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Last week’s Days of Our Lives did not slow down the building momentum at all. There were so many storylines at play that it was almost dizzying – but that’s not at all a bad thing.
Head writers Dena Higley and Josh Griffith are demonstrating that not only should storylines have actual story to them, but they should also weave with others, forming a cohesive tale. Last year General Hospital did that extremely well before it turned into what it is now. I’m excited to see DAYS take the same route but hopefully all of those proverbial wires don’t find themselves knotted up in the end. Because so much happened and because I generally liked it all, it was very difficult to pick out highlights this week.
Now onto what went down in Salem, USA last week!
Week in Review for Days of Our Lives episodes airing August 31st-September 4th, 2015.
Sealed Fate
As viewers, we’ve been seeing JJ Deveraux and Paige Larson slowly drifting back to one another – even if we didn’t like it. They’d played the happy couple before and it seemed like that’s what we’d be seeing on screens again soon, unfortunately (or fortunately?) this last week’s events sealed their fate. And it’s sure to not be the one they expected.
As expected, hero-in-training JJ finally discovered he was a little in over his head with this undercover drug sting. He’d been cruising along mostly on good luck, able to fool the local drug pusher into thinking he was back in the game and not feeding information to Roman Brady at Salem PD. He might have made it and successfully cracked the drug trafficking wide open if his vengeful ex-lover and mother of his ex-girlfriend, Eve Donovan, hadn’t squealed. We saw her telling the dealer Kyle that JJ was working hand in hand with the police, looking to take him and his operation down. Now privy to the betrayal, Kyle went after JJ, wanting to force him to “quality check” their new shipment of meth. It was obviously a test and when JJ refused to partake in drugs, Kyle knew where his loyalty truly lies. These scenes are actually tense, maybe not keeping me on the edge of my seat tense but certainly keeping me riveted, more so than when the story began a few weeks ago. The show’s new direction has been working even for the old storylines and when Clyde Weston is called in by Kyle, that’s when things start to really get interesting.
Unfortunately, this was the last time any of us will see Kyle in that perfectly tailored brown shirt as Clyde puts him down off screen. JJ had been knocked out by a pistol whip when it all happened so he comes to with just Clyde looming over him. This new version of Clyde is much more believable than anything we’d seen in the last two years. No one was ever going to buy the self-made trucking mogul from the south as a formidable rival to Victor Kiriakis and Stefano Dimera; these are men who have run prostitution rings, committed organ theft, brainwashed and risen from the dead a few times, Clyde could never be in their league. The new writers seemed to have figured that out as they began to color Clyde as more of a violent thug than a crime overlord. He’s been getting his hands dirty and everyone knows that a true crime boss has underlings to do that instead. After attacking Aiden Jennings and now killing Kyle, Clyde has gone off of his once well controlled rails and now that Kate Roberts has dumped him, I can’t imagine he’ll get any better.
He definitely had JJ quivering, showing that though he’s being propped up as a next generation hero, he’s still very much a kid stuck in an adult predicament. The viewers have seen JJ experience a wide range of emotions but seeing him cowering in genuine fear felt new. After Clyde forced JJ to be his new dealer, he promised that if JJ told anyone of his operation then he’d kill Paige – so JJ went home and told Paige. Couple together the fact that not only is there a death threat looming over her head but also a serial killer on the loose, Paige who is notorious for having a very low level of chill factor, might not last for much longer.
Salem’s latest serial killer strikes again this coming week and none other than JJ is the one making the grisly discovery. The new writers continue to wipe the Gary Tomlin and Christopher Whitesell slate clean with impressive efficiency; so if Paige must go, then she must go. This is the perfect chance for JJ to become that young tragic hero that the show has been missing. Yes, JJ is a good person who wants to do good things but he seems to be inherently naïve, a major flaw, which leads to lots of trouble for him. Casey Moss has proven himself countless times in his two years on DAYS, we know that he can handle more meaty material than just teen angst and this upcoming turn of events seems to be just that for him. Plus, cousin Joey Johnson now has the moody teen angle on lockdown.
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