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Days of our Lives (Days or DOOL) is an American soap opera. It debuted on November 8 1965, and can still be viewed weekdays on NBC. Originally, the show revolved solely around the Horton family, and has since expanded to tell the stories of other families, such as the Brady, Black, Carver, Deveraux, DiMera, Kiriakis, and Johnson clans. The series is set in the fictional town of Salem.
Storylines
1960s through the 2000sFor detailed information on historical storylines, see List of Days of our Lives storylines Recent history
Death of Zack BradyChelsea was a key figure in a major plot line that opened as she accidentally killed Bo and Hope's little boy Zack while playing with her cell phone behind the wheel of Bo's SUV. Matters grew even worse when Hope found out that Bo had not only lied to cover up what Chelsea did (when Billie insisted on taking the fall, Bo let her), he also had just that night signed a new temporary driver's license to Chelsea, then handed her the keys to his truck. He believed that he was actually responsible for Zack's death, and Hope agreed, throwing him out of their house. In an attempt to protect herself, Chelsea did everything she could to drive a wedge between Bo and Hope and push her father closer to Billie, all in the hopes that Bo would defend Chelsea at her impending trial. Her scheming drove Hope into the arms of Patrick Lockhart and Bo temporarily back to Billie. The trial hinged on a critical piece of damning evidence: video footage from a convenience store surveillance camera of Chelsea behind the wheel of the SUV. When this footage went missing, Chelsea was let off with a paltry sentence of community service. Hope was furious and filed for divorce from Bo, whom she believed stole the evidence to protect his daughter. Shawn, Belle, Phillip, and MimiIn the meantime, Kate Roberts and Victor Kiriakis discovered baby Claire's true paternity: Shawn-Douglas Brady was her father. Neither Belle nor Shawn remembered having sex during a traumatic barn fire. This was revealed soon after an organ transplant which saved Claire's life. Phillip was, mysteriously, not a match, but her godfather Shawn was, as was the late Zack Brady. Bo and Hope tearfully allowed Zack's organs to be donated, and it saved Claire's life. Soon, the truth of Claire's paternity spread to Mimi's mother Bonnie, and then to Mimi. About to be married to Shawn, Mimi swore she would tell her husband-to-be the truth but never mustered the courage, too afraid of losing him to his first love, Belle.
With this new connection between them, Belle and Shawn wrestled with their true feelings for each other, and Belle hoped she could somehow reconcile with Shawn. Both marriages would fall apart when the truth of Claire's paternity was revealed (thanks to Chelsea anonymously giving them the paternity results) and then confirmed when Mimi admitted the truth. Shawn immediately left Mimi for keeping the truth from him and filed for custody of Claire; Phillip vowed to hold his family and marriage together. Rocked from this new stress between them all, Belle would lose her (and Shawn's) baby. Ultimately, she blamed Phillip; he had reluctantly agreed to a procedure that saved her life by aborting the baby, but he went against her wishes. Belle moved out of their apartment, and a crushed Phillip left town, realizing she would certainly try to get back together with Shawn. However, Shawn had agreed with Phillip that Belle's life had to be saved, and after seeing how well he cared for Claire, he gave up his pursuit of custody. Belle was crushed by this news, thinking Shawn no longer wanted her or Claire. Shawn was dating a former hooker named Willow and worked for EJ Wells for a short period of time, and Belle was trying to figure out if Shawn could truly fit to be a father for Claire. Meanwhile, Mimi had to find work at Chez Rouge. She and Phillip gave up their rights to the baby their surrogate was carrying, but Mimi's mother Bonnie was trying to broker a deal so she can keep the baby. Because the baby is technically a Kiriakis heir, the opportunistic Bonnie sees dollar signs in the future and she has even gone as far as to steal money from her elder son Patrick to pay the surrogate to keep the baby. Also, Philip had gone missing. Currently, Shawn and Belle are trying to work things out, and Mimi pursued a relationship with Maxwell Brady. This happened after the two went to Georgia to search for Philip and wound up getting imprisoned together in a church basement (they would later be found and rescued by Abby Deveraux).But after finding out that Mimi accidentally killed her father, she left town, ruining her relationship with Max.Phillip tries to take Claire forever but Shawn and Belle "kidnap" her and run away to Canada. They are now stranded on an uncharted island. Phillip believes Claire, Shawn, and Belle dead, but Bo believes otherwise. Sami, Carrie, Lucas, and Austin (and E.J.)In 2005, Carrie Brady and Austin Reed both returned to Salem with their own companies in the hopes of finding financial success, and quickly rediscovered their feelings for each other. Jealous of her sister, Sami hid the fact that Carrie was CEO of High Style, the company Austin was preparing to acquire via a hostile takeover. Carrie