daysofourlivesrecaps

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Monday, 8 August 2023

I’m not gonna lie to you, kids: the reason I keep falling off doing these recaps is that this show is really starting to bore me. There are so many storylines with excellent potential for drama, and so many of them are just in a holding pattern right now, and have been for weeks. And, as it happens, today’s episode provides a number of excellent examples to support this assertion. So I’ll be deviating from my typical recap format today to bring you a 

STATE OF THE HOURGLASS REPORT

First up: Dimitri, Leo and Gwen.

It’s bizarre to me how much they rushed the first part of this plot (I think it was maybe two weeks between “Dimitri needs to marry someone” and him hooking up and proposing to Gwen), given that they’ve been stuck in the same tedious Groundhog Day loop ever since. This episode delivers, for easily the sixth or seventh time, a situation in which Leo and Dimitri are in bed together…

…only to be interrupted by Gwen, in this case knocking on the door of the hotel that now only belongs to Leo.

Gwen then makes a beeline for the bathroom, where she knows Leo’s paramour is hiding.

And then we’re… treated? … to several segments of tedious farcical excuses and lies about who’s actually in there and why she can’t see him.

I’ve made no secret of my love for Gwen. She’s straight-up one of my favorite characters, primarily because I came in at the end of her amazing rivalry with her sister Abigail and she imprinted on me pretty hard. So on one level, I’m annoyed with all of these shenanigans because they require her to maintain an increasingly implausible level of stupidity to keep happening. Also it sucks watching this happen to her.

But I could not call myself a soap fan if I got surprised or upset that characters I enjoy are enduring hardship. That’s, like, the entire point of all of this. What bothers me is that they haven’t added anything new to this equation for weeks and it doesn’t look like they intend to start anytime soon. To wit: Dimitri and Gwen are about to take off for their honeymoon in Iceland, and Dimitri has bought Leo a ticket so he can discreetly bang Leo on the side while they’re there.

So look forward to more of the same, only with a slightly redressed hotel room set preceded by a couple of exceptionally generic establishing shots of Iceland.

This plot: D-plus. (The D is for dick, Leo!)

On to Eric and Sloan.

Here is the most interesting thing about that one right now.

I know this happens from time to time, but it’s the first time I’ve actually witnessed it! I have seen characters permanently recast, but this is apparently a temporary thing so they want to assure us that Real Eric will be back soon enough. The guy who plays Eric got COVID when they shot this back in February, so they got his friend from General Hospital to step in.

I’m not going to remark on the fact that he isn’t as hot as Eric, or that I assumed he was one of the uggos from GH the second I laid eyes on him. Because that would be rude.

Fake Eric actually proposes to Sloan! Which I guess is something! 

It might have even been a decent moment if we actually got to see the guy we’ve watched fall in love with her pop the question. But we can’t have everything, I suppose. (I mean, we could have had a lot less COVID if we as a society weren’t Like This. But I suppose this isn’t the forum for that.)

Sloan says yes, but I remind you that at this point she’s one month pregnant. Possibly two, since time passes in an extremely nebulous fashion on this show. Apart from her covering up the paternity of Nicole’s baby (also Eric), I see absolutely no potential for any of this to go anywhere for the next seven months. I like these characters. I like these performers.

Well, not these performers. But the correct ones. I’d love it if they did something different with this situation. So far, this has not been the case.

This plot: C-minus.

Which brings me to Nicole and EJ.

Somehow, Nicole has begun to wrestle Main Character status away from Marlena over the past several weeks. And okay, Marlena’s been on the show for 5000 episodes and counting and she’s pushing 70 so maybe it’s time to start prepping a new Main Character. But the thing about Marlena is that she does interesting things, like “getting possessed by the devil” or “dying and waking up in a cryo tube” or “rescuing the amnesiac mayor from a murder/suicide he did not opt into.” Her job (the only psychiatrist in town) brings her in contact with pretty much everyone in Salem. And her weirdly powerful hypnosis allows her to poke around in their heads and, more often than not, fix their problems.

Nicole, on the other hand… doesn’t have a job, as far as I can tell? She ostensibly works in fashion, but we haven’t seen her do that or heard her mention it in months. She has a child, whom we basically see when there’s an excuse to dress her up in a cute costume (so, Halloween and Christmas). And otherwise, she is entirely defined by whatever man she happens to be with.

Also, whatever man she’s with, she always wishes she was back with Eric. Except when she’s with Eric.

I don’t mind watching a middle-aged woman make the same horrible decisions over and over again — I was a big Gilmore Girls fan, after all. But we spend SO MUCH TIME on Nicole’s bad decisions, at the expense of SO MANY OTHER more interesting characters and situations. Also, while they will occasionally get off a good zinger or two, the Days writing staff are hardly the Palladinos.

Anyway, EJ proposes to Nicole as well and she says yes. Yawn.

F-minus-minus. Stop dragging EJ down with you, Nicole.

Oh, also Xander has asked Chloe to marry him.

Which… what? These two have been together for thirty seconds, and it was clearly one of those “this is the plot we’re doing now; the transition will feel a bit abrupt but then we’ll just get on with it like it makes sense and the viewers will follow along” things. Which happen occasionally. But… seriously, what?

I have to admit, these two have some chemistry, and this is the most interesting that Chloe has been since I started watching. But also, they have absolutely nothing in common apart from living together, working together and fucking like rabbits.

Which I suppose is more than a lot of soap characters have, but still. Come on. We all know this isn’t going anywhere.

I’m grading this one as “incomplete.”

And finally… Sarah.

Sarah has been mostly offscreen in Chicago for months now. Nearly nine of them in fact. And she hasn’t told anyone that she’s pregnant with Xander’s baby.

Well, she told Rex. And Bonnie. And Bonnie told Justin. But that’s all! Her own mother, Maggie, definitely didn’t know. So when she pops over for a surprise visit…

…Sarah spends several segments hiding her pregnant belly behind a shopping bag. No, seriously.

Maggie’s been on this show since the early 70s. I daresay she’s seen a lot of pregnant women in her life. Also she knows her own daughter pretty well. So you’d think she wouldn’t be fooled by any of this. But you’d be wrong, because apparently she’s getting the same Stupid Pill prescription that Gwen has. (Do they get these from Dr. Rolf? And why would they get them at all??)

Fortunately, Sarah finally decides to save her mother (and herself) further indignity and just tells her what’s going on.

Of all the plots featured today, this one seems closest to actually turning into something juicy! Sarah’s pregnancy has been handled mostly off-camera, with someone making a call or taking a trip to Chicago every month or so to remind us what’s going on. And that’s how you handle this sort of thing! If there’s nothing inherently interesting about the actual pregnancy, or the mother isn’t doing something especially interesting while she’s pregnant… in other words, if the entire story is just waiting on her to have a kid (which is a whole other set of problems I’m not getting into right now), you need to either time jump to that point or shuffle her away from the more interesting plots for awhile.

So, because of slightly more competent storytelling and the fact that the good part should be forthcoming in the immediate future, this one gets a B-minus.

Overall, this may not be the worst report card I’ve ever seen… but I had an undiagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder when I was in school, so I am an outlier and should not be counted. I mean, this was an episode with THREE WEDDING PROPOSALS and I could not have cared less what happened with any of them!

I know this show knows how to be better. And if it doesn’t turn that shit around in the near future… well, I’ll probably keep watching and probably keep recapping, but I’m going to be a pissy little bitch about it. And nobody wants that.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Monday, 31 July 2023

Hey, guess what.

No, don’t bother guessing. I’ll just tell you. I was entirely right about “Leo interrupting Gwen and Dimitri’s wedding during the ‘if anyone has any objections…’ part” going absolutely nowhere.

(“Matty” is Leo, whose real name is Matt “Matty” Cooper, but only Gwen calls him this.)

I know I’ve been bitching a lot lately about feeling jerked around. And it must seem weird, given how much of this show I’ve already watched. Surely I’m used to the way soaps drag things out by now. But that’s just it — there have been occasional storylines that overstay their welcome but largely I have not felt hugely overwhelmed by that in the past year. Certainly not to the extent I have been lately. 

Anyway, the only good thing to come out of this interruption is EJ and Kristen (continuing to be friends! Yay!) quietly Waldorf-and-Statlering the whole affair.

It’s not fun, but Nicole is missing it… because she’s at the hospital, picking up the results of that DNA test that Sloan already picked up when she pretended to be her. Upon realizing that her confidential file was given to someone claiming to be her, Nicole goes FULL MEGAKAREN on the poor nurse (who wasn’t even the same nurse who gave Sloan the file!)

I was never the biggest fan of Nicole in the first place (largely because she just exists to pine for Eric no matter who she’s with — unless she’s with Eric, then she pines for literally anyone else), but you really learn a lot about a person when you see how they treat someone in a service profession. And she screams at this nurse for like, three segments, never once considering that this could have been a simple clerical error. Or that a grown-ass woman who should fucking know better is actually responsible for this.

Then said grown-ass woman shows up and hands the envelope over (having first removed the damning part that says the baby is Eric’s).

Not only does this needlessly prolong this insufferable plot (MAXIMUM DRAMA ≠ a holding pattern of the same lies for months on end), but NOBODY APOLOGIZES TO THE NURSE.

Speaking of Eric, he has a chat with Roman (his dad) and Kate (most everyone’s mom) about the fact that Sloan is pregnant.

Roman is extremely unhappy about this. 

And I’ve mentioned before that Roman barely has anything to do, pretty much ever, but it is well-established that he’s been extremely close with Abe for decades. (There are even occasional 80s flashbacks to back this up!) And now, having just returned from the hospital where Abe didn’t recognize him or his own immediate family, he’s pretty upset to hear that his kid is having a baby with the sister of the guy who did this to Abe. Which… is some good drama! Maybe not MAXIMUM levels, but definitely better than Roman usually gets.

