Days of Our Lives Pulled No Punches As It Ramped Up the Drama and Changed Regimes — But What (and Who) Is Staying and What’s Going?

Credit: Peacock screenshot (4)

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Soaps.com may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

I, like a lot of folks, have been struggling with the strike material the past few months — but now, with a flick of a switch it’s all over. By all accounts, a lot of it is going to be swept under the rug, so for this Soapbox, instead of just talking about the week on Days of Our Lives, how about looking back over the strike and trying to figure out what’s being tossed and what’s staying?

‘Cliched, Hackneyed… Ugh’

Well, headwriter Ron Carlivati promised that when his material started airing once again, we’d know right away and he wasn’t wrong! Friday’s episode started with Leo being beyond catty about how terrible The Spectator’s writing had gotten. It was a not-at-all veiled reference to the show’s writing and it actually accomplished something that surprised me: I felt kind of bad. For better or worse, the strike writers were there to keep the show in production and running so that it could survive.

And yes, I realize I’m saying this having been very critical lately of the stories. I’m thrilled we’re finally past, but I don’t know how much of my frustration was the temp writers being told to slow-walk things in the hopes that the strike would be over quickly. (It wasn’t.) With that said, there was also a lot of inconsistent characterization and attention to history that was driving me crazy. And Radioactive Snow Paulina needs to be erased from existence.

Then there was Sloan, all over the map. She went from desperate for a baby, to resentful of Jude and being a mother, to unwilling to lose him, to running off with EJ’s money. With her gone, Eric handing Jude to Nicole and EJ while they chatted about what happened at the front door was such a snoozefest. It would have made more sense for the Nicole/Sloan fight to come before the baby snatcher ran off, but the returning writers made it work. Also, thank you for throwing Nicole stealing Sami’s baby back at her! (Not that it makes what Sloan did OK, but history is still history.)

More: Sloan’s return wasn’t originally planned 

But how fast will EJ’s scheming be undone? Sloan seemed to show up at Nicole’s to tell her about Eric. And now that Eric walked in… Come on, Sloan, do the right thing.

Personality Switch

I know not everyone cared about Everett (“New character? No, thank you, sir and/or ma’am!”), but back when we were figuring out what was going on with him, I practically broke out the popcorn every time I was watching. OK, I wasn’t quite that excited, but it was fun to figure out who he was, what was going on and how that tied into the canvas. And then it dragged on. And disappeared for weeks at a time. And dragged on some more.

More: Dan Feuerriegel weighs in on EJ’s true love

By the time Marlena came to the shocking (shocking we tell you!) conclusion that Everett had DID, my popcorn had gotten stale. Worse, I couldn’t help wondering what the point was. “Beverett” was just writing articles. Bobby wasn’t involved in anything nefarious, there was no connection to the drug ring (remember when I thought that might’ve been a thing?) and about the only thing he did was hit on women.

But then on Friday we got more excitement than we have in ages with Everett switching to Bobby before our eyes and doing battle with Jada, Stephanie and Marlena. And there were little touches, like Jada, who’s both a cop and knows how bad Bobby can get (even if we don’t), stepping protectively between her ex and Stephanie when his personality switched that were phenomenal and so organic to the situation. While I have no idea what the original intention for Everett was, unwinding multiple personalities is going to be a bit more difficult. But I have a feeling he’ll be integrated pretty darn fast to get back on track with his original purpose.

Kiriakis Catastrophe

I almost feel bad for Theresa being so oblivious to Alex cheating on her — because I think she does care for him. But any character growth that Alex may have had was undone these past few months. He’s almost worse than ever now that he’s got his money. If he’s being kept around, expect the returning writers to set him straight again. I can’t tell from spoilers next week if he and Kristen decide to stop their affair or stop hoping to make Brady and Theresa jealous and commit to each other, but I’m guessing this open relationship is going to end.

Konstantin  bounced from slimy con, to aspiring supervillain to an attempt at humanizing him with the loss of his daughter. It’s all been a mess as the card went nowhere, The Pawn stuff went nowhere and preying on Maggie dragged on far too long.

More: Chrishell Stause is heading back to soap operas

We’ve been speculating over whether Catharina is really dead or Konstantin’s wife ran off with her. And my thoughts? The new writers won’t care. Konstantin’s about to go and his family will never be mentioned again. And I hope they change whatever’s planned for the wedding to oust Konstantin. I’m sorry, but I hated just about everything that was done with this. Let’s get Xander his fortune and Maggie secure in hers and move on.

Odd & Ends

They started solving Li’s murder, but I’m going to take a stab in the dark here and say making that creep Gil Li’s murderer was not in the plan. So that’s gonna get dropped, which is easy enough to say was just wild conjecture. Instead, I still think Li faked his death with the help of either EJ or Dr. Rolf — or both! But Clyde (please, for the love of God) likely didn’t really have anything to do with it.

Johnny and Chanel’s baby is going to be just fine. While I think it really would be great to feature a legacy character with a genetic disorder like Down syndrome, I have a feeling the returning writers will want to just ignore the radioactive stuff. Pulling that story in particular to mock made it clear how Carlivati feels about it.

And the Horton fire was, as Susan Seaforth Hayes said, a production directive so they could rebuild the set easier to put up and take down. But that time capsule has gone so absolutely nowhere, I’m wondering if it was also handed down for the temps to put in, then lay off of until Carlivati and team returned. Or the strike writers didn’t even have a clue what they were doing and it’ll just be forgotten. Who knows?

Bright Spots

With all of that said, there was some good stuff. I was (mostly) having a blast back in February Sweeps. They revealed that Bobby and Everett were the same person, back when I was excited to find out what was going on. Xander was framed for shooting Harris (why did he come back this week?!) and the early drug stuff with Holly’s overdose, Tate and Nicole’s anguish and Theresa remembering she had a son and caring for him made for darn good television.