WARNING! These are not spoilers, they are Matt's opinions. Furthermore, he is entitled to have an opinion and if you disagree with him that is fine, just don't send hate mail about it. If you feel like you're someone who is easily angered by others opinions, simply do not read this page! This is all in fun! Matt and Lori will be sharing the thoughts each Friday, so one week you will see Matt's and the next, Lori's!

new! February 26, 2010
EJ spent most of the week pouting and wishing that he was already off on Pirate Island with his two children. But before he could run off and do his Peter Pan routine, he was stuck finishing business in town. Elvis continued his revenge plot in a bid to become the most sadistic man that Salem has ever known. Apparently all that Jacobean drama he must have read at school gave him a lot of ideas. Of course, in Shakespeare's day, people just did things because they were evil, not because they had one of the most twisted and dubious love fixations in dramatic history. As Anna paced the Sydnappery chalet and fretted about what would happen, he licked his lips and stuck the knife into Sami a little more to make her squeal. Thanks to EJ's repeated insistence that this mess is all fault of 'Old Bean' Hernandez, Sami spat him out of the mansion to throw a pity party with Elvis. Rafe carried his heavy head back to his mop closet at the Salem PD and broke into tears. Sami caught him in the act and was super impressed. Although Rafe, in his biggest emotional melt down, still managed to cry less than Sami does over breakfast every day, she was as impressed by his ejaculation of ocular fluid as she would have been if he was Salem's first pregnant man. They immediately went back to her townhouse to bask in their snugglesafe and pass out. Elvis then stalked in and saw them together, immediately throwing a hissy fit and smashing a vase. He trudged off and Rafe wondered what had crawled into him and died. He even voiced his concerns to Stefano about the non-grieving, jealous schoolboy antics of Elvis. They both sensed that it was a lot more than standard stiff upperlippery. Meanwhile, EJ was inspired by Anna to change his tracks and find a new way to get rid of Rafe. Since Sami needs a hero, he decided to prove a villain but playing one and swung in with a new ransom note to tell her that Syd was still kicking.

Melanie stumbled back into the realm of consciousness. She was high as a kite but Carly was lurking over her, ready to give her the all time downer and explain that she was the woman who ejected her into the world and nearly ejected her from it. Mel wept. Mel wailed. Mel cried. Mel didn't know what to do or who was who. Carly tried explaining, which was having middling success. Mel felt like a curse, and even worse, a cursed curse. You'd think she would have been a little relieved to learn that Trent wasn't her real daddy (so she and Max aren't really related after all), but she was too busy crying. Carly asked for more time before she could explain the whole truth since the nearly twenty years that have gone by so far wasn't enough. As Carly skulked off, Viv popped up to finish the job she'd started before she was so rudely interrupted. More interruptions came. Mel cried and, in her drug addled haze, wished that she was dead since she no longer knows who she is. This broke Viv's heart and she couldn't go through with it in the end. Lawrence rolled in his grave so much about this he popped out of it again and ran around taunting his Auntie but she would have none of it and waved him away.

Babs spent the week proving that he may be even dimmer than his son. After all, Shawn at least had the wisdom to leave the fishy berg. Babs paced and barked at his phone and had one person after another come in to tell him he seemed more concerned with his dilly ho-ho than he was with any other bond he had in the world. After Babs helped Carly break the bail conditions he'd bailed her out on, Philip gave him hell for doing it and so did Hope. Showing his usual acumen for compassion and thoughtfulness, Bo flatly told his wife that he was truly arse over face in love with Dr. Manslaughter. Meanwhile, the goodly doctor broke the news to Salem's most unexpecting dad. Chloe may not be able to make buns or anything else in her over, but it turns out that Daniel and Carly made a yeasty concoction of their own many moons ago. He was shocked and appalled but as every doctor knows, that doesn't change biology.

And now, onto the spoilers. If you do not wish to be spoiled, please avoid reading the upcoming lines and enjoy your weekend. I'm having teeth ripped out of my head and then being pumped full of pain killers so I don't know how much I'll be enjoying it, but if, like me, you'd rather avoid thinking about that, you can think about how miserable everyone in Salem is. Gabi adds her face to the pity parade as she stops by to see Will and offer him her condolences. Melanie may finally get some condolences from Nathan after he pulls his pants back on and returns to town to discover that she's had a hole put through her. He might be better used looking out for Maggie though. It appears that Salem's newest widow will have something else to be sad about. Her neuromuscular condition, myasthenia gravis, returns to wreak havoc on her life again. There will be plenty of other havoc around town as the Mel's parents spar over their situation. Carly begs Daniel not to shut her out but will he be in a forgiving mood? While they argue, Bo tries to offer Mel an argument for why Carly should be in her life, not that Mel's in a fit state to argue back. And Anna gets the sinking feeling that Elvis' twisted behavior may finally be getting the best of him.

Lines of the Week:

Melanie: You shouldn't have married me! I don't know who I am!

EJ: I'm not... the vase... I didn't see it... You can send me a bill for the vase.

EJ: Rafe happened... silly little bitch.

Philip: Okay, here's my statement: I wasn't there when it happened and neither were you, and you aren't using me to get the woman you are sleeping with off scot free."

Melanie: (to Carly) I'm a curse on everyone's life. I thought it was enough I had Trent's blood running through my veins, but I have yours too.

Victor: (spotting Bo) Gotta go. Here comes the gestapo.

February 19, 2009
It was a truncated week in Salem with a few major events. EJ stuck the knife in Sami's heart so far that her crying started to resemble coughing up a hairball. Meanwhile, Carly accidentally stuck a bullet into her own daughter and Nathan stuck something else into Stephanie. But the fun got underway in Salem's answer to an amusement park: An abandoned cannery. After being trapped under an avalanche of boxes, Carly used her zombie strength to break free. Her strength didn't extend to helping her rival, however, and she quickly abandoned Hope under the surplus crates of fish heads and lug nuts. Carly lugged her cleavage across town to the Kiriakis mansion where she knew her daughter was in lethal danger.

The wedding was starting to feel a bit boring for the people of Salem, so used to seeing people get shot before the ceremony can end. Mia and her Farrah Fawcett hair were there. Just to prove that he's a geek and not an airhead, Will had to take a deep breath before every utterance he made. All the same, he was the only person wise enough to suggest running out as soon as the ceremony was over. As they left, a tumult erupted on the roof. Viv took Mel up to give her a glimpse of Heaven, which apparently resembles the Kiriakis pool where Ari and Brady used to fool around, not to mention the shrubs now overgrown since Owen was taken away, and the distant view of the harbor and its undeniable waft of longshoremen. Unfortunately, Heaven in Salem does not involve Philadelphia cream cheese, just some cheesy dialogue. Mel's vertigo started acting up as Viv led her to the precipice of doom. Before the bride could fully launch into her Liza routine though, Carly blundered in and whipped out the revolver she'd swiped from Hope. Proving that she's as daft a hand with a gun as with a surgeon's blade, though maybe not as good as she is with a letter opener, she squeezed out a shot and dropped her daughter. As the noise rang across the house, Philip used his extensive military training to recognize the sound of a gunshot. Everyone ran up to the roof and Carly began blurting out the secret she'd vowed to kill to keep.

Things were already going badly at the hospital. It turned out that Chloe's baby wasn't a baby at all. Instead, it was just a thought bubble that confused her imagination with her uterus and made her body think she was pregnant. It's a good thing Chloe doesn't have too many thoughts or who knows what would happen to her body. Daniel was abruptly called away from her blank stare at the blank monitor and scrubbed in at the operating theater. He and Lexi sliced and diced Melanie. It wasn't so long ago that this served as a form of foreplay for the doctor, but then again, he used to surf too and now his only dangerous activity is eating Chloe's baking. When Lexi informed him that the girl he was opening up was Carly's daughter, a disturbed look crept into his face. Outside of the buzzes being omitted during the fame of operation, disturbed looks were the norm, though they were interrupted by the occasional sneer or grunt. Most of this came courtesy of Kate, who was getting downright catty with everyone. Philly slowly imploded as his two mommies battled for territory. The fact that his new mother in law is also a psychotic freak probably wasn't making him feel any better. Victor kept threatening Viv, encouraging her to pray for Mel's safety. She was pretty confident that things would turn out peachy creamy. The mayor exercised the abnormal task of arresting her since Bo was too distracted looking after Carly. After some prodding, BABs finally arrested Carly too, though he used every penny in his piggy bank to post her bail and pop her out instantly. Just as instantly, she ran back to the hospital to check on her freshly ventilated daughter. Although Daniel tried to stop her, she pushed her way in, waking Mel up and nearly scaring her to death. Across town, Justin took the time to fill Philly in on just what Vicious Viv has been up to.

Meanwhile, Steph had quickly duffed her wedding duds and abandoned the wedding before the fireworks happened. Whether she was really eager to leap into the libidinal wasteland known as Alpine Valley, or she was just doing all she could to avoid the wedding tradition of sleeping with the best man, ie. Lucas, we'll never know. She and the intern holed up in a chalet room and did some climbing of their own. As Steph and Nathan's pelvises grew tired, he fantasized about being in bed with Mel. She seemed to sense something was wrong so, just to be safe, she tore Mel's letter up.

Not everyone in town was sucked into the mess that seemed to seep from the newly perforated Mrs. Kiriakis. Sami, Rafe, EJ and Anna were already busy sucking in their own little world. Elvis tried to hide his excitement at the prospect of gallivanting off to Pirate Island with his children just long enough to fool Samantha. This proved an easy enough task, although a smirk filled his face once and awhile, or maybe it was just an involuntary response thanks to the wave of wrinkles that creased her pink face as it bleated about Syd. He launched into Phase Two of his scheme to completely devastate Sami. This involved planting some bloody baby clothes of Syd's in the harbor so they would be easily found. Sami quickly reacted and, at EJ's not so subtle prodding, blamed Rafe for her daughter's supposed demise. Rafe stood by and did his best to be comforting, but he proved that he doesn't have the talent to be an effective blankie. Lucas was called in to complete that task. And on that note, we will now turn to the spoilers. For the sake of all that's good and pure, if you don't want to be spoiled, please look away now and enjoy the weekend. Next week, Daniel thinks that Chloe could use more than just a blankie of her own, like maybe a padded room of her own. He does his best to put her into therapy. She's hardly the only person in town who could use some. Some might say that Victor should be in therapy too after he admits that he's actually rather fond of having Vivian around. And if that isn't screwy enough, Bo tells Hope that he really truly loved Carly deep at the base of his baboon's heart. As she chokes on this jagged bit of brutal confessing, Mel faces yet another threat to her life. Who is it this time? Is she threatening her own life after Carly unloads and informs her that she is her spawn, or is Viv up to her old antics? And the plot thickens as Rafe proves that he's not as thick as he looks. His paranoia about EJ manages to infect Stefano who quickly starts to try and think his way ahead of his son. That might not be too hard either, since EJ gets his latest scheme from something Anna says.

Lines of the week:

Chloe: I'm definitely pregnant. I'm heading straight to the mall after this. It's getting embarrassing the way my clothes don't fit!

Carly: I was trying to stop Vivian from killing her. I wanted to save her.
Philip: If she dies, I will save you the same way.

Daniel: I can't deal in false hope.
Chloe: Whereas I can manufacture it.

Chloe: But he can't just come out and say, "Hey, Chloe, you're nuts. You should see a shrink."

February 12, 2010
Anna continued going stir crazy while trapped in the chalet. When Elvis threatened to chuck her out like a rancid éclair, she attempted threatening him back, though that failed in mid-sentence. Instead, she used Syd to guilt the DiMera into keeping her around so she wouldn't have to return to her career as a lady of leisure. Elvis backed down and sat around stroking his silk shirts and imagining how miserable Sami must be in a world without an old bean like Rafael Hernandez making it turn for her. Little did he know that Sami was busy polishing the bean. Sami burbled and Rafe promised to get Syd back over and over again. Then she cried and she cooed and then she took off his pants so they could get more comfortable on the couch and then they got even more comfortable in the bed. After burning off the stress of having a missing child, she told him how happy she was that she didn't have her children around to worry about. They went down to the pub for a heart shaped bowl of oysters marinated in pink beer when Elvis sauntered in. Once Samanther informed him that she and the bean were back in the sack together, EJ was not best pleased and began to wonder how his plan couldn't have been as perfect as he'd thought it was. Apparently he didn't factor in the reality that other people need to attend to carnal carnival more regularly than he does.

Meanwhile, Chloe finally passed a test for what may have been the first time in her life. It turns out that she got the miracle she was looking for and Dr. Dan knocked her up. That is indeed a soap opera miracle since she hasn't slept with his brother or his father, she isn't a virgin, wasn't raped and they actually have sex on a regular basis. While this defies all the laws of logic at work on Daytime TV, it also seems to defy everything Father Matt said. Chloe got so excited she managed to find the kitchen just so that she could bake up some extraordinarily bad puns. Daniel seemed more impressed that she actually managed to bake than he was with the news that his barren bedmate is now an EZ Bake Oven on legs.

But not everyone was happy in Salem. Most of the town's people were moping around about the upcoming wedding. Some, like Ari, did the wise thing and just drank champagne wherever it was available, but not everyone was successful at putting on their beer goggles. An angry Nathan got pissed and hung out at the pub. He almost told Mel about his feelings for her and how they distract his brain and other organs so much that he nearly sliced out someone's spleen the other day. Instead, he mumbled and Steph drove him to Maggie's to force feed finger sandwiches down his boozy gullet. He sobered up. Mel spent a restless night thinking of Nathan and decided she couldn't marry Philly K. while she felt so uncertain. She confessed this to Vivian, the woman who terrifies her the most in the world, and Viv proceeded to convince her to go along with the wedding. Mel didn't like being treated like she was weak and spineless but she quickly did the weak and spineless thing and did all that she was told. Viv licked her lips and fantasized about offing her. She placed the poisoned pearl toothed comb in her mop of hair. The blushing bride to be stole a moment to quickly scribble a love note to Nathan, asking if they had a future, and then she had the wisdom to ask Steph to deliver it to him. Steph quickly crumpled it and returned to tell her that Nate was a no-no. Mel was soon woozier than a waltzing piss ant and flopped on her bed like a worn out rag doll.

Across town, Kate tried everything to get Victor's goat, or at least to get his back up about Vivian. She even accused him of being 'whipped', but he's been playing this game even longer than her and wasn't going to be easily dragged into it. She was forced to turn to her husband to ask for a favor. He offered to have her problems with Viv the Vicious eliminated and made a call before they marched off to the wedding. Lucas was serving as the unlikely guard to make sure that nothing went wrong. I guess they thought his talent for shooting people in the back at weddings could come in handy. Aside from grimacing and gorping, he didn't have much to do though. The Kiriakis mansion bustled with activity and chairs filled the rooms to accommodate the onslaught of gawkers which the event would inevitably entail.

Most of the week revolved around Vivian staring blankly and imagining Carly freaking out after she killed Melanie. The reality was much more grim. Although Carly only narrowly managed to excrete some tears from her eyes in fantasy land, in 'real life' it was even more excruciating. Between being barely able to use her arms and barely able to manage more than a grunt in the vocal department, Salem's resident zombie doctor did her best to seem shocked and appalled, which often meant wailing like she was calling out to the brains she'd left on the other side of the globe.

Apparently tired of flirting with Justin, Hope decided she wanted to be normal again and the only way to do that was to re-join the Salem PD. This was especially hard for her because, as she admitted to Justin, it would mean that she could no longer torture people when she wanted information from them. As she was busy probing the latest round of murder and mayhem in Salem, Carly was being dragged to the nearby cannery, you know, the one where Kay on "Passions" used to work and the fish were always biting her nipples. Gus smuggled her out of the hospital looking rather adorable in an orderly's outfit. He set her up with a monitor so she could watch Viv kill Melanie. Carly screamed at the monitor and then her maternal strength kicked in and she pummeled Gus before attacking him with her Vulcan death grip and dropping him to the floor. She got Viv over there after sending her a fake message. Viv showed up and they bantered about brutally killing each other until Hope ran in to spoil the party. It turned out that Victor sabotaged Viv and switched poisoned combs. This left Hope in the awkward position of arresting the woman trying to kill her own worst enemy. Luckily, Gus suddenly returned to consciousness and threw a crate at Hope and Carly. He and Viv ran while Carly and Hope crawled.

Back at the Kiriakis compound, Abe was forced to stand in to officiate and managed to keep a straight face through a bit of the ceremony. Philip and Mel were married. Her collapse earlier was apparently due to nerves rather than death. While she and Philip departed for the honeymoon, her thoughts continued to linger on the intern she left behind in the world of the unwed. Now comes the spoilers... run away now if you don't want a glimpse into the hellish world which next week will bring. Remember, Monday is the Olympics and that won't be Kenzie and T. on the curling court. On Tuesday, however, things get back to normal, which is to say, to being screwy. And that's exactly what Steph and Nate get up to. "I really want to find true love. I think I can find that with you," she tells him as they play doctors and nurses. While he's giving her a full exam, Daniel has to cradle Chloe when it turns out that her miracle has a darkside which she wasn't expecting. This is especially hard for him since he knows it will spell the end of breakfast in bed. But the honeymoon is going far from well for the town's latest newlyweds. Kate is already badgering her son about what a pill Vivian is and Viv is still trying to get Mel to swallow some poison. Her plans go down the drain when she's dragged to the cells with the zombie doctor following close behind her. Meanwhile, EJ flips out when he learns that his game of torturing Sami has gone all wrong and she's returned to playing the game of twenty toes with Rafe. As he gags on his disgust, things get much worse. Rafe is forced to tell Sami that they've just made a grim discovery that could change everything in Syd's case.

Lines of the week:

Kate: I just pray to God that she's not all right.

Sami: I thought our relationship was hopeless.

Kate: That was mean spirited and inappropriate.
Lucas: Oh, you mean like feeding poison brownies to someone?

Chloe: I decided to pop some buns in the oven.

Victor: Marriage is like a leaky canoe... You can paddle like hell and still sink.

Carly: Think, Manning, think. Think this through.

Carly: Killing Lawrence was horrible but killing you could be fun. Bo is on his way and it's over. Melanie will live happily ever after.
Vivian: No, she will die in about a half hour.

Carly: They say murder gets easier the second time around.
Vivian: Spoken like a true doctor.

Stefano: I'm always nice to him... it drives him crazy.

Hope: Hope the citizen could have tied her up and done other things to her, but Hope the cop doesn't have that option.

February 5, 2010
This week, Stefano and Elvis finally managed to find the script they left lying around a few months ago. They immediately picked up where they'd left off with Elvis threatening to evict his father from Casa DiMera. Stefano laughed like a drunken bunny and told his son to stop his unending tantrum. Because time flows funny in Salem, they couldn't figure out if EJ's knickers have been in a twist for days, weeks, months or hours, but they did note that Johnny's tantrums don't last nearly as long. When Stefano wasn't arguing with his son, he was complimenting Kate on the velour sack she picked up to wear to the wedding.

Kate had more on her mind than her frequent wardrobe changes would suggest though. She was utterly distraught that she was being pushed out of the wedding party so she made sure to stick her nose back in. Philly agreed to let her share the spotlight with Vivian since they're each thin enough that there's room for both of them. Kate didn't like those beans and ran around town searching for a way to upset the applecart, just to mix metaphors, which is what Vivian spent much of the week doing. The two mommies were at each other's throats over the wedding. Kate plotted how she would usurp her way back into prima mama position and Viv was distracted by fantasies of finishing off Melanie before the wailing wall that is Carly. Viv took a page out of Kate's book and decided to use some poison. She poisoned a sort of tiara for Mel to wear, which was, if memory serves and depending on who you ask, also how Medea killed Jason's wife. But Viv had to waylay her enthusiasm for Greek tragedy and put the killing off until the wedding day. Not to be outdone, Kate snatched the gift away and wondered why Viv was acting weirder than usual about it. Melanie the moppet barely noticed any of this. She suddenly got much closer to Carly for reasons which only the writers of the show can know, though they haven't bothered to explain clearly to anyone else.

Meanwhile, Anna seemed to be getting cabin fever, stuck in her little chalet with nothing but soap operas to keep her company and the occasional delivery of environmentally friendly groceries to break up her day. Her diet of rice cakes and peanut butter was only accented by the pina coladas she mixed using a discarded Baby Alive. Syd, while still managing to be a better conversationalist than half of the other people in town, she also managed to show her DiMera stripes. Not only did she boss Anna around, she also picked her nose and wiped her snot all over her 'kidnapper' while she was attempting to have a serious conversation. The fact that EJ only drops by to play with Sydney and insult her keeper probably doesn't help, but it's a sign that this is where the baby gets it from. Anna finally cracked after Roman called her. Ari tipped him off that Anna was around. Anna wasn't clever enough to lie, she was a failure in the advertising industry after all, and she soon wound up paying Sami a visit. Rafe cornered her at Sami's and then Sami blubbered to her about how sad she was about Syd. Anna started blurting things out and then ran home. Rafe, getting uber suspicious, headed straight to Casa DiMera to confront Elvis, who managed to stutter just as much as Anna. Since everyone knows that stuttering is contagious and is usually passed along by baby snot, Rafe started to put some things together and decided that Anna must be involved with the kidnapping. Rather than chase this down, he chased Sami home and climbed back into her pants while EJ planned to run away to Pirate Island with his children.

Across town, Hope finally snapped after discovering that Carly's secret was that she spawned Mel. She discovered this when she managed to crack the seal of Vivian's 'mystery box' to find the secret inside. This disturbing psycho-sexual metaphor seemed to get Justin excited so Hope had to keep him calm and left him to act as watchdog while she ran off to do her business. Fancy Face arrived at BABs' budget bordello to see how he and his fancy piece were working out. Hope started to feel a little bad for Carly after discovering a few morsels of the truth, but that proved to be shortlived. When she walked into Casa de Babs, she noticed that someone had been redecorating Salem's greenest flophouse with Carly's designer knock-offs. It turned out that the trauma has finally made little Ciara crack and she has started to lead a dangerous life. Not only has she been running with scissors, she's been slashing Carly's clothes because she hates her stinking, rotten, smelly, fishy, gunky, punky, monkey brain eating guts (I'm paraphrasing). While Ciara has already demonstrated that she has better judgment than most of the people in her family, Hope jumped on Bo hard and threatened to take their daughter away from the murderous atmosphere he has her living in.

Mia continued to mine her 'dark side', or at least, the side with a few highlights, as she set about destroying Chad's plan to take Gabi to the arctic climbs of Vancouver so they could practice luging in his father's condo. She curbed Kenzie's dreams of being able to witness the wonders of curling in person by telling Chad's DA daddy that she and Chad were still on more than friendly terms. That ended up putting an end to things and the teens were condemned to stay in Salem. Will continued to be confused by the situation, as he should be. What was surprising was that no one else was surprised to see that Will Horton has been replaced by an eerie clone of GH's Michael Corinthos. Meanwhile, Chloe mooned around town looking miserable and pretending that she was happy. Of course, there's a reason she rarely gets to actually work on stage so no one believed her charade, except for Daniel since he's rarely looking in her eyes when he speaks to her. She and Dr. Manslaughter talked about how barren she was and then she turned to Father Matt to discuss theology. Her grasp on the nature of miracles proved troubling and the priest had to break the news that you can't always get what you want.

Anyway, now on to the spoilers. If you do not wish to have your week spoiled, please avert your eyes now and enjoy a weekend of Olympic preparations. Since they don't consider building snow men a sport, I'll be imbibing hot totties from around the world instead. With the wedding looming large in Salem, most of the action focuses on fuzzy headed Melanie and her peg legged prince. Mel's mixed feelings aren't going unnoticed, even by the people in her wedding party. Steph does her best to keep Mel's doubts stuffed down where no one can see them by keeping the letter which Miss Mel wrote away from the prying eyes of Nathan. While Steph encourages her to run off on her possibly unending vacation, Vivian attempts to talk some sense into her, but who knows exactly what that could mean? Her motherly routine ends up taking too much time away from her usual plotting and Victor manages to swan in and foil her pernicious plot before it can come to pass. While Vivian is thinking up what to do next, Hope has finally figured out who Carly's daughter dearest really is. As for those who have not been trapped into the wedding and its associated collateral damage, Brady inches a little closer to Ari when he re-gifts something to her which once belonged to sweet Isabella. Meanwhile, EJ is getting ready to throw another tantrum when he discovers that Sami and Rafe have returned to playing throw another log on the fire.

Lines of the week:
Hope: Have you been watching Dr. Phil?
Carly: Parents split up all the time. Children adjust.
Hope: That's an idiotic cliché.

EJ: You and I are going on a little trip... to Pirate Island!

Melanie: I'm more of a 'you snooze you lose' kind of girl.

Kate: You will not steal my thunder, Vivian. You will not steal my son.

Sydney: Adadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadaaaaaa

Rafe: Whoa!
EJ: Whoa? Whoa? What does 'whoa' mean?

Vivian: This harpy stole that present like a jackal in the night.

Vivian: She's lying through her fangs again.

January 29, 2010
It was a strangely uneventful week in Salem where everything was on the verge of happening and then didn't happen. The grumpy week covered barely a day of story time, although, given the hyper paranoiac activity of so many characters, it felt like it was a great deal longer. This odd suspension of action left many to binge on a bit of recycling.

Maggie continued to mourn. She made herself pass the time with various busybody acts. That's what she used to do anyway, but things were a little more sombre this time around. No one was wearing black though, they all seemed to be wearing brown in her presence. The boxes of Mickey's office stuff arrived and she sorted through them, sending much of it off to the charities for Salemites deafened by Sami or mangled by a DiMera. She also found a Valentine's card from him and a bottle of scotch. When she wasn't fighting back the tears, she was fighting the temptation to take a swig.

Hope continued to think about her watery past with Bo and recycle the memories. Even the flashbacks seemed used. She bought Ciara a little boat so she could tell her all about her time at sea, but Beauregard accidentally slammed into her and smashed the vessel. Hope looked at him like he'd just spit on her last cupcake. In her eyes, he's not just the man who left their home in ruins, he ruined her boat as well. What a burn. The fact that Carly came back to town on a boat probably made it even worse. Lo and behold, she bumped into Carly soon after and they continued giving each other pieces of their minds. None of it was anything anyone hasn't heard before and they rifled through the dialogue like they were counting sheep. It turns out that this ongoing rehashing is just another of Bo's recycling projects. If only Max and Nick were still around, perhaps they could harness the energy of Hope's righteous wailing and Carly's clumsy cowing into a new form of fuel... Marginally more thrilling was Carly and Justin's brief sashay through the game of trying to demonstrate who the biggest hypocrite is.

When Carly wasn't stuttering through the staggered insults which seem to dog her conversations with her enemies, she was attempting to play Mother Theresa to Mel. Miss Melanie was in a pretty bad mood all week, thanks largely to wedding jitters and Carly. Once again, Dr. Manic Manning spilled coffee on the moppet, this time spoiling the designer dress which Viv had helped her pick out. Miss Mel was not amused, but as the day went on, and with the fact that her emotions flip as often as she flops her hair around, she began to soften. Mel demonstrated her usual mind-bending skills of judgment by inviting the 'murderous adulterous' who has been stalking her and throwing public fits for weeks, over to her place so they can have some alone time. Carly tried warming up to her and nearly said something worth saying, like why she is so obsessed with her. Unfortunately, Mel was incapable of keeping her gob shut and seemed to start competing with Sami in the game of jumping to conclusions and blurting them out so no one else can actually finish their sentences. We call it 'slur or shut up' around the office and it's become our favorite drinking game since we had to stop playing the one where we took a shot every time Sami started balling. It was just too hard to get through the day after that.

Gus finally broke the news to Vivian that Melanie is actually Carly's daughter. Viv was almost heartbroken. She'd actually become fond of her, after a fashion. Victor forbade her to kill Philip's fiancée. After all, it would make the cruise they were planning to take together extra awkward. Vivian couldn't shake the drive to kill her though, helped in no small part by a dose of psychotic hallucinations. Lawrence's spirit, or the actor who plays it, showed up to taunt her into going ahead and gutting Mel. He knows he'll be stuck in purgatory with Carly eventually and he doesn't want to rush the reunion.

At the Salem PD, Troy finally demonstrated that he has some intelligence and figured out that Ari was a narc. Roman, demonstrating little intelligence, actually took her aside to chat about it right in front of Troy and EJ. I guess he thought that whispering would be enough to shield them from sight. Troy yelled about her betrayal to EJ. Brady wondered why. EJ played dumb, which is usually the most convincing strategy to get anything done around town. Ari later showed up at Casa DiMera to badger EJ with thanks and to blab all about her undercover operation. Whether he was trying to play it cool or simply impress her with his virility, he immediately whipped out some baby books to show off his skill at producing children. Unfortunately for him, he left her alone with his phone and Anna called, blubbering without knowing who she was talking to. Ari began questioning him about this. EJ stared blankly and made vague remarks. Since Ari grew up on the bad side of Salem, she mistook this for dry British humor.

Even less amused by his son's antics this week was Stefano. He discovered a vial of infant narcotics in EJ's coat and called his son out for it. Elvis gave him some excuses and took a few digs at him. Stefano went off and groaned to Kate who told him that he should have a lot less faith in his son, but it's not like Stefano was going to take parenting advice from her. EJ was too distracted to care about any of this. He did his best at offering fake comfort to Sami to get Rafe's goat and then left him to stew with the cow (he's already had her milk for free). Sami and Rafe went home and decided to split up because she couldn't stop blaming him for everything. Even with a daily dose of clam chowder coating his stomach, Rafe's intestinal fortitude gave way once again. Perhaps it isn't so much his guts that were in agony as his head, especially his ears. He packed up his hobo knapsack and the moping music from Charlie Brown started to play. For his part, Elvis snickered to himself about everything this week like a perverse schoolboy who peed in some soup and then fed it to his frenemies.

Anyway, now onto the spoilers. If you don't want to know, run away now so that you won't have to contemplate the terrifying spectacle of Salem's two ditziest blondes, Anna and Sami, putting their heads together. Since Anna's head is full of chocolate and Sami's is full of um.... Sami ends up opening her heart to Tony's widow and gabs all about her emotional turmoil over Sydney. Will Anna be able to play it cool? Nathan and Melanie are still trying to play it cool and act like they don't want to play cootie inspector. Even Carly catches on to the sexual tension so badly hidden by hospital scrubs. She's not the only one noticing something is off about Mel either. Daniel continues to smell around and realizes that there is more between Carly and Mel than his dear old friend has been willing to say. If he can't figure it out fast, Kate might beat him to it. She straight out confronts Carly about her weird fixation on a woman old enough to be her daughter. Kate won't waste too much time on that though since she still has to wrestle with Viv over control of the wedding.

Lines of the week:
Victor: What? Do you think I'm walking around with a tinfoil hat on my head? Right... we are in love... in Vivian land, that is, way, way over the rainbow.

