‘Days of Our Lives’ Week In Review: Family Affairs and Love Gone Wrong

Days of Our Lives is finding its way back to steady ground again. May rolls around once a year, bringing along May Sweeps with it. It’s that special time of year when soaps tend to drop their clunker storylines in favor ones that should grab viewer attention from the very start. Unfortunately with DAYS, a majority of its storylines were clunkers so there’s some major work to be done if May Sweeps is to be as riveting as it should be. Spoilers seem to point to some exciting soap, but we have to wait and see how it plays out. There was a lot that happened this last week to set up the next few weeks and it wasn’t too bad at all. Not to say I’m fully convinced, but I’m excited to see where these new beginnings will take us DAYS viewers.

Week in Review for Days of Our Lives episodes airing May 2nd – May 6th, 2016.

Wrong Turn

Everything was so right in the teen scene only a week ago and now we’ve come to this place. This last week, Ciara Brady suddenly found mother Hope Brady annoying and wanted to move out. On top of that, writers are glaringly moving her into Chad Dimera’s orbit when Chabby and Thiara were two of the show’s biggest couples to root for. Why ruin so many good things all at once?

Now there are reasons behind some of these developments that I can completely understand. Ciara is still dealing with her rape and as with a large percentage of victims of sexual assault; the methods in dealing with a traumatic event aren’t always the best. Underage drinking, vandalism and arrests have all been added to Ciara’s list of slip ups but her mother has stuck by her the entire time yet for some reason she can’t stand Hope anymore. They had such a great, mature relationship before this last week where Ciara announced she was ready to move out and start her own life. And as a full time nanny to Thomas Dimera. I loved the moment where Ciara discussed her new life path with her same aged niece, Claire Brady who seemed much more a realist than her aunt. Pay rent and bills on a nanny and musician salary alone? Since she’s dealing with troubles of her own, it’s understandable that Claire eventually went on board with the idea of a fresh start.

With Kate Mansi soon vacating the role of Abigail Dimera, which leaves Chad Dimera unfortunately without a leading lady in his life. (Time to move to Salem?) Each week that viewers have to see Chad suffering with the decision to commit his new wife and Abigail suffering in her anxieties, it’s like their hearts are broken in different ways. I can’t thank Kate Mansi enough for staying on past her contract expiration to see this storyline through with the justice it deserves. Now, I don’t think having Chad wallowing in the Dimera mansion with his son on his arm waiting for his wife to be better is necessarily justice. But neither is pairing him with the much younger Ciara who is in love with Theo Carver, Chad’s nephew. Not only is the dynamic not there between the actors, but the propping of the two characters together is far from subtle which makes it even farther from being organic. I don’t think there’s confirmation that the two will be romantically involved or even anything other than Chad looking out for Ciara as Abigail’s cousin and Theo’s love interest, but I’m just pre-emptively saying that it’d be an awful idea. Chad did offer for Claire and Ciara to move into the guest house on the Dimera property, an idea that Hope somehow bought into to give her daughter “space” and “tough love”. Both of which are probably not good ideas for a teen battling emotional trauma.

Now while Theo and Ciara had a whirlwind of a courtship, but after being best friends from a young age, I can buy them getting together this quickly. They’re downright adorable together without even regarding the history between the characters. Just please, don’t mess up a good thing when it only just began! Let Thiara thrive the way Chabby did, and in that same vein do not tarnish what Chad and Abigail built. Let’s find alternative routes for these characters, please!

Family First

The Hernandez clan has really filled out Salem, USA and while some DAYS fans are not happy about it, I don’t mind too much at all. Outside of Rafe Hernandez (and maybe Dario), the other part of the family do not make me want to roll my eyes and hope they get stuck that way. Maybe it’s because of how much they remind me of my favorite Mexican-Irish family, the Lopez-Fitzgerald’s of Harmony, New England or maybe it’s because this is an energy the show has been lacking for such a long time. I’ll say it’s a definite mix of both.

Adrianna Hernandez is a joy to watch as she wrangles in all of her children, grandchildren and ex-husband. Now living in Micky Horton’s old house, she has a place to lavish attention on her family with food and her own brand of wisdom. Their scenes in the kitchen together felt rare and heartwarming because when was the last time a whole family was together on DAYS? Though I agree, I wish it happened more often with all of the Brady’s and Horton’s running around instead of a relatively new family on the canvas, I’ll take what I can get. Though I’ll forever complain about Julie Olson not being the singing and dancing town matriarch until I’m blue in the face.

DAYS needs to balance out that darkness with some light every now and then, and that should be in the form of these sweet familial moments. I don’t even mind if like Dario, a grown man throws a tantrum and ruins the moment in the end just as long as we get to see family enjoying their time together however briefly.

Black Knight

We must give applause for Jeannie Theresa Donovan this last week. Singlehandedly, she snatched up Brady Black, strung him up and striped him bare – sadly, only metaphorically. Ever since the introduction of Summer Townshend, Theresa’s world that had finally begun to stabilize itself moved right back onto unsteady terrain all because of Brady’s incessant hero complex. Hearing a character finally address what fans have been saying for months was almost ridiculously satisfying.

It seems that it’s become par for the course for every male DAYS character to have a hero complex, to chase down women they think are “broken” and hound them with unwarranted help. Daniel Jonas was the master of it and with his death, it seems to have granted this trait to his friend Brady. From day one, Theresa did not trust Summer though that was solely based on her insecurities but this last week, we begin to fall into the depths of Summer’s truth. For weeks Summer has been playing the dutiful birth daughter, tending to Maggie Kiriakis’ bedside and even accepting the offer to move in with her and Victor Kiriakis But it’s on her way out of her hotel room that she runs into her past in the form of an old accomplice. He taunts her; she crumbles, calls for Brady and begs him for $50,000 to pay back her debt to her old partner – and Brady folds.

It’s revealed that it was all a part of another scam and Summer pockets part of the 50k. Proving that with insecurities blinding her, Theresa was right about her and her fiancé’s attachment to the woman. Now it’s no secret that I do not care for anything about Summer, so her subsequently murdering her former partner is of very little importance to me. What worries me most is Brady’s intelligence. He was never supposed to be a smart character, was he? But this last week’s action really painted him as an idiot, not just a fool. To want to constantly fix women is a bad habit for a lot of men, it’s an unfortunate reality but to willingly enable them time and time again without seeing the issue with that is plain stupid. Was there some ISA mission where John took Brady along and dropped him a couple times that DAYS viewers didn’t get to see?

It’s just so baffling that Brady who recently lost his job and is working on a startup business would think it’s okay to hand out $50,000 to an admitted criminal. It’s even more baffling that Theresa’s become the voice of reason and Brady is arguing with her when she’s more than 100% right! I’m not a huge fan of Thrady, but Jen Lilley and Eric Martsolf undoubtedly have great chemistry on screen but good God, Theresa deserves someone who has it together up there. It’s almost as if Brady doesn’t love her the same way he used to when she wielded coma inducing fireplace pokers.

As usual, if I missed something you really wanted to talk about or something you felt was important, let’s start a discussion. Comment below, tweet me and let’s chat.