Days of our Lives: The Devil Made Me Blog It

I was pretty excited when I heard SOAPnet will be airing three special episodes of Days of our Lives in honor of Halloween on the 28th. They are from probably one of the most infamous storylines in the show’s history: the Marlena possession storyline. And not just any possession, my friends. Marlena Evans here was possessed by the devil, ol' Satan himself. Here are the episode descriptions:

9PM: Episode #1995-7528 (OAD 5/12/95) Kristen is on to Marlena who morphs into a panther and also has Shawn attacked by a swarm of bees.

10PM: Episode #1995-7531 (OAD 5/17/95) After her loved ones see Marlena levitate and then interact with her as the devil, it's decided an exorcism is needed.

11PM: Episode #1995-7570 (OAD 7/18/95) With her friends and family thinking Marlena's dead, John fights the devil for her soul and brings her back.

Now after reading these, I immediately realized who the head writer was at the time, none other than James E. Reilly. I mean, considering the bizarre storylines that have come from Passions and his style of writing, there’s really no other person in my eyes in the soap opera writing business that could have come up with any more out-of-this-world type drama. As much as I’m looking forward to seeing these episodes for nostalgic purposes, I have to admit I’m a bit cringe-worthy now that I’ve seen the summaries. I was also surprised to find out that this storyline managed to last one year. And considering the quality of Mr. Reilly’s work, particularly on Passions, I couldn’t believe that he had a second run on Days; coming up with another infamous storyline, Melaswen in 2004 (that’s New Salem spelled backwards), where a bunch of characters who were believed to be murdered were actually wound up stranded on an island. I’ve heard mostly mixed reviews about the Possession era, but I know a lot of fans were turned off by Melaswen, and some haven’t come back since.

There are many soap fans who loathe this man. I myself really can’t say I’m a big fan of his work either. I admit after I managed to get over my anger with NBC for canceling Sunset Beach, I gave his creation Passions a try and did manage to enjoy it for the first 3 years. Then after that, I got sick of it. Basically because the plots were going nowhere fast, the dialogue became very repetitive, and while I'd try to tune back in a couple of times, nothing kept me hooked and made me want to stay. Also there were many instances where we finally thought something major was happening, only to find out the big revelation was a dream. That gets really annoying if it happens repeatedly. And when you stop caring about your favorite characters and/or couples, that is really not a good sign. I wasn’t sad to see it leave NBC. It was nowhere near Another World or even Sunset Beach quality, but I did enjoy it in the start, and he really managed to defecate on his own creation overtime. He also wrote Beach for a while, and after reading some of the plot synopses for that show to refresh my memory, I can take a safe bet and easily guess which ones he was responsible for.

As for the Days marathon, I do have to thank SOAPnet for airing a marathon that is well planned out and has something to do with the genre. This is another network that earlier this year has become known for airing things that don’t fit the purpose of the channel (case in point: The Fashionista Diaries), and for a while dumping traditional soap programming either entirely (which was the case with Another World) or to weekends only (Ryan‘s Hope and Port Charles), and making several other unfavorable schedule changes only to change a lot of them back. So I have to say this was a really nice surprise. It seems they can have a marathon of classic Days and the ABC soaps when they can, examples including: Days’ 40th anniversary, General Hospital’s Luke and Laura special marathon, the classic All My Children marathon that aired back in 2005, and the Ryan’s Hope marathon on St. Patrick’s Day a couple or so years back. I hope we get to see more classic stuff like this in the future. They’ve got a vast library of ABC shows that go back to the early if not mid-late ‘70’s at least, and from what is known, every episode of Days of our Lives exists in full. They also air The Young and the Restless, but considering how CBS won’t allow GSN to air any classic episodes of The Price Is Right, and according to a Soap Opera Digest article earlier this year they also won’t let AOL put older episodes of As The World Turns and Guiding Light on the Procter & Gamble classic soaps page. So I doubt we’ll see SOAPnet air any classic Y&R, at least for a while. I hope I’m wrong and that we see a marathon someday. I’d think they’d be able to make a deal with Sony but I can’t say for sure. I advise for SOAPnet to please use some of the classic episodes available more in the future when special occasions arise. Thanksgiving or Christmas would be an absolute perfect time to have one.