He does come around pretty quickly (largely thanks to Kate, whose regular advice of “you should probably have a baby about it” was at least partially responsible for this happening in the first place).

And back at the DiMera mansion, the two couples finish tying the knot without further incident.

Dimitri and Leo have a cute moment out in the Whisper Your Secrets Foyer..

…where they are soon joined by Gwen, who wants to know what the big surprise was that they said they were planning that time it looked like they were making out.

And what they end up pulling out of their asses (STEADY, NOW) is… a honeymoon in Iceland?

Fine. It’s all going to happen off-camera anyway, so it really doesn’t matter where they say they’re going. The important thing is, nothing has changed except that now Gwen and Dimitri have been married and now Leo isn’t just a Judas but also a coward.

At least Stefan and Gabi are cute and happy.

And they always will be forever! I’m certain of it!

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Friday, 28 July 2023

“Things are heating up on Days of Our Lives” is the generic thing the announcer says if you’re not quick enough to skip past the autoplay promo bullshit on Peacock. Presumably they had him say that because things are always heating up and therefore it will always be true.

Today it’s not particularly true. TWO SETS OF PEOPLE ARE GETTING MARRIED AND IT’S FRIDAY and it’s still not really true. Join me now on this journey of not-really-heating up, won’t you?

First, Rafe visits Jada to invite him to Gabi and Stefan’s wedding.

I am embarrassed to admit that I spent a minute or two wondering why the fuck Rafe would bother going to that before I remembered that Gabi is his sister. And I only remembered it then because he said it out loud.

Jada’s all “fine, I guess we’re allowed to openly be a couple now so I’ll go to your stupid family obligation thing.” (Actually she seems pretty happy to go. I suspect she’s heard about how insane Salem weddings can get and is excited that she finally has a chance to see one herself.)

Over at Sloan’s place, Eric shows up and he’s furious. He’s seen the results of that DNA test that EJ and Nicole had done and now he knows Nicole’s baby is really his and that Sloan covered it up.

Which would be an amazing development — some actual forward motion in this stupid, go-nowhere plot… if not for the fact that it was all a dream.

Uggggh.

Sloan ends up going to the hospital, claiming to be Nicole, and dropping “her husband” EJ DiMera’s name to terrify the staff into handing over the test to her.

Sloan, YOU ARE A LAWYER. Not only should you know better, but you should have a lot more dignity than the levels you’ve been displaying lately.

Then Nicole (the actual Nicole) shows up for the test results.

So Sloan ducks into a side room and tears open the test results to discover… the baby isn’t EJ’s. Meaning it’s Eric’s.

Which will be great. Some day. When Eric ends up with two babies with two women who despise each other. But that’s months and months from now. Sloan herself is like, six hours pregnant at this point. We have so much more of this tedium ahead of us.

Meanwhile, Gwen is getting ready for her wedding and picks up Leo’s phone, which has a bunch of racy text messages showing up on the lock screen.

Yes Gwen, I suppose you shall say that.

The messages came from someone Leo has saved as “MP” and in case you forgot, this is a reference to Dimitri’s magic penis.

Oh, Leo. You’re so cute when you’re secretly fucking the fiance of the only person you claim to care about in this world.

Gabi and Stefan are also preparing for their wedding today, but mostly they’re sitting upstairs and telling each other how in love they are.

I’m certain I’ve pointed this out before, but this is usually a sure-fire sign that something is about to explode. Or at the very least, heat up. But mostly they’re still just being cute. Which I don’t actually mind because I’m certain this isn’t going to last very much longer.

Then Dimitri shows up at the DiMera mansion to throw his wedding with Gwen… only to find that Stefan already has the place decked out for his wedding to Gabi.

And suddenly I am reminded of the late, great John Aniston (whose character is still apparently alive somehow), who, when asked what his favorite moment during his tenure on the show was, mentioned the lavish trip to Greece the show did for one of his character’s weddings. “Back when the show had money,” he said. Which really sticks with me at times like this, when they put up a few extra urns and some flowers in this existing living room set.

Anyway, Dimitri asks if Stefan wouldn’t mind making it a double wedding. EJ laughs this off, but Stefan pulls him aside…

…and somehow talks him into it. Because Stefan is the only level-headed person in this entire family. (Well, there’s Tony, but he disappears for months at a time and is nowhere to be seen for any of this.)

Even more astoundingly, he talks Gabi into it!

So the ceremony gets underway.

Then we come to the part that everyone in Salem dreads…

…and there’s a cute moment where both sets of couples ask why we would even include that part in a Salem wedding.

Then the episode ends with Leo speaking up at that part WHICH WE ALL KNOW IS GOING ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE. 

NOTHING IS HEATING UP HERE. THIS IS COLD AND BORING AND I KNOW YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THIS BETTER, DAYS.

It made me wish someone would kidnap Abe again just so someone could rescue him again. Because THAT was a fucking Friday cliffhanger.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Thursday, 27 July 2023

It recently occurred to me that, while I sometimes want good things to happen to characters I like, what I really want from this show at any given moment is MAXIMUM DRAMA. I want whatever situation is unfolding to unfold in the most emotionally overwrought and complicated way possible. So let’s see if anything in today’s installment lives up to that desire.

First: Dimitri and Leo are still fucking around behind Gwen’s back — or, in this case, literally twenty seconds after she left the hotel room.

Hopefully she doesn’t forget something and let herself back in —

Whoops!

Unfortunately, this doesn’t get anywhere near MAXIMUM DRAMA. Instead, we get one of those extremely hacky sitcomesque “we were rehearsing for a play” explanations.

Only Leo — four-foot-nothing Leo, who would be perfect casting as a Ferengi or an Oompa Loompa — actually expects Gwen to believe that he was getting beefy, bulky Dimitri to try on one of his suits.

Damn it, Gwenjamin. You’re getting married TOMORROW. You need to wake up and smell the sodomy!

At the hospital, Theo and Kayla share what my partner Amanda keeps insisting on pointing out are empty cups of coffee.

Theo goes into some weird theory about how Abe getting hit over the head with a rolling pin is probably his fault. This is about as far from MAXIMUM DRAMA as you can get. Theo had nothing to do with any of this. He was in South Africa at the time. Which is very far away from wherever the fuck Salem is supposed to be.

Meanwhile, in Lani’s room, she and Eli are reminding us why they were pretty much the best couple on the show before they left.

Eli’s coming on a bit strong with his OH MY GOD WE WERE SO WORRIED CAN I GET YOU ANYTHING and Lani very cutely calls him out on this.

I’m really going to miss these two when Lani gets dragged back to prison. Which is exactly what US Marshal This Guy is insisting upon right now.

It’s weird that in a room full of cops of various flavors, I still thought of this guy as the narc.

Abe wakes up and talks extensively with Paulina, whom he does not remember at all.

Turns out all the drugs and lies that Nurse King was feeding him for all those weeks (months? days? The passage of time on this show is always extremely nebulous) haven’t helped with Abe’s existing amnesia. Quite the opposite, in fact — he’s more confused than ever now!

Then Abe is visited by Theo, whom he also doesn’t recognize since Theo isn’t Jerry, the guy who was claiming to be Theo.

Then Lani shows up and very diplomatically tells Abe that she has to leave for awhile, without laying all that prison stuff on him. 

Which is a very compassionate thing to do, but also isn’t getting us any closer to MAXIMUM DRAMA.

And over in That Little Room Where Everyone is Allowed to Visit Prisoners at the police station, Marlena attempts to ascertain just how lip-strummingly mental Nurse King really is.

And given that she believes Marlena is actually Charlemagne from Body and Soul, the answer is “quite mental”!

And… okay, this may not be MAXIMUM DRAMA, but it is a really good use of that whole Body and Soul thing. I thought they were just doing that as a silly little self-referential thing and casting their existing performers because they knew they’d have fun with it. And that was probably part of the reason they did it. But now we have Whitley being genuinely confused that the woman from her soap is also this nice psychiatrist who’s come to talk to her BECAUSE THEY LOOK AND SOUND EXACTLY ALIKE. 

Sometimes this show does those “heel turns” (which I understand is an expression about wrestling and shoes?), but occasionally they’ll take someone who wasn’t especially sympathetic and add something that absolutely breaks your heart. And this is what they’ve managed to do with Nurse King in only two or three episodes.

So when Paulina shows up and smacks her in the damn face…

…it absolutely qualifies as MAXIMUM DRAMA but also I feel legitimately bad for Nurse King! Well done, Days.

Also, if I do these things for the next 20 years, I will never get a better screen cap than that one.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Wednesday, 26 July 2023

We’re on day 7,641 of “Nicole is pregnant, EJ is happy, Eric is relatively fine with it and Sloan is pregnant now too.”

Nothing new happens in this storyline. Nothing new will ever happen in this storyline. Nicole has been pregnant since the Big Bang and will remain pregnant until the heat death of the universe.

Sloan, by contrast, is absolutely no more than 30 days pregnant. And look, I’m a cis dude and I don’t know shit about anything. But even I know you don’t tell anyone you’re pregnant this early. 

She’s just that interested in sticking it to Nicole, I guess.

But the joke’s (potentially) on Sloan as she discovers that DNA test the doctor ordered on EJ. Maybe something will finally happen!

But it won’t be happening today, that’s for damn sure. 

Meanwhile, Chad and Stephanie are about to have some offscreen shower sex.

And if you ever wanted actual supporting evidence of my whole “Salem property values are extremely low” argument, it’s this: people are constantly having shower sex on this show. You ever try that with a regular-sized shower? It’s nigh impossible. The only explanation is that everyone has those enormous two-head showers. Which they can afford because their homes were so cheap.

Naturally they’re interrupted by Alex, sans shirt, once again.

