Another week down - this January is just flying by! Well, for me, anyway. Apparently Salem's going to have a very long winter. Last time I wrote this column, two weeks ago, Philip and Belle had just gotten married. On Friday they were thinking about finally getting to sleep on their wedding night. Man, I'd certainly get a lot more done if my days lasted two weeks at a go! Well, at least the dusting might get done.
The way a Salem day stretches out reminds me of my last retail job - the more boring a job I tackled, the longer the day felt. I really earned my minimum wage at that job, I'll tell ya.
Salem's people also remind me of the co-workers at that miserable job. No one seemed to ever smile, no one had anything interesting planned, any news they brought in always turned out to be depressing, and if you turned your back for a minute, someone would be sure to stick a knife in it. Sound familiar? Guess you can figure out why I left that job. And why I'm finding it so hard to enjoy the goings-on in Salem. In fact, the high point of last week was finding out that Thursday was pre-empted.
With all that 'free time' on my hands, I decided to take a little spin around the internet, following that elusive bird - the hope of something great to come on what was previously my favorite soap. I struck gold when I found the famous "Spoilers Three" Early Edition. (These three writers have satellite, and receive the next days episode before regular viewers. They do a great recap of what is to come on tomorrow's show). Seems like everyone the Three talk to are just as bored and frustrated as I (and many of you) are with Day's writing and plots lately. So they threw out a request that the faithful viewers of the show send them their ideas for how to tie up the current drudgy plots, and come up with some more watchable scenarios. (See their site here: www.pcpages.com )
Most of the people writing in agreed that they are tired of the show trying to ram new pairings of our old faithful supercouples down our throat. Everyone is tired of the kidnap/island plot - they just want everyone to come home to the real Salem and reunite with their proper partners. And there's quite a lot of lobbying for Mickey to either choose Maggie over Bonnie, die of a heart attack, or discover that Bonnie's been spiking his porridge with some sort of drug that's effected his brain all this time. Bottom line - they want Maggie back with Mickey, pronto! Failing that, they'll take a long drawn out storyline of Maggie succumbing to her old drinking habits, giving Lucas a chance to shine as the savior who helps her get straight again.
You can probably guess that getting Billie out of Bo and Hope's life is a priority. You may not have guessed that so many viewers are tired of Hope being Bo's long time doormat. Some viewers would like Hope to take a hard line with Bo, giving him an ultimatum to choose between Billie and herself, and to divorce Bo if he picks Billie and the missing daughter. Then Hope could get back to the force, and maybe solve some of the crimes that the useless Salem PD find so difficult to close.
Everyone would be so over the moon if they could tune into Days of our Lives and see romance! They're not even all that fussy about who would get ogether with whom, mentioning that they'd be amenable to someone new setting down roots in Salem to partner up with the few single characters, like Celeste. Let's face it - as long as the two characters are in love, we'll be right behind them, rooting for the new couple and cheering when they finally get together. And no one seemed to put the having of sex on a pedestal, in fact, most people would be quite fine with no sex at all at lunchtime.
Quite a few people would like to see Jan finally get found out, and die a 'long painful death'. Something like what we viewers have gone through this summer as she kept Shawn captive, I guess.
And still other people are so turned off by how Salem's finest have changed that they would prefer to hitch their hopes to characters from the past. They'd like to see Carrie and Mike return, with a family in tow; Kayla and Patch move back to Salem and start a detective agency; or Lawrence Alamain to return and partner up with Victor to pull off a scam against the Hortons.
And of course, everyone still wants Stefano back where he belongs. Although most people would like to see Stefano come back to clear his good - they'd like the entire murderer storyline to have been an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a new criminal mind. Kate's been mentioned as a possibility.
So what do you all say? Do you have ideas for a way that Salem could write themselves out of this slump, and back in our favor? Send me an email with your suggestions, and I'll print as many as I can in the near future.
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