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In this week’s edition of Gays of our Lives — Backstage drama at Days of our Lives leads to a creative change; More gays on Hollyoaks; Little plot movement exposes Shadowhunters weaknesses; The Fosters‘ Lena and Stef show strength in support; and so much more!
This Week In News
EastEnders Casts Their New Johnny
We told you a couple of weeks ago that UK soap EastEnders was recasting the role of gay teenager Johnny Carter and the role has been filled. Ted Reilly (above) will take over the role from Sam Strike, who left the part in December 2014.
Show producers say they have plenty of story planned for Johnny when he returns in a few months.
Will that include getting involved in the messy love story between Ben and Paul? Ben and Paul were planning to finally be together, until Ben’s scheming girlfriend claimed she was pregnant and Ben dumped Paul to be a baby daddy to Abi.
Johnny could be the person to heal Paul’s broken heart…
Creative Changes (Again) at Days of our Lives
What is going on at Days of Our Lives? The backstage drama is proving to be more interesting than what’s on screen these days as there’s been another change on the writer’s team.
It was just late last year that Josh Griffith and Dena Higley took over the reins at Days only for Higley to take a sudden leave of absence from a job she’d just started. There were rumors that Higley’s LOA was permanent and that The Young and the Restless scribe Beth Milstein had been brought in to replace Higley.
And now there have been more changes.
Last week Days announced that Higley had returned from her leave and Josh Griffith was leaving the show, by choice they said, and would be replaced by staff writer Ryan Quan (left), who has been on the writing staff of Days for many years and was being promoted to co-head writer.
Quan is only the second person of color to head write a daytime drama (Current Bold and the Beautiful staff writer Michele Val Jean was co-head writer of General Hospital in the late 90s). Of course, we can’t even begin to speculate what this means in terms of story and if this will have an effect on the rumored story for Paul and the return of Freddie Smith as Sonny Kiriakis. What we do know is there’s at least 6 months worth of story that will have to play out on-screen before any substantive changes can be felt on-screen. Episodes airing this week were filmed in early September.
Stay tuned.
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Being redeemed by love is a soap trope, Cain was redeemed by his love for Moira and in a lot of ways he was worse than Robert. That storyline is in a way more problematic as they killed off her husband to facilitate it. In fact I’m finding nothing different about this storyline than numerous straight couples have had so how it is catering specifically to m/m shippers beyond it being two men is beyond me.
The rape story line has been in the works for over a year so was not introduced to cater to fan girls or specifically to redeem Robert. It was introduced to explain Aaron’s problems and probably to give Danny Miller something juicy to do and yes to win him awards.
I would also appreciate not being spoken to in such a condescending manner. Your opinion is not fact and acting as if the truth has now been spoken and anyone who disagrees is a blind shipper doesn’t make it so.
Robert could have been redeemed in many different ways without turning Robert & Aaron into a love story.
The show is using this Aaron rape storyline to redeem Robert because its desperate to win soap awards – and by giving the m/m shipping fandom what they want, i.e a love-story between then, they’re banking on it being a soap award winner.
Aaron & Robert have become little more than gay fanfiction brought to primetime tv for a show that now reeks of desperation to win awards.
Robert didn’t murder anyone on Emmerdale last year. There was the accidental death of Katie, yes he pushed or more accurately flung her to the floor but who in their right minds thinks the floor will collapse underneath them like that. Apart from that no one else died, so I don’t know who all these people he murdered are. Even the attempted murders were left ambiguous (apart from the Chas one but It was so stupid I think even the show is pretending that didn’t happen)
As for remembering what he did, I also remember that Aaron not 2 months ago beat a man so hard he put him in hospital, but we’re suppose to forget that happened because poor Aaron (he also bottled and could have killed James)
The Robert redemption is on course but what I think a lot of people forget is that Robert is a more important character in the shows history than Aaron. Aaron might be very popular but Robert is a Sugden born on screen. He isn’t being redeemed so he can be with Aaron, he’s being redeemed so he can stay on the show long term.
Stop thinking of him as Aaron’s love interest and instead as as legacy as a character can get and everything will make more sense
For American Crime, I can see the murder charge as an opportunity, even though there are only a few eps left, for Taylor, his defense people to get into court or on record, under oath all of the people from Leyland who have been trying to avoid just that. Felicity H.’s character isn’t going to be able to spin herself or the school out of a murder investigation.
A group of boys beat Taylor up. Wes was one of them so even though it wasn’t self defense per se, he was being aggressively, verbally attacked by someone who had physically attacked him. The shooting had context. Maybe it will fall under a PTSD response that his therapist can testify to. Diminished capacity and all that The rape is still at the root of all this evil.
Since Becca is a dealer, I guess she can tell the truth about how Taylor was drugged. And maybe at the very least the attack on Eric in the car will make him understand that he is indeed a rapist, since part of his excuse was once Taylor said yes at the beginning he couldn’t change his mind.
The scene with Taylor and his mom was heartbreaking.
Its weird reading your commentary on Shadowhunters and you speculating on what will or won’t happen because I’ve read all the books and can’t help smirking or thinking ‘good luck with that’ at certain points.
I don’t think I understand your last point though about their fascination with each other. I think the show did a good job of showing Magnus instant infatuation with Alec based solely on his looks. It didn’t really explain Alec’s infatuation since he’s suppose to be in love with Jace. But I guess it’s natural that a young gay boy would be fascinated by any good looking guy who showed some interest in them and just expects the audience to intuit that.