discovered it was Austin who stole her company and was furious, ending up in the arms of Lucas. Sami took the opportunity to move in on Austin and they became a couple. Neither coupling seemed entirely stable as Austin tried to win Carrie back and she seemed torn between the two half brothers. Sami was paranoid she would lose Austin, so she blackmailed Lexie Carver, ordering her to ensure Carrie would not choose Austin; otherwise, Sami would reveal the truth of Lexie's infidelity with Tek Kramer to her husband Abe. Lexie complied. Carrie was one of her patients, so Lexie made up a story, telling her that she and Austin could never conceive a baby without a high chance it would have serious birth defects. This revelation crushed Carrie's hopes that she and Austin could have a family together. She shunned Austin, never telling him why. When she soon found out she was pregnant with Lucas' baby, she married him as quickly as possible. A new character, British race car driver E.J. Wells (played by ex-All My Children star James Scott), arrived in Salem and moved into the same building as the two couples. The handsome and charming E.J. immediately sparked up a friendship with Sami and found himself involved with both couples' lives. It was then that the aforementioned "gloved one" would begin to play a part in the lives of Sami, Carrie, Lucas, Austin, and Lexie (though it is not known yet whether it is the same person from the Shawn/Belle/Phillip/Mimi storyline). Sami began to receive cryptic notes from the "gloved one", stating that she would lose everyone she cared about if she didn't cooperate. The notes continued through to her wedding day, when another note stated that if she married Austin, her lies would be told. She stood up Austin at the altar, later telling him she knew he really loved Carrie and that he should be with her instead. It was then that E.J. decided to make a romantic play for Sami. Things only became more complicated when Carrie discovered she was never actually pregnant, the result of a false positive test. Carrie only married Lucas because she thought she was pregnant with his baby, but without this real tie to him, she found herself back in the arms of Austin. Lucas walked in on Carrie and Austin making love and he left her in disgust. Carrie and Austin began making plans to leave Salem together just as another note arrived at Sami's apartment: this one revealed all and was read by Lucas, Carrie, and Austin. They were shocked by how low Sami could go. Sami's son Will, already disappointed with her for leaving Austin at the altar, moved out with Lucas. Carrie and Austin quickly got married by a Justice of the Peace and left for Switzerland. This has all left Sami was nobody to turn to... except for E.J. Wells. As fate would have it, he has been revealed to the viewer as the "gloved one", but nobody in Salem - except for his accomplice Patrick Lockhart - knew the truth, or his "true identity." While they were in Talladega to promote Mythic, Sami overheard E.J. talking to one of Stefano DiMera's henchmen, telling him that he didn't care what Stefano said and that he had to finish things in Salem before he left. As part of a police set-up, Sami arranged to meet E.J. by a boathouse but instead John was there waiting for him. E.J. anticipated this and surprised him, gun in hand and with Tek looking on from outside, they argued until John tried to get the gun away from E.J. and he ended up getting shot instead. That same night, Sami and Lucas had made love in an abdandoned cabin. However, a large beam had collapsed and fallen on Lucas's leg. Sami flagged down a passing motorist to ask for help but was horrified to discover it was EJ fleeing the scene of John's shooting. EJ pulled a gun on Sami and forced her to help him evade a police road block. Sami begged him to help her save Lucas's life. He gave her an ultimatum: have sex with him or Lucas would die. After raping Sami, EJ kept his word and removed the beam from an unconscious Lucas's legs. It turned out he went to Mexico City to hide out. After Patch complained that he wanted something to do, like a job with the police department, Bo agreed to send him to Mexico City where he found E.J. pretty quickly. He gave E.J. the warrant for his arrest and E.J. told him he wasn't leaving the country. They got into a fight and after the people in the bar beat Patch up and threw him out E.J. realized that his wallet and mobile phone were stolen. Not much later, he came back to Salem and went to Roman to plead his innocence, and he was immediately arrested. As both Lexie and Tek had vanished mysteriously, they had no solid evidence with which to hold E.J. and so they had to let him go. Patch and Kayla, Jack and Jennifer reunitedAt some nearby hospice, the terminally ill Jack Deveraux discovered his long-dead brother Steve "Patch" Johnson was, in fact, alive. Jack urged his amnesiac brother to return to Salem to reunite with his wife Kayla and daughter Stephanie. Steve agreed to go meet these people that he didn't know under the stipulation that Jack would go with him. Dr. Kayla Brady Johnson returned to Salem, still grieving her late husband after all these years, just in time for Jennifer's wedding to Frankie Brady. Jack interrupted the ceremony, shocking everyone in