Victor: Something momentous must have happened. You're not talking.

Anna: Go ahead and bring the chocolates whenever it's safe.

Philip: Vivian has tried to kill people. I didn't know how you felt about that in women.

Victor: Well, it shows they aren't passive.

Carly: Can you keep a secret?
Melanie: What is this junior high?

Victor: You told me she reminded me of yourself — That's the ultimate compliment.

Mel: I really don't like Vivian. She's... uh... sincerity challenged.

January 22, 2010
When Sami and Elvis got down to the pier to 'end' the kidnapping, Rafe managed to swan in and interrupt. The G-Man didn't trust Sami so he'd been having her followed. He quickly got his people involved and they set up surveillance. Sami flipped out. Bickering and shrieking erupted. Rafe finally had to ask Elvis to cart her away because the high pitches coming out of her mouth were disturbing the whales in the harbor, causing them to attack the local fishermen. The dysfunctional threesome went down to the station to wait for news. EJ and Sami took turns being outraged. He seemed to relish goading her into becoming more distraught as Raphael 'Old Bean' Hernandez doddered around looking for answers. They managed to pick up a woman who grabbed the kidnapping cash off the pier. She turned out to be Marion O'Brion, just another of the random Irish stereotypes who hang out down there. Sami plotzed. EJ tried to start a kerfuffle. Rafe calmed them and asked if the voice the kidnapper let her hear on the phone was really Sydney's. Sami is so finely in tune with all forms of crying and babbling that she could pick it out perfectly, even through the voice scrambler. He took Sami home and she erupted again. If Sami's emotions were lava, there would no longer be room on the earth for water.

Meanwhile, Auntie Anna started to worry that EJ doesn't really know what he's doing, even if he does have the planning skills to make sure that he and Syd wore matching pink all week. When Anna told the little girl that she will have to go home soon, Syd freaked. Elvis puttered over to announce that it would all be over soon. Syd doesn't speak the same language and even she was tired of hearing this. Anna worried that the little girl could have a fever but Elvis insisted that only his taste in colour palettes was contagious.

Roman informed Arianna that her undercover operation has been completely underwhelming to their superiors. At this point, it's getting almost as pointless as her under the covers operation with Brady. She tried to talk her bosses around, but apparently she's not as good of a saleswoman as we've been led to believe. Meanwhile, since Troy couldn't find a competent hitman in the alleys of Salem, or at the American Apparel where he hangs out cruising for skanky hipsters, he decided that he would off Ari all by his lonesome. Unfortunately, he's not very good at it either. When he attempted to strangle her with his vintage coke dealer's white scarf (he has the matching mittens sewn to his coat), her yelps of death were interrupted when Elvis burst into her room. He chucked Troy out. The dealer was abruptly arrested by the Salem PD in what may have been the most successful day in their history. Roman showed up and began chatting to Ari. With Troy out of the way, who will act as middle man between her and Mr. Big? We might not have to find out since Troy managed to use his brain power to figure out that Ari is a narc and told EJ all about it. Yes Elvis, that means another woman who you want to be pantsless with has deceived you. Luckily, you already wanted to ruin her brother's life, so maybe you can kill two birds with one stone? During this mess, Brady was busy insisting to Chloe that he is finished with Nicole. Any messages he has for her, he will send through the unemployed diva, who has now added being a human telephone to her short list of talents.

Things were running even less smoothly for the other quadrant of one time friends, one time lovers in town. Beauregard Aurelies Brady, or Babs 'The Bear', as he's better known in Salem's metrosexual community, managed to make things even worse for just about everyone. Seeking to throw Vivian 'The Viper' off of the trail of Carly's daughter, he boasted loudly to Philip that Carly came back to town just for him. Vivian swallowed this and went into a tizzy. She wondered if she should really be gunning for Carly's daughter after all. This sense of doubt was doubled when she got the icky feeling that mouthy Melanie may actually be Doctor Manning's former belly bun rather than Mia 'The Moper'. She spent much of the week trying to charm the broad smiling young woman with fancy wedding plans. Although reluctant at first, Mel fell into the sway of things, a change which caused Carly to explode. Sensing impending disaster and knowing that he can't be everywhere at once, Bo asked Daniel to keep an eye on his old friend and former colleague. Daniel wasn't particularly good at this and only narrowly managed to stop Carly from taking her scalpel to her old enemy.

For her part, Carly jumped between her three emotions all week. When she wasn't stifling a sneer and looking at Mel like she'd never even heard of deodorant, she was leaping into a blind rage or staring blankly. The blank stares were courtesy of an overdose of flashbacks she endured. They all featured the dearly departed Lawrence taunting her as she went into labor and then stealing her baby away. Some of this emotive dexterity seems to have shown up in her spawn, Melanie. She showed off her ability to make cock-eyed faces, some of which she seems to have lifted from Philip. When she wasn't lashing out at Carly, she was acting as referee when other people, notably Vivian, were laying into her. Although Mel puckered her lips to exhale some memorable lines this week, she was condemned to spend most of her time asking the mother she doesn't know she has what her problem is. Ah, the philosophical implications... if only Mel knew that she is the answer to that question.

There were some other honorable mentions for the week. Kate returned from obscurity to drop by Maggie's looking for Mel. Maggie didn't appreciate it and gave her a tongue lashing. While Kate was off nursing her wounds, Mia pouted around as Chad 'The Woodman' talked Gabi into running away to the treacherous climbs of Canada with him, T. and Kenzie 'The Human Failure'. But the most devastating event of the week was Hope becoming sure that her marriage to Bo is over. If she can figure that out, who knows what's next. And now... onto the spoilers. If you do not wish to look ahead to the week that will be, avert your gaze now. It finally sinks in for Hope (it takes a really long time for anything to sink in, which means she either has super absorbent skin or she is a nearly bottomless pit) that things are over with Babs. Justin sits on the sidelines hoping someone will notice that he is still around and put him on the playing field before he gets old and gray. But at least he'll have something to distract him as his family prepares for Philly's upcoming nuptials. Things are already getting uncomfortable since Victor and Vivian have decided to accompany the newlyweds as they sail the globe for places undetermined. Even Carly's screaming about it. But something else could get in the way. Apparently Mel still hasn't gotten Nathan out of her system, as much as she insists that she has. She should probably be more worried about the fact that Vivian finally clues in that she is actually Carly's daughter. But if the fracas in the Kiriakis clan wasn't enough, Stefano wakes from his slumber to erupt at the prospect of Sami and EJ getting close again. Although this may all be part of EJ's plan to torture Samanther as much as possible, Rafe won't be seeing it that way when he sees them together. He decides to pack up his edition of the Sweet Valley High Board game and head out. The FBI man may not want to leave town now that his sister is on the verge of returning to the slammer though. Will he be able to help his sister before she winds up sharing a cell with Nicole and they have to fight over which one of them gets to play Brady?

Lines of the week:
Mel: So, I guess you're going all cougar on us... Is that why you didn't want me to marry Philip? Why can't you just let me live my life?
Carly: I'd be happy to. Any chance you could live it on another planet?

Mel: Please don't get too excited. You'll hyperventilate.

Vivian: Wrong? We do not use that word in connection with me.

Kate: I've been snubbed by Smurfette.

Mel: I think you're being a bit dramatic.

Anna: Sydney at some point will need a normal life.
EJ: With Samantha?
Anna: No... with you and... if you should meet a woman... I can't be a nanny forever.

Roman: I'm guessing that's not powdered sugar.

Carly: Let me remind you, I faced the devil and the devil lost.

January 15, 2010
Grief engulfed Salem yet again. But then, it's not as though it's ever exactly abated. Instead, it's finding itself crawling into more and more spaces. Entire sets have been added to accommodate the misery. Carly got a new room at the Salem Inn, a shabby shack made of beer bottles where she has to put x-ray charts in the windows to keep out the light. Maggie's had rooms added to her house too, apparently purely for the purpose of grieving. Maybe soon we will see all of the renovations which Stefano had done to the mansion, or the new basement which John had put in before he left. It seems like that would be a perfect place to go and cry with the rats after they leave the alley by the pub.

We saw the many faces of grief run by in a flash. Maggie slowly cried and told person after person about finding Mickey. Hope cried listening. Bo shrugged uncomfortably when he heard about it. Mia and Mel, the blonde haired moppets, quickly cried. Nathan got sentimental and tried to compensate by sucking face with Mel. Melissa showed up and punched at the air. Will managed to leap through the entire cycle of denial and acceptance in less than a minute, which demonstrates that he's not only been able to age fast, he's also emotionally matured faster than everyone else in the cast. Mia pouted as she told him. He trudged around town with a condolence casserole from Caroline.

The funeral went on unseen and we were not treated to an Irish wake. Instead, there was a little memorial in Maggie's front room. She remembered when she and Mickey were just outcasts from "Little House on the Prairie". Mel wished that she was a thousandth of the woman that Maggie was. Luckily for her, Philip is already only half a man. Her hair got bigger to illustrate that her head was full of woe, while Maggie's hair deflated to make explicit just how down in the dumps she was. Apparently she'd had Mickey's soul stored up there and the sheer power of hairspray couldn't keep it up. Mickey was remembered in all of his mustachioed glory, but he would have probably been turning in his grave if he'd seen the huge blown up photo of him in an atrocious Christmas sweater. Brady didn't appreciate Mickey's former legal partner, EJ, showing up. After all, when you are trying to take a death seriously, Elvis is the last person you want to see.

It wasn't all grief, of course, there was also the chance for the marginally less depressing spectacle of Philip and Melanie's hobble down the altar of love. Funerals are so much like weddings, only a little in reverse. As Shakespeare once wrote, "Live, and love thy misery." They were ready to run off and be married by an Elvis impersonator when the news hit. Mel made her usual faux pas or two before trying to overcompensate by getting defensive. Luckily for her, Carly showed up so she got to rail at her. Philip was more subdued. He spent much of the week looking befuddled. Philly has been desperate for a little continuity since mommy number two showed up.

His brother was finding a different kind of continuity as he returned to the carnal pleasures he'd once known in his youth. Carly sucked on Bo's ear (the entire thing) until he couldn't resist any longer and they did the deed. After he'd been thoroughly examined by the eyes-ears-nose-and-throat doctor, Hope called and interrupted their erotic interlude to tell him that the angel of death had kicked Mickey's bucket. Meanwhile, Victor seemed to be getting bored with Vivian's antics. Maybe that was just because he couldn't hide it behind his sunglasses anymore. That all changed when he discovered that Carly and Bo have been playing cars and garages. He should have seen it coming of course. After all, few women can sleep with only one Kiriakis man, they usually have to have half the family, often several times. Except for Justin, of course, which may be why he is really miffed that Bo has left him alone in the Sexually Unlucky Club Kiriakis. Carly showed surprisingly bad tact for someone who got away with murder. She showed up at Maggie's only to have Hope tear her head off. Carly was defiant and paid her condolences while taking the piss out of Hope's marriage. This only made Mel hate her more. The doctor was even more numb-skulled when she tried to warm up to Mel and Mia at the hospital, which resulted in an even higher level of hate. While she moaned to Bo about how her daughter, Mel the motherless, hated her guts, Vivian got it into her head that Mia the moper was actually Carly's spawn.

Outside of the multiplying miseries in town, trapped in her chalet with dreams of wearing a whole zoo's worth of animal print shoes on her petit terrace overlooking the rhino swamp at her McMansion in Bora Bora, Anna began having a twinge, not of conscience, but that Sami might not be as stupid as history has shown. EJ assured her that such a thing was scientifically impossible and then told his auntie to shut up, burped Syd and went out for the day. When he wasn't having his drug money washed, he popped by Sami's and offered to put Johnny in the washing machine. Sami spent most of the week sitting by her phone, filling up EJ's voicemail and spitting nonsensical rants at Rafe. Elvis spent most of his week deliberately ignoring her and enjoying the thought of her suffering. If you can have sex by telephone, you can torture with it too. Maybe that could be EJ's new business enterprise since he just sold off millions of dollars worth of DiMera assets. His father noticed, but Elvis remained unrattled and then put the next part of his plan in motion. No matter how hard he's tried to keep Rafe out of it, the FBI man just kept stumbling back in, until he stumbled right into the money drop by week's end. Rafe didn't manage to save his sister from Salem's latest inept thug though. That was left to Brady.

Anyway, now on to the spoilers. If you do not wish to be spoiled, run away now and enjoy a weekend of sipping limoncello and cruising Craigslist for box springs you can set on fire to burn old barber's mustaches on in memory of Mickey. Next week, Kate gets back into action as she begins attempting to bond with Melanie, the woman who disowned her even before they've become related. Is Kate just trying to weasel her way into Philip's good book, or does she have something else in mind? While she is trying to be the mother that Mel never had, Carly is still being angsty about being the mother she never had a chance to be. Learning about what her daughter is like might only make that worse. Meanwhile, as Vivian watches over the women and prepares to pounce, Bo gets distracted so he leaves Salem's semi-retired lothario, Daniel, to keep his eyes on her. That doesn't stop Carly from exploding at Viv when she pushes her buttons again (are we sure that Carly isn't actually Sami's real mom?). All the while, moppet Mia puts herself in more of a conundrum after she admits to herself that she wants Will and Chad. If only Rolf were still around he could find away to combine the two boys into one... And the misery persists and Hope tries to help Maggie through her grief in spite of being emotionally fragile herself.

Lines of the week:
Melanie: Nice welcome. Who just died?

Bo: (to Bo when he's in bed with Carly) Hi... uh... It's kind of a bad time.

Rafe: I knew that was dumb when it was coming out of my mouth

Hope: I need to start learning how to do things alone.

Chloe: (of her choclate mousse cake) How can you leave this? That's not human.

Hope: You're hilarious. You sleep with my husband and it's my fault.

EJ: All right. Let's pack it in. Let's just give up. They'll figure it out Anyway. Sami and Rafe... they're probably the second coming of Woodward and Bernstein. You don't have a right to insult my intelligence. I have orchestrated this entire plan and my next move will be just as flawless.

Victor: And how will you plant it on her? Will you just ask, 'Do you mind if I attach this to your bosom?'

Chad: I like girls like you that are fun and funny.
Gabi: You hardly know me.
Chad: Some things don't take time to learn.

Kenzie: What are you... the sensitivity police?

Kenzie: Mia... teabags for swollen eyes.

January 8, 2010
Happy New Year's ladies and gentlemen. I'm back from my brief exile to our sister site, Soaps.com. It's a new year in Salem, and just to make sure that everyone knows that, they've actually brought one of their longest running plots to a conclusion... kind of.

Nicole went to court, more or less concluding her starring role in the terrible tale of the tot and the men and women who love her. Everyone showed up to say their piece about what a wicked witch the blonde gone black was (it's Salem after all). Even Mia and Chad made an appearance. Brady was the only one who spoke up for her, even though it made everyone else gag. Nicole finally stood up and asked to be punished without mercy. That's how you talk if you want to get into a judge's good graces and that's exactly what she did, receiving a sentence of twenty years. EJ bellowed. The judge thought that his objections were rich coming from the head of the town's major crime family. Sami cried, which didn't impress the judge either. Not because crying is like breathing for her, but because she has a pretty lengthy criminal record and a habit of proving how incompetent she is at handling her perpetually swelling family. Nicole's tears, which have soiled her face to the point that she's started to resemble Charlize Theron in "Monster", and her heartfelt profession of guilt, did turn the judge's heart... and EJ's stomach. Once she was led off to wait for the last bus to prison, Chloe stopped by to say goodbye and then, of course, Brady. With tears in her big eyes, Nicole begged him to forget her and never speak to her again, even though she loves him and wishes she had realized that a long time ago. She was sadly carted off to the pen, but, then again, being sentenced to twenty years without Sami almost sounds like a gift.

The scandalous Sydnapping of Salem is still going on, with or without Nicole. Like most criminal capers in town, it's quickly going from being scandalous for its moral crapulence to being appalling for its sheer stupidity. It looks like Elvis' taste in accomplices is almost as bad as Anna's taste in shoes. Maybe that's why he enlisted her to abduct his daughter, which was kind of funny considering how annoyed he was that Nicole basically abducted his daughter from Sami. They've been in cahoots the whole time. She's just in it for the money. She needs to finish decorating the hideous mansion she and Tony built in Bora Bora. His motivations are a little tricker, but it's mostly about getting his daughter back on his own terms, and getting revenge on all of the women he loves to hate.

Meanwhile, Brady feared that Ari, Little Miss Second Best, was under threat, not just from Salem's drug Cartel, but from the local clam chowder merchants and their mercenary cronies who suspect that the secret ingredient she's been putting in may be a little too addictive. He was right to be afraid because there was a rather sinister chap who kept loitering around the pub. He was sent there by none other than Troy, who has managed to outdo EJ by not only being one of his incompetent goons, but by actually hiring and even more incompetent goon to do his dirty work for him. Suffice it to say, thanks to the endless interruptions which make up much of the plot development, the goon never managed to get a good opportunity to take her out. She may be creating an opening though. After seeing how much Brady still longs to spend his days in Misty Circle, she managed to make him vaguely aware that their relationship has gone sour.

But romance isn't entirely doomed for everyone in town. Nathan and Philip welcomed the New Year in their jail cell until they were released, little the wiser. Philip tipped Steph off that Nate is still pining for Mel and was even willing to fight for her. Steph went sour. Nate later tracked her down and tried to convince her that he was only chasing a fantasy version of Mel, but what he really wants now 'something real'. But before he could find out how 'real' Steph is, she took a little distance from him. While young Nathan seems to be abandoning his fantasy Mel, the real Mel couldn't shake a fantasy of Nate. Even while wrapped in the arms and leg of Philly, she kept thinking about the intern's bedside manner.

As for Salem's even younger set, after months of misery and being bullied around by nutty Nicole, Mia finally cracked and seemed to hatch a bit of a different persona. Perhaps taking some inspiration from her enemy, Kenzie, Mia tried her hand at being a master manipulator. Although she managed to imbue Chad with the 'ick' factor in Gabi's eyes, she couldn't turn the peppy teen entirely over to her side. After Mia gushed about how Chad was her soul mate, she turned around and sucked face with Will. Gabi caught them at it and guessed that Mia was just pushing her around. Will figured things out too, you can't grow up with Sami as a mother and not spot a lie after all. He finished things with her... again.

Meanwhile, it turned out that Hope knows how to give Bo a taste of his own medicine. Since she walked in on his game of tongue twister with Carly, she must have been plotting out a way to use her tongue for something other than laying the blame for everything on her husband. She came up with a guilt free way to make out with Justin and not have to admit that it's what she wanted. When they were searching Vivian's room for Carly's secret, Viv and Vic returned. The searchers tried to cover by pretending they were only overcome by the desire to search each other's secret places and ducked into Viv's quarters when they heard a noise. Viv gagged and Victor ordered Justin to goosestep out of his mansion. As soon as Justin began hauling out his boxes, Beauregard Aurelius Brady, or "Babs", as he's sometimes known, showed up, fresh from hearing about the tonsil teasing from a gloating Vivian. After he rehashed his argument with Hope about how they would 'do anything for each other but they can't do that', he repeated his less familiar argument with Justin, about how his cousin now has Hope while Babs has nothing... and then Babs remembered Carly, who just happened to be having a panic attack after being stuck in an elevator with Salem's giggle factory, Vivian. Viv left her behind as the elevator started to malfunction. Babs ran to her rescue. And since this is Salem, we all know what happens after there are elevator problems. Who knew a dysfunctional shaft could be such an aphrodisiac?

Oh... and Mickey died, less than two weeks shy of his birthday. Sorry if that sounds like an afterthought, but it was written that way in the script. The long absent character, whose chief characteristic became the fact that he was always off-screen, collapsed. Maggie attempted to revive him but had no luck. RIP Mickey Horton: January 19, 1932 – January 7, 2010.

And now... the spoilers. If you don't want to know, please avert your eyes now and have a nice weekend of frolicking and skating, eating your final candy canes and knocking over lawn ornaments with snow balls. Bo might want to build a little fort to protect himself after Victor hears that he and Carly took an 'elevator ride'. While Victor berates him, calling upon every language he knows for the full range of insults, the rest of his family seems to be headed for equally dubious choices. Philip, sensing danger, decides that he and Mel can't wait around any more and need to get married right away. The fact that Mel and Nathan can't stop telling each other how much they don't want each other might have tipped him off that something is seriously wrong. Meanwhile, Hope already seems to have realized that something is horribly wrong and is busy laying into Carly. While Bo gets between them, insisting that he's laid into Carly enough, Vivian licks her lips as she suspects she's already stumbled upon Carly's daughter. Of course, she's not the only one out for revenge. Troy sends a goon after Ari again and Brady rushes to save her, but will that he enough to convince her that he's still a good bet? And EJ's plan to get his daughter back continues, though Rafe might get in the way.

Lines of the week:
Bo: You're the same Carly I fell in love with.

Brady: I think on some level Nicole went insane.

Anna: I've heard about you. How could you do the vile and disgusting things you have done in your life? Sydney will never come home unless you do something for me.

Sami: I lied to Rafe and now I don't know if I can trust him.

Hope: It just happened... It's not what you think... It's my fault...

Vivian: That duplicitous little tramp. Lawrence's ashes are barely cold and she's trying to lure Bo into her sticky little web.

Vivian: I guess we both have a lot on our mind. Specifically, the little succubus named Carly Manning.

Vivian: I wouldn't keep pushing that button, Carly. You can breathe my air. It won't kill you. This must remind you of the trying time in the casket. I must admit that was very satisfying. But I have regretted it ever since. The truth is I should have just buried you dead.

December 31, 2009

Up at Soaps.com!

December 24, 2009

Up at Soaps.com!

December 18, 2009
Nicole spent the week sitting in her jail cell. She wished for Brady to come. Her wish didn't come true. Chloe came instead. She was distracted by Nicole's new hairstyle, but Nicole managed to push through the diva's ADD to convince her to try and convince Brady to stop by. She tried but he wouldn't. Nicole had a few other visitors though. Roman dropped in and she told him about the woman who abducted Syd. He chose to ignore her. When she told Rafe the same thing, he decided to believe her and the information was enough for him to get the only useful lead they've had.

The dysfunctional romantic triangle of Rafe, Sami and EJ took on a different kind of dysfunctional shape this week. They decided to 'work together' in an attempt to corner Stefano into coming clean about where Syd was. Such a feat could only be accomplished with the help of Sami's superhuman ability to annoy most people to the point that they will confess to crimes or have heart attacks. As EJ listened to Stefano ranting at Sami, it was hard to tell how much of what his father said about her deceptions and manipulations he actually agreed with. Stefano refused to say anything. Instead, he caught Sami trying to catch him out and tore her shirt off to reveal the wire she was wearing. Roman promptly arrived and arrested Stefano for assault, which was a little rich since they had just committed entrapment, harassment and trespassing without so much as a warrant. Stefano spit on his son and left for his old familiar cell. While he was sitting in lock up gritting his teeth, Rafe administered some truth serum to him and finally got confirmation that Stefano really doesn't know where Syd is after all.

EJ, Ari and Brady bickered. She demanded that Troy introduce her to Mr. Big. EJ set things up so that he could meet her without her knowing that he is actually Salem's drug kingpin. He used to opportunity to 'spar' with her and tell her how much he enjoyed it. Brady caught them and threw a fit. It's unclear whether EJ really enjoys his little moments with her as much as he enjoys sticking it to Brady and Rafe, but it's rather telling that he compares flirting to punching someone in the face. Brady and Ari then fought and flit apart before getting together for some sex. Just to be complete about it, Rafe and Sami also had sex this week. They exchanged their usual candles for Christmas lights. Once more, they did it on the couch. She kept all of her clothes on and he took his shirt off, which leads me to believe that old Catholic myth and assume that Sami's ears are actually her sex organs and Rafe's nipples are his.

Carly got belligerent with Justin when he continued rubbing her apparent romantic inclinations for Bo in her face. At least it was snapping her out of her usual exhausted expression. She even began sporting a broad smirk and pumped up the childishness when she was at the hospital for her job interview. Justin went there to convince Daniel not to hire her but it turns out that she and the doctor go way back. Daniel was happy to hire her, but he seems to be the only one happy to have her around. Even Maggie had to agree with Justin that having Carly in town is seriously ruining things for Bo. Carly would have a hard time denying that she is there for purely non-romantic reasons after the Mayan scroll she read at their wedding popped out of her purse and into Bo's hand. Beauregard, grand detective that he is, even managed to pick up the clue about what this meant when it happened. Maybe he should have dug around in her purse a little more to see if she had a voodoo doll of Hope as well... Hope came back for the holidays, which led to an argument with Bo in which she admitted that she doesn't have much faith in their future. They kissed anyway, but she walked out with a family photo and some beard burn, saying that love is not enough.

Victor kept his sunglasses on all week. It was his way of trying to stay invisible from the hell of the holidays that visits the Kiriakis family every year. Vivian continued settling into the mansion and setting up Carly from some grim revenge. Even Victor got excited about that. It was enough to keep him sober after imbibing Vivian's infamous eggnog. They played domestic, though the rest of the family was less convinced. Vivian set out on the town with a bundle of flowers and soon left a corpse in her wake. The corpse just happened to belong to one of Carly's newest patients. Not a very impressive way to start a new job...

Philip's problems with women became a little clearer this week when he was forced to deal with his two mommies. He did his best to avoid their vicious sniping, but they've all lived with Victor so they know how to give as good as they get. Philip was more interested in licking frosting off of Melanie's face. They flirted and he asked her to spend the holidays doing un-Christmas things like watching "The Exorcist" and throwing watermelons at nuns. She was up for that, but the romantic vibe was a little more off-kilter elsewhere. Steph and Nate decided to trim the tree together and maybe go caroling or watch the porpoise fights in the harbor during the Christmas clam bake. Mia stopped being mousy and just moped. Will had no will and was totally indecisive. His mother had to prod him to go to the non-denominational snowflake dance. Unfortunately, it looks like taking Mia to the shindig could hit a snag since Chad asked her to go too. Mind you, he was panting over Gabi after meeting her so we'll see how that turns out.

Sydney hung out with her kidnapper, perfectly oblivious, but then again, ever since she left Salem she's seemed pretty jovial. Her kidnapper (Anna) fell over while hanging a wreath and Syd giggled a bit. She's proving to be a real DiMera – comfortable in captivity, laughing at other people's misfortunes. What's more perplexing is the fact that the show's minions very publicly declared who the kidnapper was even though they still refused to show who she is to the audience until the end of the week.

Anyway, now on to the spoilers. If you don't want to know about the merry happenings in Salem next week, avert your gaze now and make some snow angels, or eat some shortbread, or build a gingerbread replica of the DiMera mansion and let EJ and Sami be gingerbread men so that when they bicker too much and you can bite their heads off. Elvis "I like to spar" DiMera wants to hold a special candlelight vigil for Sydney just to get everyone into the Christmas spirit. The plan could pay off since he receives a note from the kidnapper. Plans are going a little differently for Philip. It looks like he and Mel aren't going to watch "The Exorcist" but they will do something shocking. He pops the question to her, and it's not the question about how they are going to split the royalties for their sex tape. Could this possibly pull them out of the romantic quagmire they've been sinking into? Meanwhile, Carly could be sinking Bo even further into one after she confesses that she really does have feelings for him. Brady finds that he can't shed his feelings for Nicole easily and ends up going to her side after Ari alienates him and Gabi makes Mia uncomfortable when she dances with Chad (she's from the bad side of the tracks so she knows the Lambada).

Lines of the week:
Bo: You move out and I ask you to move back and you tell me it's up to me. It's not. We're stuck in a pattern so tell me how we get out of it because it's driving me crazy.

Vivian: My goodness, what happened to your fashion sense. You almost look like a student nurse.

Rafe: It has a big long Latin name I can't pronounce, but suffice it to say it's truth serum.

Philip: Whatever you do, don't sit on the lap of the guy playing Santa.

Kate: Tis the season to kick your butt to the curb.

Philip: Someone just told me I'm lucky to have a family. I'm lucky they haven't killed each other or buried someone alive...

Stefano: Samantha and that pimp of a boyfriend and even Elvis are behind this.

Vivian: You're a poster boy for sanity compared to the Botox bitch.

That's all I got for this week. I'll be back next week for more of my take on Days, but in the meantime, check out Christine's Days Of Our Lives Weekly Blog on Soaps.com this week and Lori's Last Word (DOOL Weekly Thoughts).

December 4, 2009
Elvis raged. He ranted at his father to stay out of things and vowed to do things with the help of the Salem PD instead. Nicole called. He kept her on the line for half an episode but the Salem PD still couldn't trace the call. Stefano thought his son was making a stupid mistake. EJ threatened to never let him see his grandchildren again if he didn't back off. Stefano felt bad, after all, the babysitters EJ and Sami constantly leave the children with need a break once and awhile. EJ raged some more. Sami and Rafe worried, paced, cuddled, worried, paced, she screamed hysterically, he calmed her down, worried, paced, screamed, he calmed her down, worried, expected the worst, then got hopeful, then pessimistic, then hopeful, then worried and screamed and he calmed her down some more. To jazz it up, she also worried to the other two men involved this week – Brady and EJ. She slapped Brady for bailing Nicole out. He felt bad and tried to help out, which led EJ to scream and bellow and pout. Rafe calmed him down and then there was more pouting and screaming. Elvis didn't want any help from a man who loves his wife more than he does.

Nicole made it all the way to Cleveland, where she promptly gave herself a makeover, going from blond to raven, for a moment becoming eerily reminiscent of Beth on "Passions." She hung out at a flea bitten, bed bug ridden motel and Syd chuckled the whole time. Fay made a return appearance. Nicole gave her a sob story about being in a dangerous and abusive relationship, which was mildly accurate, and spun it for maximum pity points. Her mom gave her all the tips she'd saved up from the diner and even arranged for Nicole to get a fake passport. Bus tickets, however, were enough to break Nicole's budget. She had a crises of faith about what to do next when the bus conductor announced that they were preparing to leave for Toronto (I know that's how I feel whenever I go back there). She decided not to run with the baby and tried calling Sami. Before she could speak, she passed out and was dragged into a hospital. In the fracas, Syd vanished. Elvis, Brady, Rafe and Sami flew over to Cleveland, bringing their hilariously awkward tension with them. They were shocked to find Nicole alone and no sign of a baby anywhere.

Vivian settled into town some more. She even did some bird watching with Victor, who has been sneering a little less than usual. While they shared some amusing banter, which was surprisingly full of less venom than either of them are normally known for, things went less smoothly with Philip. He didn't appreciate having Viv swan back into his life again and ordered her to stay away. Nonetheless, he did rub her presence into Kate's face.

