 2016... but even Mascolo's death couldn't prevent the Phoenix from rising again, and Stefano was temporarily revived in November 2019, with Stephen Nichols in the role (although the resurrected Stefano turned out to be a brainwashed Steve Johnson).
19	* PortmanteauCoupleName: Shelle (Shawn-Douglas and Belle), Ejami (EJ and Sami), Chabby (Abigail and Chad) and Bope (Bo and Hope), just to name a few.
20	* RealityIsUnrealistic: One particular aspect of the 2019 storyline in which Julie Williams suffers a massive heart attack (which Gabi thought Julie was faking to make her feel guilty about her behavior towards Julie, nearly leaving Julie for dead) was seen as pretty outlandish among some fans. After forcing Lani Price to do some groveling to allow the transplant to happen, a grieving and vengeful Gabi Hernandez allows Julie to receive the fatally wounded Stefan [=DiMera=]'s heart. As payback for Lani accidentally killing Gabi's husband, Stefan [=DiMera=][[note]](Lani was attempting to shoot his mother, the once-thought-deceased Vivian Alamain, who was about to kill Lani, only for Stefan to dive in front of the bullet and get mortally wounded in the neck)[[/note]], Gabi blackmails Lani into jilting Eli Grant on their wedding day under threat of using an app that controls the speed of a [=DiMera=] Enterprises-manufactured pacemaker implanted into Julie (Eli's aunt)’s heart to kill her. Head writer Ron Carlivati revealed on his Twitter account in October 2019 that the plot device was inspired by a 2013 CNN report about former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had an internal defribrillator he received in 2007 modified to disable wireless features that could be hacked to induce a coronary event.
21	* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap:
22	** Chelsea Brady, upon being [=SORASed=], started off as an extremely hated character. She was an arrogant [[JerkAss jerkass]], was rude to everyone around her (even her best friend Abby), was responsible for killing her little brother, and tried to break up Bo and Hope's marriage in order to rekindle his relationship with her mother, Billie Reed. When she started dating Nick, she became a much better person. She went from being the most hated character to one of the show's more popular characters.
23	** Arguably to a lesser extent, the same happened with Melanie Layton (now Jonas). She started out an unlikable and shallow con-artist (although deliberately so), but was given a sympathetic backstory and became so popular she was even given a connection to the Horton family by way of her birth father, Daniel Jonas, being tied to that family tree.
24	* TheScrappy:
25	** Belle Black. While Carrie and Sami Brady, and Jennifer Horton all worked well in their role as the young blonde female heroine of the show, Belle was widely reviled by fans due to her perceived judgmental, self righteous personality.
26	** Taylor Walker. After two extremely likeable actresses (former ''Series/GeneralHospital'' stars Natalia Livingston and Tamara Braun) failed to sway fans into liking her, she was mercifully PutOnABus for the second time. (Taylor was first seen in 1998, with Katherine Ellis in the role, also short-lived.)
27	** Willow Stark (so much that she was KilledOffForReal due to the large volume of hate mail that NBC received about her character).
28	** Alex North, a new character that was developed to allow Wayne Northrop to be able to return to the show (his old role of Roman Brady having been recast nine years earlier, in 1997, with Josh Taylor, who previously played bartender Chris Kositchek from 1977 to 1987), launched into a storyline that a good chunk of fans would prefer to forget, in which Alex was revealed to be an abusive ex-husband of Marlena's who used his authority as her therapist (in order to help her regain her memory) to control her.
29	** While a lot of people liked Will Horton, the Guy Wilson incarnation was reviled as having made one of the most likable characters on the show turn into one of the most annoying. This was to the point where while some were sad to see the character go, the murder of Will was in some cases applauded for finally getting rid of the actor. Needless to say upon Will's resurrection, the show brought back his previous actor, Chandler Massey, and had him reshoot scenes that they needed for flashbacks from when Wilson played Will.
30	* SeasonalRot: In addition to the aforementioned second James E. Reilly era, there were quite a few issues associated with the frequent head writer switch-ups that occurred between 2015 and 2017. Storylines and couples flip-flopped so often that it became irritating to try and keep up with. Each turnover seemed to warrant [[OutOfFocus changing the B-cast]] at much-higher rates than usual: In that time, Belle and Shawn returned and left the show thrice (each), Xander was PutOnABus only to be brought back for another storyline...three times, and Eve was let go only to end up returning as a recurring character twice and then being forgotten about. (Her actress, Kassie [=DePaiva=] was diagnosed with cancer and was allowed to take time off, but there was no on-screen reason for her departure until she returned again.) While not entirely universal, the change to Ron Carlivati as head writer caused a lot of these changes to settle into more acceptable standards.
31	* SuperCouple: Doug and Julie are sometimes considered the UrExample for the SoapOpera genre (when ''Time Magazine'' did a cover story about soaps in 1976, they were featured in the cover photo). Later, playing FollowTheLeader with [[Series/GeneralHospital Luke and Laura]], the show presented Bo and Hope, John and Marlena, Jack and Jennifer, Steve and Kayla and many others.

Context YMMV / DaysofourLives