attendance including his wife Jennifer and daughter Abby. Outside the church, Kayla fainted at the sight of her long-lost husband Steve, and she soon hoped to discover their love together. Unfortunately, he admitted not knowing her, but she vowed to help him remember. Steve found himself pressured by the new responsibilities of being a husband and father and went back to Cincinnati. He would return to Salem to try again with Kayla, but ended up starting a relationship with Billie Reed. Eventually, Kayla took Steve on a short trip away from Salem to a hotel they stayed at years before. During their stay, Steve suffered sudden flashbacks and regained all of his memory with Kayla. Meanwhile, thanks to help from Frankie, Jack was cured of his illness thanks to an experimental drug treatment. He felt very awkward stepping in between Frankie and Jennifer, but Abby was very hopeful her parents would get back together. Soon, Jack and Jennifer became embroiled in the mystery of the murder of Officer Eve Michaels, a crooked cop at the Salem PD. And just as abruptly as they got back together, both Jack and Jennifer were soon gone to London. This left Frankie pretty much alone, and he soon returned to Washington, D.C. Current storylines
Ratings and scheduling historyNot long after its introduction in 1965, Days of our Lives became a successful part of NBC's attempt to dethrone daytime powerhouse CBS. By 1973 the show, pitted against CBS' Guiding Light and ABC's Newlywed Game at 2 p.m. Eastern/1 p.m Central, had matched the first-place ratings of As The World Turns and sister NBC serial Another World. NBC capitalized on this success with the decision to expand to one hour on April 21 1975. This expansion had followed the lead of AW, which became TV's first-ever hourlong soap on January 6, three and a half months earlier. Further, Days' new starting time of 1:30/12:30 finally solved a scheduling problem that began in 1968 when NBC lost the game Let's Make a Deal to ABC, and in its wake, eight different shows were placed into the slot, with only one, Three on a Match, lasting more than nine months. However, this first golden period for NBC daytime proved to be short-lived, as Days' ratings began to decline in 1977. Much of the decline was due to ABC's expansion of its popular soap "All My Children" to a full hour, the last half of which overlapped with the first half of Days. By January 1979, the network, in a mode of desperation more than anything else, decided to jump headlong against AMC and moved the show ahead to the same 1 p.m./12 Noon time slot. In exchange to its affiliates for taking away the old half-hour access slot at 1/Noon, NBC gave them the 4 p.m./3 slot, which many (if not most) stations had been preempting for years anyway. By 1986, ABC and CBS followed suit, under the intense pressure of lucrative (and cheap) syndicated programming offered to affiliates. By the early 1980s, Days had displaced Another World as NBC's highest-rated soap. However, the entire NBC soap lineup was in ratings trouble. In fact, by 1982, all of its shows were rated above only one ABC soap (The Edge of Night) and below all four CBS soaps. The "supercouple" era of the 1980s, however, helped bring about a ratings revival, and the 1983-1984 season saw "Days" experience a surge in ratings. It held onto its strong numbers for most of the 80s, only to decline again by 1990, eventually falling back into eighth place. In the mid-1990s, however, the show experienced a resurgence in popularity and the show reached number two in the ratings, where it remained for several years before experiencing another ratings decline beginning in 1999, the year that Days became NBC's longest-running daytime program (upon the cancellation of AW). Throughout the 2000s, Days and all the other remaining network daytime serials have witnessed a steady erosion of viewers, mainly due to vastly altered viewing habits induced by cable networks and alternative genres such as reality and talk shows on minor network affiliates. With the impending cancellation of Passions in September 2007, Days will become NBC's last remaining traditional daytime program (excepting the Today Show, which will receive a fourth weekday hour in exchange for the forementioned cancellation) on its mid-day schedule. On January 17 2007, NBC Universal Television president Jeff Zucker remarked that "Days of Our Lives" would most likely not "continue past 2009."[1] DOOL Primetime Specials (Nielsen Media)
Theme song and opening title sequencesOpening titles
A portion of the opening is also used as a mid-show break bumper, starting after the hourglass has zoomed out and title has appeared with Macdonald Carey announcing "We will return with the second half of Days of our Lives in just a moment," something he has said since the show expanded to one hour in 1975. From its debut in 1965 until March of 1966, announcer Ed Prentiss spoke the words now made famous by Macdonald Carey. Since April 1966, the late Macdonald Carey has intoned the legendary epigram "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." From 1966 to 1994, he would also say, "This is Macdonald Carey, and these are the days of our lives." After Carey's passing, the decision was made to remove the second part of the opening, out of respect for Carey and his family. Opening musicMusic sample:
