It’s been a long, strange road on Days of Our Lives, but if our calculations are right, we should be about done with the Writers’ Strike material by June. Even though the strike ended last fall, Days of Our Lives’ material didn’t start until around the holidays — months after the other daytime soaps had brought back their permanent writers. Why? Because Peacock’s sudser shoots so far in advance, it took seven months with the material to catch up with reality.

And therein lies the show’s strength… and weakness. For Days of Our Lives, it’s a cost-cutting measure that allows them to shoot large chunks of shows at a time and sprinkle breaks in here and there. That’s probably a big part of what’s kept the show going with a budget that NBC and now Peacock are willing to throw at it.

But most other shows only shoot about a few weeks in advance. It allows them to shift direction if things aren’t working and lean into the things that are in real time. Not all stories hit like writers may have hoped, and if a show can’t dump the ones that are dead on arrival, then all they’re getting for their efforts is a bunch of frustrated fans.

Catering to every viewer’s whim isn’t feasible or a great way to run a show, but you want them invested and enjoying things. You want to be able to test pairings out, see what sizzles and fizzles with the audience and run with them. You want to be able to build off of fan buzz and go from there.

You don’t want to get saddled with villains who people can’t stand (Sorry, Konstantin.), story beats that stretch credulity (Maggie really didn’t catch on to his con for six months??) or characters who just get buried under the fast forward button (No offense, Harris, though you may be gone for good). People need to be excited about watching, and if they aren’t, there’s not a whole lot you can do for six or seven months if you’ve locked that story in.

And if anything, the lead time seems to be growing at Days of Our Lives — though that may just depend on the time of year. But when speaking with actors back in April, they acknowledged that they were already starting to shoot Christmas material!

The reality, though, is that there isn’t much that can be done to come back from this. Maybe, there’s a way to slow shooting down incrementally over time to better catch up with reality. But that would increase costs at a time when that’s likely not tenable. We know Days of Our Lives can’t afford to just shut down production for months at a time to let the schedule catch up. If they could have, they would have done that with the Writers’ Strike, as they had already banked enough material to reach into the holidays — three months after the strike ended.

In the end, it’ll be interesting to see how much of the strike material is wiped out and how much is kept. While the regular writing teams may acknowledge that the shows have to keep shooting no matter what or risk getting canned, that doesn’t mean they like the idea of others coming in and upending everything for a few months, then handing it back. Whatever happens, we have a feeling that we’ll know as soon as they return when stories are unceremoniously dropped — which could be good, but could also be far too late for frustrated fans.

Will Everett’s split personality be integrated at the snap of Marlena’s fingers? Will Chanel’s baby be declared fit and healthy just like that? Will Xander finally find out that he’s Victor’s heir?

What do you think? If there were storylines or romances you could change for the better, what would you do?