Carly began the move to Maggie's. Bo was still skeptical about the move. Hope thought it was a good move, but she still doubted that Carly and Bo would be able to stay out of each other's pockets. Beauregard did nothing to dissuade her. Hope was scarce after that. Carly dragged her hobo sack across town and started moving in. On the way, she spilled scalding coffee on Mel, who was rather furious to find out that they would be bunk mates now. Of course, Mel had other things to worry about this week, like her inability to make up her mind or control herself. Melanie's facial expressions continued to run away from her. It's like she's not even sure what they are communicating anymore. Watching her is like seeing someone try to match their emotions to whatever look randomly appears on their face. But this fascinating inversion of emotional reality had consequences when it led to her nearly kissing Philly K. Nate walked in on cue, blew up and broke up with her. Philip wanted to pick up the pieces with her. He's been trying to do that for awhile. He even told her a sob story about being a stolen embryo. "I had a tough childhood too," was all she could say in response. She pushed Philip away, who skulked off to scowl at Bo over beer. Meanwhile, Steph made a pass at Nate.

Anyway, now on to the spoilers. If you would rather stay in the dark about the upcoming events in Salem, avert your eyes now and enjoy a happy weekend stamp collecting, Christmas shopping, gum chewing, boxing, box socializing, baby stealing or whatever else warms the cockles of your heart. Otherwise, Carly better check if there is a bomb shelter under Maggie's and stock up on oxygen masks because Vivian is going to be teaming up with Victor to extract her revenge. Making things more awkward, she's just moved into the dysfunctional version of 'The Fact of Life' and isn't being made to feel entirely welcome. Adding to her misery, no doubt, will be her admission that she really does have feelings for Bo. Now that she's gotten over the loss of his mullet, she can share some more tenderness with him, which is exactly what Justin walks in on. Will he spill this to hopeless Hope? News will be just as bad for the rest of Salem as Syd continues to go missing. Nicole isn't much help and gets bundled off to jail while EJ becomes convinced that she knows exactly where the clever like tyke is.

Lines of the week:
Bo: All kids think their parents are idiots.

Carly: All my life I thought I was a pretty tough cookie, but the last few years with Lawrence scared me.

Philip: I guess I just need someone to tell me the sun will come out tomorrow and everything's coming up roses. I also need to hear it's darkest before the dawn.

Arianna: But Phillip is what you want.
Melanie: No, and if he is, I'm wrong.
Arianna: This isn't about right and wrong, it's about what is and what isn't.

Philip: Now 'Incubator Mom' is back and she wants to coddle me. How can I be a success if I started out as a stolen embryo?

November 20, 2009
Now that the truth is out, Salem will never be quite the same again. Each day brought new torment for the poor people of the little town as they endured all the pain and penury that's been held in reserve for the nation's capital of fish guts, fishy births and gut-wrenching screams.

Poor Nicole. All of her dreams have been smashed again. Even the porn industry might be hesitant to take her back now. On the bright side, she did share a truly beautiful and highly nuanced confessional scene with EJ on the pier. It was the kind of scene that soaps only do at their best. Now that she is looking at the end to her life in crime, Nicole has to prepare for a life with the 'biotches' and 'hos' in orange who she used to mock so endearingly. But all is not lost for Nicole. She still has hope, and not Hope Brady, just Brady. He showed up to pay her bail because she's so poor.

Poor Sami. She finally found out the whole truth about Grace and Sydney. Well informed is never where Sami is most comfortable, and this was no exception. She kept losing her footing. To her credit, even if she bitch slapped Nicole and sadistically ordered her to admit that Syd was her daughter, she still let her say goodbye to the little tyke. The brief period of co-parental bliss with EJ was short-lived and he soon exploded in paranoia, assuming that she was trying to swipe away the child he had recently put out on the curb like trash.

Poor EJ. Not only did he find out the vast extent to which he has been hideously duped by Nicole, he's discovered that he now has to be stuck in a parental triangle with Rafe and Sami, possibly for decades to come. It's amazing he's still willing to leave the house considering how out of touch with reality he must be feeling. But he braved it anyway, spending much of the week raving and ranting at the pier when he wasn't swilling booze and ranting at whoever stumbled into his mansion. He had it out with virtually everyone, from Nicole to Roman to Stefano, and, after a brief moment of sensitivity, Sami and Rafe.

Poor Mia. She's ruined her whole life to save someone whose life just got ruined. That applies to Nicole in the short run and, very likely, Sydney in the long. Maybe now that the truth is out, Will will forgive her for her lies, or maybe she has just made things even worse. At least she's proven to Maggie that she can be every bit as prone to trouble as Melanie. She's also proven that when she gets angry, she can be pretty nasty, which bodes well for her future in Salem.

Poor Miss Melanie. Doomed to be adored by two attractive men. If that wasn't bad enough, no matter who she chooses, she seems destined to be stuck in a triangle with Stephanie. Actually, three men were interested in little Mel this week. Mark flew all the way over an ocean of Eurotrash to find her for a little afternoon delight. Well, actually he just wanted some money she owed him for an Arabian horse which never materialized. Philly came to her rescue, which resulted in kisses. With her past randomly coming back to haunt her, however, does this mean Trent can come back? Roscoe Born usually comes back as a ghost at some point after his character has been killed. Please?

Poor Philly K. Without his mother around to fuss over him, he's been left to his own devices. He seems particular fond of one in particular – his cell phone. In addition to, no doubt, storing his own copy of his infamous video escapades on it, it's also what he has been using to wage an unceasing war of seduction on poor Melanie. He's called her so many times that she finally went to see him and asked him to stop. He took this delayed reaction as meaning that she didn't want him to stop. Even Maggie told him to stop but he wouldn't listen. How could he though? His smile has been so broad that it's practically muffling his ears.

Poor Victor. Without any drugs to deal, all he wants is love, but he's getting the cold shoulder everywhere he goes. He dropped by to see Caroline, who hasn't been well. Even her clam chowder can not keep away the swine flu. He didn't hesitate to make a pass at her but she thinks his business is a big no no. Little does she know what Brady learned this week, that his grandfather sold off his nasty business to some other sordid soul. Brady was not at all pleased, especially after all the high and mighty chit chat his grandfather spewed about Ari. Poor Victor wasn't getting any love from his grandson either.

Poor Vivian. She's traveled all the way across the world only to have to endure not only Hope's abysmal design sense, but also the truly wretched coffee proffered by the Java Cafe. At least she seems to be enjoying the prospect of making Carly suffer. So far, they've only traded barbs, mostly about hatchets rather than about being buried alive, but her arrival has finally brought this story to life. It was starting to get so grim that the thought of Justin jumping Hope's bones was the only thing to suggest it had any life in it at all.

Poor Stefano. He didn't show up until the end of the week and only wasted a few minutes playing dumb before admitting what he knew and saying that Nicole had, more or less, the right idea. After all, EJ still got to raise his baby and he didn't have to have Salem's most frequent preggo around for it. In his own way he meant well. But then again, didn't everyone? That's part of what makes the whole thing so brutal. Good intentions often lead to bad consequences. The big question left was, how did Stefano not know what went down while he was away? How lazy is that? In the end, after Stefano told him he feared the truth would send poor Elvis back to Sami, EJ tried strangling his father.

Of course, the person to feel really badly for is poor Sydney. Either way, she has to be raised by one or two of the most inappropriate parents in the world. She can either be raised by a burbling, neurotic, women who lives in a shoe with so many children she barely knows what to do, or by the head of the town's drug cartel. Being half Brady and half DiMera also leaves her with a rich genetic inheritance that will give her a penchant for maniacal abuses of power, perpetual lying, loud fits of rage, radical leaps in age and explosive bouts of amnesia.

And now on to the spoilers for next week's Tom Turkey truncated edition of the show. If you don't want to know, leave now and have a pleasant weekend. Otherwise... she just got to town but she's already seen enough to make her worried about what her sister has been up to. Gabi quickly stumbles on some of her jailbird big sister's drugs and suspects the worst. Tension in the family isn't getting relieved from the outside either. Arianna is starting to suspect the worst of Brady thanks to his ongoing involvement with the walking disaster known as Nicole. He tries to add a little scope to his good deeds by reaching out to Sami but she slaps his hand away. It didn't help that he bailed Nicole out. Meanwhile, Chad and Mia join hands to mourn the child who they never really got to know. Vivian tries to get over her grieving by bonding a little with Victor over their mutual hatred on Carly. While they plot her demise, Carly finally comes clean with Bo about more details concerning Lawrence's untimely death. His further involvement only manages to fuel the fires of his ongoing fight with Hope.

Lines of the week:
Stephanie: It's just a dumb shoe.

Stefano. (on having Rafe killed) Insects annoy me.

Justin: (to Bo) You're acting like a complete jerk.

Mia: Everything makes sense now except... why... why would she switch babies?

Bo: Would he be so sympathetic if you weren't drop dead gorgeous and fun to be around?

Vivian: You, Bo and Hope together — ménage à trois. Do you darn his socks together... plan his special meals?"

November 6, 2009
Carly paced around Bo's house and worried between flashbacks and nightmares. Bo paced around and furrowed his brow to try and calm her down. She said they should bring in Justin for help. When Justin arrived, she refused to tell him anything so he refused to help her. When she went to bed, Hope dropped by, at Victor's prompting, only to find Carly in her bed. Hope freaked out in a 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' kind of way and threatened to call the cops. She gave Carly 24 hours to clear off. Bo assured Carly that Hope would keep her word but, apparently, as soon as she went back to the Kiriakis compound, she called the Feds and Carly was arrested. That actually seemed to calm her down a bit. Whatever happened to her to put her in this awkward place? This isn't exactly the Carly that I remember. Either, she is a hapless victim or she is just playing everyone. Victor thinks she's a psycho. Even considering his dubious take on most women, he may have a point. When she killed Lawrence, she looked cold blooded enough and she had willfully married a man who had always been pretty far gone. Or she may just be a victim after all, which is a far more boring option. The fact that this entire issue is unclear is the only thing that's actually making the plot interesting at the moment, with the exception of Vivian's smattering of slight appearances. From the way she talks, this is going to be drawn out for awhile so she can get maximum pleasure out of afflicting her old enemy with as much damage as possible. In 'Days' speak that can only mean two things: It will either be rushed through quickly and farcically, or it will never go anywhere. Then again, they could surprise us... Fingers crossed.

Victor also stuck his oar into another relationship this week. He told Brady that Ari is a drug dealer. Brady blew up, ran across town and confronted her. Their secret relationship ended rather publicly. He angrily walked around town, drinking cappuccino after cappuccino. He bumped into Nicole and dropped the hint that things are dead in the water between he and the raven haired one. Nicole had other fish to fry and told him they are 'good friends'. Since she's about to leave town, who will be keeping Brady warm at night?

Could it be Ari after all? Even though he said that she'd be sleeping alone from now on, she may have already found someone to take Brady's place. EJ and Ari had the first encounter in their 'new' relationship. Now that he knows she's a drug dealer, he's paddling over to her. She has no idea that he's her boss, of course. Can you sue for sexual harassment in the underworld? I'm actually looking forward to this a lot, basically because Ari isn't Nicole or Sami. EJ and Nicole were fun at first, but he changed her a lot, and, though they're well matched in many ways, they've gotten kind of annoying. He had a few cold run ins with Nicole and then one with Sami this week. They bonded a bit at Grace's grave. But before the Irish flutes could start playing, I had a traumatic flash. Didn't Santo go to South America and start a cocoa plantation after he left Colleen? And wasn't he then haunted by Aztec spirits after he stole some of their sacred jewels which were then passed down to Stefano? He could have had an affair with one of the local novices there, a woman who just happened to be Ari's grandmother? No, I'm kidding. They don't have to get that desperate selling any romance that doesn't involved Sami. If I have to listen to poor James imitating Chico Marx as he gushes about the virtues of olive oil for five minutes again my head will explode.

Meanwhile, Mel tossed and turned but couldn't get Philip out of her mind, even when Nate was in bed with her. They didn't consummate their relationship as she'd hoped. Even though she jumped into his comfy new bed, his phone vibrated in a way that made him know that saving the lives of Salem's citizens was more important than saving his sex life. She turned to Brady about her libidinal conundrum. "Dump them both and go it alone," he advised, in what may have been the best advice she's ever been given. Across town, someone else could have used some solid advice. Poor little Mia had to tell everyone what a slut she was so that Chad wouldn't think that he was the father of her child. She even had to lie to woolly Will about it. But not everyone was convinced by the stories which the young blond had lifted from a Larry Clark movie. Rafe stumbled back into town to steal Syd's teething ring and Sami's toothbrush for a DNA test. Sami caught him at her place and they pushed the penguin out of the way to swap some DNA of their own on her couch. Then he ran back into the night to find the truth and fantasize about how he'd like to kill Nicole.

And now the spoilers. If you don't want to know, now is the time to run. Rafe's plans to wreak havoc by revealing the truth could be railroaded when Stefano takes out a hit on the guy. Considering how incompetent DiMera henchmen are, this could go anywhere. Anywhere, or at least, somewhere else, is where Nicole wants to be. She leaves Syd with Chloe as she runs off just as the proverbial hits the fan. Although the wide eyed diva has been wanting a baby, this isn't exactly what she had in mind. With Nicole leaving the picture, EJ's eyes are already gravitating on Ari. But he may have competition from the same man who has been helping Nicole deceive him for so long. Arianna won't let go of Brady easily and tells him that she's a lot more than a drug dealer, she's an undercover operator too. Brady isn't the only one getting in the way. Victor worries that Carly is the worst thing in the world for Bo and Hope right now. The fact that Justin is trying to get her out of jail doesn't help the old tycoon feel any better.

Lines of the week:
Chad: (to Nicole) Your film work makes me think you can fake things, you know, like loving her.

EJ: I'm not pressing charges against Nicole, but I will never forgive her. I think she's suffered enough.

Sami: I didn't want dueling headstones.

Nicole: It's scary to think his decision not to throw me in jail is an improvement in our relationship.

October 23, 2009
Nicole's downfall continued this week, moving from one desperate step to another. Each day things seemed to crumble a little more for Misty Circle, the faded star of "Locker Room Lolita." She turned to Brady with a desperate plea to run away to no man's land with her. They admitted that they love each other and really seemed to mean it. He wouldn't run though, wouldn't give her money and told her that he was seeing someone else. Nicole was devastated, even I was kind of sad, but worse things happened to her this week.

Chad Peterson Woods, the only unmarried Salemite to have a name that long, continued trying to ruin the lives of the blond women of the town. He berated Mia and Will, who clung to each other lovingly. He berated Nicole, who got really desperate and tried to bargain with the only thing she had left: her body. Although Chad was a big fan of her glittering past in the gutter cinema, he wasn't keen to take on a part in "Lays of Our Lives: Salem MILFs." Instead, he threatened to use her porn past against her in court to get his daughter back. Sami tried to talk some sense into him next by nakedly telling him what a grossly incompetent mother she was and what a terrible person she is for trying to raise children she obviously can't raise. After Maggie bumped into him and revealed that Sami was Will's mom, her little chat collapsed on itself and only made him more determined to get his daughter back. He turned to his father, DA Woods, for advice, and Woods sent him to Justin to arbitrate things. The meeting between Mia, Will and Chad was a flop.

Meanwhile, Nicole turned to Sami so she could listen to someone else crying for a change. Sami told her all about how being a mother entitles you to do anything, good or evil and, even if you're awful, as long as you love your kid, anything goes. Nicole choked on her tears the whole time because the flood of irony was large enough to fill an ocean. Sami then pulled out a surprise: since Nicole couldn't get cash from anyone else, Sami decided to give her some. She's been living off of money John left behind and decided to hand it all over so her former enemy, now best friend, could leave town forever.

Stefano finally woke up and started talking, too fast for his own good as it turned out. The Phoneix might never die but that doesn't mean his wits are as lively as they used to be. He made several slip ups in as many minutes to make his little EJ wonder if he's known about Nicole's penchant for fibs.

Kate made a perfunctory pop up to see if she could get away with meddling in the life of the only son she has in Salem right now. She hunted Stephanie down to try and urge her to get back with the bullet riddled billionaire but she continued to insist that they don't fit together. Kate was mostly doing it to prevent her son from continuing his porn star antics with Melanie. Philip chewed her out for sticking her finely carved nose into his life. He spent the rest of the time trying to pretend he wasn't flirting with Mel, who spent the week leaping from pouting to biting her lip as she flirted with Nathan. They kissed a few times until Maggs caught them in the kitchen and tried to put the kibosh on their romance.

Victor started selling his drug operations to EJ. This could be because he's tired of the trade, or he may be setting things up so Elvis will take the fall for being the pusher of more than just prams. Hope came back to pack up and leave. Before she could, Victor cornered her and begged her not to go, even offering her a room of her own in the Kiriakis compound. She reluctantly agreed to take it. While she was moving out on Bo, it looked like someone else could be moving in. Carly's boat pulled up in the harbor. Omar wanted to drop Rafe on the dock so he could become food for the sea gulls or longshoremen, but Carly chose to be more ethical and snuck into town to rob the hospital. After she grabbed some antibiotics, she shot him up and he continued to mutter.

Chloe and Daniel had sex followed by cake and then he told her it looks like she can't have children. Brady and Arianna made out quite a bit and decided to keep their relationship a secret, much to Roman's chagrin. He even threatened to have her thrown back in prison, where she was known as 'Lock Down Lolita'.

And now onto the spoilers, if you don't want to know, have a happy weekend preparing for Halloween. It doesn't look like anyone in Salem will be in the mood to go trick or treating. Sami's half-brother bumps into her and tells her the half of the story which Nicole has already been telling her. This leads Sami to wonder what else he knows and just how involved he was in all of the child swapping going on. She may have to prepare herself for some other ghastly news though. No matter what Mia says, even if she promises to play Locker Room Lolita with Chad, he still won't back down on his determination to get his daughter back. Unfortunately, he may regret being so easy going about rejecting women when it turns out that the DNA test isn't going to come back the way he'd hoped. While Nicole is trying to avoid being poked, Sami is busy ranting at Stefano and accusing him of turning on Nicole.

Lines of the week:
Stefano: Where is Sydney?
EJ: With her mother.
Stefano: Oh my God! She is with Sami?

Kate: (to Nicole) Will you be leaving a forwarding address for your hate mail?

Roman: I'm not so old I don't remember doing things that were stupid and dangerous.

Chad: (to Nicole) Thanks, but no thanks. As much fun as it would be to brag to my friends about about bagging a hot old nymphomaniac, I'm not doing anything to screw up getting my kid back.

October 9, 2009
So now EJ finally knows the truth... more or less. He exploded at Nicole all week. He even opened up to his sister about the mess. Lexi had to stop herself short of saying that he must be the world's biggest dope. More surprisingly, he opened up to Sami about it. Of course, the real reason he's angry has to do with blood and what it means to his, basically feudal, feelings of love. Sydney isn't his biological child. That was the real shocker. He admitted that without the child, he couldn't have loved Nicole. He only claimed he truly loved Sami after she had his child. As he told Lexi, he loved Syd because he saw himself in her. As soon as he discovered that they don't share DNA, it ended. That's because, as Tony once observed, his 'love' is really all about Stefano. Women are a warped way that he can consummate his relationship with his long estranged father by giving him heirs and proving his sometimes dubious masculinity. The incestuous overtones are even weirder now that Stefano is married to EJ's former sex partner.

Nicole didn't handle the mess well either. She's determined to stick around and fight for her family. That's what she's been doing all along, after all, so why she thinks it will suddenly work it out well now is anyone's guess. She had the nerve to rant at Brady, blaming him for her lies coming out. Admittedly, he slipped up but this is still her handiwork. Aside from Syd, he's the only one in the mess I really feel bad for.

Stefano and Kate's wedded bliss continued for a few days and quickly turned comatose. Most of the town gathered around to sneer at them. Kate, who should be used to it by now, was really annoyed, likely because even she is appalled by the situation. Stefano, meanwhile, completely glutted himself at Chez Rouge. It was almost like he was trying to, very publicly, put himself into a diabetic coma. You have to wonder how deliberate it was on his part and why he would do this. He was carted off after having a heart attack. Everyone stared at Kate, assuming she'd just poisoned him. She seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing and took it in stride, rubbing EJ's face in the fact that this could mean she'll be not only his new mommy, but also his new boss.

Nathan and Mel finally had a date. They had plenty of hand on hand action and even some kisses. Philip made another pass at her, but she's busy with Nate now. Maggie worried about the potential threesome. She should have worried even more when Steph voiced her interest in Nathan. That's just what Salem needs - another square romance. Things went even less well for Will, Mia and Chad. All three are miserable. Mia is the most miserable of all, having lost her baby and now Will. She's set to lose even more and Chad just comes off like an assbag more every day. Daniel and Chloe still haven't re-consummated their relationship. They just have lip on lip action. He's back at work and she's wandering around town as clueless about everything as she would have been if she hadn't been in a coma.

The other big news of the week was that Carly is finally back, even if we still have little idea what's up with her. So far, we've been teased with a splintered glimpse of her final days with Lawrence. Their, always odd, romance apparently went very sour over the last while and she wound up stabbing him in the gut. Sure that he was dead, she ran off and jumped on a jet headed for Salem. Although she tried calling Justin and Bo, there were phone troubles thanks to turbulence and the apparent inability of Salemites to answer in-flight calls. So far, I'm really intrigued to know what's going on with her, though I'm afraid it will be less than surprising. It is nice to see her again, Crystal Chapell seems to have sunk right back into the character.

The most shocking thing this week was seeing Sami look for a job. She searched high and low. Well, she checked out an animal daycare and asked Maggie for work. I guess she can't really work at the pub with Arianna. Rafe was curiously absent all week after Meredith rolled him into the Salem harbor, which brings us to the spoilers. Next week, everyone is Salem begins answering questions in monosyllables and buying paintings of dogs playing poker. It turns out that this strange change coincides with a large fresh batch of Caroline's infamous fish soup. A DNA analysis of the soup reveals that the fish had been feeding on Rafe for a good few days. No, I'm joking. That doesn't happen, but this does... Word spreads that Nicole's deceptions have been revealed and this means a few more people could be caught in the crossfire. Mia and Nicole try to look for a way to shield themselves while Elvis goes after Brady. Meanwhile, Carly left violence and trouble behind so she may be disappointed to find that there is plenty more of it in Salem. She'll have more than phantoms to deal with soon. She winds up having a gun shoved in her face. Over at the Kiriakis compound, the news of Lawrence's death seeps in. How will Victor and the family handle it and what could this mean for Carly when she arrives? And Lucas completes the world's fastest course of rehab. A Salem day usually runs long enough to brew a vat of wine in real time, but not this time. He returns to town to make amends and take his twelve steps, one of which will be to Chloe to make things right between them.

Lines of the week:
Kate: (to Daniel) Wow, you figured it out. He's a diabetic, his health isn't great, he sat there gorging himself and had a heart attack. You should alert the Nobel Prize committee. I didn't hurt the man.

Philip: (to Victor) You are a cynical bastard... A flaming misogynist. I could date Joan of Arc and you would think I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

EJ: I seem to be drawn to women who lie.

Lexi: (to EJ) Y'know, for a smart guy, you are a total idiot.

Nathan: (to Steph) I'm having dinner with Melanie, so tonight is a bad night.

Melanie: Thanks for defending my honor.
Philip: It was nothing.

Maggie: (to Sami) Gee, I've never seen a job application with death row on it.

September 25, 2009
It was a week of bad news for the mama's boys of Salem. Luckily, it was actually a very good week for viewers of the show. There was a seriously different whiff in the air that one can only hope lasts into the future. Long-standing roles were inverted or reversed or mocked. Sami managed to be strategically vindictive and an extraordinary bimbo in the same episode. Kate was pathetic enough that she was almost pitiable and Stefano and Victor managed to be cruel but cheerful and funny all at the same time.

The week started out a bit solemn and then turned into a weird nightmare. After weeks of agitation, Hope left Bo and took Ciara with her. They had the same argument they've been having for weeks. He was miserable, she was distant and a bit righteous. Everyone saw this coming. Even Bo probably saw this coming but couldn't be sure. After all, he hasn't had visions since he was knocked on the noggin during Ciara's rescue.

Although Ciara is safe and sound, the same cannot be said for Rafe. Meredith, the perfunctory loony redhead, returned to town to wage her war of revenge on Salem's busiest unemployed man. She tracked him down at Sami's and conked him on the head. Before she could drag him off, the blonde one returned. She kept trying to call Rafe, who just happened to be slumped on the floor unconscious behind her. She didn't notice and ran off to look for him while Meredith whisked him away to a basement somewhere. Does this mean that we're in for a lengthy torture session? The last time Galen Gering was imprisoned in a basement he was forced to have sex with his girlfriend's sister while her grandfather watched. Can "Days" out-kink "Passions"? I doubt it. Sami ran off to chat to Brady, who was in a bad mood all week. So was Sami until the end of the week. I guess it was only threatening to take Lucas' children away, without having to resort to her usual bag of deceptions, that helped her blow off steam and put a smile back on her face.

While Bo and Hope's marriage crumbled and disappeared early in the week, the rest of the week was concerned with Stefano finally get an answer to the question he popped to Kate long, long ago. She came around and agreed to marry him, though she let out a truly horrifying shriek when she did. This was thanks to Chloe returning from her coma and brushing the cobwebs off her brain. She quickly cleared Daniel's name and they spent the week being cuddly. Even Father Matt dropped by to bless her, though she insists on staying 'faithful' to Lucas until the divorce comes through. The priest was cool with that, even if it doesn't make much sense from a Catholic point of view. Then again, Daniel did ask her to marry him... Lucas was less cool with the whole thing, but then, news that his mother was marrying one of the men he hates the most in the world probably didn't help either. Since he's already disowned her enough times, he didn't have to bother this time around. That task fell to his brother, Philip. Although Philip was initially in denial that his mother could do such ghastly things, that didn't last. Even Lucas managed to deny it to himself longer, but neither of them were stubborn enough to keep it up. Philly begged his mommy dearest not to go through with the wedding but Kate decided to be totally fatalistic, which is a strange pose to take when you are trying to save your life. After singing to her son that she is a survivor, he disowned her, though he showed up at the wedding to watch the deed be done. Lucas was too busy falling off the wagon, landing on Maggie's floor and then having his stomach pumped, to attend.

Kate's wedding was a small affair at Chez Rouge. She wore a rather ghastly red dress and a long bead of pearls which resembled a noose. The ceremony was quick, but the before and after was packed full of a lengthy series of one liners from Victor. It was almost as if the writers had been saving them up for the occasion. After the callous hilarity, Kate actually shared an almost tender moment with Theo after he spilled her champagne all over her gown. Everyone took digs at Kate this week, and really enjoyed doing it, which was enough reason to watch in itself.

One odd thing which has started to stand out was that since Stefano has, more or less, handed over the business to Elvis, they've sort of reversed roles. Stefano has actually become like the young one in the relationship, getting the older one out of town so he can get up to mischief. He's also smart mouthed, sarcastic and so on. When he called his son, who was vacationing in Paris, to tell him the wedding news, Elvis' reaction was almost like that of an irate father in an old sitcom who was outraged that his son was throwing a party at his house. Elvis has been left to be a senile crank, completely out of touch with reality. Of course, Elvis never actually had an adolescence. He was sent to law school when he was barely out of diapers and came out a man. Maybe that's why whenever Nicole is walking around him in a negligee he seems to be a mixture of leering schoolboy and a pervy old man.

The darker side of Elvis, however, will return next week... Now on to the spoilers. For those who do not want to know, look away now and have a fruitful weekend. That's one thing that Nicole and EJ won't be having. They'll return from their brief and sticky honeymoon to the now over-crowded Casa DiMera. While he's staring daggers at her, his former flame, Kate, can't help but notice. It will be even more obvious when Elvis nearly gets violent as he confronts Nicole over her lies. Is this the end for the couple? If it is, she may already have someone waiting to comfort her. Melanie realizes that Brady still has pretty profound feelings for Nicole, no matter how much he likes to deny it or how big and soulful Ari's eyes can be. Melanie won't spend much time arguing about this with him since Nathan drags her attention away when he asks her out. Is she interested, or will the moping 'motherless' Philip hold her attention? He may be distracted by what's going on in his family's mansion, namely Victor blowing his top after Daniel declares his plans to marry the diva of his dreams. While he's trying to fulfill his dreams, Sami gets bored looking for Rafe and decides it's time to get over him. She might not have given up so easily if she'd known he was trapped in Meredith's arms.

Lines of the week:
Brady: Well, I guess Copernicus was wrong - the earth doesn't revolve around the sun, but around you instead.

Brady: Most imaginary boyfriends tend to be fickle.

Victor: You want to smell nice on your trip to skid row?

Maggie: I think they are going to honeymoon in North Korea.

September 11, 2009
The kidnapping story continued to unravel this week. Bo spent most of the week sitting in the pub pouting about his fight with Hope. He complained to anyone who would lend him an ear and fueled a remarkable degree of enmity against Justin. Hope hung out at home with her remarkably untraumatized daughter until Dean stopped by to bite his fingernails and act concerned. His nerves soon turned to be his undoing. As he anxiously played with his lighter, Ciara recognized the sound and tipped her mom off that he was the kidnapper. She tried to play it cool but....

...read the rest of this musing on the blog!

August 28, 2009
Most of the week picked up where last week left off - with the kidnapping. Ciara sat in her blindfold, ear plugs and blanket while Brenda, Kyle and Dean argued over what to do. Since the little girl was sense deprived for most of the event, she seemed virtually undisturbed by everything. Theo wound up being the one to point the cops in the right direction. He identified the tattoo which Kyle had and that led the cops to him. Dean caught wind that things were about to fall apart and ended up shooting his two accomplices before shooting himself in the shoulder to make it look like he was in a gun battle with them. He got all of the commendations for rescuing Ciara, but his desire for revenge still lingered.

The kidnapping seemed to annoy more people than it thrilled. Between the bad dialogue, the extreme, angst ridden facial expressions and the lack of any real tension, the plot quickly fizzled. I did laugh uncontrollably several times, though that likely wasn't the intention. Salem has a long history of dopey criminals, which only serves to make the town's cops look even stupider. Now, in Dean, they have a character who manages to do both. Nick Stabile, who plays Dean and has been bouncing around Daytime since the early 90s, at least managed to evince something of a personality through the debacle, though the reason for his revenge, professional jealousy, are almost impossible to take seriously. While Dean sticks around for awhile, waiting for his plot to rot, Hope and Bo seem to have opened a wound between them which is likely to fester. Tongues are already wagging that the couple will split, thanks to Justin popping up and Carly creeping in around the corner. As a couple, they've been fizzling for years. A split up may be exactly what both characters require to become interesting again.