Sure, we just had that big talk about boundaries the other day, but all he wants is help picking out a shirt for his date!

Which Chad does, and then promptly slams the door in his face.

At the Salem Inn, Gwen and Dimitri remind us that they’re getting married on Friday (!!).

Gwen suggests some sex (probably in the shower), but Dimitri balks!

And then reminds us of the whole “he’s fucking Leo” thing.

Which I was certain was just a tactic to get Leo to stop trying to ruin the wedding but apparently he was serious about being a closeted gay dude (which I believe) and being seriously into Leo (which makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.)

Gwen is understandably disappointed.

Dimitri leaves to run some errands, so Gwen confides in Leo. Who completely fails to come clean with her about the whole “I’m fucking Dimitri” thing.

And instead blows a bunch of smoke. Which is not what Leo usually blows!

Get it? That was a dick joke. And Leo is being a real dick about all of this.

Dimitri’s errand takes him to Chad and Stephanie’s, where he invites the two of them to the wedding.

Chad reminds him, in one of the most legitimately glorious speeches anyone has ever given on this show, that he (Dimitri) very recently held a gun to Kate (who is basically Chad’s mom)’s head. And that Gwen allegedly* terrorized his dead wife Abigail when she was alive.

Then Chad slams the door in Dimitri’s face and returns to his offscreen shower sex.

And at Small Bar (no, really — the small bar is called Small Bar), Trask realizes her date is not Li again, as she feared at the end of yesterday’s episode… but Alex!!

I was so excited about this! They’re both of pretty comparable hotness. And Alex hasn’t been here long enough to have done a bunch of crimes that Trask would hate him for. Hitching her star to his usually shirtless wagon would be an excellent way out of Supporting Character Purgatory!

Unfortunately, Alex screws up the date by talking too much.

And as an ADHD kid who always talks longer than he probably should, I felt bad for the guy. Until Trask called him out for constantly putting his glasses on and taking them off again. Which, I swear to christ, is a thing we’ve noticed since Alex showed up a year ago and we delight in pointing out every time he does it.

Man, I love it when they get meta.

Li’s date ends up being this lady.

And I think the joke is supposed to be that he got a dud too, but first of all, she’s fucking hot. Second, she’s kind of a freak (she wanted to date him because she thought he actually was involved in that murder plot). Third, in her ten minutes of screen time she turned out to be a better actor than Li has been in over a year. And fourth — look at her. She’s fucking hot.

Regardless, Li dumps her (ugh) and somehow he and Trask end up having another drink together (uggggggh).

And Alex runs into Chad and Stephanie, on their way out to the pub.

AND THEN CHAD INVITES HIM ALONG.

Look, I always thought my “these three should just all hook up in a polyamorous thruple situation” thing was a long shot but… maybe it’s actually happening after all??

* Gwen has never done anything wrong in her life.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Tuesday, 25 July 2023

Wendy and Tripp are making out on the couch again, so naturally Li walks in and puts the brakes on that. Yet again.

And not for the first time it occurs to me that:

• Li was a top executive at a large company. He was probably bringing in six figures, and surely he has a little stuck away in savings.

• Wendy is an IT professional at that same company. Surely she makes decent money at that job.

• Tripp is a fucking doctor.

• the property values in Salem are ridiculously low. Like “the way your boomer relatives remember it being easy to buy a house” low.

So how the fuck is this living situation still happening?

(Whenever one of my viewing companions tries to apply real-world logic to this show, I threaten her with the spray bottle like she’s a cat poking around where she doesn’t belong. And I believe I may deserve a spritz for this one.)

Li then spends the rest of the episode reminding us about his disastrous date with District Attorney Melinda Trask.

But he continues to have all the screen presence of… when your screen goes dark because you don’t have a screen saver installed. Also I was here for that. It only happened last Thursday.

Trask, for her part, has doubled down on getting dolled up and is waiting for a new date.

But she’s early, and she runs into Sloan, so the two of them chat for awhile.

And while very little new information is exchanged in these scenes either (Sloan is pregnant; Trask tried to bug Li), they are at least interesting because these two performers are great and honestly I just want them to date. Or at the very least continue to be friends.

Because while I absolutely did not want Trask hooking up with Li, I do want her to move out of the periphery and into some stories where she isn’t just the last-minute antagonist. This very thing happened to Sloan not one year ago, and I loved watching it happen. It was like watching Chief O’Brien go from nameless guy driving the ship to chief engineer of Deep Space Nine.

Meanwhile, Eric and Brady compare notes on their respective storylines: Eric with his “Sloan and I are having a baby” and Brady with his “I threatened Kristen with a gun so now this is gonna be a whole thing.”

And that whole thing has led to Belle paying a visit to Kristen to see if she’ll maybe drop the charges.

Which is a ballsy move. Even ballsier: Kristen demanding that they re-revisit that custody agreement that Brady ripped up.

The custody agreement that she used as a negotiating tactic while she was hiding Rachel from everyone in her house. The one that Marlena inexplicably said everyone should just go along with to make this situation go away.

Now we’re just acting like this is an entirely reasonable thing for her to demand! Which is absolutely insane to me. But not in a fun soap way. Just in a “this feels a bit lazy” way. Kristen is a DiMera, for god’s sake. They’re supposed to be these amazingly devious strategists. But Kristen’s only moves seem to be “kidnap Rachel” and “make insane demands until everyone just starts treating them like they’re sane demands.”

AND IT ACTUALLY WORKS FOR HER.

Speaking of non-evil DiMeras, EJ continues to be a supportive partner, despite his nearly universal reputation to the contrary. This time he’s not tied up in the secret room so he can accompany Nicole on her visit to that expensive fertility doctor.

And OH NO, the doctor wants a sample of EJ’s DNA (just a cheek swab, you pervert) so she can rule out potential genetic defects in the child.

Which means someone might finally discover that Sloan falsified that paternity test. More importantly, it means maybe this storyline will finally start going somewhere because seriously, I thought we learned our lesson about running in place with the whole Wendy/Johnny/Tripp fiasco.

Back at the bar, Trask is getting impatient and calls the matchmaker (yes, these people are using a MATCHMAKER. In 20-the-hell-23) to find out when her date is due to arrive.

She is informed that the gentleman in question should be there any time now. And that he’ll be wearing a blue blazer.

And if any moment demanded a GOB Bluth-style “COME ON!!”, it’s this one.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Monday, 24 July 2023

Yesterday I watched an episode of General Hospital. This has no bearing on anything I’m about to recap; I just wanted to mention it because it was SO FUCKING WEIRD. Somehow that show felt simultaneously cheaper and more expensive than this one. And there weren’t nearly as many hot people. It was like spending the night at some other kid’s house and being weirded out by their different brand of paper towel and their liberal use of doilies.

Speaking of doilies…

…damn, I really thought I had a segue there.

Speaking of Chad (we weren’t, but just roll with me or we’ll be here all day), he’s paying a visit to the only person all of Salem can agree is a good person: Theo.

They do a lot of narrative running in place (if you’re playing the “as you know…” exposition drinking game with these scenes, you will end up with a pleasant buzz) because Theo needs to be in this episode but not till near the end. I’ll get to that. Near the end.

Related: Eli’s back! He’s wondering why Lani hasn’t gone back to prison yet, so he heads over to Paulina’s for some answers. Paulina has none.

This is another set of characters that will have a lot to do in the last beat of today’s installment, but right now they’re in a bit of a holding pattern until we get there. I promise, we will be getting there. And it will be worth it!

One set of characters who have absolutely nothing to do with what I’m trying to build your anticipation for: Alex and Stephanie. Alex is returning the robe he borrowed from Chad, freshly dry-cleaned. Then he invites himself in and just sort of… hangs out, refusing to leave.

Last time this happened, I put forth my theory that he’s just doing this to fuck with the new couple (Chad did a LOT of “oops, I’m here right when you two are trying to get intimate! What are the odds??” back then), but Stephanie calls him out on it and Alex is… actually oblivious to the fact that he’s been doing anything wrong, and a little hurt that he’s caused his friend so much annoyance.

They talk through their issues, Alex promises to work on this in therapy and then they hug.

And then we get to experience my absolute least favorite Days cliché (even more than “walking in on someone telling a secret you’re not supposed to know about”): someone walking in on their partner in what is clearly a platonic hug with someone else and going off the fucking deep end about it.

Chad told Theo that he doesn’t feel threatened by Alex, but his witty rejoinder of “shut up!” when the other guy tries to explain seems to say otherwise.

So now Stephanie’s sympathies are back with Alex, and she’s mad at Chad. Maybe there’s still some life left in this ol’ love triangle after all! (And listen, I like Chad but there’s a part of me that would absolutely LOVE for Alex to steal Stephanie away from this perfect little domestic situation she’s building with Chad and his kids. That part of me is the entire reason I enjoy soaps.)

Down at the docks, Jada, Rafe and US Marshal Sam Gerard (no relation) continue to discover Lani’s body and also a syringe.

Gerard expresses concern that Lani became a junkie in her brief time on the outside, and that the reason she didn’t return to prison is because of drugs.

But then she’s rushed to the hospital, where they’re able to determine that it’s not, in fact, heroin in her system but a highly specific sedative that Nurse King recently took a pallet-load of. Good work, Kayla.

Speaking of Kayla… just prior to this, she was still poring over Nurse Kings records with Marlena.

They discovered that the trauma Marlena treated her for (which was then, unfortunately, circumvented by The Rollicker himself, Satan) happened thusly: one cold day back in 2021, she left her husband at home with a malfunctioning gas-powered space heater. The heater in question ended up killing her husband and three cats by carbon monoxide poisoning. And… I know this part of Marlena’s possession is a bit of a retcon, but I’m glad it is now because watching her camp it up as the Devil was a lot of fun and I’m not sure this gas leak sidequest would have been thematically appropriate at the time.

