Days of Our Lives: Soap Hub Critic’s Week In Review

Everybody’s got an opinion…especially where their favorite daytime drama is concerned – 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

Let’s go ahead and get it out of the way. Killing off Laura Spencer Horton (Jaime Lyn Bauer) was not cute. It also served no other purpose than to paint Gwen (Emily O’Brien) into a corner from which she can never possibly emerge.

With that being said, it suddenly struck this writer that Ron Carlivati actually seemed to be following the blueprint from one of Days of Our Lives all-time greatest storylines. See if this sounds familiar.

Laura enters the scene, keeps quiet about a child’s true parentage, and when the secret finally comes out into the open, it leaves in its wake death, a sibling relationship in tatters, and a marriage on the verge.

Sure, “Is Jack Really Gwen’s Father?” will never, ever rival “When Will Mickey Learn That Mike Is Bill’s Son?” in terms of viewer investment and nostalgic reminiscence, but all the same beats are there.

Tommy’s Horton’s wife, Kitty, learned the truth about Mike’s lineage and wound up dead for her trouble. When Mickey learned he had been raising his brother’s child he went after Bill with a gun (shades of Gwen attempt to induce permanent psychosis in Abigail). And, of course, Laura and Mickey’s marriage didn’t survive the scandal. The jury’s still out on whether or not Jack (Matthew Ashford) and Jennifer (Cady McClain) can get past his daughter murdering her mother.

It was a risky, risky move to kill off such a beloved, legacy character – one whose roots stretch all the way back to 1966 and who has the distinction of being Tom and Alice Horton’s daughter-in-law twice over (owning to her marriages to Bill and Mickey). We’ll see if it pays off.

And speaking of payoffs, both Nicole (Arianne Zucker) and Ava (Tamara Braun) have vowed revenge against repugnant, unrepentant Charlie (Mike Manning). Throw in a few more Salemites making similar threats, and you’ve got yourself the makings of a genuinely thrilling whodunit.

Further DAYS Musings

* We appreciated Vivian’s reference to her absconding with Nicholas Alamain all those years ago. It’s so nice when a character’s rarely-remembered history is…well, remembered.

* Props to Kristen (Stacy Haiduk). If this were the 1990s, she would have bribed one of the Statesville guards into helping her subdue and/or drug Susan (Stacy Haiduk) into unconsciousness so she could switch places with the looney spiritualist. But Kristen 2.0 actually explained the scheme that she had concocted and granted Susan time to mull it over….sure, she also threw in some stealth manipulation there but she’s not reformed reformed, just slightly reformed.

* The bonding scenes between Lani and Valerie (Vanessa A. Williams) were an absolute treat. It’s par for the course for a mother-in-law to despise their daughter-in-law on a soap opera, so it was a welcome change seeing these two have such a sweet, loving, and relatable exchange.

* So, Marlena (Deidre Hall) and John (Drake Hogestyn) came down with a case of food poisoning, a day or so after they were presented with a homemade chicken and wild rice casserole from Claire (Isabel Durant), huh? Seems like Claire’s got more to apologize to her grandparents for than her petulant tirade a few weeks back.

* There truly wasn’t a better literary couple that DAYS could have compared Ben (Robert Scott Wilson) and Ciara (Victoria Konefal) to other than Romeo & Juliet. But luckily for CIN fans, it appears that these young lovers will have a far happier ending…eventually. Days of Our Lives airs weekdays on NBC. Check your local listings for airtimes.