Then again, splitting up has never worked for Philip and Stephanie. They actually manage to become more boring each time it happens. To cap it all, they keep making my Philly harder to like. It's bad enough that he keeps going back to that laundry cycle of a relationship with that non-entity Stephanie, but he has to break little Melanie's heart too. Romance didn't exactly seem in the air for anyone else either. Chad threw a lot of longing looks at Mia. She flits between longing and confusion. Even if she reads her journal entries aloud, it still isn't entirely clear what she wants. Chad tried to make another move on her during some dance for teens at the Cheatin' Heart. She danced with Will instead and Chad had to stop her from driving off with a drunken Kinsey. Salem's obligatory teen bitch only got whiplash and a neck brace but her face was still intact enough to bicker with Chad about what to do next. Since the adult characters on the show are all so immature, it's actually really strange to watch the teenagers interact. There's something remarkably weird and staid about it, like they've hired random children to imitate old people trying to pretend to be young people. Then again, I guess that's what it is.

Brady caught Ari with her friend Troy again. Troy is a drug dealer with designs on her. The last time Brady saw him, he punched him out. Now Ari wants Troy to get her in to see their bosses. At the end of the week, Lindsay Hartley arrived to take over the role. She's already shared scenes with both of her former "Passions" co-stars. One of the things, perhaps the key thing that I've come to appreciate about Ari is that, unlike the rest of the town's women, she doesn't constantly break into tears. Now that one of the few actresses who can cry as much as Alison Sweeney has come to town, how long can this last? I still don't know what to make of her so I'll leave it alone.

Dr. Baker continued to threaten Nicole. She fretted. Stefano groaned and offered to take care of it. Rafe dug into it. Sami cried and tried not to cry. Rafe tracked Dr. Baker to the Dominican and went after him. Sami followed. Lucas doled out advice to everyone although he has no idea what to do himself. Chloe stayed comatose. Her father dropped into town to check and see if there was anything he could do. There wasn't. But the highlight of the week was probably Kate and Daniel. He's obviously been going stir crazy in the Kiriakis compound and, between the random hallucinations of Chloe and the binge drinking, he's managed to form a crazy plan. He's using Kate's lust for him to try and get one over on her, or, at least, get into her apartment for a snoop. All of their lewd stares, tawdry comments and panting were a real sight to behold.

Anyway, onto the spoilers. Please look away now if you do not wish to be spoiled. Go and have a happy weekend instead where you can imagine what you'd actually like to see happen. Next week Kate continues pushing Lucas to hurry up and do what Chloe asked him to do in her living will. While she's busy bossing him around, Daniel is digging around in her apartment looking for a way to take her down. Across town, Rafe continues to dig. His job is a little easier since Dr. Dick is dead and his lawyer holds all of the information that Rafe could need. Things aren't running quite as smoothly for his sister. She is trying to get a meeting with her drug masters while Salem's other crime families prepare for a shakeup. Stefano wants to hand the family business over to EJ but, as usual, he's a bit distracted. Philip's left his criminal past behind him for now and jumps into Stephanie's loving arms. Meanwhile, Chad continues trying to get Mia to welcome him back and recruits Kinsey to steal her diary so he can get the dirt on what's really going on with her.

Lines of the week:

EJ: Football... involves a foot... and a ball... That's why they call it football.

Daniel: Whatever it takes. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Philip: I need to tell you something. I promise – The past is over.

Lucas: Mia is a sweetheart, but with a past. I'm trying to protect him. It could end up in heartbreak.

Kinsey: I just committed social suicide!

August 14, 2009
Will tried to move ahead with Mia, even if she isn't a virgin. I was baffled about how this was a big deal but I guess I didn't go to Salem High. Anyway, they kissed and made up then he got to have his mother blubber to him about her love life. I guess if seeing what relationships do to his mom isn't a turn off, nothing can be. Meanwhile, Kinsey and Chad continued trying to do the lightweight version of "Cruel Intentions" to break up the couple.

Things weren't much more sophisticated among the slightly older Salemites. Melanie and Nathan continued to bungle hanging out together, which is a real accomplishment considering the fact that they are roommates. They tried going to the Cheatin' Heart, but when Mel returned to him after running to the bathroom to figure out how to button her shirt properly, she spotted his cheatin' heart with Steph and blew up. After Mel sulked away, Nate and Steph apologized to each other and hung out.

Things went a little better for Brady and Arianna, who both managed to take off most of their clothes this week for some poolside flirtation before the summer is over. I guess they were trying to prove that neither of them were hiding any drugs. But it wasn't all light. The other major couples in town were in various versions of misery. Sami and Rafe broke up again. I've lost track of how many times this has happened. I always thought it was just for the make up sex, but Sami's feelings for him now run so deep that she likes his painting of dogs playing poker. She whimpered to her son and then to Lucas, who was hardly the right guy to open up to. He was gruff. He was ready to condemn her and just as ready to condemn Rafe as a murderer.

Of course, Lucas has has other things on his mind, like his wife being in a coma. After last week's skeptical version of Lucas, the one who was bright enough to realize that his mother is a psycho, this week saw him return to his far dumber self. While Lucas wailed, Daniel seemed to be getting exhausted from repeating his accusations against Kate over and over again. This time he got to repeat them to Justin when he returned to Salem to be his lawyer. Victor hired him because he's family, though he's never actually tried a criminal case before. He didn't do much but give and 'aw shucks' look and say that Kate may be too smart for him to beat.

He wasn't the only return this week. Dr. Dick Baker also reared his head, calling in from a tropical location to blackmail Nicole again. She turned to Stefano to sort it out. She's still insecure about everything and Dick is making it worse. The only time she and EJ seem secure is when they're having sex. The rest of the time, they're a mess. He hung out at Grace's grave and did some bonding with his sister.

Bo's visions returned to haunt him this week. This time, they came back to warn him a little late. After he'd stuffed them away for awhile, they resurfaced just as Ciara was being abducted at the carnival only a few feet from the mayor and numerous parents. She gave the kidnapper the same eerily blank stare that Rafe is always giving Sami. I guess you really shouldn't take candy from strangers. So why take Ciara? For money probably, unless we're in for a real surprise and this is tied to the Alamains. But wasn't this the same guy who was stalking Hope and looking for a cash grab after hearing about her big charity donation? Since he's going to want millions, does this mean that Bo will have to turn to Victor for help? Victor may be looking for more of a father-son relationship since his with Philip is rapidly disintegrating. Since Carlo was abruptly introduced and killed, Philip has been drifting around town. His father tried to snap him out of the moping and told him to get some backbone. This only made him more alienated from the family business. He moped straight into Melanie, who offered to make him feel better. Can you guess where this is going?

Now onto the spoilers. If you don't want to know, then look away now and enjoy your weekend. The kidnapping gets into full swing. We haven't had one of these for a couple of months and this one actually involves kids. Hope freaks out and Justin tries to comfort her as Bo get bullheaded and refuses to give up a penny. As usual, the Salem PD is next to useless, which may be why Brady doesn't run it them right away after finding cocaine at the pub. It didn't fall out of an old pair of his pants either. Will he have the brains to figure out that Ari is Salem's biggest drug dealer? Daniel and Kate ran into each other in her fantasy this week, but next week they'll run into each other for real. Since she still has the hots for him in her own weird way, will he be smart enough to exploit that to his advantage?

Lines of the week:

Sami (to Stephanie): Tomorrow is another day. You'll get another happily ever after... uh...

Brady: Swimsuits are prohibited in this pool.

Victor: This is business. It's dirty sometimes. If you don't like it, teach kindergarten.

Sami (of Rafe): He just gave me a blank stare.

July 31, 2009
Maybe it's because it's so bloody hot and I haven't been sleeping well, but I was feeling really disengaged as I watched the show this week. It's been sort of like Philip's hair - strangely limp but with too much body at the same time. There were a few highlights. Victor laying into Kate and her pretending that she cared was nicely over the top, if predictable. And then there were odd things, like one of Abe's infrequent appearances. How come every time he shows up to berate Bo about how he's doing his job, he tells him that things are coming after his ass? Has he been moonlighting as a prison warden or something? Nicole did a lot more heartfelt crying, which is now ceasing to be sad and just become disturbing. It wasn't really a week where things happened but where people argued about what happened.

Sami badgered and issued ultimatums to Rafe all week. He even caught her sending her father out to investigate him. He finally broke down and told her about Emily... sort of. It was only after she regaled him with the, arguably quite incomplete, list of the crimes she's committed and others have committed against her that he opened his mouth. After he promised that was everything, she told him about her little run-in with Meredith, Emily's sister, so he tried telling her 'everything' again. This time, he blamed himself for Emily's death. She died in a car accident and he thinks he could have saved her, but the details are still sketchy. Rafe also made the trip to the Salem Inn to chat with Meredith, who wasn't at all happy to see him. She's convinced that he's the one who killed her sister. Unfortunately for Rafe, it turned out that Stefano is the one who brought the redhead to town. He gave her a whole lot of money and she told him the entire, hole-ridden story of Rafe's wedding day. Stefano promised to get her justice.

His son was having a quieter week. EJ seemed extraordinarily quiet, his stiff upper lip a definite pout as he lounged around the mansion, talking under his breath. He and his wife had sex and then talked about how they aren't themselves anymore. She ran around town trying to do her usual round of damage control before learning about what happened to her friend. Nicole turned to coma Chloe and cried at her bedside, confessing every bad deed she's done in the last year. Brady also showed up to weep for the dying diva... when he wasn't busy following Arianna around. They tried to clear things up between them some more and then he followed her to the park where she was accosted by a man. Brady beat the guy into the ground until Ari pulled him off. She seemed pretty unphased by it. They kissed and agreed to a date later. The bloody man crawled out of the bushes. She handed him cash and he handed her a bag of stuff. Is she drugging the clam chowder, selling dope to Salem's teens, or is this something else?

Poor Daniel. I don't know who I feel worse for – him, or the guy who plays him. All of the protestations of innocence and love for Chloe punctuated his words. It was like those two things were commas in all of his sentences. Anyway, Kate's plan finally started to pay off for her. Chloe's big eyes closed and Maggie opened her big mouth to the cops, helping to back up Kate's fibs. Unfortunately, she opened her mouth a little too wide and suspicions was cast not only on Daniel, but on Lucas as well. As Kate paced around, urging Chloe to die under her breath, Victor arrived. He was happy to hear that the divas was in demise but his tune changed when he figured out that Kate was hanging his godson out to dry for it. He took a break from threatening Kate when Lucas bumbled back into town. They broke the news to him one piece at a time. He didn't take it well. But audiences finally got the opportunity to see him and Daniel in fight, in a jail cell no less. Surprisingly, they kept their shirts on for it. The doctor didn't mince any words and told him everything that a cuckold wants to hear - like that his wife only stayed with him to keep God happy and then his mother tried to kill her.

Then there was big news off camera. Louise Sorel and Michael Sabatino will be returning this fall to make up the Alamain contingent. This could be good, but I'm always skeptical about bringing back old characters. Not only does it tend to be ratings poison, they often seem out of place when they've been absent and unmentioned for more than a decade. I like the characters, but this really isn't the same show anymore. There was some other casting news as well. Salem is getting a new Arianna. Lindsay Hartley, best known as teary eyed Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald Crane Winthrop, will be taking over the role. I have mixed feelings about it. As much as I loved "Passions," and I did, this seems like a little much. I've been impressed by how successfully Eric Martsolf has managed to carve out a character who is nothing like Ethan, so I can only hope that they don't try and return to the Ethan-Theresa dynamic. Thankfully, so far, Ari doesn't seem remotely like Theresa, but will it last?

Anyway, now the spoilers. Look away if you don't want to know. EJ's grieving process takes an unusual turn when he shows up in the graveyard to replace Grace's gravestone with one bearing the DiMera name. His paranoia continues to simmer when it comes to Nicole. As her own paranoia continues to bubble away, Stefano tries to sabotage Rafe some more by digging deep into the mystery of his 'murderous' wedding day. These aren't the only people grieving in Salem. Philip gets a shock when one of his guards is killed and then begins to grieve for him. Lucas is grieving for his dying marriage but Daniel seems more confident than ever that when Chloe wakes up, she'll be going home with him. He better hope that she doesn't pick up a case of amnesia, Salem's answer to the common cold. Also optimistic – Lexi and Abe get some good news about Theo. But the disappointment of the week will come for Will who finally learns that mousy Mia isn't a virgin after all.

Lines of the week:

Stefano: (to Nicole) Your optimism is firing on all cylinders. You're a joy to be around.

Sami: (to Ari) Rafe and I broke up... or something. We're not together any more.

Victor: (to Kate) Isn't it ironic for you to be outraged about infidelity?

Victor: (to Kate) Your concern is touching... and a little bit scary.

July 17, 2009
Chloe wandered around town feeling doomed. That's pretty much how Daniel felt as well. That's how we know they really love each other. He tried to jog his longing away but only ended up with cramps. They pushed their way through the torture which was shooting the pilot episode of 'Heart and Home'. After it crashed, they were determined never to see each other again. Kate continued her diabolical plan and snuck around town planting evidence in Daniel's apartment and buying off various goons to do her bidding. If you're going to be paying people to do illegal stuff, why she is resorting to all the breaking and entering herself is beyond me. I guess she has to get her kicks somewhere and she was certainly giddy as the week progressed. As Kate licked her lips thinking of Chloe kicking the bucket, the diva swooned and collapsed, only to be rushed to the hospital. As she veered in and out of consciousness (it is an unusually thin line for her) she fantasized about Daniel while the doctor prepared to leave town. Running off is working right into Kate's scheme.

Rafe and Sami moved in together. She's still determined to get to the bottom of what was up with Emily, the dead woman who is haunting his life. He wants to keep his past in the past. Considering how much baggage Sami carries, I don't know how they would have room for any of his. They barely have room for any of his belongings either. He moved his box of odds and ends in, though his taste in décor filled her with dread. Most of his belongings seems to be mementos of Emily and broken kitchen equipment. As he settled in, he burned them or hid them in the couch. But it wasn't all about trying to disappear into Sami's sense of interior design. He also tries to mend fences between her and Will, which went a long way.

Nicole re-convinced EJ to drop the custody suit. He was jumpy but agreed, though finding out that Rafe was moving in with Sami and onto his paternal turf made him seriously angry. After catching Nicole and Sami together in the park, he sent his wife home so he could berate Sami, though he did agree to back off and let her see Johnny. Nicole spent most of the week worrying about what was next. Elvis could go back on his promises at any minute and Rafe is still digging around. Stefano assured her that Mr. Hernandez wouldn't be a problem for much longer. He's got the dirt on former FBI agent and he's confident that it will cause some serious trouble for Sami and maybe someone else...

Melanie continued trying to play matchmaker. Brady and Ari went bust quickly. After finding out that he was a recovering addict, she told him that they didn't have a chance. The barrista claims that her ex was an addict and she couldn't go through that again. Brady moped around town, bumping into Salem's other miserable single people here and there. Melanie continued trying and failing to distribute joy in the lives of the people who are sort of her friends. She used an old scheme to trap Philip and Steph in the cabin to sort out their problems. It didn't work, although it did give the show its perfunctory shirtless Philip sequence. She left again in tears and soon wound up crying on the shoulder of a scantily clad Nathan. Brady returned to the mansion and took a swim. As he wandered around glistening and shirtless, he got a lot of unwelcome advice from Victor about women. Meanwhile, Ari made a mysterious phone call.

A stranger showed up with candy at Ciara's birthday. He waited until she was alone to offer it to her. He claimed that he had all sorts of other colors too. Then he vanished. Unbeknown to Bo, his daughter has a new Tommy Bear that she's been hiding from him. Her new 'friend' could also prove to be a problem. He's been snooping around town for information on Hope for weeks. And now, on to the spoilers. If you do not wish to know, look away now and enjoy your weekend. Before Doctor Dan can leave town, a woozy Chloe makes a confession to him. Will it be enough to keep him around? He might not have much choice since Bo and Hope are taking him as prime suspect when it comes to Chloe's poisoning. While Chloe dreams of Daniel and his life turns into a nightmare, EJ dreams of Sami and they aren't the kinds of dreams a married man should be having. Nicole is wide awake and more paranoid than ever. She dashes around town doing her best to keep everything under check. Since Mia also seems on the verge of a breakdown, Nicole tells Chad to back off on her. He's not the only person who should back off either. Sami continues to dig into Rafe's past and probes Meredith all about it. While she's headed for more chaos in the romance department, quite a few other Salemites are already there. Stephanie and Mel seem to be ending their brief truce and begin fighting over Philip.

Lines of the week:

Nicole: (hugging Sami) People seeing that would think it was a sign of the apocalypse.

Victor: Any woman with half a brain would want to get her claws into you.

Melanie: Maybe the Pope is Catholic... oh, he is.

Rafe: Thinking isn't my strong suit.

Bo: Yeah. Maybe you and I can head over there later and see if we can have a little action in the bouncy house.

July 3, 2009
It was a short week so I'll keep things short. There was more weeping in Salem, though it felt a bit different than it did before. A weight is gone and the temperature in town seems to have changed. The Chloe and Daniel affair has quickly turned into Daytime's version of "Sleeping Beauty." Kate was licking her lips and arching her eyebrows all week as she doped up Chloe's basket of Granny Smiths. After a few false starts, the diva ended up taking a bite. It tasted bad so she almost threw it away. Luckily, Kate was around to convince her it was supposed to taste that way. Chloe soon dropped to the ground. I keep expecting them to cut away from this plot and reveal that it was just Caroline reading a book to Allie. The big question is – does this mean Kate can turn into a dragon at the end, or, at least, a vicious cougar?

I always thought part of what made Sami so crazy was that she had to put up with Kate for all those years. Now I think it might have been the other way around. Sami caught Rafe in the graveyard and began grilling him about who Emily was. He wasn't forthcoming and got defensive in a way we've rarely seen. He may be sweet on top but there's a brooding violence underneath. If he's got dark secrets, he better have them well hidden because Sami wasn't relenting in her snooping. This led to them fighting and her admitting that going back on her promises and sticking her nose where it doesn't belong is about the sum total of her personality. All of her self-diagnosing turned him on so he promised more fights in the future and then they had some makeup sex, after which, she started looking through his wallet.

EJ liked seeing Nicole bonding with Johnny. He told her that he wasn't asking her to replace Sami, which is odd because that's basically what she's been doing. In addition to making women pregnant nearly every time he takes off his shirt, EJ also has the power to turn them into prodigious whiners. She's become so empathetic to Sami that she's been smuggling little Johnny out of the mansion to visit her. Next thing you know, she'll be smuggling Sami food as well since she realized this week that she can't afford any. I just hope she also smuggled over some prophylactics because Sami really doesn't need any more mouths to feed. Nicole is coming apart at the seams and suffering a real identity crisis. Stefano isn't helping much, even if he is offering to take an interest in Rafe, which usually means sending incompetent hit men to try and kill him.

Nicole isn't the only miserable mob woman of course. Stephanie has also been coming apart at the seams. She went to see Father Matt for advice. He didn't give much. Instead, he sat there and she gave advice to herself, telling herself what she has already told herself many times before – that she loves Philip but shouldn't be with him. She, abruptly, dumped the dimpled mob heir. It was quick and may have been one of the least drawn out weepy scenes in recent memory, which leads one to wonder if this is really the end at all.

Not everyone was miserable of course. Melanie was as pouty as usual but she had a plan this week. She's decided to try and set up Brady and Arianna as a way of getting good karma. No doubt this is part of her long term goal of winning over Nathan, who was curiously absent this week. Anyway, now onto the spoilers. If you don't want to know, leave now and have a nice weekend. You can look forward to more of Melanie and her sexy summer antics as the youth section of libidinally challenged Salemites travel out to the Horton cabin for a little cleaning and other things. It won't all be romance though. Bo advises Nathan to stay far away from Melanie and Chad informs Will that he is Mia's boyfriend. Meanwhile, Chloe falls into Daniel's arms and is rushed to the hospital. While she's getting her stomach pumped, Sami is asking Rafe to move in with her. But will it work without the danger they had haunting them in the safe house. He still has plenty of secrets he's hiding from her which could cause problems. Across town, Nicole is keeping her secret alliance with Sami from EJ and starting to fall apart under the pressure of being a DiMera wife. All the while, Philip and his father are left arguing about how things went wrong with Stephanie.

Lines of the week:
Arianna: I appreciate what you're trying to do... aside from the creepy stalker thing.

Brady: Why do I feel like you're Tom Sawyer getting me to paint the fence?

Stephanie: With all your wealth, there is one thing you can't give me: Peace of mind.

June 19, 2009
After the grimness of the past few weeks, things got marginally lighter on the show. Thankfully, the show is still managing to keep a fair degree of continuity, even when that doesn't mean that every second scene is someone crying. The break in the tension was largely thanks to melodramatic Melanie. Max has decided to ditch town and go with Chelsea to London. His sister was not pleased and pouted around town before deciding to take him up on his offer to move in with he and Chelsea… and then came Nathan. Salem has yet another Horton in its orbit. It's been awhile since a new member of the clan popped his head in. The last few didn't fare so well either. Jeremy, while easy on the eyes, was hard on everything else and things barely went well for Nick. Will the vain and sarcastic medical intern turn out to be a weird hybrid of those two departed characters? He obviously has a brain, as well as a lot of attitude and a propensity for taking his shirt off. Time will tell. Anyway, he's moved in with the three Ms, Mel, Maggie and Mia, which could lead to all sorts of shenanigans...

...find the rest of Matt's Musings for this week on our blog!

June 5, 2009
It was kind of a curious week. After lots of consistency, and consistent build up, there was a small explosion and then things seemed to turn back to where they were before this entire Kiriakis-DiMera war began. Philip was zipped into a body bag and smuggled into the morgue with Melanie's help. He managed to kick his way out of the body drawer with his special shock-absorbing legs and struggle with Owen before beating him to a pulp. The kidnapping story abruptly (although I may kick myself for saying that) came to a close, but what was gained in all of this? We were teased with the various possibilities of a new character. The loopy, and buff, gardener Owen certainly had some possibilities, added to by his clearly difficult and angst filled relationship with his father. They were a couple of characters who could have fit well into the canvas of eccentric and incompetent creeps in Salem and added a lot of macabre and darkly humorous details to the show. Unfortunately, and bafflingly, it looks like they're gone.

As the kidnapping faded away, the baby switching returned to prominence. I don't know, maybe all of this body switching, body bartering, half dead bodies and living bodies in the drawers for the dead has some symbolic significance I'm not aware of. Then again, Dena Higley is not James E. Reilly. The knot this story is tied in may soon unravel though. Baby Grace wound up in the hospital this week and Daniel was desperate to get some information on her biological parents so he can treat her bacterial meningitis. Sami decided it's finally time to come clean. Unfortunately, the truth as she understands it, isn't exactly true. Nicole stood on the sidelines to fret. She watched the sight of EJ comforting Sami with hardly a word and then went down to the chapel to pray for God's help. She isn't Chloe so God didn't offer her anything; instead, she got Stefano. He confronted her about the entire scam. He knows everything, but he doesn't want to lose the baby any more than she does so he wants to keep her secret. Strangely enough, she and Mia teamed up to let the cat out of the bag together. They went to see nurse Maxine and informed her that Mia is the mother of the seriously ill child.

We were treated to a few fantasy sequences from Chloe and Daniel. He had his shirt off a lot and tried to suppress his desires for her. No more writhing around in his underwear like last week, this time he was in the shower. Meanwhile, she fantasized about telling Lucas the truth. The first time around, he didn't care. The second time, he did. Chloe seems to be having some serious issues with reality these days, although I guess she always has. Kate popped up to tell her that all is forgiven and the diva swallowed it without thinking. Of course, Kate really is not the forgiving sort. Chloe isn't the only one having a hard time with reality either. Stephanie seems to be turning more delusional by the day. Considering the stuff she's been through, that makes perfect sense. Only a few weeks ago she was dumping Philip because she thought his lifestyle was too dangerous, not she's marrying him and assuring Roman that he'll keep her safe and she was wants the dark life. There is something really missing there. I also consistently have the nagging suspicion that something is seriously askew with Rafe. He enthusiastically filled out reams of paperwork this week to get the adoption underway. After much Sami sex, he bumped into his sister and she warned him that "it" is happening again.

Another interesting development for the week was that we were treated to a glance into Brady's past. Trapped in the mausoleum, he was surrounded by the ghosts of his family and showed a bit of pathos. The way he kept staring at his mother's grave hinted that something from his past could be coming back. How? I have no idea. Meanwhile, Melanie provided the comic relief while he tried to act like MacGyver. He even borrowed her bra wire to try and rig up some cell phone reception. Bo and Hope tracked them down by screaming and then opened the massive vault door with a credit card. In other Melanie news, it looks like she is about to get a new house mate at big Red's. Following her cousin moving away, Mia has been left homeless. In spite of harangues from his father about getting involved with a former addict, Will decided to ignore that former addicts advice and move Mia into the home of another former addict, Maggie. Now the three Ms can spend their time re-enacting scenes from "The Facts of Life" Salem style.

Anyway, now on to the spoilers. Look away if you don't want to know. It's time to break out the 'bon voyage' banners for Max and Chelsea. She'll be returning to say goodbye. She's decided to make a life for herself in England. Since Uncle Max has realized that he doesn't have much of a life in Salem, it looks like he will be departing as well. Luckily for him, there are Irish pubs almost everywhere in the world. Meanwhile, former Euro-trash and now reformed good guy, Brady, gets invited back into the bosom of the Kiriakis family. Will he be running into Victor's open arms, or is he having another of his moral dilemmas? His ex-wife is having a dilemma of her own. She still doesn't know what to tell Lucas, but it looks like he actually has a secret to tell her. At least she'll be telling herself the truth – that she still loves Daniel. Not to be outdone, Sami comes out and tells EJ the truth about the baby, no doubt complicating things for both Stefano and Nicole.

Lines of the week:
Stephanie: This is nice without you getting shot.
Philip: That always helps improve my day too.

Sami: What? You don't want her to have teeth?

Nicole: That makes me all warm and runny inside.

May 22, 2009
This week picked up where the last left off. The momentum has been good, which is odd since so little actually happened. For the most part: Stephanie was captive and repeatedly went nowhere and the Kiriakis and DiMeras kept wondering what would happen next. The real action of the week, aside from Owen and Stephanie knocking each other around like a pair of cross-dressers on absinthe, was Sami and Rafe's bedroom romp, complete with candles. They didn't have any Kenny G. records, so they just amped up the baby monitor. With few distractions, everything has focused on the kidnapping and on the Sami-Rafe (or Rafi, as I like to call them) romance. It's an interesting juxtaposition. The kidnapping played out like a nightmare, the romance like a fantasy, allowing for an odd emotional balance.

Philip and EJ continue set themselves up as rivals, ironic since little over a month ago Tony was configuring himself as a sort of double to both of them. It's almost as if his death spawned their change in personalities. Both crime family heirs are now haunted by the heir who never really came to power. Each man has entered into a duel of styles with their father while they attempt to find themselves. Strangely, Philip's hot temper and penchant for outbursts seems reminiscent of Stefano's ruling style while EJ's cold and calculated viciousness is far closer to Victor's. But, aside from the psychodynamic which they have going on, Philip and EJ have both been delicious. It's also interesting to look at how the full blown mob story has actually played out in comparison to the fantasy one which preceded it a few months ago. For those who don't recall, Nicole had an elaborate black and white film noise fantasy that spanned several episodes. It seemed utterly superfluous at the time but in retrospect it's actually more interesting. The 'real' thing is remarkably different from the smooth-talking, snappily dressed imaginary one. Instead of everyone being conniving, everyone is distraught and off their game. Everything is being bungled all the time. Most of those involved seem to have no idea what they are doing. Even Victor seemed to come to the realization this week that the whole thing is less a game than a chaotic series of events with little real logic, fueled by the ghosts of the past and minimal capacity to see what's right in front of them (such as Owen).

Owen has proven to be another intriguing addition to the odd characters that the show sporadically invents. There are a few distinct types of criminals on the show – those who have large, often quite crazy plans, like Stefano, and those who just seem to bumble around behind the scenes, occasionally spilling into sight and embarrassing their masters. The former see themselves as grand tragic figures, the latter simply as people, though they often come off as clowns. The late DiMera henchman Bart would be an ideal example, though there are plenty of others. Owen falls into the same mold. He's an odd character, and not just because he's been forced into a situation which is completely abnormal for him; he'd still be odd if he was just a gardener. Whether he's simply extraordinarily naïve or has some kind of mental illness, it's far from clear. What is really interesting about the kidnapping story, to me anyway, isn't so much how Stephanie will react through the ordeal, since that likely won't hold many surprises, but what this will mean for Owen's character and how this will turn out. After all, he seems like a completely doomed person at this point. Neither family will want him alive after this, and it's doubtful any of the other townspeople would want him around either, so what will happen?

Another intriguing development this week was Arianna and Brady's flirtation. Was it forced? Kind of, but it was cute and they both pulled out interesting angles of each other's personalities. She's new and still an enigma, but he has a history and remains somewhat enigmatic. Like a lot of people, I'm dying for Brady to really get a plot of his own. He also flirted a little with Melanie, who wandered around the periphery of things, bickering with one of Philip's bodyguards and thinking about selling Stephanie's giant gold earring. It looks like next week might end up being rather different than this one. Spoilers to follow... please avert your gaze if you don't want to know. Stephanie continues to channel her old feistiness and fights back between pouts and bouts of unconsciousness. Although she uses all of her womanly charms to try and distract the easily distracted Owen, she still winds up winded and finds it impossible to breathe. Meanwhile, Daniel and Chloe have been taking a breather from their mutual obsession but it looks like they could finally be coming back for more. They'll be panting, if not pantsless, again next week. The diva will even admit that she's not exactly happy living cooped up in the cabin with Lucas. Kate gets a glimpse of them together again. Will she keep her mouth shut this time? She might not have to since Lucas memories of the night he discovered the affair, before being blown up and saved by God, are starting to percolate back into his brain. Across town, Nicole stops worrying about EJ and goes back to worrying about herself when she discovers that Mia and Will are now getting a little too close for her comfort.

Lines of the Week:
Victor: I'm still in charge of this family. My men won't let you near Stefano.
Philip: I have my own men. I'll get my men to go up against your men.

Philip: Thinking like that gets people killed.

Sami: Did you just say smokin' hot pain in the ass?
Rafe: Yeah, but I meant it as a compliment. I cherish every inch of you.

Brady: Thanks for the grievous bodily harm.

Stefano: The man you work for is an amoral swine. You could do better.
Nurse: Not in this job market.

Melanie: It's Stephanie's. Who else wears earrings the size of a tennis racket?

Arianna: (to Brady) I don't give a damn about your money or your looks. I don't care if you have something huge packed away in your pants.

May 8, 2009
It was a week of romance, goodbyes and mob violence in Salem.