So, as Kayla’s pulled away to tend to a drug overdose (the aforementioned Lani), Marlena, knowing that Abe is still alive and at Nurse King’s apartment, realizes she could get there before anyone else and stop a potentially deadly situation (which she, under the influence of the Dark Prince, inadvertently helped to create.)

So she makes her way over there.

Good thing, too. Because Nurse King has decided to do that thing that a lot of crazy people on TV and movies do — recreate the events that traumatized her. (I have no idea if this happens in real life. And this does not matter at all.)

Only this time, the cats are stuffed (because she’s crazy), the husband is Abe (not her husband, because she’s crazy) and she’s going to be with him this time, like she should have been last time.

Jesus. I love laughing at all this dumb, exaggerated nonsense but… jesus. That’s a good one, Days. Sometimes you get me feeling some real emotions and this is absolutely one of those times.

Thankfully, before this horrible scenario can play itself out again, Marlena comes charging in!

And if you ever wondered why I constantly assert that Marlena is the main character of this sprawling, seemingly unconnected narrative, this is an excellent example.

Rafe and Lani are right behind her…

…but Marlena’s therapist powers kick in and she ends up being the one who talks Nurse King down and saves the day!

Not to mention getting a bit of redemption for her role in creating this horrible situation. She didn’t even need that redemption because that was all Satan… but she is Marlena, so obviously she got herself some anyway.

And back at the hospital, all those characters I mentioned earlier converge. Paulina and Eli are pleased to see that Lani’s okay.

And then the entire family greets Abe, who’s been safely recovered at long last!

Abe, for his part, still doesn’t remember who any of these people are.

But that’s more of a “promise of delicious melodrama to come” than an undermining of the long-awaited conclusion of this storyline.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Friday, 21 July 2023

Often, kinda by design, it feels like we’re watching three or four different shows on any given day.  But then occasionally we’ll get a gem like this one, where everything connects back to one single plot.

Steve and John are in Los Angeles. (You can always tell we’re in an exotic location because of the two or three shots of exceptionally generic stock footage before we cut to a set that looks very much like it exists somewhere in Salem.)

These guys are hoping to catch Jerry Prentiss, the actor who was involved in Nurse King’s weird plot to kidnap Abe. And honestly, their plan was pretty sound: Jerry left on a bus, so they took something faster than a bus to his destination so they can be there waiting for him when he gets off the bus. Nice job, Black Patch!

They pull a bit of good cop/bad cop with Jerry and for the first time, I sort-of understand what the point of John is. I mean, listen: I have come to love this character and the absolutely bizarre choices his performer makes to play him.

But I was never clear on what his role was in this private eye business of theirs. Steve is clearly the brains, the charm and basically everything else. But now I realize John growls like that because he thinks he’s being intimidating!

This does get answers out of Jerry, but Lani already managed that days ago by being both good and bad cop.

Lani is, indeed, still tied up in Nurse King’s apartment. 

And now — finally — she (Nurse King) is acting suitably crazy. Like, I was having real problems understanding her motives this whole time. She didn’t seem hostile, and most of the stuff she said and did (apart from the initial kidnapping) seemed relatively reasonable. But now, possibly sensing that this storyline will be ending soon, she steps up and takes us to the Promised Land of Batshittery.

Now she’s stopped answering to her real name and apparently actually believes she’s Paulina. And she treats Lani as though she’s the younger woman’s actual mother. 

She’s still definitely Nurse King, though. You can tell from the syringes full of sedatives!

She injects Lani with one of these when Lani hips her to the existence of the ankle monitor that was a condition of her temporary release from prison. “A number of law enforcement agencies, some of which aren’t just extremely dumb, made-up ones created for this show, will be using this to track me here,” she says.

So naturally Nurse King solved the problem the only way she knows how.

The real Paulina, meanwhile, receives a visit from Kate, who continues to hone those excellent “staying active in the story even though this has almost nothing to do with me” skills that make me love her so much.

Paulina expresses a lack of faith that people will be able to do their jobs effectively (whaaaaat? Not Paulina!) and cites the unsolved disappearance of Kate’s son, Philip, some time ago. “If they couldn’t find him, they won’t be able to find Lani, either!”

Philip was a real piece of work who antagonized a bunch of people and ultimately fled town with his mother’s help. Which Kate cops to to Paulina.

Then Paulina, realizing that a lot of the details of Philip’s faked disappearance (fell into the river but no body was recovered — only a small amount of blood) are almost identical to the details of Abe’s.

So she concludes that Abe must therefore still be alive.

Which… okay, she’s right. We know she’s right. But that is some positively Adam West Batman logical leaping right there, Paulina old chum.

At the hospital, Marlena and Kayla chat about their husbands definitely being in Los Angeles (you can tell because the caption said so!), then their conversation drifts to the subject of Nurse King.

Marlena apparently treated Nurse King some time ago, following the accidental death of Mr. Nurse King. Only — and I bet you’re not going to see where this is going, because it was a delightful surprise to me — those therapy sessions happened back when Marlena was possessed by the Devil!

I bet you people think I made all that Devil stuff up. It happened. And the repercussions of those events are still being felt! Marlena and Kayla realize that the Devil almost certainly encouraged Nurse King to feel guilty about her role in the accidental death of her husband (and three of their cats!), which may have led her directly to the aforementioned Promised Land.

Which sucks for Marlena, but also… A+ callback, Days!

And down at the police station, Rafe and Jada are still stressing over the fact that Lani is missing, when this US Marshall shows up to ask… about that thing I just said.

Yes, they did give this US Marshal the exact same name as the US Marshal from The Fugitive and subsequent spin-off movie, which was called US Marshals.

Marshal Significantly Hotter than Tommy Lee Jones reminds everyone that Lani has one of those ankle monitors, so they track the thing down to the dock set that I was certain they’d torn down to make that bus station in LA. (It’s possible that’s still true and they shot these out of order.)

And — oh no! — there’s Lani! And she appears to have been drugged via some kind of injection! BUT WHO COULD HAVE DONE THIS??

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Thursday, 20 July 2023

Some days I complain that not much happened, giving me very little to include in a recap. Today is like the platonic ideal of one of those days (of our lives).

Talia, fresh from her community service job of “cleaning up the town square, since it’s only one of two exterior locations in this town and the other one is where people usually get mugged or do drug deals or whatever,” joins Jada at one of the two interior locations where you can have a meal with someone: the Brady pub.

And that… is literally it. They spend their scenes recapping why Talia is doing community service and where Jada is now with the whole “got caught having an illegal office romance with Rafe and now he’s fired” thing. 

Speaking of Rafe, he’s sitting in the newly-cleaned town square (thanks, Talia) and continuing to stall the federal marshals demanding to know why he hasn’t turned over the prisoner he promised to watch while she was on furlough. (That’d be Lani, and we’ll get more into that tomorrow.)

I’ve only just barely started liking Rafe after watching him for hundreds of episodes, but it has finally started to happen. And as long as the person he shares the next set of scenes with doesn’t suck, that trend should continue.

Then Goddamn Johnny Motherfucking DiMera shows up, so never mind.

Actually, though… these scenes end up being pretty good! I have occasionally witnessed a friendship between these two that seemed a little odd to me in that “why is Marty McFly friends with Doc Brown?” way, but they actually mention here that Rafe was Johnny’s stepdad for awhile. Which definitely makes sense. Everyone’s married everyone in this town at some point.

But yeah — they commiserate over their shared frustrations (Johnny being dumped by Wendy; Rafe being fired) and it’s all genuinely charming and entertaining! Well, for a Thursday anyway.

Wendy, meanwhile, was hoping to seal the deal with Tripp tonight but he has to cancel because of the whole “career that saves lives” thing.

So she slathers some goop  on her face and watches… some kind of sport on television?

I would guess the sport is basketball, but my guesses in this area are easily discredited so you absolutely should not put any stock in them whatsoever. She could just as easily be watching tetherball for all I know. Does Irvine have a tetherball team?

But then Tripp shows up after all! He got someone to cover his shift so now here he is! Hooray!

So they begin the “Peacock and chill” ritual we’ve all heard so much about.

And then are almost immediately (Pea)cockblocked by Li, who comes home early from his date.

Said date was with Melinda Trask, the district attorney. They shared a bonding moment over her favorite wine, so neither of them ended up storming out of the place in anger and frustration like we expected them to.

They have some standard date-chat about favorite movies. Hers is Casablanca (not an imaginative choice, but it is a classic for a reason); his is The Godfather… 

…TRILOGY. Which, if it came from any other character, might read as an unconventional pull. Maybe they can genuinely defend the universally panned third movie. Or maybe they’re just a contrarian.  But this is Li. He probably googled “popular movies,” saw The Godfather, then saw there were three movies and thought he would seem more human if he said he liked all of them.

As the date progresses, Melinda asks some more cute “getting to know you” questions, like “what was your actual involvement in the plot to kill Stefan DiMera?”

She does follow this up with a hair twirl, a coy smile and a “tee hee, this is just between us!” but even Li isn’t falling for that one. He grabs for her purse and pulls out a recording device, which just happens to be rolling.

So… yeah, now Li slumping home (to his extremely bizarre living arrangement with his sister and her boyfriend) and being very bummed out kind of makes sense now.

Then Melinda has one more beat — why can’t she ever seem to make this whole dating thing work?

But because she’s a good performer, I ACTUALLY FOUND MYSELF FEELING BAD FOR HER ANYWAY.

There’s also a set of scenes where EJ rubs Nicole’s feet and offers moral support to his pregnant partner.

What an unrepentant villain! Just a morally bankrupt scoundrel, devoid of any redeeming factors whatsoever!

Eric and Sloan also have some go-nowhere bits involving babies and maybe Sloan is pregnant? 

