Ron Carlivarti is no longer as head writer on Days of Our Lives after seven years on the soap.
While change is always difficult, this could be good news.
Kalivati deserves credit for turning things around after the disastrous storyline of the previous writing team. However, his story has become stale and repetitive, so a change is long overdue.
Ron Kalivati corrects some big mistakes
He resurrected Will Horton and made Salem more LGBTQ+ friendly
When Ron Carlivati first joined Days of Our Lives, many fans were outraged by Will Horton’s death.
Related: As representation declines across the industry, is TV failing LGBTQ+ viewers?
Will, part of Salem’s first male-to-male couple, was strangled to death in an unnecessary serial killer storyline that took the lives of several characters for no apparent reason.
Some fans viewed Will’s death as a blatant act of homophobia, especially since Gabby soon returned and gave custody of Ali instead of Sonny despite serving time in prison for murder.
Fans weren’t the only ones disgusted; they were disgusted, too. According to Soap Opera Digest, Alison Sweeney refused to return to the set until Will’s death was redeemed.
Kalivati began doing this almost immediately after taking office.
He also introduced more LGBTQ+ characters and gave Days of Our Lives its first bisexual storyline, when Ellie questioned Chanel’s sexuality after being attracted to her.
Unfortunately, Days of Our Lives’ Ron Carlivati corrected Will’s situation with a silly story in which Will was given a resurrection drug that brought him back to life, but Destroyed his memory and made him think he was EJ – his stepfather.
Resurrection potions became an overused plot device, with many characters resurrected from seemingly certain deaths.
Kalivati’s most controversial storyline becomes a repeating beat
Abigail’s DID is a problematic storyline that fuels writers’ obsession with doppelgangers
Earlier, Kalivati divided fans when she wrote a story about Abigail suffering from dissociative identity disorder.
RELATED: 19 of the most touching mental health stories on television
The bad thing is, Kalivati’s story bears little resemblance to real life. Abigail had no history of sexual abuse and named her alternate personality after people she had known throughout her life.
To make matters worse, there is a scene in the story where Stefan deliberately provokes Abigail’s dissociative state so that he can ask Gabby, her alter ego, to have sex with him, even though he knows Abigail’s primary personality disagree.
Days of Our Lives writer Ron Carlivarti correctly had Chad and Abigail frame the incident as rape, but Stefan never faced any consequences for it, and later on In the series, this is called an affair.
It also doesn’t help that it leads to a story in which Abigail is unsure which man is the father of her child, causing the story to go down the path of well-worn TV tropes.
Abigail was sent to Florida for treatment and recovered within a few months, which was unrealistic.
It’s par for the course for Kalivati, who doesn’t always write mental health stories appropriately.
JJ’s suicide attempt is the most intense of these stories
Although it was one of the few stories that fully utilized Casey Moss’ talents, it still caused controversy
One of Kalivati’s most memorable storylines attempted to address racial bias in policing.
No one expects a soap opera to be as realistic as a show like “Blue Bloods,” which strives to show the NYPD in a fair light, but Kalivati does his best.
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This story has many strengths. After mistaking a handheld scanner for a gun, JJ shoots Theo, who has always been close to his family.
JJ felt so guilty that he eventually attempted suicide, while Abe sat vigil at Theo’s bedside, vowing that he would never forgive JJ.
These are important feelings that need to be expressed, and the storyline is filled with family drama, with Jennifer taking JJ’s side and Abe taking Theo’s.
However, this type of story works best when it’s more morally ambiguous, so the audience can debate who’s right and who’s wrong.
Instead, when JJ spots Theo breaking into the warehouse, Theo doesn’t follow instructions and instead turns around and points a gun-shaped object at JJ, making anyone claiming racial bias look ridiculous.
This left many fans feeling that the issue was not fairly explored, with the only emphasis being on JJ’s guilt.
JJ’s suicide scene is one of the best scenes in Days of Our Lives. JJ writes letters to his loved ones and relives some of the times he felt he let them down, only to be saved at the last minute by Gabby’s arrival.
It’s the perfect setup for a touching story, with JJ exploring his past through therapy and taking the time to heal, but Kalivati doesn’t follow through appropriately.
JJ had a therapy session (if you could call it that) over breakfast with Eric, and once the conversation became uncomfortable, JJ left.
related: 7 Ways The Days of Our Lives Can (and Should!) Use JJ Deveraux
Soon, he was fine with it and began to accept his girlfriend Lani’s claim that he was cheating on her with Gabi because she saw them hugging.
When Lani became pregnant, she made a mockery of a serious issue by pretending JJ was the father so he wouldn’t become suicidal again.
When the truth came out, even the virtuous Abe supported Rani’s lies, further perpetuating the myth that people with mental illness should be viewed as simply unable to cope with the stresses of life.
These storylines point to larger weaknesses that need to be addressed
Kalivati wrote too many similar stories at the end of his run
Kalivati often begins with mental health stories but fails to end them well. He did the same thing with the physical health story.
He loved doppelgänger stories so much that many of them ended up being ridiculous. For example, there’s the touching story of Marina receiving a DNR, and Heidi pretending to be her so the real Marina could hide in the hospital basement and continue her treatment.
Bonnie and Adrienne switch places, Kristen keeps forcing Susan to switch, and a completely ridiculous story has Kristen wandering around town wearing a magic mask that transforms her into whatever character she wants to play. The perfect stand-in.
These stories provide Days of Our Lives with opportunities for meta-humor, but come on! How many doppelgänger stories do we need?
An infamous time jump quickly forgotten
This unnecessary story is just about being number one
One thing the new writing team couldn’t easily correct was the time jump Kalivati inserted into Days of Our Lives.
Kalivati wakes Jennifer up from her coma and learns that it was a year later. It’s an interesting concept that no American soap opera has done before, and viewers have been speculating for months about how to fill in the gaps in the various stories.
Time jumps are great if needed. Neighbors followed a similar concept with its 2023 reboot, ending with a flashback week where the characters and the audience learned everything they missed.
However, in Kalivati’s case, he seems to have jumped in time in order to create something novel and then quickly abandoned it. The new writing team needs to avoid this; it diminishes the value of the show and makes it less enjoyable to watch.
One of the new writers had previously been a series executive
Paula Cwikly wrote for Days of Our Lives in 2002
In seven years of material, Kaliwati has many wonderful stories, as well as many ridiculous ones, and it is impossible to list them all.
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His story has grown stale as he keeps repeating beats and doing things that are completely over the top and ridiculous, like bringing Orpheus back as Marina, Keira, and Kate spent three weeks in Paradise before it came out Part of the story is not as dead as reported.
A new team of writers could breathe new life into Days of Our Lives by giving viewers a different story than we’ve seen before.
In this case, it helps that Paula Cwilky previously served as showrunner.
She writes stories that are more sensitive to issues surrounding sexual assault and abuse, such as Nicole’s original storyline, but without sacrificing drama.
We can expect that she’ll be taking the series in a different direction with her new writing partner Jeanne Marie Ford.
Ford shot One Life to Live under Kalivati’s direction, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t rein in the more absurd aspects of his story.
Hiring two women to lead the writing team was also a smart decision, given the behind-the-scenes scandal and accusations made against Days of Our Lives by actress Arianne Zucker.
Over to you, Days of Our Lives fanatics! What are your thoughts on Kalivati’s storyline? Do you think Days of Our Lives will get better or worse once new writers’ material starts airing next April?
Hit the comments and let us know!
Days of Our Lives airs exclusively on Peacock. New episodes air weekday mornings at 6/5c.