Sami and Rafe bumped into Nicole at the Java Cafe. Insults ensued. Then the couple went to the fair with the kids. Turning up the romantic gestures, he asked her out to the forbidden woods on the bad side of town to have a nighttime picnic by the polluted river. Shocked by the newfound knowledge that fish splash when they are in the water, Sami slipped and fell. Rafe fished her out and then managed to use one of the standard soap opera sex techniques – getting naked to avoid freezing. Philip did this with Chloe after the jet crash. As Luis, Galen Gering did it on "Passions" at least once to save Sheridan and she tried to do it right back to him. Anyway, their naked picnic party was interrupted by a roving cop. Since he liked the look of them, he gave them a break. They went back to her place to fret over Grace and they made out some more, then played Scrabble and made out again.

Chelsea has left town. Max could hardly say goodbye. Bo and his daughter shared a nice hug. Hope and Chelsea said their tear laced farewells. She even said goodbye to Theo. Chelsea didn't say much of a goodbye to her grandmother though. Of course, Kate was a little busy this week. She finally confronted Daniel about his affair with Chloe. After months, and after deciding that she wouldn't bother with revenge, she decided it was time to stick the knife in just a little. The doctor was nonchalant and didn't show any signs of feeling guilty. Instead, he tried to make Kate feel guilty for turning on the woman who saved her life. Kate abruptly turned around and confronted Chloe, firing her right in front of Lucas. She fed him some excuses and he swallowed. Meanwhile, his son, Will, was being fed some lies as well. Will and Mia ran into one of her old friends, some "Gossip Girl" reject named Kenzie, who gabbed all about Mia's past, suggesting that she was a meth addicted bulimic. Will found this hard to believe but, not wanting to tell him the truth, Mia went along with the lie. Pouting followed.

Philip had his shirt back on this week while Steph mollycoddled him. His father slipped in sporadically to say that their plan were going ahead. Steph would bicker with Victor, then with Philip. This was interrupted by another assassin. This time a woman dressed as a nurse attempted to kill Philip with a pillow. That flunked and she was arrested, but Hope remained clueless. Brady dropped by to lecture his family on the perils of violence. Philip and Stephanie then went home and bickered some more. He managed to pacify her by asking her to move in and then dropping to his good knee. "Stephanie Johnson. You are beautiful, witty, wise..." he said before popping the question. She agreed, but with that kind of spin, what else was she going to say? While Stephanie starts down the road to becoming Salem's next mob wife, maybe she should stop and ask Nicole how it's going for her.

Nicole worried about the fact that EJ and Stefano are investigating Dr. Baker. All that they found was that he was a gambler but Elvis assumed he was working for the Kiriakis clan. Nicole tried convincing him to drop it. He coldly told her he would and then didn't. While he went off to deal with Victor, discovering that old man Kiriakis had abducted Stefano, she panicked all week and ran around like a chicken with her head cut off. Baker refuses to take her worries seriously. She offered to take him upstairs and pay him off. As they argued about cash, he fell down the stairs. She ended up giving the good doctor mouth to mouth and saving his life, but the doctor's doctor wondered if the doctor might now have memory problems. Maybe... but when she went to see him at the hospital, he accused her of trying to kill him.

The show has continued to be strong and has been embracing its more volcanic side lately. As things have become more focused over the past few months, one is left wondering why they were so messy in the past. Could it have been that they had to cut so many veteran characters, not just for budgetary reasons, but just to get a little focus back into things? It certainly feels that way. They've also abandoned, or at least crystallized the reformation of, a few other things. Ejami are no more. Even if the two characters admitted, more openly than ever, what their feelings may have been for each other, there's clearly nothing much there. Instead, there are three couples. Rafe and Sami, EJ and Nicole and EJ and Stefano. EJ and Stefano, I would argue, were always the real couple behind Ejami and Sami was just the confusing surrogate for his love for his father. But now that his father knows how much he loves him, the love is coming out in a different way. Before it was through sexual blackmail, organ stealing and a baby, now it's a gang war. James Scott continues to prove that he's actually remarkably good at being cold, brutal and vicious. He's managed to be genuinely disturbing to watch, displaying a naked psychopathic streak which couldn't be more foreign to Stefano's operatic swagger.

A question many may have been asking by the end of the week was: Who designs the stairs in Salem? I guess this is what happens when everything is done by mob contract. I'm not sure what it means when carpenters end up accidentally killing people with more efficiency than professional killers. Tony and Ford Decker died falling down the stairs, Theo got close – now they just need to start making people slip in the shower. That could be Sami and Rafe's next date.

And now... the spoilers. Stephanie and Philip won't be enjoying their new engagement for very long. Not long after he's popped the question, Melanie hears about it and starts to pout. Perhaps more worrying, the gardener drugs and kidnaps the bride-to-be and carries her off. This could give EJ the bargaining chip he needs. Although Junior's been calling in favors and trying to get his own team of talented goons together (it's not easy with the recession and all of the out-sourcing), he's still arse over face when it comes to negotiating with Victor, who is now demanding that he sign over everything. Meanwhile, Bo has another vision. Since Chelsea is gone, his unconscious must be refocusing on his frequently forgotten other spawn, Ciara. And adding to the complications in Salem, Rafe's sister, Arianna, starts to get in the way of him and Sami because she thinks that little blondie is trouble.

Lines of the Week:

Stephanie: I've been a potential casualty ever since I fell in love with you.

Philip: It's hard to reason from underneath a pillow.

Kenzie: It's not gossip. I'm 95 percent sure.
Will: You're 95 percent bitch.

Nicole: They will find out and they will hand you a shovel so you can dig your own grave.

April 24, 2009
It was a steady, active week so my thoughts are kind of all over the place. Please bear with me -- I haven't had enough coffee yet. This week gave everyone plenty of excitement... or at least it had its male leads take off their shirts even more than usual. After months of speculation, Eric Martsolf (Brady Black), famous for his near perpetual semi-nudity on "Passions," actually took off his shirt. It wasn't purely gratuitous either, which is, arguably, a good thing. Melanie found him at Salem's favorite meeting place, the pier. Tony's blood had barely dried on its crusty fish gut covered surface when the DiMeras decided to shed a little Kiriakis blood in revenge. Since Brady is on Elvis' bad side, a thug was sent out to pound on him after he nearly interrupted EJ and Nicole's wedding. Melanie used her recently acquired capacity for compassion to help him over to the hospital where she disinfected his muscular torso and tried to be charming, perhaps to make up for that rather abrupt kiss she disturbed him with the other day. He was remarkably calm and Zen about the whole thing and remained so as the week unfurled.

Philip had his shirt off pretty much all week. There's been a lot of suggestions that he's magically gotten back the body parts he left in Iraq. He's certainly moving a lot more nimbly. But his new body parts and his bare chest only gave the DiMera's hit man an easier target. He and Stephanie finally made love this week... several times for good measure, but this left him vulnerable in more ways than one. After professional killer, Signor Masi, the man with a face made for mug shots, earned his money and put a new hole in "billionaire playboy Philip Kiriakis," he was ready to give the world a freebie and put a bullet in Steph too. The maintenance guys walked in while she was screaming and Masi ran off. Philip was rushed to the hospital. His family arrived to pace, pray and worry. Of course, Daniel was the only surgeon in Salem with the wherewithal to save his life, leading to many awkward moments between him and the family he can't keep his medical instruments out of. Kate was against it and then changed her tune. She seems to have suddenly found religion, or something close to it. She isn't talking to God the way that Chloe was, but she is promising not to seek vengeance anymore... not against the doctor and the diva anyway. Considering the wallop she gave Stefano, he could be on her list now. Meanwhile, Victor was his old self. Watching him spit out insults and threats is always fun. He also had the chance to be warm with his son after Philip recovered from a close call with death.

Rafe escaped his usual duty of gratuitously revealing his chest this week. Instead, he hummed and hawed and hung out at the Salem airport until Sami came to collect him. She spent the first half of the week humming and hawing at at the wedding. She sped over but her car broke down. She asked Max to fix it and he noticed her baby was sick. She said she would take her to the hospital instead of breaking up the wedding but then took her to break up the wedding with her. It didn't work. Although she disrupted it, after hearing about Philip's dangerous misadventure with room service, she decided that staying away from the DiMeras was a good idea. She and Junior talked about how they used to love each other (which really isn't as straightforward as they left it last time they had that conversation) and then she flounced off. Mia also showed up to almost ruin the wedding. Dr. Baker stopped her but his explanations weren't quite enough. She had to see her baby one last time. Nicole let her but mother and baby didn't click. Dr. Baker popped up again and offered to explain why the maternal bond had vanished.

It wasn't all about men's chiseled abs though, with or without wounds. Poor EJ. He barely even had a bachelor party. It was just him and his father having liqueurs and planning to kill people. I guess if you're marrying a former porn star that makes a perverse kind of sense though. Nicole and EJ had the briefest and most perfunctory wedding nights in memory. That was only after having a wedding ceremony that spanned several episodes. The Oxford educated mafioso wrote his own vows, telling Nicole that he couldn't resist her in her orange jumpsuit and then they went through many sacraments and blessings. I guess they needed extra protection.

Anyway, here comes a peak into next week... The Salem PD decides to do things right and by the book when they're investigating Philip's shooting, but since they've had so many cutbacks, they just send Hope to take care of things instead. Will she notice that Stefano isn't his usual bright and clear eyed self? Is that because he thinks he's being poisoned, or is it because he has diabetes? That's what Lexi will be unraveling for her increasingly addle-brained papa. While he continues trying to wipe out his enemies, Sami continues trying to hide the truth about her baby, or, at least, what she thinks is the truth. Unfortunately for her, it looks like someone else may be hiding something as well. It isn't EJ or Nicole either, it's Rafe. Sami catches him telling another woman that he loves her. Meanwhile, Brady is insisting to Chloe that he doesn't love Nicole but she should probably be more worried that Kate is confronting Daniel about the affair. Maybe she doesn't want any trouble though? After all, her family already has plenty. Just to add to it, Billie is in a serious accident in London and Chelsea leaves to see her.

Lines of the Week:
Stefano: Shot but not dead. That is the problem.

Nicole: You mean I can't go anywhere without a creepy thug?

Mia: I babysat this other baby. I felt more connected to her than my own baby.

Nicole: If Phillip is dead, I guess there won't be a party. I wonder what your daddy is doing that is more important than out wedding.

EJ: We don't want it to look like we're dancing on Phillip's grave.

Victor: What happened to you? You look like you got put through a meat grinder. Did a DiMera thug do this? Face the facts. Get some spine or leave me alone. Today the DiMeras tried to kill my son and beat up my grandson!

Melanie: What if you're not handsome anymore like Mickey Rourke or something?

April 10, 2009
Tony is dead and the aftermath lingers. Philip was so sad about it even his hair seemed to pout. His father kicked him to the curb. He was so lost that he let Stephanie lead him home to her new apartment. They made out. She took off his shirt. They tried making out on different pieces of furniture. He perked up a little, in spite of the frightening blouse she was wearing. It's hard to run away when you only have one leg. Victor interrupted and apologized. Both men know they're jerks most of the time. Philip decided to go back to the family. Steph threw a fit and broke up with Philly. He didn't blink and even pointed out how often she dumps him. After he went home, she ran after him and told him that she still wants him. He seemed distracted. She went out, thanked God and then went home and told Chelsea and

Max all about her day. Max acted jealous. Chelsea is not amused to see that he still cares about his niece/former flame. It's not clear what Chelsea sees in him either. They spent the week making out and arguing about how to assemble cheap furniture, at least, when they weren't giving EJ advice about grieving.

EJ was miserable all week. Surprisingly, he didn't pout. Instead, he growled and groaned and grimaced. Sometimes he yelled, but when he wasn't doing that, he was vowing revenge. His father wept and vowed revenge. In either accent, it rings the same way. It's been really delightful to see Elvis return to form. He's not the pushover he was for Nicole and he's not the noxious Hugh Grant reject who was with Sami. Now he's just nasty, mean, irrational and cold. He's smart enough to realize the absurdity of his situation and the futility of this spiraling war with the Kiriakis family and everyone else, but he seems to be following in his father's footsteps. But isn't this because of his vulnerability, so often masked by his casual arrogance? There's doom in Elvis' eyes. Tony was one of the few people who actually understood him and Tony died trying to do what Elvis must have recently been tempted to do – betray his father and go out on his own. As with everything else, he's so repressed he could hardly admit that to himself, but he did admit that he was slightly happy with his brother's downfall, a slip that now seems to have sent him into a guilt ridden mode of grieving.

Nicole's marriage plans are a train wreck. Elvis doesn't seem to care if the marriage goes ahead or not. When he's not giving her the cold shoulder, she's crying on Brady's. Even he is starting to feel the strain of trying to be her conscience. Her life only gets worse. Dr. Baker's job offer out of town fell through so he's returned to Salem, America's refuge for unethical physicians. And, of course, Mia has been bumbling around town, befriending Will and, unwittingly, becoming the babysitter-in-waiting to her own baby.

Sami showed up at the mansion to talk about what was good for her children. She didn't come clean with EJ but was tempted. After seeing the way that he's been treating Nicole, when she's actually done something honest, Sami finally pulled up her cleavage and walked away. She went to Caroline to talk about her problems. Caroline didn't exactly tell her anything she wanted to hear. Meanwhile, Rafe stood around, trying to scope out the situation, get information from the sarcastic lips of Will and hurl half-baked ultimatums at Sami. They're getting closer, but how well can things work when you get most of your relationship advice from nuns? Rafe is obviously hiding some skeletons in his closet. Maybe the priest version of John Black had to perform an exorcism on him when he was a troubled teen.

One nice thing to see lately has been the increased use of ludicrous fantasy sequences. Kate's been dishing out gruesome scenarios for Chloe's death and Nicole's been having wedding nightmares. I know they are tacky, but that's part of what makes them fun. While most of the week was actually well-measured and consistent, there were a few things which were simply painful. Maggie playing matchmaker for Daniel comes to mind. I actually felt bad for the guy. He already has to watch Lucas and Chloe make goo-goo eyes all the time. I'm not in love with her and the spectacle is still gag inducing for me. Now that Melanie is working at the hospital and checking him out, he could be in for even more trouble. But the most painful thing of the week was the blouse that Stephanie wore. I literally had to keep looking away from the screen. What was the purpose of this inordinate level of torture?

Now on to the spoilers... We'll find out if Mia is as naïve and innocent as she seems to be as her old friends start crawling out of the woodwork. Max's intelligence starts to reappear and he is using it to apply for med school. She's already had one doomed relationship with a medical man so how will Chelsea feel about that? She might have more to worry about when the pub gets a sexy new waitress. Meanwhile, after spending a day with shirtless Philip this week, Stephanie finally gets to find out what's going on downstairs. While their two bodies get better acquainted, Hope and Roman's do likewise, but all may not be as it seems. Bo's vision of them in a motel room may be coming true, but it turns out that they are there on a stakeout. Across town, Brady is staking out the wedding and trying to stop Nicole from lurching further into disaster. Just to make things worse, Mia starts asking for her kid back.

Lines of the week:
Brady: No more self flagellation. Just tell me what happened.

Kate: Daniel gets around... Think of him as the gift that keeps on giving. I am not a stranger to his bedside manner.

Lucas: We were thinking...
Kate: That was your first mistake.

Maggie: Do not confuse the Hippocratic oath with celibacy vows.

Stephanie: Hey God, sorry I haven't been here in a while.

March 27, 2009
In spite of the dreary fact that Thaao Penghlis (Tony DiMera) is departing from the show, "Days" has felt stronger in the past few weeks than it has in a long time. Though the week was not exactly action packed, the actions it did contain were filled with an unusual sense of determination. It wasn't that the week flowed all that differently: It was still a series of delayed and repeated actions. Kate flew back from Vegas with Lucas and Chloe. She repeatedly fantasized about killing her new daughter-in-law. At least watching her kill Chloe was less torturous than watching Chloe tongue wrestle with Lucas. Kate showed up at the hospital to rub the elopement in Daniel's face and scope the place out for dangerous drugs. A nurse with a big mouth told her everything she needs to know. This will no doubt be complicated by the fact that Chloe suddenly noticed she's pregnant.

Chelsea decided to move out of Bo's since he feels awkward that she is sleeping with his brother. She's going to move in with Stephanie, which is also awkward since she used to sleep with Uncle Max as well. And if all of this familial awkwardness weren't enough, Bo also came to the realization that it is his other brother, Roman, who has been haunting his visions of Hope's infidelity. Despite Hope's many protests that she would never, ever, ever be unfaithful, he still can't shake the certainty that this vision is about to come true. It horrifies him so much that he's practically begun hibernating. Hope can't even get him to open up with promises of a hot date. Now we only need to find out how the dirty deed will come about. It's an intriguing twist on things to show the conclusion and then walk through the events that lead up to it. It's just unfortunate that Bo's mental processes are mostly illustrated through the rate of his facial hair growth rather than more intricate character development.

Another character who could use some more development also had a busy week. Brady was being pulled between the Kiriakis family and Nicole just as much as usual. I guess that's enough to keep anyone in shape. His motives don't shift much. He wants to be good. But he's in Salem so it's not that easy and even he knows it's pretty boring. Despite that, he's actually come to be an important character and his presence on the show has made a positive, if subtle, difference. He's always drifting around, pulled into everyone's problems and relationships but never really involved. Brady has become what the town rarely seemed to have: A conscience, albeit a flawed one. And, as a "Passions" fan, it's nice to see that Eric Martsolf can play someone who isn't a total dim wit. He can provide a casual likability to his scenes with Daniel and give Nicole's selfishness more of a context. It was also nice to see him interact with Galen Gering again this week, though it was brief.

Rafe is sticking around town for Sami's sake. She spent the first half of the week flying off at the DiMeras. After breaking the news that she was "adopting" another child, Elvis doubted how much she cared about her children if she's bringing more in. She slapped him for that and then flounced away, telling EJ that she never wanted to speak to him again unless it involved their son. We all know that won't last, but it was a nice thought. She pouted around town until she bumped into Rafe. Since she refuses to listen to his advice, he tried to give her the silent treatment. That didn't last. She ran after him. They kissed and kissed and then ran over to the convent to pick up the baby... Okay, I give in. As much as I can't stand Sami, I have to admit that she seemed genuinely cute and sweet in her scenes with Rafe, at least when she wasn't talking. Now she wants to know about his past. The only thing we've been told so far is that it's tragic. That's so vague I don't want to speculate.

The real highlight of the week, however, was watching Philip and Tony kick off at each other. They set the confrontation up rather crudely by having the two alienated heirs of Salem's big crime families discuss how similar they are. While that's certainly true, it's a complex relationship that could have benefited from being extended over time and illustrated with more events rather than simply Tony's sage quips. That said, it was still nice to watch the two actors working at what they do best: Intense verbal sparring and sarcasm. But it wasn't long until the physical aspect overcame that. Tony and Philip struggled at the pier and Tony wound up falling onto a stake below. I guess that makes sense since he's felt more like a character who wandered in off the set of "Dark Shadows" lately than he has like his old self. He hasn't taken his final breath yet. Nicole showed up at his hospital bed and he flashed her the evil eye. She had a crummy week all around. After her plan to steal the blueprints with Brady's help failed, she was stuck in a loop with Mia. One woman saying she was doomed, the other saying that she was sorry.

And now, onto the spoilers. Look away if you don't want to know. Tony clings to life for a little while, just long enough to scribble a note for his younger brother. Is he outing Nicole, or will this just be another piece in his revenge on his sibling? Whatever he ends up writing, that same week Elvis will agree to call off the wedding. Meanwhile, adding to the misery in Casa DiMera, Anna shows up to give Stefano a slap around. Across town, Kate plans to add to everyone's misery by asking Chloe to host a talk show. But while she pushes the self-conscious diva into the limelight with one hand and fills her other hand with poison, Bo has his hands full trying to keep Hope and Roman apart. Adding to chaos in the Brady family, Sami shows Grace around and Lucas begins asking some awkward questions.

Lines of the Week:

Lucas: I think things really worked out well with us eloping. I'm sorry my mom missed the ceremony, though.

Daniel: Yeah, she was looking forward to a big affair... uh, I mean event.

March 13, 2009
The week began with a sizable event before slowing to a crawl. Circuitously, EJ managed to have a worm implanted in Titan's computer system. It abruptly erased all of the data, much to Philip's chagrin. He instantly knew that EJ was behind it and decided it was high time that he killed him. Before that could happen, Philip vanished until Friday to make airtime for everything else... like Chelsea dumping Max. She found out he wanted children (at some point before he dies) so she decided their relationship was impossible. She was so desperate, she even went to Dr. Dan and begged him to operate on her so she could have some false hope. He doesn't perform operations that are quite that dangerous, so she moped back to Max to explain it was over. He didn't understand and it isn't over.

Meanwhile, Max's brother was having emotional issues of his own, and this week they weren't about his brother sleeping with his daughter. Once again they were about Hope and he is getting pretty jealous. Then again, she's been confiding in Dr. Sex and being friendly with Salem's newest tall dark and handsome man, Rafe. Could either of these men be the man he sees in his visions of his wife? Maybe, or perhaps it's someone much closer to home... He was uncomfortable enough that he told Roman to put the kibosh on hiring Rafe to work at the Salem PD. He and Roman both liked him because he doesn't know how to obey the law and they already have a 'secret fund' to pay him with, but Bo was still too worried.

Sami ran around town trying to get Rafe a job. He didn't appreciate it, but they had a lot of moments together talking about how important they are to each other. She only made up one 'Agent ___' nickname for him this week, which is something of a record. Now that she's out in the fresh air - relatively speaking, since she seems to spend her time hanging out at the pier, y'know, the place where bodies wash up - she's suddenly hatched an idea to try and adopt Grace with Rafe's help. She worried about not being around for Grace, but couldn't help admitting to Will that she isn't around for him even when he is standing right there. Will already assumes that Rafe's her new boy toy. Actually, he seemed to assume a lot of things and cover it over with sarcasm. He gets that from his father, but with Will it's more out of bitterness than self-loathing. The young Horton/Roberts even had a conversation with Chloe. She tried to confide in him so she could get him to speak sympathetically about her to Lucas. He pretended to be interested, and then told her that he was only pretending, and she could barely tell the difference. While Chloe prayed a lot less this week, she talked to herself a great deal more. I guess that's what happens when you've been living with Lucas (Sami seems to have the same affliction). Or maybe it just happens when you live in Salem, after all, Nicole does it all the time too.

Across town, Daniel started talking to God and looking for signs. He lit candles and everything. It didn't take long for him to become Salem's latest sage and he rolled around town drinking and doling out advice, encouraging Lucas to run off and elope with Chloe (God told him to say that). Meanwhile, Kate made a thankful return to form. She would have been licking her lips if she wasn't busy using them to manipulate Chloe and Daniel all week. She made a pass at the doctor and tried to turn him to do her dirty work. He walked away and she decided she'd have to do things all alone. She hunted after the fractious couple only to discover Will. He told her that they'd already flown off to Vegas, although the plane is actually on delay.

Nicole and EJ had a blissful Thursday. It went from lingerie and a suit to instant nudity. He didn't even notice that she hadn't popped out a kid recently. You'd think when his other romances were Sami and Kate, he'd have a clue about the difference. Fans of the couple were cheated out of the usual softcore footage; not even much of a gratuitously shirtless EJ, just his back. They cooed about their love until he passed out and Philip called to start threatening her again. He returned to exactly where he left off on Friday, but the momentum was sadly lost by that point. Nicole turned to Brady in a panic again. He spent most of the week comforting Melanie before turning on her, and revealing a little more of the intriguing personality he always seems to hide under a veneer of self-help rhetoric. Spoilers to follow. All those who wish to avoid them should know look away.

Next week, Brady will cast aside his nice guy routine and start to verge on dangerous. Sick of the string of threats and innuendo flowing out of Philip's mouth, he threatens to shut him up. Philip already has other fish to fry though. In addition to raging at EJ and Nicole, he now has Tony to take his tantrums out on. Tony stops lurking and comes out to fight. This is likely to lead to some deadly consequences. Not only will he be fighting with Philip, he'll also be holding his own against Nicole. He knows what she's been up to and isn't afraid to use it against her. Her problems could quickly double since Stefano will continue to dig into what the very unholy woman has been doing hanging out in convents. It doesn't help that she talks to herself in public either. Talking loudly and unwisely is a talent shared by many Salemites, though few do it quite as well as Sami. It could come back to bite her next week when EJ hears her talking about Grace. While that might infuriate him, Kate has already run out of town, thoroughly infuriated, in a bid to chase down Lucas and Chloe and stop the marriage. Daniel is left behind in Salem, but his wandering hands will quickly find their way to Hope. Is he just comforting her, or is this part of Bo's vision?

Lines of the week:
Philip: Say ta-ta to your Euro-trash lover boy, because I'm gonna tell him everything I know about your sleazy affair with Brady.

Chloe: You almost died.
Lucas: That's a reason to get insurance, not married.

Daniel: I really got to know part of Chloe when she was my patient.

February 27, 2009
At least the week started off well... After last week's string of strong shows, the first few episodes of this week were still fun. Why? Strangely enough, it was because everyone was angry, jealous and confused. Monday even gave us a literal explosion. So what was all the feuding and finagling about? The same things as usual. Lucas does and doesn't want Chloe. Chloe wants Lucas and Daniel. Nicole wants EJ but threatens to leave. Philip wants Steph and Mel and her project. Victor's a grouch. Sami and Nicole are compulsive liars. EJ now yells more often than he blinks. The show also, and I could be wrong about this, seemed to hit a new record for how many times they could squeeze the word 'bitch' into the dialogue this week.

We've been catching glimpses on EJ's darker side lately. This week, it exploded. Of course, underneath his 'cordiality', Elvis has always been a nasty nelly and he's so much more fun when he lets it show. Watching him battling with Melanie was a delight. They clearly come across as two people from radically different worlds and the contrast, and their convoluted dialogue, is always amusing. Of course, Philip isn't amused by it and still tried to use his powers of seduction to get her to renege on her flirtations with the DiMeras. This blew up in his face so he had to do something more desperate. He spotted Nicole with Brady together and proceeded to blackmail her with his non-knowledge of what it was about. He knows that making EJ paranoid is easy. EJ is so insecure that if a woman so much as kisses his cheek, he wants to marry her and knock her up. It's only out of a sense of class, apparently gleaned from Hugh Grant movies, that he doesn't bring a U-Haul with him on his second dates. Nicole, uncharacteristically, let herself be bullied by peg leg. After he hobbled off, she stuck her nose in Elvis' business and he proceeded to try and bite it off. Nicole haters must have been thrilled to see him laying into her in scenes which were virtually plagiarized from "The Godfather Part II." She threatened to take her baby away if he didn't end his war with the Kirkiakis family. He warned her that would never happen. She gave in. She accused him of still being in love with Sami and threatened to take her baby. He gave in and ripped up the project (which was a somewhat meaningless gesture since there are copies). Is he just changing tactics for variety or is there more to it? The battles between Sami, Nicole and EJ picked up more or less where they left off. Now, I'm not taking sides. All three of them are mentally unbalanced criminals and shouldn't be allowed around other adults, let alone children. There are differences of course. Sami and Nicole are accomplished liars while EJ is just underhanded, but they're all too insecure to be in a healthy relationship with anything.

But as the week wore on, things stopped blowing up. In fact, Thursday and Friday's episodes were all about not blowing up. The entire episode centered around repressing things. Sami lied and told Lucas her baby was stillborn. Nobody told Lucas why he was at Daniel's. Bo and Hope still don't know how to communicate. Even Ciara had to mediate for them. But there was one little blow up at the week's end. Bo actually argued back to Hope. A few days alone seemed to give him the power to stand up to Fancy Face's death ray eyes, but it didn't last. They might end up back together, but it's not looking pretty.

Meanwhile, Chloe has suddenly found religion. Well, not exactly. You can't really do that on network TV, so she's suddenly had a spiritual awakening, which is similar, but potentially far more annoying. After telling Papa Walton, er, I mean Father Matt, all about her sexual escapades, the priest had told her that Daniel was her soul mate. She prayed for a sign from the Almighty. When she went to the doctor's digs, a fire ball came out and hit Lucas. Assuming he was dead, she prayed for his recovery and he popped up with a highly specific form of amnesia that blocks out his knowledge of her affair. Daniel still wants her but she pushed him away because she has to be true to God. He gave her a scientific explanation for what happened, but she rejected his logic. While she may not have much use for logic in Salem, she should have been working harder to keep up appearances because Kate caught the doctor examining her tonsils with his tongue a few minutes later. Mama Bear tried to tell Lucas, but he was impervious. The explosion didn't knock any sense into him.

And now, onto the spoilers. Please look away if you don't want a hint of what's in store next week. Rafe comes to Salem and becomes protective of Samantha. Maybe a little too protective since Elvis is soon threatening to report him to his superiors at the Bureau. A desperate Sami attempts to enlist Nicole to keep EJ away. They aren't the only people who are having trouble with who to focus on in their love lives either. Bo has another vision, this time of Hope and another man, but it's so out of focus, he's not entirely sure what's happening. Meanwhile, Philip plants a kiss on Steph, Lucas and Chloe decide to get back together and Max and Chelsea leap into bed.

Lines of the week:

Victor: (romantic advice for Philip) That's hardly attractive for a man. Throw her out on her ass.

Lucas: (to Sami) The last time I saw you, you were pregnant. Obviously, you're not pregnant any more.

Nicole: (to Sami) You seem to have packed on the pounds. What? You thought a bigger target would make it easier for the killer?

EJ: The time for thinking is over.

EJ: You don't play games with me, not unless you wish to lose... I believe the expression is 'big-time'.

February 13, 2009
While it wasn't the most eventful week, it managed to be more amusing than not. Victor received some precious air time and used it for his usual charming string of nasty quips. Hope, still irate about shooting her sister-in-law, left Bo so she can go clear her head. Kayla, who was obviously pumped full of morphine, spent an episode teasing Daniel about his romantic life. He had his hands full. Chloe dumped Lucas, claiming that he is too good for her but not elaborating. He was, understandably, at a loss. His mother showed up to berate him, assuming this is all his fault. She has romantic problems of her own. Aside from lingering feels for Dr. Dan, she also has Stefano still sniffing around her. He even showed up at Chez Rouge dressed as one of The Hives and asked her out. Meanwhile, Brady gave his ex-wife a little comforting. Chloe pondered whether you have to be stupid to be happy. It doesn't seem to help in Salem...

...Read the rest of this week's Musings here!