This will undoubtedly lead to some interesting drama down the road, what with all the Nicole-related complications… but we’re not there just yet.

And back at the pub, Johnny and Rafe join Talia and Jada. 

They enter as Jada is telling her sister how good Rafe is in the sack, which is a nice turnaround on the usual “walked in on the end of a conversation and misconstrued what I heard like I’m goddamn Mr. Roper” thing they’ve been doing lately.

So they talk privately and OH GOD BOTH TALIA AND JOHNNY WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT BEING SINGLE. AND THEY’RE ABOUT THE SAME AGE. THEY’RE GOING TO HOOK UP NOW, AREN’T THEY? GROSS GROSS GROSS

But instead, Johnny takes the opportunity to yell at Talia for the bad stuff she did and positions himself as Chanel’s guardian. (I was going to say “white knight” here but boy would that be a loaded expression under these circumstances.)

And of COURSE that’s how this goes. Because one half-endearing scene notwithstanding, Johnny gotta Johnny.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Wednesday, 19 June 2023

I’m on a deadline today so I need to keep this one short. Fortunately, very little happened in this particular episode so that should be easy!

First, Xander comes home to the plastic surgery monster Chloe with an anniversary gift.

It’s a dart board.

These two began hooking up some months ago (exactly three, according to this very episode) when they were both in the Brady pub and Chloe accidentally threw a dart directly into Xander’s chest. As meet-cutes go, it wasn’t bad (I think I have a soft spot for love stories that start with a  trip to the emergency room) and this was a fine way to commemorate it.

Then they place a foreplay-based wager on a game of darts which ends, as you might expect, with them having sex on the couch.

(They always have sex on the couch because I’m certain they haven’t built bedroom sets for either of these characters.)

Next, there’s yet another tiresome series of scenes featuring Bonnie and Maggie (Justin is also here, but pretty much just in a “wincing awkwardly off to the side” capacity), in which Bonnie almost tells Maggie that Maggie’s daughter Sarah is pregnant. 

I like all of these characters. I don’t even mind some goofy sitcom shenanigans in my soap. But if they’re just going to do this for nine months to remind us that Sarah’s pregnant while keeping her mostly offscreen so she can dramatically return when the baby is born…

…okay, that’s actually kind of clever. Definitely better than just periodically saying “as you know, Sarah is still pregnant.”

Speaking of sitcom shenanigans, the promise of Alex living across the hall from Chad and Stephanie pays off immediately as a shirtless Alex shows up at their door like so much Kramer.

Though I dare say, in a contest of “who wore no shirt better?” I think Alex wins.

Alex heard that July on Days means two things: waving a gun around and/or walking around topless. So Alex opted for the more flattering of the two gun shows. Chad is not impressed.

It turns out Alex’s apartment doesn’t have hot water, so he wheedles his way into Chaphanie’s shower. And then into Chad’s robe.

Then he sees they’re having Chinese food for dinner and invites himself to stay and eat.

This initially struck me as uncharacteristically boorish behavior — Alex does have a strong bro vibe, but the show has also gone to great lengths to show that he’s better than that and constantly trying to improve. Then I realized that he’s probably doing all of this on purpose. Back when he was with Stephanie, Chad was constantly interjecting himself into situations in which busy was about to be gotten. I think this is just some sweet payback on Alex’s part. Honestly though, either interpretation (revenge or cluelessness) is pretty funny.

Meanwhile, Stefan admonishes Gabi for her latest risk-taking (waving a gun at Li.)

And eventually she agrees never to do anything like that again… without bringing him with her.

After all, you know what they say: “two guns are better than one, and not wearing a shirt also figures into this equation somehow!”

Speaking of shirtless, here’s Li again. Okay, he was shirtless last time we saw him, but now he’s all dressed up for his date. Which ends up being with Melinda Trask, the district attorney who so recently pushed for Li’s incarceration for his involvement in the recent attempted murder of Stefan DiMera.

You’re right to scoff, Melinda. This guy’s pretty but he’s a criminal. And not even the fun kind like Kristen or Xander. He also continues to be just the worst actor in this entire ensemble and it’s so incredibly painful to watch him share scenes with Trask, who is right on the cusp of being one of those “background characters who comes to the foreground because we like the performer so much.”

Like… she sees the wine Li has ordered (and please ignore the obvious fact that this label was hastily thrown together and printed out in the props office five minutes before they started rolling)...

…and segues into a genuinely wistful monologue about a trip she took to wine country just after law school.

The text itself is slightly better than usual for this show, and Tina Huang (the woman who plays Trask) really sells the Proust-like journey to a simpler and more hopeful time in her life. (Okay, I’m not sure if it’s actually Proust-like at all. That’s one of the few classic literary references I know and I only know it because of Monty Python.)

And while she’s doing all that, she just gets… nothing.

And the worst part of it all? She’s probably going to go home with this boob! And he’ll probably touch her boob! Maybe both of them!

I don’t love Melinda Trask’s George W. Bush-like trampling of people’s basic constitutional rights. (Honestly, I have a feeling she’s going to love working with the new Acting Mayor.) But even in light of that, she deserves better than this soggy bath mat of a scene partner.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Tuesday, 18 July 2023

Li, recently released from police custody since they couldn’t pin the “complicit in the near-assassination of Stefan” thing on him (despite it being true, albeit to a lesser degree than they originally accused him of), sits around shirtless in the apartment that he shares with Wendy and Tripp.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Li is a boring character played by a performer with no charisma or apparent intelligence. But he is, at least, good-looking. So, like, if he has to be onscreen, I’ll take the half-naked version over the clothed.

Then Gabi shows up at his door.

“I was just thinking about you,” says Li. And that’s definitely what you want to say when you’re in a severe state of undress and you’re talking to your ex, whose fiance you recently attempted to murder. No possible way that could be misinterpreted!

Then Gabi pulls a gun on him.

Not for the pervy implications of what he said. For entirely other reasons. And in true Li fashion, he has no idea what to do with this (or any) information.

Gabi’s here because she knows Li was involved with the aforementioned plot, despite his being released by the cops. Also she heard that we’re waving guns around now (more about this in a moment), so why not threaten and/or possibly kill this guy? I mean, even if she got caught, she’d probably walk. Her brother is the police commissioner! (He’s not anymore, but I don’t think Gabi knows this yet.)

As he begs for his life, Li tries to convince Gabi that he’s definitely over her because he’s hired a matchmaker!

This was actually the very lie he told Wendy a couple of weeks ago, but apparently it’s true now. Why the show went with “matchmaker” and not just “dating site” is beyond me. But I know he’s not lying this time for reasons I’ll come back to in a minute.

You can conclude from this that Gabi does not shoot Li. Which… maybe was her plan all along? It’s hard to tell because Gabi’s fucking nuts and I suspect she didn’t entirely know what her plan was herownself for at least a minute there. (I’m really gonna miss her when she leaves.)

If you were wondering if Dimitri and Leo were still boning, the answer is “very yes.”

This particular bit included some actual pelvic thrusting and, while I still think Dimitri can do so much better than Leo, I love that middle American housewives (whom we all assume are still the core audience of soaps, right?) are getting a bit of softcore gay porn whether they want it or not. Three cheers for The Gay Agenda!

The two of them share a tender-post coital moment and remind us that Leo must keep Dimitri’s shameful secret so he can marry Gwen. 

Who, incidentally, is the exact person Leo came here to help out in the first place. He even describes her as his “ride or die,” so it’s a bit weird that he interprets this to mean “it’s okay to fuck her fiance. And also not to tell her about it when I return to the hotel room that we inexplicably still share as a home.”

And that is exactly what happens. He doesn’t tell her. They do the usual I HAVE SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT DIMITRI thing, then he naturally swerves and says WE’RE PALS NOW AND WE’RE PLANNING A SURPRISE PARTY FOR YOU!

Poor Gwen.

Then we deal with the whole “Brady threatened Kristen with a gun” thing. First, Belle, who is a step behind all of this, shows up to retrieve the signed custody agreement she hastily threw together because her mother said it was okay to give in to blackmail. (Or is it extortion? I can never remember and absolutely cannot be bothered to look it up or even care very much.)

Kristen tells Belle about the whole gun thing. Belle essentially says “well, if he did do that, you probably had it coming BECAUSE YOU KEEP KIDNAPPING YOUR DAUGHTER AND PULLING THIS KIND OF BULLSHIT.”

But this is no kind of defense, which Brady discovers as Jada starts asking questions about the incident and then, because she’s a fucking narc now, Rachel tells her where the gun is.

So he finds a sitter for Rachel (and I would love to know who the hell could possibly watch her well enough to ensure she doesn’t just run back to Kristen somehow) and goes down to the police station for questioning.

Belle, desperately catching up with the plot, shows up and advises him not to say anything.

But Brady thinks it’s a good idea to just come clean and admit everything he did. Because… you know, endless kidnapping and extortion or blackmail or whatever.

Astoundingly, Jada seems about ready to just let him go (possibly because she’s literally the only cop working right now and she just doesn’t have time for more DiMera-related bullshit) but uh oh! Here comes District Attorney Trask!

And if there’s one thing she likes even less than people having basic Constitutional rights, it’s punishing people who are abusive to women.

…which, okay, fair enough. She’s a complex character, okay?

“Let’s hurry this up,” she says. “Because I have dinner plans.”

…and they’re with Li!

And finally, EJ and Stefan enjoy a drink together and decide to call a truce. 

They discuss Megan’s plot to kill Stefan and the fact that Megan’s son, Dimitri, shouldn’t be living in their house. So they return home to confront him with this.

Unfortunately, Kristen got to Dimitri first. Armed with the knowledge that he and Leo are shacking up (brought to her by Rachel) and desperate to do something with her blackmail blueballs, she’s managed to convince Dimitri to cut her in on the Von Leuschner fortune in exchange for not telling Gwen about it.

