Fifty Years Of Days

I got into the soap opera habit through Guiding Light. <1>  CBS cancelled Light in 2009, though, and there went my little daytime TV fix.  To the rescue, DOOL.  Days Of Our Lives began its television run in November 1965, and the show is set to mark its fiftieth anniversary this month on NBC.

II.

The Horton family, in the town of Salem, was the main focus at Days' beginning in the sixties.  The generational descendants of the original Hortons (along with the Bradys) still figure in the current storylines.  But the evolving narrative has bloomed, in all kinds of new directions.

There is the intrigue of the wealthy and powerful DiMera and Kiriakis families, led as they are by the aging-but-still-raging Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) and Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston).  Elsewhere, I've been amused by, and sympathized with, the adventures of Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker).  Has Nicole finally found a lasting love with the good Dr. Daniel Jonas (Shawn Christian); or will she find a way to sabotage yet another promising relationship?

A new powerplayer, the folksy-talking and utterly ruthless Clyde Weston (James Read), has come to Salem.  Will his scheming succeed in Abigail Deveraux (Kate Mansi) marrying Clyde's evil son; will Abigail be able to resist her secret passion for Chad DiMera (Billy Flynn)?

And what about - but reader, you have the idea.

III.

Through the decades, Days has dramatized and documented the varieties of societal change in its suburban America of the last half-century.  To hope for another fifty television years of Days might be hoping too far ahead.  I will instead say, congratulations Days Of Our Lives, on the first fifty.
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<1>"Talk About A Soap Opera!". BMT, May 2013.