January 30, 2009
It was baby week. Two popped out, almost simultaneously. Just to make sure that this wasn't lost on anyone in the audience, they used split screen for most of the action. I'm not objecting. I've always been fond of the technique and it was used appropriately. If it was JER making this, I would know they were making a joke, but this is Dena Higley, so I'm not so sure. The entire "24" style of the episode was added to by Rafe and the killer playing mind games and exchanging all sorts of pop psychobabble and caustic remarks. The baby broker Baker got Sami's kid out while a nun forced her to concentrate. Meanwhile, Nicole delivered Mia's baby. She had an easier time than Dr. Baker and merely whipped out some old sheets to lay by the bed, telling the young woman to think about 'rainbows and kittens'. She promptly placed the baby in a drawer, no doubt to make Mia more comfortable since she grew up in one too. After putting the newborn in a picnic basket, she hurried over to the clinic and discovered that Sami's baby was having trouble. After building up some momentum for the plot this way, they quickly threw it away and everyone involved spent the rest of the week arguing and screaming, or, if you're Nicole, saying that something is too long and difficult to explain and then spending a great deal of time explaining it. Nicole prayed for a miracle and got one. Apparently God was impressed by her idea to beat Sami to death with a statue of the Virgin Mary. After Dr. Baker finally managed to make Sami's baby cry, Nicole told him that they were going to swap the children. Nicole suddenly decided that Sami was a capable mother and could look after Mia's baby while she looked after EJ's.

It's been awhile since Melanie had much airplay but she was back this week and larger than life. She's positively giddy at the opportunity to make the Kiriakis and DiMera families go to war over her patent. Although she told her brother all about her plan, when Philip showed up to talk to her she ran away. He already knows what she's up to and he tipped Brady off about it. Brady, apparently, doesn't know much about what's going on; he's been too busy playing basketball with clients. Melanie ran into him and told him her sob story and he seemed quite sympathetic. Is she going to try and use her bedroom eyes on Philip, Brady and Elvis all at once?

Of course, her love life, or lack thereof, isn't nearly as curious as Dr. Daniel's. He and Chloe played break-up phone tag most of the week, dumping each other in voice messages before meeting in person to share some truly odd dialog. They can't stay away from each other and have been meeting up every couple of hours to talk about how they can never meet up again. He also had a few peculiar scenes with Kate, who seems to have no clue about what is going on inside of his head. He kept trying to avoid her questions by ordering pizza melodramatically. Victor cornered him outside of the pub as he watched Lucas and Chloe play with children. Daniel admitted to his Godfather that all of the women he seems to want are already taken. Perhaps that's the key to his psychology – he wants what he can't have, whether it's because of death, disease or marriage. That's an appalling romantic cliché, but maybe it's not even that deep. After all, there was a food fight following directly after his little revelation.

Bo told Patch all about his visions. Now he's having visions of Hope and Kayla getting hurt. Which leads us to the spoilers for next week. Please look away now if you do not wish to be spoiled. In the coming week, Bo will find his visions coming true again. Kayla is shot and chaos breaks out across Salem. Since Marlena is gone, Daniel is the only real doctor left at the hospital and his hands are already busy. No, just kidding. Rafe and the killer battle it out and Bo lends his trigger finger to the action. Nicole and EJ bring them Ejami baby home. This quickly gives her something to freak out about and she's as sure as Sami was that there is something wrong with the child. Meanwhile, Maggie can hardly keep her mouth shut about Chloe's unbuttoned exit from Daniel's love shack and Steph and Philip finally get it on.

Lines of the week:

Daniel: I meant what I said. It's over. We can't be together.
Chloe: That's why I'm here.

Chloe: When I listened to your message the first time, I understood. When I listened again I wanted to kill you.

Baker: So the nun is lying too?

Maggie: You know he can be a jerk and he knows you can be a bitch, but in time you will love each other more.

Nicole: Sami may be a despicable person, but she is a responsible mother.

Melanie: The more greedy hands, the more money in the pot.
Max: I think it was Karl Marx that said that.

Daniel: I belong in Salem, but sometimes I think all the right women are taken.

January 16, 2008
There's been some sort of vague change at "Days" over the past few weeks. It might have something to do with the pacing, which has picked up. It might have something to do with the lack of a daily dose of Sami... or Melanie, but things are moving differently. For the most part, this sounds like a good thing. It's like someone flipped a switch and noticed all of the plot holes and dead ends and is now hopping around to fix them. Or maybe that's hoping for too much. But it would explain why Stefano and Kate finally discussed his marriage proposal. For those who were baffled by their scene this week, the aging master criminal proposed to the aging mistress of seduction early last fall... before both of them nearly died. They didn't bring up her miracle revival, or his, and acted like he asked her last week. Maybe, given those conditions, that makes sense, but it didn't feel like it made sense. "Days" isn't "Passions" -- time actually passes in Salem. Anyway, she needs more time to think about it, whatever that means. If a day is a grain of sand in an hourglass, I guess half a year is about equal to the sand that Daniel gets in his wet suit when he surfs.

Kate's former flame, Dr. Daniel, has already started thinking about other things, or Chloe at any rate. He showed up at her engagement party. She was wearing green; he was jealous of Lucas. She tried to resist his talk of them being perfect together, but then the zippers fell and the door magically locked itself. Lucas still managed to interrupt, though he didn't see anything. Viewers had to wait until the next day for the drawn out sex scene. Maybe I'm superficial, but it was hot. It brought to mind what I remember soaps being about -- awkward and slightly disturbing romantic pairings and long softcore porn scenes. I've complained about this before, but, for whatever strange reason, this sort of thing is rare these days in Daytime. That could be the real reason the ratings are dropping. I'm not going to argue that Chloe and Daniel are a great couple. They're both shells of characters, but they have potential. Most of hers is in her past, most of his comes from the fact that we know nothing about him. Do people care about them? Probably not. But they look good and listening to him whispering romantic cliches while they tear off their clothes is a nice way to spend an afternoon. They even had a fire going to show everyone how hot it was. Did anyone see if the doctor had a bearskin rug? The other highlight of the week was Victor, who dispenses insults with the grace that can only come from years of experience at it.

Across town, Nicole continued trying to get her baby. Over and over, she told Mia her sob story. Over and over, Mia demanded to meet her fiancé. Finally, Nicole broke down and took her to the mansion. The young woman looked at the crib Stefano had flown over from Italy and said she used to sleep in a drawer. Tony, who has spent the last few weeks haunting the mansion, popped up to find out who she was. Nicole told him they met while she was trying to help girls in trouble. He ran off and told his little brother, who tried to imagine that Nicole is turning into a saint.

Nick finally had his hearing and has been sentenced to two to five years. Melanie spoke up for him to get him some leniency. He begged his friends not to let his project fall into the wrong hands. What does this mean? Could it mean that the Alternative Fuels Project could be exploited to make WMDs or something. Maybe that's why the DiMeras are so interested all of a sudden, after all, they used to be in that business. Meanwhile, Philip and Stephanie made kissy faces and kissed for most of the week, but Melanie ended up impressing him with her 'magnanimity' in the courtroom. So, for anyone who wants to see a triangle between Mel, Steph and Philip, there is still hope. I don't. I hope she drops Philip for now and he can run after her later when he gets bored with Stephanie the way everyone else does. For now, Melanie should set her eyes on EJ. He's bound to get frustrated with Nicole sooner or later and, whatever Mel's drawbacks, at least she isn't Sami.

The thing that's bothered me lately has been that so much seems rushed. I'm sure that some welcome the change of pace, but there's a difference between leaping through hoops and pacing things well. Right now the show feels like it is following an arbitrary deadline instead of any internal logic. I don't know if it would seem this way if we didn't know so much about what goes on behind the scenes, and in the actor's contracts, but we do and it does. John and Marlena are being pushed back together. He's started to regain some of his old mannerisms even if he doesn't have his memories back. Dr. Taylor quickly got him under hypnosis and remembering his love of Marlena. This made her freak out so she lied, telling him there is no chance he can get him memory back. In more of a surprise, she pushed him to leave town with her. Marlena is desperate too; she kissed him but it didn't jog his memory. Even more desperately, she went to Kayla for a second opinion. Since Kayla lives with Patch, I guess she's qualified to give psychiatric advice. While they bumbled around and Charlotte started acting crazy, Brady snuck into her office, found the video of John's hypnosis session and sent it to Marlena. So what's up with Dr. Charlotte and why does she hate the Jarlena reunion? I shudder to think.

The real surprise of the week was that they suddenly killed off Hilda, and in a completely lame and undramatic way at that. It was bad enough that we were teased with a female character that didn't whine constantly, or sleep with Lucas, or flirt with Daniel, but they had to make her go down without a fight. Making it even worse -- she died for the sake of Sami. The blond terror quickly ran away on Rafe, while he was suffering from the wound he received protecting her, so she could try and pawn her kid off on some nuns.

Now, onto the spoilers. If you do not wish to be spoiled, please look away. Continuing the freak out, Charlotte goes to see Marlena with a syringe. I guess she read her rival's file and is trying to be ironic. Either that or she has no imagination. Of course, by the end of the week, the couple will be back together. Maybe a little more trauma is all they need to be on the same page. And speaking of traumatic experiences, we get to watch Nicole and Sami talk to each other last week after Nicole hunts her enemy down. Meanwhile, Rafe battles the killer once more and Chloe runs away to Canada to escape from the men in her life for awhile.

Lines of the Week:

John: I can be negative and pessimistic on my own. Why pay a psychiatrist?

Nicole: Stefano is just one of the sweetest goofs you'll ever meet.

John: I want my memories back because Blondie is in my mind somewhere.

Nicole: But we were invited. Chloe is my best friend.
Victor: That's a frightening thought. I'm uninviting you.

Victor: (to EJ) You're not just an idiot, you're a damn masochist

January 2, 2009
It was New Year's week on 'Days'. I don't think much more than a single day, or night, of story time actually passed over the course of the four episodes. Since it was a shortened week, and many of us are still recovering from our holiday indulgences, I'll keep this brief.

The week didn't hold a great deal of surprises. While Sami spent the week dropping hints and trying to get Rafe to open up to her some more, he managed to stay relatively quiet. Of course, it's easy not to talk much when you have Sami to fill up the vacuum… However, he did admit that he didn't mind being stuck with her for New Year's. She was baffled. Maybe it slips her mind that he is an orphan. Their relationship dichotomy modified somewhat. She's become slightly less aggressive and a bit quieter. She's also showing a little less cleavage and he's flashing more biceps. For a Sami Brady relationship, that's pretty deep.

Lucas continued to be puppy-eyed about Chloe. Her anime style eyes were busy checking out Daniel. They keep trying to avoid each other and end up together over and over again. Not only was she terminally ill once, she is also the donator of major bodily fluids. Those are two things the doctor can't resist. The week even opened with a big softcore sex fantasy for the not-yet-lovers. It was nice to see a brief return to 'sex in the afternoon'. Kate, meanwhile, has lost her libido. Daniel keeps offering to stick around so they can spoon but she keeps sending him away. She also clearly suspects that there may be something between Chloe and the doctor. Perhaps she actually wants them together as a way of saying 'thank you'? Can Kate really be that generous, or is she planning something? Her support of the Chloe-Lucas pairing is truly suspicious.

Elvis spent much of the week being frustrated. I mean, more frustrated than usual. And this time it wasn't just because he was being denied sex. He wanted everything to be just right so he could pop the question to Nicole. Stefano kept pushing him to get a pre-nup and filled his time with endless conference calls. When EJ wasn't busy with that, Tony would show up to berate him about how dangerous their father is. EJ clearly doesn't care. It's hard to know if he is naïve, distracted, or if he really is more of a knock off the old block than is often hinted at. He could easily turn in any of those directions. His bigger problem is one that he isn't even very aware of – Nicole. She finally figured out that Dr. Baker is a baby broker. She repeated this little tongue twister many times while attempting to enlist the help of Brady, or to blackmail the baby broker into giving her the child that she's sure she deserves. He hasn't been terribly helpful and none of the two facial expressions the doctor has were offering her much comfort. In the end, there was much weeping and she decided to come clean with Elvis. Before she could, he dropped on a knee and proposed.

Salem's other burgeoning romances escalated this week. Max and Chelsea continued to flirt and they even managed to kiss. Melanie kept flirting with Philip. He can't help but flirt with anyone who happens to be female. He ended up kissing Steph at 12 o'clock sharp. They both admitted that they'd been playing games just to annoy Melanie. That seemed to endear them to each other even more. They made out some more and will quickly take it further. And John and Marlena accidentally, sort of, had a date.

And now… on to the spoilers. For anyone who doesn't want to risk having their dreams of the future shattered (or prematurely fulfilled), please look away. Kate is out and on the loose, but, without any libido to speak of, she doesn't have much use for Dr. Dan. She'll continue to push him away and into the arms of someone who has an operatic level of libido. The doctor may have even more problems though. Lucas is going to use all the talents (okay, not all) he learned in prison to smack the doctor in the jaw. Chloe nearly busting Daniel's million dollar hands didn't seem to bother him much so a little damage to ten-dollar jaw shouldn't be worse. The only question is: Which reason is Lucas using to do the deed? Maybe he's in need of a vacation. Bo seems to be. That's why Hope will convince him to run off with her for a while to rekindle the romance in their lives. Will this stop his visions? Maybe he could ask John for some advice on head injuries? Apparently, Mr. Black-DiMera is finally recovering from his and will start to jog his memories of Marlena.

December 19, 2008
I'm pleased to say that I've genuinely enjoyed 'Days' lately. I'm not entirely sure why. Let's review what happened this week to see if there is a hint anywhere. The entire week was made up of relationships that mirror previous ones. Everything that happened seems to have an echo in what happened before, only some of the characters have been exchanged and none of the characters who had the experience previously, seem aware that they had it at all. One of the curious things is that, increasingly, all of these plots seem to happen in little worlds which scarcely intersect. Even when they overlap, they seem sealed from each other.

Lucas and Philip had a little tiff over the fact that they've both dated Chloe, something which they've largely forgotten about. To his credit, Philip never tried to marry her. Philip then spent the week leaping between the two women in his life: Melanie and Stephanie. Melanie, who is channelling early Chelsea, hit the jackpot this week when Nick handed all rights over his project to her. That means she can earn millions. She hung this over Philip's head. Melanie sneered and Philip barked, eventually firing Mel. She went straight to Victor, who seems to exist solely to berate his son, which he did, yet again. Philip quit and, five minutes later, asked for his job back. Meanwhile, Stephanie went to Max to remind him that they were broken up and she was interested in Philip. He already knew, but got angry anyway. Then Chelsea came, she teased him, they flirted, he gave the toy dog that Trent left him in his will to Theo. Is that an ominous sign? It seems obvious that Max and Chelsea are going to get back together, and not just because she's the reformed version of his sister (which is a little creepy). The fact that they are being placed in 'adult' situations, ie. with Theo, suggests that it will be a very different coupling from the last time around. So Uncle Max hooks up with another 'niece'. It would be nice if Chelsea met a guy who hasn't slept with most of her friends or family.

John has been going to Dr. Charlotte for therapy. He's been lazily re-enacting his early relationship with Marlena, which has also been slightly re-enacted with Marlena every time he gets a new personality. Charlotte wants to reunite the broken couple; that's her mission, which sound like the opposite of what she was saying a week and a half ago. They both seem happy, but confused by this. I can't figure out if this is the only purpose of the new character or what. Marlena was strangely curt to her and the black hole the character crawled out of could either mean that she has some dark secret to be revealed or she is just really badly written. Most of the time, I can't tell. She isn't supposed to stick around for long though, which is too bad, because I like her. Besides, Salem won't have a shrink when she's gone and it needs one.

Bo knocked his head and now is having visions. He's been hearing a screaming child and envisioning disaster. I think I'm glad that they might be bringing back more supernatural elements, but it's too early to tell.

Rafe and Sami managed to be less annoying this week. He was stabbed so he could take off his shirt more than usual. Now that the killer knows who he is, he keeps flirting with leaving but can't seem to tear himself away. She managed to pout less and then slipped and fell. Meanwhile, Nicole dumped Daniel as her doctor (she likely knew he'd try to feel her up and discover her secret) and ran to Dr. Baker to ask him to fake being her obstetrician. He was reluctant but agreed to do it for $750,000. Now she needs to figure out how to get it. To complicate things, Elvis is getting randy and keeps flashing his chest and pointing his flower at her.

If you look at the plots, they aren't any better than usual, but something has definitely changed with the show. There's a steadiness which has suddenly returned and there's a new level of comfort in the scenes which was missing for a long time. The characters even seem fresher, better articulated. That's all a bit impressionistic, but that's how it feels. Daniel continues to unravel exactly the way I always thought he would. Since day one, I had him pegged for a pervy doctor and he just keeps fuelling the fire with his lust for Chloe. She's clearly uncomfortable that he wants more than her bone marrow, but I think we all know where this is going. Meanwhile, his godfather, Victor, showed up, which is always welcome. He did the only thing they let him do anymore — make Philip feel like an idiot because his libido gets in the way of business. He should probably tell Stephanie to stop her cleavage from getting in the way of business too. Like I've said of Philip before, Melanie seems to be acting on a different show than most of the other characters. Usually, that doesn't work, but at this point, she manages to be more entertaining than not. I thought she was laying it on thick to start with, but Molly Burnett has really hit her stride lately and they are loading her up with all of the good lines... I just wonder how long they can keep that up.

Anyway, now on to what happens next week. If you don't want to see anything even approaching a spoiler, please look away and have a happy holiday. Otherwise, Melanie will be enlisting Max to smuggle her into the Brady Christmas. Will the spirit of the season enter her soulless body, or will she be able to Scrooge the holiday for everyone? Luckily for Alice, she'll be skipping the festivities this year; Mel might have given her a heart attack. Doug and Julie will be around for the holidays, however, and will be reading the Christmas story at the hospital. Meanwhile, Chloe breaks an ornament Maggie gives her. Given the bizarre sense of causality on 'Days', who knows what might result from this? In another bit of holiday largesse, Victor will be giving the boot to Philip and Brady. And the killer isn't taking a break for the holidays. Now that he's given Rafe a taste of his talents, he's ready to spread the joy a little thicker and give Sami a bullet for Christmas.

Happy holidays to everyone!

Lines of the Week:

Melanie: 'Tis the season, bitch!

Nicole: (to EJ) You can't come in here looking like a chiseled God and expect me to fall at your feet. Especially when I'm not sure you have my best interests at heart. You don't trust me with seed money for our child's future.

Daniel: So, when you get out of here do you want to hang out? Maybe take in a movie? Thumb wrestling?

Nicole: It's about the baby. It is driving me crazy and that's why I'm acting irrationally.

Melanie: Pretty soon, Stephanie, you will be the ghost of Christmas past.

Melanie: Look at the way you dress. I think you should apply for a job at Hooters.

Stephanie: (to Melanie) How dare you talk to me like that! You were the one who was talking about having sex with Philip!
Philip: Yeah, but that never happened. I'd rather stick my hand in a garbage disposal.

December 5, 2008
Nicole has been doing her best to hide the fact that she lost the baby from EJ. Elvis realized something must be wrong and dragged her to the clinic to find out what it could be. Nicole promptly blackmailed the doctor and offered to pay off his debts if he would keep the truth from EJ. She went home with her fake belly on, worrying that Elvis will stop loving her. Things got even more complicated for her when Stefano decided he would fly in a specialist to look her over. Nicole was outraged. Elvis and Stefano interpreted this as meaning she was some sort of feminist (I guess, in a Camille Paglia sort of way, she is).

Sami dragged Rafe to the convent and they talked about nuns. She wanted to go to confessional but he forbade her and dragged her back to the safe house so he could subject her to some gratuitous shirtless time and Hilda with a Christmas tree. He left little blond alone with big blond once again so that he could dress up in a cable uniform and snoop around the DiMera mansion. Sami outcried Nicole this week.

Kate cried a lot this week as well, but considerably less than most of the other women on the show. Daniel tested her family and dug through the hospital databanks for someone who could donate their bone marrow to her. The procedure Daniel plans to use would be, of course, extra risky and cutting edge. Chloe turns up to be the only match. Kate forbids her to donate right after Lucas forbids her to tell his mother that they are engaged.

John finally met a doctor who he didn't freak out at. Marlena set him up with her old mentor, Dr. Taylor. She had no idea that he was actually dead and his daughter had taken over his practice. When John met Dr. Charlotte Taylor, he was impressed that she didn't want him to change. He smiled a lot, introduced the women and joyed in teasing Marlena, who was instantly jealous and annoyed. Not only is the new blond shrink looking after John, she thinks Marlena is a bad influence and she is moving her practice in right next door to hers.

It all sounds very dramatic... well, amusing anyway. Somehow, most of it doesn't feel that way when I'm watching it. There has been some nice soap opera acting in the past two weeks. Kate, Melanie and Nicole have all cried with wonderful agility. Melanie's misery intrigues me the most, not because I enjoy the character (since I don't), but because it's more complicated and slightly less conventional. Terminal diseases and dead fetuses are sad things for sure, but that also makes them easy. Meanwhile, Sami's pointless whining is just a litmus test for the painful. If it weren't for the fact that the people she is interacting with are so deadpan, it would be unforgivable.

Melanie and Stephanie both spent much of the week trying to impress Philip. I keep having the feeling that Philip seems to be acting on a different TV show. Sometimes it even feels like I would much rather be watching whatever that other show is. He's not alone either. I could say the same for John, or Stefano, when they aren't shamefully wasting him, or even Daniel for that matter. One of the things about "Days" that strikes me is the remarkable discontinuity between the actors, not only because they are hedged into the same sets and repetitive plots, but into styles that don't seem to fit with each other. It's sort of like interior design in England, where everything seems to have been decorated by some monster with eyes on every side of its head but none of them are communicating the same information to the brain. Sometimes it just seems like the show's writers are each locked in different parts of the studio and forbidden to communicate. I don't think that's the case though, for if it were, it would likely be better, just be accident. The other day, Chrissi (the editor for Soaps.com) and I were forced to admit that one of the only interesting characters on the show right now is Daniel. He's interesting because he's such an enigma. We can't decide if the gravelly voiced doctor is just a terribly written character, or a terribly perverse one. The other characters seem imprisoned in some terribly repetitive routine, but he's strangely relaxed back about the whole thing.

Anyway, forgive my rambling... what follows is spoiler type information, so, if you do not wish to be spoiled, please avert your gaze. Next week, Stefano will be pushing EJ to make things official with Nicole. Whether this means marriage or a strictly legal arrangement, we'll have to wait and see. She will be making some arrangements of her own. She'll even be forced to drug Brady to take care of them. Melanie and Stephanie continue to vie for Philip's attentions, which could get dangerous for everyone involved. And, taking a break from Sami stabbing him in the back, Rafe gets stabbed in the literal sense.

Lines of the Week:
Sami: All of a sudden you're being human and I don't want to think of you like that! You have to keep acting like a jerk so I won't concentrate on Christmas.

Stefano: I thought caring for your unborn child would trump your hysterical feminism.

Hilda: You have a mind like a steel trap.

EJ: To talk technical: I am a guy. Father is a guy. We saw a problem and decided to fix it. When it comes to something like this guys are basically clueless.

Kate: If it's not Dr. Good-News-Bad-News Jonas.

Kate: That's kind of hideous.
Daniel: I know. It's garish and commercial. I'm going to get you in the Christmas spirit.

November 21, 2008
It was an eventful week on "Days of Our Lives," both onscreen and off. After last week's scandalous rumor that Jay Kenneth Johnson was being let go as Philip proved to be no more than a 'misunderstanding', we are still left with the disturbing news that John and Marlena will be leaving the cast. Although some have already suggested that this may just be a crude ploy to get some publicity for the show, we'll have to wait and see. So far it has managed to generate a great deal of negative press. It's debatable whether even bad press is good press in this instance.

Onscreen, things were dramatic too. The Trent murder plot reached its peak. Nick went berserk, took Melanie away with him and tried to convince her that they needed to get married to protect each other. Everyone he knew was searching town to rescue him from Melanie's infernal clutches. Bo and Hope finally pieced together that Nick was actually the dangerous one and managed to track him down. As the cops broke down Nick's door, Mel leaped off the balcony, only to be saved by Bo and Philip. Steph stood by and watched, not terribly impressed. Nick was promptly arrested and confessed. Kudos to Blake Berris for how he played his scenes. He managed to stay in character even when his character no longer was. His scenes with Maggie were sad and genuine. Too bad everything around them was something else altogether. Everyone blamed themselves for what Nick did. He was a nice boy, corrupted by the evil of Salemites. That's actually one of the more interesting things about the story. Usually, evil comes to town and is orchestrated by some foreign force; this time the town turned someone evil.

Meanwhile, one of Salem's other 'romances' has been flailing around almost as sadly as Nick and Melanie's. Nicole and EJ have already succeeded in becoming as boring as he was when he was 'with' Sami. That's what happens when he stops being sexually frustrated. I can forgive that, but what they've done to Nicole is appalling. She's become a simpering, neurotic mess, but there's reason to suspect that she will return to her darker side in the coming months... In the meantime, Elvis suddenly agreed to take over the reigns of the DiMera empire from his father. Will this really happen, and, better still, how will Tony feel about it? He might make a show of not caring, but it wasn't that long ago that he and EJ were banding together to try and steal the company. Now that Brady is in town, and part DiMera, will he want a piece of the pie like his father did? This fact hasn't really come up yet, so who knows, but it's an intriguing possibility. So far, Brady and Nicole have drifted around, being awkward with each other. Sexual tension is inevitable. Sami will be gone for awhile and EJ can't exist without being part of a triangle. Brady's been around for more than a week and I still don't know what to make of him. There's a certain blankness to the character right now. The first thing I noticed about him was the way he would sit there and do mocking imitations of people when they weren't around. He's done this a few times so far. I'm guessing this is supposed to signal some sort of sardonic depth to come out in the character, but it's just odd right now. A few other observations for the week: EJ has been blinking less and Melanie has been blinking more; apparently Kate finds David Bowie soothing (I guess she was listening to "Low"); Lucas was giddy and Sami continued to reduce her emotional complexity to alternating between whining and whining loudly.

Kate's chemo is actually going well, or maybe not. Daniel is somewhat contradictory about it. Maybe that's because, unconsciously, since he desires Kate, he wants her to be sick, though, as a doctor, he can't acknowledge that. The more I see of the character, the stranger I find him. I don't know if that's because he's just a strange and complex character, or if it's because he's badly written. Daniel's scene with Chloe this week made little sense. She already knows that he gets over-involved with his patients and she knows that he's involved with Kate. He had an almost identical conversation with Nicole before she and EJ got serious, as well as with Chelsea earlier than that, and with Kate even earlier on. The only thing their heart-to-heart revealed was how pathological the guy. Chloe's also in a bizarre position right now. She has feelings for Philip but is with Lucas. She obviously has something, at least hinted at, with Daniel as well. More worrying was that Lucas excitedly asked her to move in with him this week... in a huge new house he plans to buy. Less than a few months ago he was broke and fresh from prison. After only a few months, he's already sure that Chloe makes a great mother to his children. I suppose after watching Sami attempt to be a mother that might seem true, but what is wrong with this guy? Did those head injuries he received in prison do severe damage that we don't know about? There's no reason behind any of this; their relationship isn't even a sketch at this point, it's a doodle. I want it to end. Not because I want to see either of them with anyone else; I just can't stand to see them together.

Anyway, now to the spoilers. If you don't wish to be spoiled, avert your gaze. John will be defending Marlena against Sami's stalker. Sami will be getting more airtime. Unable to bear being trapped with Rafe, she runs off to hide out in a convent. I guess if Sami could be a boy, she could be a nun too. It's already being speculated that she'll give the baby up to the sisters. Meanwhile, Nicole will be having baby trouble of her own when her stomach pains get worse. All the while EJ will be off with his father conducting business. Will Brady come to Nicole's rescue, or will he be too busy making eyes at his ex-wife Chloe and making Lucas jealous? Although Lucas has always excelled at displaying his jealous and his joy of ranting, he'll be getting some stiff competition when Chelsea and Melanie battle it out to see which of them can actually get a new plot line.

Lines of the Week:

Bo: Did you hear what you just said? You just threw her under the bus.

Nick: I caused one person to die for Chelsea and now another one for you, Melanie. Whenever I try to do good people end up dead.

Daniel: I've always lacked humility but I need to learn I'm not a God.

Nicole: How many friends do you have?
John: Real or imaginary?

Stephanie: In order to deal with her you need mace and a net. Wherever they are, I'm sure Nick is in trouble.

November 7, 2008
Abe was elected mayor of Salem, thanks in part to the fact that he was running against a corpse who had never played any role in the city's activities until a little over a month ago, not that such facts are ever guarantees of political victory. He and Lexi worried that they could be in the crosshairs of the Marino murder investigation since she sort of, but not exactly, asked her father to get rid of him. Roman and Abe got a quasi-confession out of Stefano to this effect and promptly agreed to forget it since it might incriminate them. Abe instantly chose yet another Brady to be police commissioner. Bo's first order of business, beyond complaining about his tie, was to remind Abe that they have murders to solve. Will Bo change much in the job? He and Hope have become cold and, frankly, have seemed like jerks for the past couple of weeks. Is that just because they've actually been working, however unsuccessfully, instead of hanging around in the pub and eating donuts?

Nicole was arrested for Trent's murder and locked up. EJ has been slightly unhelpful since he has the nagging suspicion that she's guilty. Since she hates her jail cell, she complained her way into the medical ward where she was nearly pummelled by a woman named Candi. EJ rescued her at the last minute and took her back to her cell where he continued to suspect her and she began to be sure he just wanted to take their baby. Across town, Kate started getting chemo and Chelsea tried to reconcile... again. Philip got angry at Daniel, then supported him, then got angry, then supported him, then got angry again. Daniel, who seems to be the surgeon-general of nonchalant flirtations, made some more loving statements to Kate before leaving her alone for her excruciating therapy. He went over to the gym to work out and began flirting with Chloe, feeling up her muscles and telling her that he's 'developing a taste for her'. I know he flirts with everyone, sometimes he even seems to flirt with Philip (it's the artificial leg), but it wasn't until he found out that Chloe almost died from leukemia that he really seemed to get hot for her. Is this a coincidence? Either Daniel has a thing for lusting after Philip's family members and lovers, or he really has this fetish for morbidity. He's Daytime's first surfer-goth.

And what's up with Philip? He 'sees himself' in Melanie, he says, and he has naughty daydreams about her, all the while he acts jealous about Chloe and claimed, only a few weeks ago, that he had deep feelings for her. Then he lent his shoulder to Stephanie to cry on and was his usual flirty, and slightly snide, self with her. I know he's supposed to be a player, but it's just weird to have peg-leg run all over town to make passes at different women. Capping it, however, was when they had the most bizarre shot of him graphically biting an apple that spontaneously appeared in front of Melanie's face.

