The state of Days of Our Lives

We, the undersigned, urge you, those who, write, direct, and produce Days of Our Lives to please re-examine the state of the show.

Among the Days of Our Lives fans online community, we're seeing a problem. Numerous lifelong fans have decided to no longer watch. Around 7 to 8 in just the last few days. Even Dustin Cushman (lifelong fan & creator of the #1 Days of our Lives message board/site that pops up when you type DOOL in on Google) is so frustrated that he can no longer watch.

We're not that hard to please. We all just want desperately to see our show returned to a point where we can all be proud to be fans of this show, enjoy it, and see it prosper the way we all know it has the potential to. We've all agreed on several points of constructive criticism that we strongly suggest that you consider, if you want to retain your audience. Keep in mind that our message board community alone has a total of 1988 members. Please do not make the mistake of taking us or our suggestions lightly if you value your audience....

1. Ejami and Lumi fans alike are sick of the Ejami/Lumi triangle. We want this triangle resolved immediately. We don't want to take a break from the triangle, then later go back to it. We want it resolved one way or the other. Some of us may not like the results if Ejami wins and some may not like it if Lumi wins, but neither will be happy if this continues. We've been dismayed and discouraged. Most of us have lost the faith that you even know where you are going with the storyline. Stop trying out E.J with new people and stop trying out Lucas with more people before resolving this triangle, its just a distraction and only puts off the inevitable. This storyline is losing your viewers and you may not get them back if you do not act now.

2. We want the veteran actors (Bope, Jarlena, Maggie, Mickey, Steve and Kayla, etc.) to be on screen and to have storylines of their own. We believe that they have potential beyond simply being plot devices for the young characters to use when need be (example: Bo and now Kate being sick just to give Chelsea some interaction with Dr. Jonas). Young characters have their place but we're not willing to watch the characters that got us interested in the show become doormats for the younger characters. We realize that it's summer and typically you show mostly teens, but try to remember the original fan base. You may not be able to lure in teens during the Summer, but you've already got us... don't drive away your true fan base for a fan base that you may or may not get to watch.

3. Stop hiring new people (Tamara Braun, Joe Penny, etc.) and then letting them go. We get spoilers and we know they're not going to be around long. Therefore we don't become invested in them because its pointless to care about characters that will be gone in a month or so. Even if we do become invested in them, we're just let down. We have had enough of it.

4. We would like more character/couple development. We see situations like Chloe and Lucas being together, just popping out of nowhere with no rhyme or reason. We want to see the love develop on screen. We don't appreciate sex scenes with no emotional connections at all. Remember that the audience is mostly females and not horny guys and/or back alley sluts. We want to see love and romance, not something that merely resembles porn. There is a way to do sex scenes and a way not to do them. Building their love and then letting that love explode onto the screen in a vivid sex scene is much more interesting than merely throwing them in an elevator. The elevator scenario may be more realistic, but this is a soap. We want romance and fantasy.

5. If you begin a storyline, finish it. More CONSISTENCY. Dropped storylines are understood sometimes, but there has been too many lately. Months of storyline were spent on Brady being missing, we received no pay off from that. Nobody really grew closer through the search for him, their were no exciting search and/or rescue scenes, his absence was merely explained with no backlash from it really. We need pay offs for storylines. ALSO if a villain murders somebody or does something else bad like that, we expect them to be found out eventually. That goes back to finishing storylines. Also, if a character is bad one week, it would stand to reason that they would be bad the next week unless something happens to turn them good or vice versa.

Don't spend ages writing a character one way just to completely overhaul their personality to fit a new story. If someone must change, at least come up with a semi-valid reason for it. Example: Max going from confident, sensitive race car driver to insecure whiner overnight.

6. Public service storylines are okay, most of us are fine with them. Try to work them in more naturally so they don't sound so commercialized though. We also don't want them taking up numerous episodes. Work them in, but don't force them on us. It loses our attention quickly when it's all we hear for long periods of time.

7. Give the triangles a rest for a little while. Or if you must do them, keep them shorter. The longer they go on, the more split the fan bases get and we begin to wonder if you have any direction for the story line at all.

8. There is something we love that you've done. The new version of John Black is great. That's something pretty much all of us agree on. Some of us want him to gain his memory back, BUT none of us really want him to gain every characteristic of his old self back. If John gets his memory back, we request that you allow him to continue to have his hilarious one liners and wonderful guile.

9. Last, but not least, just simply listen to the audience. I know thats contrived because we all disagree on certain things, but we all generally just want an entertaining show, and there is no reason you can't keep us relatively happy.

We hope that you really take our message to heart. We expect to see our requests met in some form or fashion and would love to get a response to this letter. Thank you for your time.

**Credit for this letter goes to Kerry Burnette**