So now she’s on his side in the whole “keep him in the house” thing.

She dresses all of this up in an argument about family loyalty, which Stefan actually falls for.

Which means this alliance with EJ lasted… two segments? Maybe three?

And look, I’m always in favor of the path that leads to the most melodrama but I was really hoping these crazy kids had finally put their differences behind them, you know?

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Monday, 18 July 2023

Having torn up the custody agreement that he was railroaded into putting together, Brady continues to confront Kristen. Kristen, for her part, is not especially happy with any of this.

So she returns to her “I have no idea where Rachel could be” and Brady has had just about enough of this so he pulls a gun.

Which… look. In real life, there is absolutely no excuse to pull a gun on an unarmed person (in their home, no less!). But this ain’t real life; Kristen is fucking crazy; and if Brady doesn’t resolve this here and now, Kristen will almost certainly flee the country and he’ll never see his daughter again. 

So while I normally would be made uncomfortable by this situation (Colin’s recent abuse of Talia springs immediately to mind), I think things are suitably melodramatic for me to actually kind of cheer Brady on just the tiniest bit?

One person who is absolutely not a fan of any of this, though, is Rachel.

Shit, Brady. Good luck extricating yourself from this one without scarring your child for life.

He does manage to get her out of there.

And he immediately locks his dad’s gun back up as soon as he gets home, like the responsible person he is. A responsible person who just got back from threatening his ex-wife with it, but still. We give partial credit in this course!

Good thing he did though, because here come the cops, responding to a complaint that he did that very thing!

“Kristen called you guys on me, huh?” he asks Jada. But no! It wasn’t Kristen!

Well, perhaps I spoke too soon when I praised your extricating skills, Brady. Because it looks like, as the old saying goes, the most challenging extrication is yet to come.

Speaking of extrication (a word that really owes me for promotional consideration today), Nurse Whitley is still in the process of leaving her job so she can flee town with Abe.

(Her next line to Kayla is not, in fact, “fried chicken,” in case you were wondering.)

Steve is still a step behind Lani in this whole “tracking down Abe” business, and is joined at the door to Jerry’s apartment by his partner, John. And since Jerry isn’t answering the door, they just… kick it down. Which I guess is a thing private eyes can just… do?

They confirm that Jerry has indeed bailed, and they actually pull a pretty clever variation on the classic “rub a pencil over the notepad to see what they wrote” trick — they discover that he printed something, but the document got jammed, so they pull open the printer.

There, they discover a bus schedule. Which does, indeed, narrow things down from “maybe he took a plane or a train or a boat or a goat.”

Rafe, who — termination notwithstanding — has been charged with keeping track of Lani, shows up to Paulina’s house to take her (Lani) back to prison.

But Lani’s not there. The two of them grow increasingly concerned over this and Paulina, obviously overwhelmed with just having lost her husband (as far as she knows) and now this… starts screaming at Rafe for breaking the rules and sleeping with Jada.

She actually manages to build a pretty good case connecting that to this current situation, and even manages to blame Rafe for Abe’s apparent death in the process. Like, the logic is a lot more coherent than mine is when I get this mad.

But obviously this was an unexpected emotional cocktail — one part grief, one part panic attack — and she regrets serving it almost immediately. Rafe, who’s actually turning out to be a pretty good dude, understands this and does not hold any of it against her.

And at Nurse Whitley’s house, Lani spends the entire episode trying to convince Abe that she’s his daughter, that the woman keeping him here is not his wife and that he needs to get the hell out of here.

But Abe, despite the appearance of a few Body and Soul-fueled breakthroughs, is still pretty confused (what with the amnesia and all) and isn’t buying it.

Then Whitley returns home and discovers her!

And then promptly jabs her with a sedative. Because, to Nurse Whitley, every problem is a nail and every solution is a hammer full of tranquilizer.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Friday, 14 July 2023

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I might be getting a little burned out on this show. At the very least, I wasn’t feeling particularly engaged in most of the plots, which didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Boy, it did not take them long to turn THAT around.

Let’s start with Marlena, who’s still confronting Kristen over the whereabouts of Rachel (Kristen’s daughter, Marlena’s granddaughter). Kristen continues to insist that she has no idea where Rachel could be.

Then she pivots to that old standby: “but hypothetically, if I did know where she was, I might be more inclined to tell you if there was something in it for me.”

Marlena is, as I have mentioned many times, the moral center of this show (when she isn’t possessed by the Devil, anyway — and it’s been over a year since that was true). But she’s been making some pretty weird choices lately. Like this one, where she just agrees to Kristen’s hypothetical scenario and swears to use her Main Character powers to convince Brady to revisit the custody agreement that currently doesn’t allow Kristen to see her daughter at all.

So Marlena leaves to do that. And then someone emerges from the secret room. OH NO, IT’S A BEAR!!

Oh, whew. It’s not a bear. It’s just the daughter that Kristen is illegally hiding here. That’s entirely fine.

Apparently Rachel was hiding in plain sight up in the attic, amidst a vast assortment of stuffed animals that we apparently don’t have the budget to show.

They have, by my accounting, paid for two bear suits now, though: this child-sized one, and the adult-sized Duke. Duke’s heyday was a storyline from over a year ago, but he still makes the occasional appearance — one as recently as a couple of months ago!

Marlena finds Brady and Belle chatting in the town square and goes over her “just give custody back to Kristen and she’ll tell us where Rachel” plan. 

Brady thinks this is a terrible plan and so does Belle, but Marlena has Therapist Powers and Main Character Powers and, over these two particular people, Mom Powers, so there’s absolutely no way they can resist. My god, no wonder Satan keeps coming after this woman. She has an entire town under her thrall.

So Belle uses her Lawyer Powers to draw up a new custody agreement. 

Which Brady then takes over to Kristen.

Then, after making a big show of having Kristen sign it, he tears it up in her face.

Which… is a highly impractical way to make your point, but also, 10/10 for handling it in the most melodramatically soapish way possible.

And while all of this really was quintessential soap stuff that really delivers everything you want out of a show like this… trust me when I tell you that it was the much less interesting B-story today.

First, we pick up where we left off with Lani confronting Jerry about his part in Abe’s disappearance.

Lani might only be on temporary furlough from prison, but she’s still one hell of a detective. Jerry endures her questioning for all of about thirty seconds before essentially collapsing to the floor in a fetal position, weeping openly and confessing every last detail of Nurse King’s very stupid plan.

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Nurse King is being questioned by Steve.

She also folds almost immediately, but her plan is to just throw Jerry under the bus and resume fleeing town with Abe’s poor, drugged-up body.

So they’re all getting pretty close to finding Abe, who’s still zonked out on Nurse King’s couch watching Body and Soul. AND NOW HE’S SEEING HIS OWN ACTUAL SELF IN THE SHOW.

This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen and I love it so much. Best of all, they actually deliver on everything that “beloved character recovering from amnesia think’s he lives in a soap that exists inside our soap” promises. Up to and including an appearance by a fictionalized version of his wife, Paulina!

Jackée (best known for the 80s sitcom 227) has always looked great on Days, but her Body and Soul appearance is some real next-level shit. Honestly, sometimes I find myself wishing she was a little better at selling some of the heavier emotional stuff on this show but this camp comedy stuff is completely her wheelhouse and She. Fucking. Nails it.

TV Abe sort-of recognizes his wife, and other elements of his actual existence start seeping into the show. He even starts to remember that he and Paulina have a daughter together: Lani.

Fictional Paulina (whom they’ve given the surprisingly not-over-the-top name Sandra Clarkington) doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They’ve never even met before, so how could they possibly have a daughter?

But then Abe’s viewing is abruptly interrupted by a tap-tap-tapping on Nurse King’s chamber door and IT’S LANI! HIS ACTUAL DAUGHTER! SHE FOUND HIM!

Days of Our Lives, I am truly sorry that I ever doubted you.

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Thursday, 13 July 2023

It’s a sad day in Salem — today is the funeral for Mayor Abraham Carver (who isn’t actually dead, as we the audience know, but none of these poor saps do.)

Paulina, having passed through the “sarcastic about cactuses” stage of grief, is doing her best under the circumstances. And Chanel, astoundingly, is still being a responsible adult and a supportive daughter!

Theo (Abe’s son) shows up…

…and then Paulina sends Chanel away… for some reason? They make kind of a big deal about how Paulina’s being so insistent about this, while also being quite vague about the reasons, but… it’s just so she can talk to Theo for a minute? So that was nothing. Well, Paulina’s out of her mind with grief, I guess. Not everything she does has to make sense.

Chanel, for her part, continues her supportive streak and leaves as instructed.

Then Theo goes over the eulogy he intends to deliver at the funeral. Which includes this amazing line calling out a dumb thing Paulina did.

Theo, incidentally, is autistic. I admit I don’t know as much about autism as I probably should and maybe (ironically) I’m missing some obvious signs that he’s putting off. But it often feels like the writers forget about this themselves, write him like they would any other character and occasionally throw in a line like “as you know, I’m autistic.” But this was an excellent way to remind us and give us a good laugh — not even at his expense, because that thing Paulina did WAS actually very dumb!

Meanwhile, Steve and John are going over the evidence in The Case of the Missing Mayor again. I suppose the best time to do this is “right before the funeral we’re having because we failed so hard that Abe has been presumed dead.”

Then Chanel stops by. I’m pretty sure I know the answer in this round of Do These Characters Even Know Each Other? (it’s no), but her mom did shoo her out of the house and this is as good a place as any to be, I suppose?

It does allow her to share some information about Nurse Whitley and Jerry (the guy who claimed he saw Abe fall into the river) that actually sheds new light on their case.

These guys are supposed to be seasoned private investigators, both with an extensive background in law enforcement. And this former party girl-turned-baker, who can’t be older than 25, may have just blown the case wide open for them.