"Days" has been somewhat more incoherent than usual (example: Max maniacally defending his sister and then, spontaneously turning around and saying she's really no good, not to mention what's happened to Nicole over the past few weeks and what's happened to Nick), which has never bothered me, but it's rarely been as incoherent as it's been lately. Or, I guess I should say, it's never been incoherent in quite the same way. Usually, the plots are full of holes and the characters jump through them. Now, the characters are full of holes and the plots disappear in them. I know I'm not alone when I say that frequently, over the past few weeks, the characters seem almost unrecognizable as their former selves and their relationship make even less sense than ever. It's normal for past events to be treated as irrelevant or, at best, mythical. In a recent interview I read with James Scott, he said that the people at the show actually recommended he remain ignorant of character and show history as a matter of practice. This would seem to hold across the board. A certain degree of amnesia is necessary. I can accept constantly re-writing a character. EJ can be nine or twenty nine or fifty nine years old, he can have nine wives or have raped Sami nine times or never, because character history really doesn't matter. There are no facts on "Days of Our Lives" and characters don't do anything out of experience, they do it out of personae which are created in a vacuum and then dropped onto the set. That's why some people think soaps are badly written, but I don't, I find it charming. The thing that bothers me about what's been going on lately is that it's all plot and almost no personae.

It's not all bad of course. I've been pleasantly surprised by Galen Gering's performance as Rafe. You really have to see an actor in more than one role to appreciate whether or not they can actually act. Unfortunately all he's done is play blinking contests with Sami (I guess she couldn't really play with EJ). I'm looking forward to him interacting with someone other than Sami. Despite some superficial resemblance, there's little of the lumbering and, let's face it, quite dumb detective he played on "Passions." It just makes me that more excited to see what Eric Martsolf will do with Brady. By the way, spoilers from here on... Brady will be returning next Thursday. It will be just as John actually returns to get involved in the storylines again. He'll be searching around for the man who took a shot at Sami. Does he want to give him pointers, or is he trying to capture him to impress Marlena? Across town, Lucas and Philip aren't thrilled with how Kate's chemo is going and have their doubts about Daniel renewed. Lexi continues to renew her doubts about her maternal capacities when she finds that Theo seems to prefer Chelsea's company. Meanwhile, Nick will try to go on the run and will ask Melanie to go with him. Their plan hits a dead end when he vanishes. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bo and Hope will be arresting their latest suspect in Trent's murder.

Line of the Week:

Mel: I have plenty of friends.
Philip: Aside from Nick, who are they? The mail man?

October 24, 2008
As usual, Sami spent most of the week weeping. Crying about whether she should shield her children from the DiMeras; wailing about not being understood; tearfully refusing to go into the witness protection program because she couldn't bring her children; and whimpering about being alone and in danger. She also scowled and screamed for good measure to the point that she resembled a demoniacally possessed jack o'lantern. Where did this week's horror's start? Salem's mayor was shot dead on Stefano's doorstep and Sami just happened to be nearby, witnessing the slightly less horrific sight of Elvis and knocked-up Nicole canoodling on the sofa at the time. She came face to face with the shooter and now the shooter wants her dead. She ran indoors and interrupted the intimate moment between EJ and Nicole to tell them about it. Nicole thought she was full of blarney... until she tripped over the corpse in the doorway. It's nice to know that 'Days' hasn't lost its dark sense of humor. The show really was funny this week, if not entirely fun.

I know John is strange, but this week he was actually bizarre. It's like he's turning into a very eccentric child before our eyes. Watching him react to Nicole's abdominal pains like she was going into labor was almost sweet. He spent the rest of the week either threatening Stefano or acting like a naughty boy who was sucking up to his mother to get a puppy. Marlena wasn't entirely convinced by the wide unblinking eyes routine and is still filing for divorce.

Someone else's hair was standing on end as well this week. Daniel spent most of his appearance on Wednesday with his hair frazzled up in a bizarre display. Unlike his mother, Philip wasn't impressed to see the doctor wandering around his backyard soaking and shirtless. After punching him in the jaw and ranting at him with the film noire attitude he had left over from Nicole's fantasy scene, he finally agreed to back off and stay out of his mother's love life. Daniel seemed to be showing his true colors though. He really has a thing for dying women. I don't want to analyze it, it's sort of obvious, but I think Chelsea had a lucky escape getting away from someone that pathological. Kate later showed up at the hospital with the trunks Daniel left behind at the pool (yeah, I really want someone who can't remember to take their clothes when they leave to perform surgery on me). Chelsea came to try and apologize but, seeing them together, reneged and wished she'd never have to see Kate again. Daniel then told them the latest results: Kate has metastatic carcinoma.

Philip, for his part, seems to be getting involved with someone who may actually be the most pathological person in Salem: Melanie. Since he's already rich and she has no money, she tried to bed him to get him not to go to the cops with what he knows. They undid some buttons but Philip couldn't go any further than that. Lusting after brain dead zombie women is one thing, but he draws the line when it comes to killers. He went to Bo with what he knew. Bo was not happy that he waited so long to tell him. For his part, Bo spent most of the week looking at people like they were morons. Which segues into the next topic.

Stephanie and Max broke up. I'm sure some people out there care but I'm not one of them. Max is just plain disturbing lately and Stephanie needs some time alone to regroup and get her feistiness back. I guess that's what happens when you stop being a redhead. For a guy who is supposed to be a genius, Max is acting incredibly stupid. That other genius, Nick, seems to have become equally stupid recently. Rumors are that he's the one that offed Trent while hopped up on pain killers. Poor Trent, or I should say, poor Roscoe Born. Just like when he was murdered on "Y&R", he gets dragged back as a hallucination. Although I normally hate this sort of thing, I'll forgive them since it's nearly Halloween and since watching him bad mouth Melanie is always somewhat entertaining. I'm sorry to her fans, if she has any, but the girl is just a brat. I'll give her credit though, Salem has plenty of brats and she can already stand apart. There's a greater desperation to her, a refined brattiness, a sort of brat chic. There was another curious moment between a father and daughter this week as well. Lexi attempted to confront Stefano about Marino's murder. He was offended by the suggestion that he was involved and then acted very sweet and gentle. It was an unusually tender moment.

Warning! If you don't wish to be spoiled, avert your gaze now. Next week, after offers of sex and her lack of cash fail to convince Philip that she's not the bad seed, Melanie decides it would be a merry idea to skip town before she gets arrested. Nick seems happy to go along. Maybe a little too happy... they may breathe a sigh of relief by the end of the week when Nicole gets arrested for Trent's murder. Even if this clears Caroline, this won't keep all the pressure off of Max. He and Steph will continue to gloomily grumble about their failed relationship. To compound things, Trent's will is read to Max and Mel. Did they inherit his debts, a fortune, a gloomy house in New Orleans, the newest solar car, his talent for dispensing insults, the porn home movies he made with Nicole, or something unexpected? Meanwhile, Sami will be stuck in the witness protection program while the shooter looms large. Who will protect the protectors from Sami though? It appears as though that's what agent Rafael (aka Galen Gering) may be doing. Back in town, Kate will tell her children about her cancer and Daniel will try and tempt Chelsea to forgive them.

Lines of the week:

Kate: If I'm not dying, I want you. If I am dying, I want you. I want to make love to you.

Stephanie: I'm not going to cry.
Max: What is there to cry about?
Bo: Let me see... maybe that she's in love with an idiot?

Lucas: What if you came back with a baby? What are you going to tell people? "Look what I found at a yard sale!"

Philip: What? If sex doesn't work, you segue to tears?

Chelsea: There's stupid and then there's Chelsea stupid.

ctober 10, 2008
The week went by quick. Or maybe it just felt that was because I drowsed through a lot of it. It was another week where little really happened. Unlike most of the weeks when nothing much happens, it wasn't bogged down with a lot of flashbacks. Instead, it was mostly fresh not-happening happening. But even with all that not-happening, a few things went on. Caroline is out of jail and back working at the pub. Max's room was searched, his bloody shirt was found and he was taken in for questioning. He hoped that he would be arrested and get his mom off the hook, but his hopes were dashed when the DA actually bought his story. Other suspects continue to be mentioned. Even Melanie tried expanding Bo's list. She seemed to have more ideas about this than he does. Bo and Roman paced around wondering how they could get their mom off and refused to seriously consider any of their family members suspects. They may go through the motions to indicate otherwise, but it's pretty clear that they are going about the whole thing with bias. So why was the mayor so impressed with the Brady way of handling things? Because trying to look like they are doing the right things has them exactly where he wants them and he's ready to pop up at any moment and mirror their hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, Abe and Lexi brought Theo to the park. They left him with the babysitter so they could go and talk about his mayoral campaign. Mayor Marino popped up again, this time to threaten to expose the skeletons in their closet. Lexi gave him the voodoo stare (where's her mother anyway?). They returned to the park right after Theo had run off. They freaked out and expected the worst. It turned out more monstrous than they could imagine: Little Theo ran off to the arms of Chelsea. But really, they should worry. There's another killer on the loose in Salem and he'll start popping up soon. Of course, this person may have offed Trent, rather arbitrarily or deliberately, and will begin offing more people as time plods on. Murders on Days are always a tricky thing since people so often return from the dead, but what's interesting to watch about them is the way they often cast an unflattering eye on so many of the characters.

Speaking of which, it was nice to see Trent in a flashback berating his little witch of a daughter. She brandished a knife a lot and then, after snapping out of her flashback, tried hiding her departed father's wallet in arch-enemy Stephanie's purse. She even roped Philip over to her cause, imploring him to help her and batting her eyelashes with frivolity. Since Philip seems sexually frustrated at the moment, he's trying to act gallant, unlike when he has regular sex and acts nonchalant. He offered to dig around for her and she spilled her purse on him so now he knows that she had her father's wallet. Mel is sort of settling into the grooves of Salem pretty well. Although she seems to be lingering on jumping into a rehash of one previous plot or another, maybe she'll leap into something new. Maybe she and Philip can hook up. Poor Philip, but he and Melanie do share a similar twinkle in their eyes and smirk with equal bravado. Philly seems slightly interested and then there could a strange romantic polygon: Chloe-Philip-Melanie-Nick, and maybe a few other people thrown in. I'm guessing it will be square though.

Nicole had a spazz at EJ. She needed a big commitment from him and tried to forbid him to see Sami. Even she realized this was quite a leap, after all, he and Nicole have never even had a real date, just talked about having them. Both characters were written strangely this week. He seemed cold and distant, highly distracted by something which seemed totally unrelated to what was happening. She was needy and corny, sort of like Sami, but Sami is rarely corny. She's usually too highly strung and Nicole is usually too drunk. Unlike most soap characters, they actually become less maudlin under those conditions. Whether this strange way of writing them makes them complex or incoherent is anyone's guess. Maybe it's all hormones (but what's EJ's excuse?). Sami discovered that Nicole is having EJ's baby. Like EJ, she had to wait and hear her blurt it out to him after telling half the cast. All of the puking that Nicole and Sami did around pub apparently didn't tip her off. Why hasn't Sami been sick before by the way? Didn't she get knocked up first. Nicole's been leaving puddles all around the pub for weeks.

Marlena still wants to go through with the divorce since 'real' John is still nowhere to be found. I guess she'll never get the disc back. Part of me imagines they're using the information on it to write the scripts for the show. Oh, and Nick got berated for drunk driving and Daniel was frustrated by Kate because she didn't want to die in a hospital bed. I guess he won't let her foil his plan that easily because next week he's going to take her to bed and check out more than just her vitals. Will the good doctor be both kinky and health conscious and ask her to wear an oxygen mask while they do the deed? Meanwhile, Nick and Melanie will be sharing a kiss. Does she actually have feelings for him or is this some extraordinarily complex plan she's launching? John finally signs the divorce papers but this more than likely is far from the finish line. Other couples in town will prove equally problematic. Nicole and EJ aren't being brought together exactly as she had hoped. He accuses her of exploiting her pregnancy for gain. Out in the land without indoor plumbing, Sami will be leaping into Lucas digs. How will Chloe feel about sharing the love shack? And the aforementioned murderer will be poking around and making his presence felt.

Lines of the week:

Nicole (to Sami): Take a load off and I do mean a load. Are you gaining weight or just hormonal?

Nicole (after being sick): What happened to you?
Sami (after also being sick): Your perfume made me nauseous.

John: I need a friend. Do I seem like a person who isn't capable of normal emotion?

September 26, 2008
This week, Nicole reminded us that Salem smells like dead fish and garbage. Honestly, it never really occurred to me how much Salem must stink. Between the fishing, the dead bodies, the almost non-existent street maintenance, and the green beer vomit that comes from the Brady pub, it's got to be unpleasant. With ambiance like that, no wonder she keeps vomiting in bushes all over town. Is she just sick at the thought of losing all that money? Bo and Hope finally pushed her secret out and exposed her marriage with Trent to Victor. He found it extraordinarily funny. It's been a long time since he was grinning that smugly. I like Nicole, but it was still nice to see. Although she keeps blaming Caroline's chowder on her condition, everyone watching assumes by now that she is pregnant. Even she seems to assume it, despite the fact that she can't get pregnant. But after last week's decision to have a day long fantasy flashback, any decision TPTB make can only look reasonable in comparison. On the whole, it was not a terribly eventful week. Instead, it was a week about preparing for something to happen.

John began hallucinating while Anna talked to him. He had a seizure and was taken to the hospital. Marlena and Kayla stared at x-rays of his brain and didn't know what to think. Rolf broke the news to Stefano that John will soon die, or his brain will explode, or something along those lines. Stefano doesn't seem to care much about John anymore. I don't know if I should be optimistic about this change. I'll try. But my guess is that we are going to get a replay of the pawn plot with someone else. Maybe with Brady when he comes back, but more on that later.

Lexi gave up her job as Chief of Staff so she could spend more time with Theo and then went to see her father and gave the typical DiMera child rant that they've been giving since the 80's. Stefano seemed a bit bored. She went home and discovered that Abe has finally perked up his backbone and quit his job so that he can go after Stefano beyond the confines of the law. I guess that's why he may be running for Mayor in the next election. Much of the rest of the week involved people trying to avoid getting Abe's job. Fearing the devious Mayor would put a DiMera crony in his old seat, Abe tried to convince Roman. He didn't want it. Then he tried to convince Bo. He didn't want it. Then they tried to convince Hope. She didn't want it. Then they tried to convince Bo again. Why didn't they want it? Because they were afraid of paperwork, afraid they'd actually have to obey the law and Hope was afraid she wouldn't be able to spend time with the daughter who she never spends time with in the first place.

But the week concluded on a more somber note. The death of Trent, which has been hinted at for weeks, finally came. Now don't get me wrong, Trent was a nasty bastard, but that's what I liked about him. And he wasn't nasty in a convoluted DiMera sort of way, but in the more down-to-earth way that only a sleazy physicist is allowed to be. I don't particularly care who killed him, though the show has gone to great lengths to spread the pool of possible killers as widely as possible. They've also gone out of their way to make him unlikable, throwing away any credibility the story originally had. There was more complexity to the character originally, and hints that they could have actually ingrained him into people's lives more, maybe even made him slightly pitiable. That would have been at least marginally daring. But the cheap exposure of him as an abuser, when Nicole seemed to hint at so much more, was pathetic and exploitational. If you're going to do sleaze, go all the way. And if you're going to have flashbacks, why couldn't they have flashed back to Trent and Nicole's seedy life together. I do care, however, that Trent is dead. For one thing, he is yet another in a long line of dead end plots which have been shabbily built up and abruptly dropped. For another, and more importantly, I actually enjoyed the character. That was mostly due to Roscoe Born, one of the most hard working and talented actors to ever grace Daytime. Every sentence he spit out was coaxed full of acerbic venom and a wonderfully raw, anguished undertone which few actors in the genre ever successfully muster. Like most good soap villains, and even when they are being written at their most cartoonish, he can fill up a single scene with more depth than most 'heroic' characters do in a whole career. To top it off, the people he was battling, namely his 'reject', 'loser', offspring, are genuinely boring characters. Every character the guy sneered at was less intriguing than his grimace. Just watching him tear into Max and giggle when he threatened him was a joy.

Next week, the whole whodunit plot will get under way. Caroline is locked up looking guilty, Max and Melanie bumble around looking guilty, and everyone else runs around looking guilty since they usually are guilty of something. Morgan is continuing on her long goodbye. She'll catch Philip with his lips on Chloe. Is the diva missing the lips of young Kiriakis, or just weighing her options now that she knows being a mommy isn't for her? Meanwhile, Nicole has spit up enough that she realizes she must be with child and Kate spits up more blood.

In more exciting news, the official word came down today that Galen Gering and Eric Martsolf, best known as Luis and Ethan from Passions, will be coming to Salem. Gering will be an FBI agent and Eric will be Brady Black. More than a few already suspect that Brady will be returning to become Stefano's new pawn. This could be good, or it could just feel like retreading, we'll see. At any rate, he already has plenty of experience playing a mindless man who is endlessly bossed around. I'll admit that I'm thrilled to see them both coming back to Daytime, this may even slightly ease the pain I still feel from Passions withdrawal, but I worry that this could be another sign of the erratic plotting the show has been suffering from. One after another, they just drop characters and subplots in and let them quickly evaporate, re-tooling things as they go without any sense of direction. There's something very random about the way the show has been working. Maybe it's always been that way but the distractions now are fewer and the seams show more. At least Martsolf's role will already be ingrained in the show's history so that could anchor things. Now, if only they could bring Ben Masters in...

Lines of the Week:

Daniel: You are coughing up blood, which is the sign of a serious illness!

Kate: It was two people reaching out for a little warmth.
Chelsea: It sounds really touching.

Daniel: Don't worry. The board knows Eleanor is just a constipated busybody with too much time on her hands.

Stefano: How could my children be so stupid?

Half of Trent's lines! Particularly when he told Max that he could drink all of the green beer in the world and still wouldn't be a Brady.

September 12, 2008
I almost felt bad for EJ this week. 'Bad' isn't the word, I felt his pain, I guess would be more accurate. And what is his pain: Only the most excruciating thing in Salem — Sami. EJ and the two blonde women in his life kicked each other around for a good part of Wednesday's show. It was entertaining. His eyes almost burst out of his head because he is so fed up with it. Nicole painted him as a drama queen and Sami annoyed him so much he seemed ready to burst into tears. He even started calling himself Allie's daddy; even Sami started saying that she was 'our' baby, but she quickly stopped that when he refused to fix her problems for her. After the cursory pouting, Sami decided to ignore a court order and ran off to the wilderness, well, the Horton cabin, to give a teddy bear to her daughter. She was shocked to find Allie alone (Chloe had slipped a few feet away to wash her hair) and started to go into panic mode. EJ tracked her down and tried to calm her but Lucas and Chloe caught her there and so did the police. After Sami ran out of Salem, Nicole had called them to suggest that someone was kidnapping baby Allie. Nicole (a.k.a Misty Circle, and what kind of porn name is 'Misty Circle' anyway? It sounds like a Celtic girl band) spent the rest of the week being unusually perky for her sober self, dispensing insults and talking about her renewed self-respect.

Meanwhile, back in Salem, where people usually shower in the co-ed locker room at the hospital, Lucas' brother Philip was trying to get things back on track with Morgan since her father came back and then promptly left for prison. They shared a sweet kiss but, I fear, it will all be for naught now that Kristen Renton will be departing from her role. I didn't care for Morgan at first, but she grew on me a bit. For months, however, the writers seemed confused about how to use her and they wasted her with some bland pouting and completely asinine fantasy sequences about Philip. I mean, really, that frequently repeated dance sequence? I know nuns who are more naughty and still manage to remain chaste. She probably still plays with her My Little Ponies. Does this departure mean that Philip will be putting all of his energy back into the business? Perhaps that's what Victor's little business talk with him this week was in preparation for. Or perhaps he will take Tony and EJ's offer to join them in an all out war on John. Once they take him out, Stefano will be next. At least, that's the 'plan'. But Tony really doesn't have much of a plan. He just keeps changing his suits and bumbling around the mansion with Anna, chewing on his words. Perhaps, in moving the brothers in with their father, they are slowly transforming the boys into the adolescents that we never got to see them as.

And how is the war going? EJ says, "It's not a bloody laugh riot!" But it sort of is. While eavesdropping on his father, and this seems to be the extent of Tony and EJ's ability to be underhanded these days, Tony heard Stefano propose marriage to Kate. Of course, if Kate married Stefano, that would make her EJ's new mother-in law. How would he feel about having his former conference table romance as his mom? Better yet, how would Sami feel having Kate at the mansion. They seem to have taken a page out of the Bold and the Beautiful's playbook. I don't know if this should be exciting or just, I don't know, kind of gross. Mind you, I like Kate and she's in an awkward position right now. She's at loose ends. After the horribly handled Daniel affair, she seems to be coming down with some sort of disease, which is not new territory for her and which is why this is so disappointing. Other people have been feeling sick as well. Nicole was ill, some may suggest pregnant as was Chloe, though she put her nausea down to traveling by boat. I'm trying not to think about this. The last thing this show needs right now is more children.

Over in France, we finally learned some more about Melanie and her father. Trent, who we know is a gambling addict (yes, heavy irony: Trent the math whiz can't work the numbers), asked his daughter, who is practically bankrupting him to pay for booze and clothes, to have a drink with a man in exchange for erasing his debt. She wasn't pleased. It wasn't a drink that was expected of course. Melanie seemed more insulted by the fact that she was doing this to pay off his debts (which are, in fact, largely hers) than anything else. Dispensing her 'attentions' on men is essentially how she's been paying most of her bills lately. Max didn't see it that way, of course, even though everyone else figured it out. Max the math genius tallied up the situation and decided that the only way to solve his problems was to kill his father. Anyway, back to the 'plot'. He ran off to rescue his sister (how he found her was not explained) and Nick was shot in the fracas. She went to the hospital and pouted at him before offering him a kiss. Chelsea stood around being green eyed. Melanie suddenly decided she would go back to Salem after all. Back home, a jealous John punched out Trent in the pub while he was on a dysfunctional date with Marlena. John's really lost it over the past few weeks and, frankly, it's making less sense now than anything they've ever done with the character. John is just becoming a sort of Bermuda triangle where storylines float to and vanish: Paul, Ava and now Trent.

Next week, things get nastier for Trent and his brood in preparation what has been hyped as the big fall whodunit. Theo continues to melt down and so does his father. Abe throws a fit and chucks his badge away. This could have something to do with the Mayor sticking his head into police business. Marlena tells Sami to grow up. She eats mushrooms to make her grow. No, I'm kidding, Sami wouldn't do anything that rational.

Lines of the Week:
EJ: I was not put on this planet to fix your problems, Samantha. Nor you, Nicole, so just leave me out of it. I've got my own problems to deal with!

Phillip: Do you like the idea of 'us'?

Marlena: I’m not giving up. I'm letting you go.

EJ: I can't help but be attracted to you. It's a matter of biology.

Nicole (watching EJami): I want to change the channel.

Chelsea: Why can't things just be simple and good?

Nicole: (to Trent) If you need money talk to the shrink inside. Maybe she'll pay you to be a lab rat.

Tony: If you need help, just scream.

August 29, 2008
Strangely enough, with the Olympics over and last week's hallucinations now a thing of the past, getting back to Days regular storylines was somehow unrefreshing. Maybe that's because the almost pointless, though pleasurable, meandering of last week had fewer flashbacks and likely will rarely be flashed back to in the future. One of the things that made Nicole's film noir fantasy sweet was that we would never have to go through it again... and again. It's not as "green" as the current Bo plot, which is so filled with recycled flashbacks, he must have shaved in a bid to further clarify what was past and what present. With the concentration on the hospital set over, the plot lines are now spread all over the globe and just as discontinuous as before. Suddenly, it appears as though Bo's tabloid outing was practically planned. He didn't actually destroy evidence, only a copy of the evidence to flush John out. Paul conveniently escaped from John's dungeon and is running around in the shadows. Roman, once again agrees to do what the Salem PD does best - bend the rules. Proving once again that even the mob have higher ethical standards than the cops.

And speaking of questionable ethics.... Chelsea and Daniel were delayed from consummating their relationship at an "inopportune" time, although it gave them enough time for a gratuitous shirtless scene from the good doctor. Now, thanks to a thoughtless text message from Kate, the truth about them is out. The expected Chelsea eruption followed, although with less of the customary flailing; I suppose she's matured. He and Kate apologized profusely. Chelsea whimpered; everyone is miserable. After what happened between Nick and Billie, I feel bad for Chelsea; the poor girl must be getting a complex. Please let her go crazy and start abducting things... there's nothing else Days does so well. Meanwhile, Daniel has grown on me... a bit, but more in the way a room deodorizer or elevator music does than an interesting character. Maybe it was all that talk of surfing, or the slight gravel in his voice, but when he's on screen I feel like I'm listening to one of those white noise/sound of the sea tapes. Things were played a little thick when he was introduced, but he's settled more now and would look good in a relationship with Lexi, or even Kate for that matter. But this relationship mess wasn't the only one dwelt upon this week.

"Oh my Gosh... that's not what I want," Marlena said after 'android' John professed that he may have feelings for her... if he can only figure out what the feelings are. It may have just been me, but for some reason, I laughed aloud when Marlena uttered that rejection. After their entire Frankenstein love story, you would think that attempting to abort its future would at least merit a little blasphemy. Instead, she made gestures to getting back with Roman. He almost blushed and brought up their past romance, which was nice since it was as much of a part of her as John has been. John kept trying to take her home. She backed him off. He went away to sulk and then came searching the next day, tearing around town to find her. She showed up at work, which is unusual, and John tracked her down. They had sex in the office, one of the perks of being your own boss. But I find this new shift in John's character completely unbelievable and really, sort of depressing. He claims the gas did something to his brain, or whatever is left of one.

Meanwhile, across the ocean... the France story is slowly winding down. I have mixed feelings about this. I enjoy it when Days goes on the road. Contact with real places clarifies a lot about what "reality" Salem is part of. Melanie is growing on me a bit (so long as she isn't turned into another Chelsea), and certainly more than her brother and his female companion. Somehow Max and Stephanie seem to have gotten more tan while sitting in their jail cell. He's also managed to acquire more chemistry with any woman who walks by than he has with Steph. Seeing spoiled little rich girl Tiffany plant one on him bordered on the cute. Anyway, Max and Steph got out thanks to a little help from Nick who prodded Melanie to get them released. She obviously has a thing for his wallet, though Nick's fortune is still largely theoretical at the moment. But what was intriguing in this plot this week, was when we saw Trent actually bickering with someone on the phone about keeping his children apart. It's unclear why he wants this, and even less clear why anyone else should care, but Trent seems desperate, otherwise he wouldn't have roped Steve Johnson PI into this.

The DiMeras are finally moving back into a potentially interesting plot. With Tony preparing to battle John and, perhaps his father, I have a feeling of optimism. Everyone is moving back into the mansion, slowly but surely. Maybe that's why Lucas is so eager to leave with Allie. Even Mickey thinks he might have a shot. Sami might not have his criminal record, but its hard to imagine you could even convince a jury in Salem that she is a fit mother.

Next week we can look forward to Tony trying to move the family in a new direction; Victor and Stefano going in an old direction; City Hall proving to be as corrupt as Salem PD; Abe telling Daniel to stay away from Lexi and Nicole and John teaming up to go after Trent when he starts to make a play for Marlena.

Lines of the Week:

John: If it's the cigars, I'll go outside to smoke.

John: Thoughts in your brain... bold new concept.

John: I've been doing some thinking myself and, when the gas hit, I realized I care about you.

August 15, 2008
To start with: Days was fun this week. I haven't said that for awhile, but the show was actually consistently enjoyable. Most of the credit for this belongs to the DiMeras - all four of them. Virtually the entire week has been concentrated in the hospital. Surprisingly, the show is usually its most effective when it is at its most reductive; when it limits the sights and cast. It wasn't always like that and it's hardly a healthy situation for a series with a broad ensemble, but for the past year or so, less tends to be more.

There was a good reason for things to be so concentrated this time. Everyone was locked on the unlucky seventh floor of the hospital. While they began to freak out, things were complicated by the mysterious, hallucinogenic vapors Stefano released. He stalked around the halls gloating and threatening revenge. I know, it's all cheesy and ludicrously over the top. Even the writers seem to know it; After all, isn't that why they have characters saying they feel like they are in some cheap slasher film? However, I prefer this cheesiness to last week's wedding. Mind you, the flashback to Bo's mullet were probably more frightening that this week really was, but I digress... It's DOOL. If I didn't think everyone involved knows how silly it is, I don't think I could laugh without feeling mean.

It's nice to have Stefano back. I can already take issue with certain details, but I'm going to reserve judgment and just enjoy him, hoping that he isn't turned into a caricature of his former self (which is what they did the last time they brought him back). Already, since he's woken up, the dialog has become quicker and more amusing and I'm optimistic this will continue. His repartee with his family members was enjoyable all around. I'd like to see his relationship with Tony and their past fleshed out a great deal more. I felt a bit cheated last time around. But I'm really looking forward to he and John battling it out, because it shouldn't be like any of the previous times this has happened.

Ejami fans may have gotten a boost when Sami admitted she has more than the occasional carnal itch for EJ. He kept probing until, finally, her admission about her admission was more telling than what she admitted: "You were on the floor and I thought I had killed you and a lot of things came into play. Anything is possible. I'm sorry I can't promise you more than that." Is that complicated? or idiotic and meaningless? With Sami and EJ, it's always hard to tell and the whole thing may have just been the byproduct of the gas they were huffing. But, as I've argued in the past and as Tony explained months ago, EJ's feelings for Sami are predicated on his love for his father and she is merely a vessel for this expression. Stefano fleshed this out a bit this week when he, or Sami's hallucination of him, began gushing about breeding the future of the family. Sami is ideal for this of course, because she is Marlena's daughter and EJ's pursuit of Sami is only a continuation of Stefano's pursuit of Marlena. What does Stefano's return mean for them, just as they were falling apart? I don't know, but watching Sami and EJ's relationship continue is a greater torture than anything else Stefano could come up with. Poor Nicole. No wonder she has to run off to a completely random and convoluted fantasy sequence next week.

The other thing the week brought out once again was the fact that Marlena is, in many respects, a double to her enemy. Not only is John basically a pawn to both of them and who both of them have used and manipulated for decades, but they are moral equivalents, something which they point to with endless irony. They are also doubled in their children and their children mirror one another. That's where whatever attraction exists among any of them has come from. Attraction via narcissism when manic; repulsion stemming from self-hatred when depressive. They each re-double their vows to put each other through Hell, or profess their other feelings, which are essentially euphemisms for the same thing. I can't help but not feel sorry for any of them. None of them are victims and none of them have any redeeming qualities — some of them just have more class than others.

Next week, we can look forward to a much-hyped black and white fantasy from Nicole, in which she and the other young Salemites will couple and uncouple in some vintage clothing while looking smashing in some high contrast photography. But there will also be some plot movement: Nicole will be pushing EJ about his feelings for her and she'll be getting far more active in her pursuit of the blinking lawyer. We'll get to watch her team up with Chloe to make Sami's life a living hell, which, in DOOL logic, must mean they really like her. Marlena's dead twin returns to give her sister some advice. Since the living people in her life have such a shoddy relationship with reality, this might not actually be a bad thing. And the battle among the DiMeras will go into full force while each of them takes a side - and even two sides at once - in a bid to outdo each other.