The theme that regularly accompanies each sequence was composed by Charles Albertine, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. In the summer of 2004, the show's theme song was changed to give the tune a more majestic feel. As this coincided with the height (or depths) of the Salem Serial Killer storyline, many viewers speculated that the change in theme was signaling a profound change in the nature of the show (and perhaps a clue to the outcome of the plot itself). Both versions (the 1993 theme and the new theme) were alternated by every other day, but was scrapped after only being used in eight episodes with the 1993 theme the only one used since; the 1993 theme tune was reinstated with no comment from Days publicists. Days in other mediaFriendsThe series was satirized on the hit sitcom Friends when one of the principals, Joey Tribbiani (played by Matt LeBlanc), got a job as Dr. Drake Ramoray on the show. All storylines shown on Friends (with guest shots by actual Days of our Lives stars) were fictional and did not represent what was really going on in the soap opera itself. Joey's fictional stint on the show ended when he angered its writers and his character was killed after falling down an elevator shaft. Later, his character was brought back to life in a further spoof on the show (no fewer than thirty-six characters have been "brought back" from the dead on Days). Joey was brought back as a man with a brain transplant. His new brain was from the character Jessica Lockhart, played by Susan Sarandon. Lockhart died from a horseback riding injury. The Lockharts are also the last names of Bonnie, Mimi and Patrick on Days, but the Jessica character is not a relation to any of the three. Alison Sweeney who plays Samantha Brady appeared on Friends as "Jessica Ashley" who stars with Joey on Days. In another episode has Joey in a scene with Kristian Alfonso as Hope Brady; she, along with Roark Critchlow's Mike Horton, are the only characters on the real Days to be on Friends. In the spinoff sitcom Joey, Joey was nominated for "best death scene" in which he was stabbed while performing surgery. The connection between Days of our Lives and Friends is attributed[citation needed] to the fact that John Aniston (Victor Kiriakis) is the real-life father of Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green). Other MediaIn Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Socrates quotes the famous line "Like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives." In the movie Nine to Five, when the evil Mr. Hart (Dabney Coleman) is being held prisoner in his house, there is a quick shot of him holding the TV remote and watching the opening credits of Days of Our Lives. The long running sitcom King Of Queens featured actual characters from Days in a dream sequence where the characters had their dialogue modified and some characters were replaced by Queens' characters. Also, the sequence was shot on video instead of film. On an episode of Sanford and Son, Fred Sanford complains about his television bill and not being able to watch Days of Our Lives if the bill isn't paid. Then, Fred goes into a rampage about the current storyline, in the early seventies it was Mickey Horton's saga, and what he might miss if he doesn't get to watch the show. In the movie Drop Dead Gorgeous Iris Clark (Mindy Sterling) taped over Gladys Leeman's (Kirstie Alley) beauty pageant tape with the opening credits of Days of Our Lives. In the movie Legally Blonde, in Elle Woods' (Reese Witherspoon) college application video, she proves her ability to recall information "at the drop of a hat" by relating a Days of our Lives storyline in which heroine Hope Brady is brainwashed by "the evil Stefano," which roughly corresponds to the timeframe in which the movie was filmed. The Food Network show Behind the Bash, hosted by Giada De Laurentiis (who also hosts her shows Everyday Italian and Giada's Weekend Getaways) celebrates an episode behind the 40th Anniversary party for Days of our Lives On the teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210, the kids ponder their lives to being similar to Days of our Lives and The Young and the Restless. In Episode 102 of the comedy show Scrubs, Dr. Perry Cox is watching Days of our Lives in the hospital staff room. In the sitcom The Nanny, Fran says to Maxwell "As William Shakespeare once said, Like sands through the hourglass so are the days of our lives". From 1984 to 1992, Maxwell's potrayer, Charles Shaughnessy found stardom as Shane Donovan on Days of our lives. In the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, while Richard Dreyfuss is creating the Devil's Tower in his home, Days of our Lives is on the television, featuring Susan Seaforth Hayes and Bill Hayes as their roles of Julie Williams and Doug Williams just prior to the news report. On an Episode of Night Court, Richard Moll, quotes the famous Epigram just before the Theme Song Plays. Cast
Current cast membersRecurring cast members
Comings & Goings
Deceased cast members
See also: List of Days of our Lives cast members Executive producing and head writing teamDays of our Lives executive producers
Days of our Lives head writers
Awards
Trivia
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