Of course, Abe is still fine.

Well. Not fine. He’s still trapped in Nurse Whitley (who we’re now calling Nurse King, apparently?)’s apartment, and still receiving regular injections of heavy sedatives.

But he’s not dead.

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering exactly what Nurse Whitley Kim Coles King is playing at here. Does she want Abe to start believing that she’s actually his wife Paulina? Then what? Surely he’s going to continue to unravel this extremely shoddy tapestry of lies. If nothing else, someone is going to slip and reveal one of her many non-Paulina names to him. Does she really think he’s just going to give up on all of that and settle into a life he clearly hates with a woman he clearly also hates?

The only thing that really makes sense to me, given what we know about her character, is that she eventually wants to dress him up like a cat and then taxidermy him and keep the body on her couch for the rest of her life.

Oh, it turns out there is a next phase to this plan, and it’s not my cat-taxidermy-Abe scenario. It actually involves leaving town.

She advises Jerry to do the same, and offers him a wad of cash to do so.

And she gives us this line, which MUST be a reference to another show streaming on Peacock, right?

And — hey, look! Lani’s still in town! She stops at the DiMera mansion to chat with Kristen. These two are canonically best friends, and not in that “oh shit, Nicole and Chloe are best friends!” way. So it makes total sense that Lani would come over for a little hangout.

She also happens to bring up the fact that Rachel is missing and asks if Kristen kidnapped her. And almost immediately sees through the lie, because KRISTEN, THIS IS YOUR BEST FRIEND OF MANY YEARS WHO IS ALSO A DETECTIVE. DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU WERE GOING TO GET SOMETHING PAST HER?

Also concerned that Rachel has gone missing: her dad, Brady, who’s hanging up posters in the town square.

Then he has a chat with Marlena, who tells him not to worry.

And, look — I’ve made no secret of my love of Marlena. But HIS CHILD IS MISSING. I mean, yes, obviously Kristen has her. But the Salem PD (what’s left of it anyway) searched the DiMera mansion and Brady confronted her personally. So we have no evidence that she actually has Rachel. The kid might actually be in serious danger for all anyone knows! (In fairness, they haven’t read this recap so they don’t know about the conversation with Lani yet.)

Later, after Abe’s funeral, Brady meets his dad at the pub and he basically says what Marlena says: “Rachel’s fine, don’t sweat it.”

Sure.  We all just attended a funeral for the last person in this town who went missing. But I’m sure this will all turn out okay.

As promised, Marlena confronts Kristen.

She lays on some pretty thick mom-guilt about how she JUST gave Kristen free hypnosis EARLIER THIS VERY WEEK but Kristen continues to lie. Marlena’s also not buying it, but she’s not familiar enough with Kristen to lay the “bitch” line on her like Lani did.

So that confrontation doesn’t amount to a whole lot, but it does set off a series of other confrontations!

Like Steve, confronting Nurse Kidnapthemayor!

And Lani, confronting Jerry!

Damn it, Jerry!

We may finally be closing in on the actual whereabouts of Abe, who is actually drugged out of his goddamned gourd and watching more Body and Soul! 

I was initially a little disappointed in this installment because we’ve already seen these B&S versions of Kate and Jerry and I was hoping to see some performers we hadn’t seen on this show yet.

And so, as if answering this concern, Abe himself — the actual Abe, not a performer who resembles him — appears on the soap, at Lorna DeLorean’s door!

Man, if whatever’s in Nurse Kim-King’s syringe makes you think you live inside a soap, how can I get a prescription?

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Wednesday, 12 July 2023

This was a pretty eventful one for a Wednesday episode! Maybe these guys have finally realized that on a streaming platform (as in life itself) time is meaningless and the labeling of individual days serves only to mark the inevitable passage of time.

Then again, they probably do know that because I think that’s exactly what this guy has been trying to tell us since 1965.

(Incidentally, they’ve shaved that intro down to a tight fifteen seconds. It would almost certainly take you longer to find and use your remote to push the ‘skip intro’ button than it would to just let it play.)

Okay, first — Wendy finally chose a guy!

If you felt jerked around by me teasing this information in yesterday’s recap, imagine how I’ve felt for the past… 8 months or so? I have a distinct memory of this being a thing around Christmas, but it’s possible it’s been going on even longer than that. And even though we knew she picked one of them at the end of yesterday’s episode, it still takes more than half of this one for them to finally tell us.

First, she asks Tripp (who lives there) to give her and Johnny some privacy.

Both guys somehow inexplicably interpret this to mean that she’s chosen Johnny, not just that she wants to have a conversation with one of them without the other one just hanging around. But of course, “misunderstandings bordering on farce” are one of this show’s favorite tricks. Certainly of late, anyway.

So Tripp goes to visit his dad, Steve. Steve continues to be an extremely good dude, and it’s easy to see how a guy like Tripp came from a dad like Steve. He tells his son that, if he cares for Wendy, he should fight for her. But not in the shitty, sexist way that guys used to do stuff like that.

Steve is doing his best to keep up with the times and gives very good advice about how to be confident and assertive without being toxic and pushy. I wish I had jokes for this, but I don’t. I’m just a real sucker for media where strong, self-assured dudes are also allowed to be compassionate and sensitive. It’s a level of nuance that actual grown-up TV shows struggle with, but this soap fucking nails it.

Back at Wendy’s place… Johnny’s being a real smug dickhole over his assumption that Wendy has chosen him.

Which is what makes it extra delightful when she says “nope, I’m actually into Tripp. Now get out of my house.” She’s more diplomatic about it than that, but after so many months of waiting for this exact thing to finally happen, my memory wants to embellish it a bit.

Also he throws a little entitled hissy fit when he gets the news. Because of course he does.

Then Tripp comes home, gets the news and everyone’s happy! Except Johnny, and nobody fucking cares about that guy!

Over at the pub, Kate and Kayla have a chat over breakfast. Mostly about how Kate really wanted Harris to kill Megan, and how disappointed she is that this didn’t end up happening. Kate gotta Kate.

Kayla commits a very mild HIPAA violation and tells Kate what’s been going on with Harris’ deprogramming.

And here he is, still at the hospital, hanging with Marlena. Who is somehow not crawling with picnic ants.

Harris believes that, what with being brainwashed to kill for Megan on two different occasions, maybe he shouldn’t just be free to go because Marlena says he’s cured now. Maybe, he suggests, I should go Offscreen Hills, the mental institution where we sent Tripp’s mom, and be under observation for awhile.

Marlena is weirdly hesitant to agree to this, but finally does.

I still want to like Harris, but a trip to Offscreen Hills usually means, as you might infer from the name, leaving the show. I mean, I’d be very happy if he met Tripp’s mom (Ava, one of my favorite characters) there and they fell in love. But that doesn’t seem terribly likely.

But before the Nice Young Men in Their Clean White Coats show up to take him away (ha ha), Kate shows up to sort-of apologize (this is Kate we’re talking about after all) for asking him to kill Megan.

Which, let’s be honest, is probably the best send-off this poor guy is likely to get.

Okay. I promised eventfulness and I definitely meant more than just “an obvious resolution to a tedious love triangle.”

Because this is the episode where we meet Clint Rawlings, formerly deputy mayor to Abe Carver and now, in light of Abe’s presumed death, acting mayor of Salem.

I was pleased to see the introduction of a new, fairly handsome character but one of my viewing companions (TLo) insisted we were meeting a new villain.

And she was proven right almost immediately. Clint really comes out swinging, laying into Chanel for daring to reopen her bakery after the Poisoned Biscuit Affair of April or So.

He proceeds to go into the elaborate web of deception and misfortune that led to Sweet Bits’ recent closure (Chanel getting involved with her college professor; the untimely demise of the professor’s wife; the subsequent cover-up of the whole affair by her mother; the arrival in Salem of two of that professor’s children, both swearing revenge) and assures her that he will not stand for any of this because his administration is going to bring law and order (now streaming on Peacock) and decency back to Salem.

If you happen to be watching the show with any racist dogs, they almost certainly started barking at the sound of that whistle.

And at the police station, Rafe actually does decide to do something about the whole “Shawn was drinking on the job” thing and prepares to suspend him. But then Shawn reveals that he knows all about Rafe’s secret affair with Jada (his subordinate and the only other named cop on the show) and effectively blackmails Rafe into not suspending him lest the affair become public knowledge.

Wow, he’s a mean drunk. Who would have expected that of Shawn Brady, the Irish cop?

Naturally someone overhears all of this. (Did I say “bordering on farce” earlier? I meant “living in a comfortable suburb of farce and commuting in daily for work.”)  And that someone is Acting Mayor Family Values, who almost certainly cannot account for his whereabouts on 6 January 2021 if you get what I’m saying.

Rafe does manage to go through with the suspension of Drunk Shawn, but then Rawlings proceeds to Make Salem Great Again and fires Rafe!

Which sucks, because I was just finally getting to like Rafe a bit. But also because, as far as I can tell, this makes Jada the only active cop in Salem now.

Well, unless you count Officer Skippy, the guy whose pants got stolen at the hospital a few weeks ago. But what’s the likelihood that this new Acting Mayor puts an inept, inexperienced white dude in charge over the woman of color?

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Tuesday 11 July 2023

Johnny comes over to visit Wendy, but she’s not here — instead, here’s some shirtless Tripp. (Thank you, I will.)

We’re in month 23 of “Wendy inexplicably doesn’t know which of these guys she wants to date,” so I guess it’s time to run in circles a bit more!

The two of them nearly come to blows (no, not like that, Leo) as they talk through their conflict a bit. But then they decide to handle whatever ends up happening like mature adults! Which, in fairness, Tripp has been doing this entire time so it’s really just Johnny who decides this. Also, I’ve seen tomorrow’s episode already and — spoilers, I guess — it’s not going to last until then.

