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Days of Our Lives returned to airwaves this week with… a not so bad set of episodes! As always, there will be ups and downs when it comes to the stories but the ups were interesting enough to keep me watching all week. Although there truly isn’t much happening at the moment, just a lot of setting up for future stories (that will most likely be destroyed once the new head writers’ material begins in a week), there were still some bright spots shining through the darkness of days past. I appreciated this week for what it was even while knowing that next week when the new writers’ material airs, it’ll all be shattered to bits. But onto the highlights of the last week in Salem!
Week in Review for Days of Our Lives episodes airing August 22nd – 26th.
Hung Up
Claire and Ciara Brady, they’re not just same aged aunt and niece, but also teenagers full of a lot of feelings. Seriously, these two girls were pouring it all out this week in Salem without a single reservation. In a sense, you have to admire even a little bit that these young women were able to open about how they felt but wow, was it a lot to handle!
Claire interested me since the first day she returned to Salem, more grown and a little quirky. Olivia Rose Keegan’s delivery always gives Claire this light, kind of airheaded feel but she’s actually almost always the most self-assured teen when thrown in with her crew; getting her wishy-washy parents into a clearer head space, helping Ciara through the aftermath of her rape and ultimately coming up with the badass idea to torment Chase Jennings in an abandoned warehouse. Claire is unique and more and more you get a sense of her personality. This week Claire was spunkier than ever. After discovering Chloe Lane’s pregnancy, she promised to keep it a secret as long as they continued to work together. She’d been working on a song that she really wanted to share with her boss and promptly heads around town singing it – multiple times. By the second time Claire broke into song I was giggling, not because it was bad but because it was already too many musical sequences in one episode. Actually seeing her go through the process of creating the song just further reinforced her love for making and playing music, a huge chunk of her personality.
Then there’s her aunt, Ciara who after growing up lost about 99% of her personality. Viewers were treated to a confusing, almost robotic crying scene when she learned of cousin Abigail Dimera’s “death” from Theo Carver. The tears were there but the emotion seemed placed elsewhere for both actress and character. Theo could see it too and almost as soon as the two longtime friends had gotten together, Ciara was off, eager to check in with Chad Dimera instead of wondering how said friend was doing. Thankfully Claire showed up and the two worked through their feelings together – with their mouths. Theo and Claire’s kiss was surprisingly hot and there was a definite spark there. And honestly, pairing two of the most well-acted and fully formed teens character-wise (not that it means much, I mean these kids literally got excited at the prospect of drinking soda) just makes sense and I can’t believe I was blinded by anything else before. I want to see more of them together. There was this perfect awkward but realistic atmosphere as Claire tried to express her feelings to Theo while also explaining what about those feelings to the highly functioning autistic. Some DAYS fans found the scenes uncomfortable, as if Claire was coming on too strong to someone with “special needs”. What I saw was a nervous girl trying to sort through her feelings for a boy who was different and needed an extra push to get it; nothing more, nothing less.
On the other side of Salem, things weren’t going so well for Ciara and rightfully so. Belle Black had been doing her best to offer counsel to Chad during the custody battle only to have Ciara barge in with an attitude. If I were Belle and my husband’s little sister was trying to dismiss me from the premises, there would have been a little bloodshed but Belle remained levelheaded and let Ciara play into the fantasy that she could save the day for Chad and Thomas. There was this bizarre manic energy around her as she desperately tried to convince Chad that she’d be there for him, that she was all he and his family needed now that Abigail was gone. Her cousin wasn’t even reported dead for an entire day until Ciara was confessing her love for Abigail’s husband… Talk about taking it to a new level of messy. So unlike Claire, Ciara has no personality left and it shows in the fact that at 18 she’s ready to put her life on hold to raise another woman’s baby. That’s her only goal… As if her sudden infatuation with Chad wasn’t creepy enough from the beginning, having it culminate in an even scarier climax was worrisome. What’s going on with Ciara? If her mom can live it up after losing two husbands, then why can’t she bounce back the same way? That was sarcasm there but I really think Ciara could only benefit from having more regular sit downs with Marlena Evans.
The only enjoyment I got from these scenes of Ciara and Chad was him shutting her down with such precision, giving her no wiggle room no matter how hard she fought for it. That’s why I got a sick kind of pleasure when Ciara walked in on Claire and Theo making out at the townhouse. For the way she treated her friends and family in her blind hunt for Chad’s heart, she kind of deserved to have hers stepped on. As far as what Ciara does next, I can’t say I care too much but wherever Theo and Claire go, I think I’ll be keeping an eye out for them. This has to be the only case where a character became less complicated with SORASing because with her old spunk, Ciara and Claire could have easily become a new generation’s Sami and Carrie. But no, we’re never that lucky.
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