A Critic’s Review of Days of our Lives: What The Show Gets Right

When it comes to Days of our Lives, every fan has their own opinion – and Soap Hub is no different. For five days we sat and watched the good, the bad, and everything in between, and now we offer you a handy review, and a cheeky critique, of the Days of our Lives week that was.

Days of our Lives: A Critic’s Week In Review

If there’s one thing that Days of our Lives excels at, it’s cross-pollinating its characters and its various storylines. Deidre Hall is giving a star turn as a possessed Marlena Evans Black, but that storyline is perfectly entangled with various other offerings: Paulina Price’s (Jackée Harry) secret, Ben Weston (Robert Scott Wilson), and Ciara Brady Weston’s (Victoria Konefal) baby-making efforts, and Doug Williams (Bill Hayes) and Julie Williams’s (Susan Seaforth Hayes) plight.

And take all this into consideration: Ciara’s desire to restart her career when soon put her in the same orbit as Philip Kiriakis (Jay Kenneth Johnson) and Gabi Hernandez DiMera (Camila Banus); the latter happens to be romantically involved with Jake DiMera (Brandon Barash) – Ben Weston’s best friend, Philip’s mortal enemy, and the chief reason that Abe Carver (James Reynolds), he who Paulina is keeping her secret from, has been grievously injured.

Another thing that Days of our Lives does well, is gifting a character with a through-line, and sticking with it. D.A. Melinda Trask (Tina Huang) hates dirty dealings and politicking, but she hates Kristen DiMera (Stacy Haiduk) even more; so, of course, she’ll be willing to let Justin Kiriakis (Wally Kurth) and Xander Cook (Paul Telfer) skate if Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston) can produce her daughter’s killer.

DAYS also likes to pay homage to its history, and its most famous plots. Case in point? It appears that Lani Grant’s (Sal Stowers) maternity is about to be outed in the same fashion as Michael Horton’s paternity; Mickey Horton learned that he wasn’t the teen’s father when he attempted to donate blood, and discovered that he wasn’t a match; now Abe’s in desperate need of a blood transfusion, and daughter Lani is on the scene…

Further DAYS Musings

* Kudo to John Black (Drake Hogestyn) for so quickly realizing that something is very, very wrong with Marlena.

* Speaking of this whole, Lani isn’t really Abe and Tamara’s daughter thing – Marilyn McCoo is going to be needed on-screen, desperately. This really only works if we get to see every beat played out, especially Lani’s confronting Tamara over her lies.

* Victor may fancy himself a, “family all ways comes first,” kinda guy, but least Days of our Lives fans forget, he tried to have Bo killed so that he could have Carly Manning all to himself, he left Xander to rot in a foreign hell hole, and he’s never given Justin one shred of decent advice…oh, and he also fed him drugs that kept him impotent. Hardly the stuff good uncles are made of.

* You Win Some: EJ DiMera (Dan Feuerriegel) convinced Nicole Walker Brady (Arianne Zucker) to join him on a dinner-do-over…You Lose Some: Only to have this one ruined by Steve Johnson (Stephen Nichols) and Kayla Brady Johnson’s (Mary Beth Evans) antics.

Days of our Lives (DOOL) airs weekdays on NBC. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Salem, check out all the latest that’s been posted on DAYS spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.