Lines of the Week:
Philip (to Nicole): If EJ can accept Sami, you shouldn't have a problem.

Stefano (to John): I can reboot you and your metamorphosis will be complete.

John: Are you functional?

John: I was Stefano's personal lab rat.

Sami: As soon as they find out what Stefano did to my mother, I hope John kills him.

August 1, 2008
Philip was shot. He tossed himself in front of Morgan when one of Ava's goons tried to level a shot at her. I guess this proves he's noble, or perhaps just that he has a talent for being shot or mangled by weaponry. If much more of the poor guy's flesh gets shot away, he will be on the road to becoming a bionic man. Maybe he can hire Rolf to help him out with that... That would likely be more entertaining than watching Morgan's perpetual weeping. I know she misses her father and loves Philip, but it's reached the point that it has just become maudlin. I had some hopes for the Philip-Morgan pairing. They're both cute and there's something tender between them, certainly something more sincere than in their relationships with anyone else. This is boring though and as far as passion goes, her expressions of affection are more reminiscent of a little girl longing for her missing My Little Pony than an adult romance. Hospital-bedside-romance is an even more overused situation than trapped-in-the-elevator-sex and nowhere near as fun.

The southern belle might be crying over something else soon however.... Want to read more? Catch the rest of Matt's Musings at SOF's new blog spot!

July 18, 2008
This week was a bit of a mixed bag. I actually have to scratch my head a little to remember everything that happened. That may be because I'm getting old, or maybe it's because there are always so many flashbacks. While there is still no grand summer plot in sight, at least there has been some movement in a possibly worthwhile direction. This week we saw the glimmering return of the old EJ. Although he's always hovered somewhere beneath the surface, he finally seems ready to come back as what he was to begin with: A real DiMera. I hope that pie in the face finally settled things for him.

What everyone seemed to acknowledge this week was the problem of Sami. After the dysfunctional pair repeated their usual argument, EJ went a step further, saying, "This environment is not conducive to the raising of a child. It's not the life I want for my son." Sami's eyes boggled. She's already fought hard and dirty to be a virtually absent mother of a dysfunctional child once, she can do it again. EJ continued his analysis: "I know you love him as much as you hate me. I think your hatred for me will eventually lead to resentment toward Johnny." He was actually right: She is an unfit mother and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near children or even the immature men in her life for that matter. And then he repeated how irrational she is (and she is) and she repeated her threats against him. Hopefully this will end it, but I don't have much hope. Anyway, after leaving Sami, the pawn in his love affair with his father, behind, EJ promptly ran to Uncle John so he can play son to him.

That said, Marlena and Roman also mused on the problem of Sami. Roman, wisely, said she would be better off without the two men in her life. Marlena, manically as always, had other things on her mind. Perhaps she is still projecting her own failed relationships with men on her daughter. She said as much herself, even suggesting that Sami's problems were all her fault. So why can't she learn from her own daughter's mistakes since she certainly never learns from her own. After this moment of clarity, the doctor abruptly started travelling down the Frankenstein route again and is recruiting, or blackmailing, poor Rolf back into his old profession so she can John's brain back.

The big secret haunting Ms. Roberts came out this week: Kate and the doctor had a bit of a fling, if it amounted to that much. They were "there" for each other, but there wasn't much "there" anywhere to be seen. Why this wasn't actually given the plot time it merited is beyond me. Seeing him and Kate is certainly less boring that he and Chelsea. But it's a rather disappointing and humdrum. I know Kate seems to sleep with everyone, but if they were going to do this, couldn't they have put it in their distant pasts or even taken the sleazy route and had the doctor two time Chelsea with her grandmother.

Max ran off to France to search for his sister. Steph pouted, told her dad to stop being over-protective, donned a beret and ran after him. Trent found out and is miffed. On the train in France, a paparazzo cornered Max and snapped his shot. Apparently, he's still a star over there... or maybe there's more to it than that. The most exciting thing in this plot was the little map they keep showing with Max traveling over it. That's cute. Why can't they do that all the time?

Morgan finally found out what Paul left behind: A package full of cash with a "generic" letter. She and Philip waited in line at the post office for most of an episode only to be greeted by a lazy postal work played by crazy Norma from "Passions". She was reluctant, but searched around and got it for them. I'm hesitant to be so descriptive about this, but this is about as much tension as they put into the show these days. Before Philip and Morgan could open it, Bo and Abe caught them and took the package to the station. They looked in and found the money, only Bo had enough police skill to actually look through the entire package. He soon discovered a tape recording of Philip threatening Paul. It wasn't long before Victor and Kate found out about it. Victor guilted his son into giving it up and now it's in Kate's possession.

Now we can look forward to: Someone flatlining; Max being blackmailed; Lucas and Chloe continuing to cuddle; Nicole revealing more than her body to EJ; and a bunch of confessions.

Lines of the Week:
Ava: John and I kept things PG-13.
Nicole: What is the point of foreplay if you're not gonna play? I don't get it.

Roman: Remember, you're doing this for Allie.
Lucas: I just hope the next time she sees me it isn't at my funeral.

Steve: They love each other and Stephanie just wants to be there with him on his journey. It's not like they are going to Somalia or taking up cave diving, right?

EJ: So you can start your life with Lucas?
Sami: He's the love of my life.
EJ: He's also in prison.

June 20, 2008
Chloe outsmarted Lucas this week. She figured out that he managed to sneak away without anyone noticing. Lucas has been relatively quiet this week outside of his newfound bond with the former opera singer. One would almost assume that prison taught Lucas a few tricks about how to be conniving, if it wasn't for the fact that Chloe is a step ahead of him. I suppose this proves that Sami is even dumber than both of them. After all, she still has feelings for EJ, a man so vapid he makes Nicole look deep. This is the secret of the Nicole and EJ pairing, perhaps the most exciting pairing for EJ since he was bedding Kate. When Nicole looks into EJ, she sees the void staring back at her and this allows her a depth that she doesn't know with anyone else. As soon as she starts looking into EJ's face, that darkness wells up. She's struggling with drunkenness and a lascivious past; he struggles through the ambiance of idiocy that he thrives in. It was a pleasant surprise to see her get his shirt off and then send him packing, refusing to be a cheap distraction for him.

The mystery of EJ was finally unlocked this week by his brother. Tony proved himself to be the cleverest shrink in Salem when he unpacked EJ's skull. The real reason that Elvis is so obsessed with Samantha, he explained over a martini, is because of his love for Stefano. It's a detail which has often been forgotten: The whole Ejami thing is part of Stefano's last plot to destroy the Brady's and, far from their relationship reconciling the two families, it ended up destroying them. After all, the Brady's are more disparate, desperate and aimless now than they've ever been. Nothing much is binding them together. What binds EJ to Sami is his love of his father and his loathing of himself for being a failure to his father. If Ejami is really a love story, it's the love story of EJ and Stefano and the child they perversely created together. Sami is just a tool that conjures EJ's nostalgic fantasy for a time with his father that he never really knew. That's what the Santo-Colleen malarky was really about.

John and Marlena have decided to begin again...again. Watching the plots for these characters is starting to feel like watching EJ talk, it's just twitches and stuttering with an occasional quip to distract from the mess. It's not that there's something incoherent about it, on the contrary, it's too coherent. It's as coherent as a brick wall. But what really annoys me, more superficially perhaps, is that this means the John-Ava story will go nowhere. It's a shame, because they have more actual chemistry than he's had with Marlena in years. There was a palpable pleasure in their scenes which had nothing to do with the infusion of nostalgia or tragicomedy that fills his scenes with Marlena. He reached out to Ava this week and she brought her mob knowledge and power to work as they abducted and intimated Paul. They brought an enjoyable balance to the scene, part malice, part charm. After all of the talk of beginning a new life, we are quickly heading back to the old...again.

The big reveal of the week was Dean Robbins coming out and admitting that he was Max's father. Although there are some very serious weaknesses in this plot, I'm just happy to see Roscoe Born on the screen. He's long been one of my favorite soap actors and I'm glad to see him do anything. It's unfortunate that he tends to be typecast, but he's so very good at being nasty. To put the icing on the cake, he's got a past with Nicole, a nasty past. Does she know anything about the lost sister Max is looking for? Will she turn out to be his long lost sister or mother? Are these two plots completely unrelated? The less intriguing aspect of the story is actually Max and Stephanie. They've quickly come to suggest a deranged version of an aging and miserable married couple. Is this because they were both pushed into early retirement from their careers? For months Max has been trying to be a little old man; perhaps Shawn's soul jumped into his body and possessed him? He seems to be reacting to reuniting with his past much the same way Shawn did when the Colleen-Santo thing was dug up. I guess they deserve credit for pulling a radical SORAS without actually aging the actors, just their personalities.

Slightly less inspiring this week: Phillip and Chloe continue their "arrangement" although she has feelings for him. He says he has feelings for her but obviously has feelings for Morgan as well. Daniel finally asked Chelsea out. Kate is appalled and refuses to let him operate on her. Is there something she knows that no one's saying. Didn't she tell him that he would have to tell Chelsea the truth about something?

Lines of the Week:
Chelsea: Daniel is a gentleman, but a girl can dream.

John: (offering Marlena dinner) What would you like: French? Italian? Inuit?

EJ: I don't know why I want to be around here anyway. She infuriates me. If she wasn't the mother of my child I'd wring her bloody neck.
Lucas: Yeah, I know exactly how you feel.

Marlena: I know John is capable of bad decisions.

June 6, 2008
Most of this week seemed redundant. Even when trying to collect my thoughts, they keep getting mixed up with past weeks or past plots. Lucas is back, but now in an odd position as the odd man out, living down the hall from Sami. Something is seriously missing though. He's as bitter, paranoid and repetitive as ever, Sami is as whiny, needy and defensive, EJ is as smarmy, obvious and manipulative - watching them interact, it's almost as if these three characters actually know each other less well than they did before. Maybe they do... maybe Sami's bouts of amnesia, Lucas' alcoholic blackouts and EJ's recent drunken blackout don't have anything to do with booze or mental instability but are merely essential parts of their characters that allow them to tolerate themselves and others by never developing anything more than the most superficial relationship with anything. I wasn't a fan of this triangle the first time around. The only thing I enjoyed about it previously was watching Kate cringe at her son's stupidity and Lucas' continual vows to change his name. At least Kate stuck her head in this week, albeit briefly. Even for a perpetual troublemaker, Kate seemed bored.

EJ and Nicole are getting closer, which is swell, because, unless he's drunk, he's a lot less entertaining. "Lucas is a boy," says EJ, "He doesn't know how to look after a woman. He put a bullet in my back like a coward. I haven't forgotten about that. I told Sami I forgave him just to woo her." That's the old EJ, the one who obviously went to school reading Jacobean tragedies and knows the value of hypocrisy. This is the real EJ and love has nothing to do with his motives. It's spite and loathing; everything else is just theatre. At least, for the moment, the character is getting back to his old consistency. That's not exactly true for Nicole unfortunately who, when she isn't pouting or making jokes about alcohol, seems quite lost. I know that's part of her position right now, allowing her the opportunity to jump into one of the several plots she's peripherally involved in, I just wish she would get a little more focus. With focus, she might actually be dangerous and that's what the show needs right now.

The lack of real threats was obvious this week in the little Joe episode. Sick babies are always an easy ploy, but this one vanished almost as soon as it came. This has been a consistent problem with Kayla's character ever since she wanted to get pregnant. There has been a desperate attempt to give her drama and despite throwing a series of melodramatic standbys like abduction and a troubled, premature labor at her, nothing seems to materialize. Plots just keep dying around the woman.

And now to another character whose plots quickly go nowhere: Chelsea seems to have realized she's made a horrible mistake by dumping Nick for Daniel the non-committal surfer. "I'm not discussing this with you. It just seems sneaky and weird not to tell you," was what the doctor offered as his non-explanation in addition to saying that he was seeing someone he couldn't see but isn't really seeing her... at least not anymore, if he was in the first place. I might have missed a nuance that would have made it all make sense; I was continually distracted by him making bedroom eyes at Lexi. That's a pairing that I could stomach. Poor Lexi has been in just as much of a black hole since they pulled her out of the basement as she was when she was down there. At least an affair would be better than her and Abe bickering about their Mohawked child. All of the actors have been sleepwalking through this plot. It's like watching an episode of the "Twilight Zone" where the "mentally ill" child turns out to be the sane one and everyone else is really crazy.

Max moved closer to the end of his tether this week. He had a few outbursts, finally violent ones towards the end, attacking his docks supervisor and nearly coming to fisticuffs with John. The reasons for all of this will soon be apparent. He revealed a few details this week, particularly when he was discussing his "Rain Man" type skill with numbers. "Genetics and sweat" is what he kept repeating and that's all I'm going to say.

John, as usual lately, had the more interesting moments of the week. His conversation with Ava, though somewhat labored, was enjoyable and they played off each other well. His confrontations with Phillip are also a pleasure to watch. If they'd only give Philly the kind of air time they give EJ, or to Bo talking about going green, they could really develop him into a more complicated and mischievous character.

Lines of the Week:
Victor: "The Salem cops were just here sniffing around about the cocaine on John's ship."

Lucas: "So I'm your lab rat?"
Chloe: "More like a guinea pig."

Phillip: "Nice to see you too."
Victor: "You want nice – teach kindergarten."

Ava: "I know a fellow mental case when I see one."

Ava: "Are you married?"
John: "More or less"

Hope: "I'm married to the Jolly Green Giant."

May 23, 2008
"It's not the 80's anymore," Tony tells Anna as he proposes to her. Of course it's not, so why does it feel like show seems so confused about it? From the 80's and onward, soaps have essentially been slow paced ultra-softcore porn for housewives. And while, since the turn of the millennium the sex scenes on most series have dwindled and don't come anywhere near to the lengthy soft focus romps of yesteryear, many viewers watch daily in giddy anticipation that a little more flesh will once again
fill their screen. That's what most of this week was about, or what it danced around. There were more double-entendres and lewd suggestions this week than in most of the past month. A nice sleazy time all around.

The centerpiece of the week was the sex scene between EJ and Sami. It was graphic enough to give Ejami fans something to oooh about and Lumi fans something to ewww about and everyone else something to shrug about or a chance to see what was on the other channels. After the two rapists got
together in a little ab and cleavage fury, Lucas arrived and quickly blew his stack at them. I can't claim that I missed Lucas and I can't even claim that his surprise return was particularly surprising or exciting. It was more like a pilot for a TV sitcom that doesn't get picked up. At least John got a few laughs at everyone else's expense. The only surprising thing was that Lucas didn't react more. By Lucas standards, the shouting and stomping was pretty mild. After bedding Sami, EJ got the bright idea to sneak away and avoid another tongue lashing. He went out to find a dank bar to think about his feelings. Is this what the DiMeras have sunk to? How I miss Stefano... not that the other members of the family are fairing much better. For example: Poor Tony and Anna. It's not the 80's anymore, it's not even the 90's, so what are she and Tony doing? While I enjoy them, I'm bewildered as to what to do with them and I don't know how much longer they can keep using them as filler between other things.

Across town, a hospital locker room got it's fair share of traditional sexual farce. Chelsea continues to corner Daniel, left in nothing but a towel, ready to be exploited by the wandering hands and lips of whoever drifts into the steamy co-ed locker room. The doctor is intimidated by her "vitality" as he puts it. After they start kissing, he shoves her in a locker and leaves her there while a woman with the scintillating name of Amber Cress comes in to make some lascivious offers to him. I wonder what
her medical specialty is? The writers are obviously playing with the age thing, ratcheting it up ridiculously. Although some people are put off by the perversity of the whole thing, but it's hard to decide if Chelsea lusting after someone old enough to be her father is more disturbing than
Daniel's thing – lusting after someone because of her sickliness. The most perverse thing about it is still, of course, the surfer talk. I can't wait for Chelsea to get an Annette Funicello hairstyle and start dancing the Luau Cha-Cha-Chá.

The other big theme of the week was whether there is more to something than meets the eye. Lexi worries that there is more to Theo being un-talkative than meets the eye and wonders if, like she and Abe, the boy needs therapy. I guess the Travis Bickle haircut she gave him didn't really register. Apparently there is also more to Max than meets the eye. At least this is the conclusion we're supposed to reach after they played variations on that line nearly half a dozen times in the past week. It seems like Max is hiding his prodigious science talents so that he can stick around the pub and help Caroline, at least that's what his grave side conversations with his father would indicate, but there must be more
to this, though I shudder to imagine what it could be. Even in a different part of the city, Nicole was playing with the same line, suggesting she was just as shallow as everyone thinks she is. EJ insists that can't be the case. He should know, he's been flipping from depravity to saintliness ever since he came on. It's the fact that characters aren't what they seem
to be that makes them so easy to change. And that's the secret to soap opera writing: The more vacuous a character is, the more plot potential they have.

Lines of the Week:

Sami (after sex with EJ): "I can't believe we just did that... but Nicole upset me."

EJ (after sex with Sami): "Were you just marking your territory?"

Bo (on violence): "Killing a guy sticks with you. Even a dirt bag like him."

Tony (proposing to Anna): "We're not the same people we were when we were young. It's not the 80's anymore. We're mature now."

Daniel (to Lexi): "I bet Abe thinks you are all that and a bag of chips,
so just go see the psychiatrist."

Sami: "That slut!"
Lucas: "Are you talking about Nicole?"
Sami: "What gave it away? "The word 'slut'?"

Lucas: "You had sex didn't you?"
Sami: "Yes, but I didn't know you were coming home."

Chloe (to Philip about Morgan): "I'd like to get to know your little girlfriend. Oooohhhh... Look! She's a college girl. Have you been trolling the campus for freshman coeds?"

Marlena: "I'm going to go up and check on Sami."
John: "Knock first. She might be 'entertaining.'"

Philip: "Friends with benefits can be tough to pull off. I don't have time for drama. But what the hell – You can be just the medicine I need."
Chloe: "The best part is it goes down really easy.

Nicole (after hearing that Lucas caught Sami in bed with EJ): "Holy mackerel! That was some welcome home."
EJ: "Actually, it was a bit of a mess."

May 9, 2008
Mob boss and all around ubergoon Martino Vitali came to town and very soon he will be gone. I'm unsure if this is a shame or not. With Stefano gone and Victor back, a good feud among rival crime families would be welcome, especially when you throw a loose cannon like John into the mix. But perhaps the writers quickly realized that they've been down similar avenues before and the mob is best left to "General Hospital", where there isn't much of anything else. In the process, everything's changed for Ava pretty quickly. It's an easy trick to blame drugs for everything and suddenly transform a character into someone else. So who is Ava going to be now and will we get a chance to see much of her? I find it terribly hard to dislike someone who would level a shot at Hope, so, hopefully, there will be something else worthwhile for her to do.

As for the other newer characters: We discovered Daniel's secret, which was that, apparently, his wife was a terminally ill patient and she died. Not a terribly impressive secret, so I hope there will be more to it. The fact that he took her down to die by the waves makes a rather tidy excuse for his surferisms and explains why he refuses to hook up with Chelsea... for now anyway. He'd be better with Kate, I think. He would even be better with Lexi, and considering how much trouble she thinks her marriage is in, she might be priming herself for a fling. Meanwhile, Chelsea is going back to her old self, brutally dumping Nick, who also seems to be getting screwed over by Max who is slowly acquiring a new and strange personality. The irony of this is that Chelsea seems to once again be chasing a phantom. Nick seduced Chelsea from afar by pretending to be a handsome doctor. She discovered this lie and found the "real" doctor who turned out to be a creep. Nick saved her from the doctor and she discovered that Nick was who she really wanted. This fantasy now seems to have returned in the person of Daniel, but it's far from clear who he will turn out to be.

In other news, EJ and Nicole are in cahoots after all. He's paid her to lie to Immigration and it's unclear exactly what else they will get up to together. It's very nice. Finally a little more of the evil EJ, even if it's evil of the boring variety. Using Nicole to make Sami jealous is cringe-worthy on many levels, but Nicole still makes the pair more amusing than they are on their own. To be honest, I could care less what he does to Sami, as long as he does it in an underhanded and evil way. Why can't he just get Rolf to reprogram her or stick Kate's brain in her body? Instead, Sami continues to move toward a Lucas level of blatant stupidity. If the flashbacks this week reminded us of anything other than John and Marlena's old hairstyles, they should have reminded us of what a devious and vindictive creature Sami is. What happened to the cruel and scheming Sami of old? When they magically aged Will did they accidentally start aging her backwards? Beneath her thin maternal veneer, she seems less mature now than she did when she was teenager.

The strange central scene of this week was when Sami, wearing a pair of large monkey slippers, sat down to psychoanalyse both herself and John. I'm not sure if she got her lessons from her mother or Dr. Nussbaum, I'm not even sure which would be worse, but Sami passes the test as a daytime shrink, handing out the regular advice and excuses; they even gave her glasses to do it with. But the whole conversation between them was an important one, not just for John but for "DOOL" itself. After all, if you keep bringing back the past in flashbacks, how do you move on? Isn't it better to forget and abandon the past, something the show always tries to do but never completely manages. Some soap operas don't require a suspension of disbelief, they require recurring amnesia. That's the thing that makes John's role so interesting now. Not only is he Mr. Amnesia, he also serves to center everything around him. In spite of the fact that, as a person, he's completely inconsistent, it's only his present which changes dramatically as he re-imagines himself, whereas everyone's past continues to change. Up until now, this has always made him easy to manipulate, whether by Stefano, Victor or Marlena. Now he's become far more creative. Maybe Sami, also a remarkably inconsistent character and frequent amnesiac, could learn a few things from this.

Lines of the Week:
Nicole: "I don't know what I'll do if Pookie leaves me."

EJ: "Then you will have me."

Victor: "Daniel told me he was going to marry her in the hospital. That night she took a turn for the worse."

John: "Look at this place. There is no sign of forced entry. Either a professional or a freeloading relative robbed me."

Nicole: (to Sami) "I can't just exchange Pookie like you do husbands."

Sami: (imitating Charlton Heston) "You can have it when you rip it from my cold, dead hands."

April 25, 2008
The highlight of the week was Sami punching Nicole. Not that Nicole isn't swell, but it's so nice to see Sami get aggressive. It was also good to see the possibility of a Morgan/Philip pairing continue to blossom. Philly needs some love, or, at the very least, some non-Chloe-related lust, and it should be fascinating to watch him get involved with a woman who isn't a flake or a bimbo for once. Two other romances continued to percolate at different speeds. Stephanie is doing her best to get over her problems and move on with Max. Nothing new was revealed about Max's recent odd behavior, but Stephanie certainly seems sexually frustrated. What else could explain her wearing those white socks with that all black outfit the other day? The Chelsea/Dr. Jonas thing also moved on. I'm afraid it will develop into a story instead of staying in Chelsea's drug induced haze where it belongs. The most ominous sign of the week was seeing Rolf holding John's ID disc in his hands. Why isn't he destroying that thing? Please Rolf, before it's too late!

Things started to get way out of hand with the "old" and the "new" this week. Perhaps a third of the conversations in the past week revolved around whether the old you was the real you and the new you was not, or whether the new you was the real you and the old one was not... or something similar. It would have been more amusing if the conversations had employed flashbacks to different actors who have played the parts (for those to which that applies). They didn't really play it that way, sadly. It will be interesting to see how far they can push this angle without resorting to the use of doppelgangers and mysteriously appearing twin--not that either of those things are objectionable. It seems to be a dwindling possibility, however, as the Ava plot loses the steam it had left and Marlena tries to embrace the new John.

The issue in all of this is really a question of how to deal with redundancy and ambiguity and go beyond them. John Black's mysterious identity was finally solved when he discovered that he was a DiMera. Ironically, when he discovered this, he was no longer who he had been for years. This same theme finds a variation in Steve, who is also the product of other character's imaginations and machinations, though largely a cypher himself. It's a plot device they've been pulling out for years. Usually it keeps things fresh. If you can't integrate new characters, which is notoriously difficult, the least you can do is reinvent the old ones, even in a ludicrous manner because--as DOOL writers have always known--history is contingent. What's worrying is that at the moment, the show seems more intent on creating a semblance of coherency than it's ever really bothered with before. There was a time when the holes in logic could easily swallow entire storylines; now the sailing is a little too smooth. For instance, the incredibly bland problem of Ava. Patch left her, she got depressed and wanted him back... more or less. Apparently, she suffers from "brief psychotic disorder", which is something the show could use more of.

Lines of the week:
Marlena (to John): "Married people don't date."

John (to Nicole): "I lost my memory not my senses. You didn't think this tasteless dress and the painfully embarrassing come-ons would be enough to make me reveal my affairs, did you? Who are you working for, Victor or little Philip?"

Stephanie (to Max): "It's about you and me. And me and you – and how I feel about you."

Sami: "Nicole hydrates. She drinks two quarts of something a day."

Nicole: "Juice without vodka is like a day without sunshine."

Nicole: "I don't even know which brat I was holding. EJ's baby or Lucas' baby... Good thing you didn't have triplets. Can't tell the fathers without a program."

April 11, 2008
Marlena is hell bent on getting the old John back. We even got a glimmer that there might be something of the old John in the new John. When he, rather gruffly and over-adamantly, asserted that he wasn't remembering anything, something seemed to be returning... but maybe he was just uncomfortable, which I guess anybody would be if they were under Marlena's hypnotic control. I suspect the old John she seeks will return eventually, under the hypnotic spell that Marlena's hair seems to cast on him, but it will be a tragedy when that happens. What's really baffling about it all is that Marlena, of all people, seems so convinced that there was some specific old John she could call back up. John, if he's had any consistency over the decades, has always been a cipher with no really stable identity, continually flirting with new personalities. Maybe the new and wonderfully laconic John is just who John has always been underneath it all and Marlena has become excessively superficial and nostalgic for a past that was about as real as the erotic fantasises she used to have about him when he was in a coma. It was rather striking that all of the moments that she used to try to make him remember their past, were moments when the old John was pretending to be someone he knew that he wasn't, simply in order to please her. It was good to see that they didn't shy away from the irony that Marlena is now taking on the role of Stefano, albeit Stefano light, and, once again, John gets be someone's pet project.

Sami and EJ's "marriage" got a little more real thanks to Nicole waving cash in his face to help him support his martini habit. It's hard to say if Sami is jealous or just annoyed that Nicole seems so intent of getting into EJ's life. I just hope she can get rid of reformed EJ and push him back into the realm of darkness. If Chloe, Nicole and John are the most sinister people on the show right now, something is seriously wrong...beyond the bizarre pacing. The show seems to have returned to the John E. Reilly version of time. More time passed in the first few minutes of Monday's show than the entire rest of the week. Not that I'm complaining about that. I'm probably the only person in the world who would prefer it if he was still writing the show. At least it was relatively consistent, even when it was consistently bad, and it always seemed like something could happen. Now it persistently seems like, whatever is going to happen, is going to happen in some distant future and nothing much is pushing it along. Couldn't we have gotten a few more details from Ava and her shrink this week, or at least some ludicrously phoney TV psychiatrist talk. Ava should send her doctor after Hope/Kayla and have her brainwashed using all the information on her that she's culled from the internet. Then Hope could run around thinking she was some strange version of Kayla, resulting in many uncomfortable moments for both Bo and Steve. Or at least they could have Steve brainwashed again. Isn't that what soap opera psychiatrists are there for? Kayla and Bo worrying in bed is not interesting, or necessary, and the only thing exciting about Stephanie and Max's scenes this week was that pie and cake were involved.

Lines of the Week:

Nicole (to Sami): "I'd cry too, if you were my mother. You know... the twins having different fathers is freakish. How does that work, anyway? You really must have been slutting around."

Sami (on Nicole): "I dislike tomatoes. I despise her."

John (on the difference between being used by Marlena and Stefano): "He didn't look half as good in a dress."

Philip (on Nicole arriving at Chez Rouge): "Maybe I should tell Maggie to hide the Crystal."

Nicole (to Sami): "You look... like you've just had twins."

Roman: "I'll lock you up."
Bo: "On what charge?"
Roman: "Reckless stupidity."

April 4, 2008 -
It's been bickering week on "Days". Well, that's not entirely accurate. Bickering and inappropriate flirting seem to have been the rule. Not that I'm complaining. While every woman in Chelsea's orbit noticed her obvious crush on Dr. Daniel, none of them managed to stop themselves from throwing a few double entendres his way. Kate probably has a shot with him... Chelsea has yet to share a man with her grandmother. I still don't trust him at all, by the way. I think it's the surfer talk. I also found it a little odd that, considering he's known Victor for most of his life and their families are supposedly close, he suddenly needs Chelsea to explain everything to him. Some people have suggested he may have something to do with Ava, citing the mention that he was hired to help the troubled daughter of a powerful Italian family. Maybe...but he also seems to be trying a little too hard to be ignorant about fellow world-traveler Nicole.

Having finally gotten out of the hospital, for the most part, we have instead been confined to a series of dining rooms. It's been wonderfully theatrical: just when soaps seem to be moving away from their campy phoniness, "Days" maintains the tradition. To accompany that, the chatter on the show has really been upped. My hands hurt from typing, but little has actually happened this week. Whoever is writing the dialog is really outdoing themselves. EJ somehow turned from being Hugh Grant to Cary Grant while he and Sami tried to re-enact the first half of "His Girl Friday" for the Immigration agent. The more successful humor came from John and Rolf. I never thought Marlena, Salem's own Lady Satan, would be put in the position of straight man to John, king of the monosyllabic response. But, to me at least, this is the most fun they've ever been and listening to anyone make sardonic remarks about Sami and EJ makes me smile.

Max continues to become more mysterious, which is a relief since I often wonder what they'll do with poor Uncle Max. His efforts to keep Stephanie away from the docks and his increasingly perplexing behavior towards Nick are giving him a darker dimension. Though I doubt Max, however troubled, can make the leap into villainy, this weird side of him is, at least, more interesting that he and Steph making Little Orphan Annie eyes at each other. I suspect his working down at the docks may be more than random considering the fact that John and the Kiriakis' are currently dancing around going to war over them.

I never realized Aunt Maggie was such a cutie until Tuesday. New, surprisingly youthful, Mickey pops up and Maggie's hair truncates in size and she suddenly becomes mischievous. Perhaps this means they'll finally get something to do, though the cynic in me assumes they'll become props in the ongoing EJami Punch N' Judy routine. This prospect is almost as exciting as Ava noticing how unbelievable it was that Hope is pregnant. Of course, that didn't last. They really have to hurry things along with this. I actually find Ava amusing, but they have repeated the exact same flashback sequences with her repeatedly and it's starting to seem like she's just a time filler to put between John's laconic remarks.

The other big excitement of the week was the return of Nicole. So far it's been fun… though I worry it will turn into another pointless parade of cleavage a la Chloe.

All photographs are courtesy of Soapoperafan.com.

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