Wendy does finally return home and OH MY GOD she’s finally made a decision! Who will she choose: the handsome, charming, respectful doctor? Or the entitled rich kid with the horrible little mustache?

We don’t actually get to find out until tomorrow. I mean, I know already because… like I said, I’ve seen the next one. But I’m not going to tell you that yet.

Instead, I’m going to tell you why Wendy has finally decided to pick a guy.

It’s because she’s been visiting her brother, Li, in that little room at the police station. And really laying into him — first for lying to her about being over Gabi, then for the crime that he did. The crime of hypnotizing a dude to kill Stefan so he can be with Gabi again. (It turns out he didn’t actually do that crime, but HE WAS VERY CLOSELY INVOLVED WITH ALL OF IT, so it’s extremely frustrating to me that he might get away with that since he didn’t do the actual main crime.)

Anyway, Wendy’s disappointed. And Li… is his usual expressionless self throughout the entire conversation.

But then he tries to turn things around on Wendy, comparing his murder plot to her not being able to decide between Tripp and Johnny. Which is an extremely dumb thing to say, but… well, I just showed you Li’s face. He’s extremely dumb.

Somehow that did actually get through to Wendy, though? You know this part already. Except who she chose. I’ll tell you that tomorrow! Don’t be so grabby!

Speaking of Gabi, we’re still dealing with the aftermath of Megan getting the better of her. First, Rafe yells at her for needlessly putting herself in danger.

Then Stefan shows up to do the same. 

They take their fight home with them (while upstairs, Leo and Dimitri bone it out and Li’l Rachel is just outside with a glass to the door).

And eventually they work out that Gabi shouldn’t be doing things like “jumping on a would-be assassin’s back” and “confronting a bedridden supervillain.” Or rather, she SHOULD be, but only if Stefan’s there to have her back. Which is honestly kind of beautiful.

Said would-be assassin is himself handcuffed to a hospital bed, because of the whole attempted assassination thing. And here comes the main character of the show, Dr. Marlena Evans, still sporting that tablecloth outfit.

Harris has requested her presence so that she can unhypnotize him. Or… lay some extra hypnosis on top of the hypnosis he’s already received. Or something, I don’t know. I’ve watched Marlena enter the subconscious of like ten different Salem residents since I started watching. I think it’s like a rite of passage for these people.

While she’s rooting around in there, she discovers a memory of Li ordering Harris to kill Stefan.

That same horrible fog effect we got in John’s dream last week is applied again, so you know it’s a memory.

But then she keeps digging and discovers that it wasn’t Li at all! It was Dr. Rolf, whose white suit in this washed-out style looks like an angel. A mad scientist angel who commands you to kill someone and then makes you think someone else did it.

So like one of those “biblically accurate angels” we’ve all heard so much about.

And down at the Abe Carver Shantytown Memorial at the docks, district attorney Trask confronts Sad Eyes Shawn about his unfortunate pivot to Drunk Guy Shawn.

And then demands that Rafe fire his drunk ass.

Trask can be something of a hardass, but she’s 100% right here and I kind of hate that Rafe refuses to comply out of spite. I mean, why would a cop protect another cop who did something so fundamentally wrong that someone could have gotten seriously hurt? That doesn’t even make sense!

Then Rafe gets a call from Marlena, informing him that Li was, indeed, wrongfully accused of being involved with this whole Stefan Killing thing. So Trask lets him go.

Which, god damn it, is exactly what I said was going to happen.

God damn it!

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera

[daysofourlivesrecaps]

Monday, 10 July 2023

Chad and Stephanie are touring the set that will presumably be their new apartment, because there’s absolutely no chance the crew put together this much for a single episode.

It’s been a long-held belief in our household that the property values in Salem are extremely low, what with all the kidnappings, murders, Satanic possessions and general international intrigue. Which kind of explains why we’ve been watching a number of couples and individuals competing for the same rental properties for weeks now — it’s like how competitive New Yorkers get over rent-controlled places. eg, here’s Brady, nipping at the heels of our young lovers, hoping that he could be the first to snatch up this three-bedroom place for himself and his daughter.

Sorry, Brady. You snoozed and so, in accordance with fundamental principles of society, you losed.

Over at the Kirakiseseses, Alex has decided that it would be best for all involved if he moved out. Because seriously, JOHN ANISTON DIED BACK IN NOVEMBER AND WE ARE STILL PRETENDING THAT VICTOR IS JUST OVER THERE IN THE NEXT ROOM. 

Also there’s the whole “Maggie fired him and then became his sworn enemy pretty much out of nowhere” thing, which makes living with her a little uncomfortable. Alex continues to work on his conflict management skills thanks to the tireless efforts of Dr. Marlena Evans and does not rise to any of Maggie’s attempts to reignite the bizarre conflict between the two of them.

He doesn’t actually have a place to live yet, “but how hard could it be to find an apartment in Salem?” he thinks, and heads over to the vacancy he heard about earlier today...

…where Chad and Stephanie have already decided to move in. Which sucks for Alex, but again: by their accounting, this is a three-bedroom place! I realize you’re moving out of a mansion, Alex, but you may have to set your sights a little lower.

Nevertheless, he returns some time later to hand Stephanie the rental agreement for this place. Which he picked up from the landlord. When he signed his own papers for the place right across from them.

Stephanie, Chad and Alex had a pretty intense love triangle happening somewhat recently, but I can’t imagine this will in any way impact them all being neighbors now.

Gwen runs into Kristen in the town square (official motto: you’re probably going to run into someone you know here and if you’re Nicole, that person will definitely be Eric) and they have a chat about Gwen accepting Dimitri’s proposal.

Kristen doesn’t mention her knowledge that Dimitri is just marrying Gwen so he can receive a massive influx of cash from his ill-defined Eurotrash family. But Kristen’s had a lot going on lately, so it probably just slipped her mind?

Kristen returns home and shortly thereafter, witnesses the “secret” passage opening. 

There are easily half a dozen reasons why this is all very stupid, but I cannot deny that I was legitimately excited to see who might emerge from the tunnel. Especially since we’ve accounted for the two people who know of its existence: Megan fled town on her Definitely Real Submarine and Leo is upstairs with Dimitri. (Don’t worry; I’m getting to that.)

But it’s her daughter, Rachel!

Much like how she stole her dad’s cell phone to take an Uber to visit her mom in prison, this time Rachel has ditched camp to come here and confront her mom about why she didn’t come say goodby before she left for camp. Kristen explains that she was tied up in the incredibly secret and secure tunnel (the very same one this eight year old girl knew about and just emerged from) and then they begin scheming about how they can be together permanently.

Yes, that’s little Rachel saying “I thought we were fighting that.” That being custody of her. Which is a privilege currently enjoyed by her father, Brady.

Then Brady shows up, having just received a call from Rachel’s camp informing him that she’s gone missing.

We don’t hear the other side of that conversation, but the fact that it ends very quickly says to me that they just kind of threw their hands up after reporting this to him. “Yep, she’s gone. We told you. We’re off the hook now.” Which probably explains why he looks so pissed.

He confronts Kristen, who insists she hasn’t seen Rachel today.

We’ve seen this attempted kidnapping happen five or six times since we started watching and I root for Kristen every single time. There’s a burgeoning supervillain in that little girl — one that could be even more insanely over-the-top than her Auntie Megan — and the only way it’s ever going to develop further is under her mother’s tutelage.

All of that being said, I can’t imagine “nope, she’s not here” when she is, in fact, here, is going to work for very long. Because, supervillain family or no, Kristen is actually really bad at this.

Over at the Spectator, Xander is lamenting a serious decline in ad revenue when Chloe comes in with this hilarious (?) cactus-based ad for Southwest Airlines.

It’s extremely weird for this show to be so specific about a brand (the only other time I can remember it happening — apart from the clumsy Peacock references — was the above-mentioned Rachel incident where they actually said “Uber” instead of “ride share”), so I can only assume this was paid promotional consideration of some kind.

This will take the paper out of the red and Xander is so pleased by this development that he convinces Chloe that they should fuck right here in the office.

So they do.

And then Gwen walks in.

Naturally there are a couple of cactus/dick jokes. Which is a little odd since Leo isn’t even in this scene. (I told you, I’m getting there! I need like… two more sentences, okay?)

Chloe runs off, Xander gets dressed and he and Gwen discuss her engagement. Xander is jealous, but then they actually kinda talk things through like grown-ups and he ends up expressing a genuine desire for her to be happy with Dimitri.

And we pick up where we left off with Dimitri: he’s entered his room, and discovers Leo, who has himself discovered the paperwork detailing the whole “marry Gwen, get rich” scheme. So Dimitri kisses Leo.

At the end of Friday’s episode, Leo looked terrified, like this was non-consensual and we were about to go someplace truly unpleasant. But Days has absolutely no qualms informing you that you must have been mistaken — our hero did indeed get out of the cockadoodie car in time. And, oh look at that, Leo is now suddenly a lot more into this.

Dimitri then proceeds to convince Leo that he (Dimitri) is not actually straight — the Von Leuschner family insists that he marry a woman to receive his inheritance, but he (Dimitri) is, in fact, gay.

He also insists that he finds Leo irresistible. Which is where the lie breaks down for me, personally.

But Dimitri is extremely committed to this ruse. That, or he really does have awful taste in men.

Either way, this is now where we find ourselves: with Dimitri insisting to Leo that he’s a secret gay and convincing him not to tell Gwen. Which Leo, for all his protestations of being Gwen’s BFF, agrees to.

And this will all probably be fine since they’re the only two who know about any of this. Except…

OH SHIT! Could this be the greatest cliffhanger ending this show has given me so far? I think it might be!

#days of our lives #dool #peacock #soap opera