Believe It or Not, Days of Our Lives Shocked Life Into a Surprising Number of Stories This Week — Plus, the *Real* Reason We Got That Snowstorm (2024)

Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI (3), Peaco*ck screenshot (2)

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There’s no way we can get around the big white, snowing elephant in the room this week, but I think I actually figured out what’s going on. And aside from that, Days of Our Lives gave us a surprising amount of movement in other stories — you just may have missed it when we got lost in the snow!

Cabin In the Woods

OK, let’s just pull off the band-aid and do this. I’m pretty sure there’s one thing we can all agree on: There was no point to the snowstorm story. At all. It didn’t, as we speculated, involve Clyde. It didn’t advance any story. And unless Chanel gets superpowers from her proximity to Radioactive Paulina, it didn’t introduce anything new. Plus, there was no reason for Julie to be at the cabin, other than comic relief as she kept walking in on Chanel and Johnny and tried to avoid telling Paulina what happened.

Then, after Paulina commandeered asnow plow onto an island, she found Chanel with no problem, staging a rescue from where she was trapped in the rocks — entirely offscreen!If we had seen Chanel trapped, shivering in the snow, building up the danger in a snowstorm over the course of a few days, at least it would have been exciting. But if the resources weren’t there for those scenes, then they shouldn’t have done a snow story to begin with.

Maybe Paulina found Chanel so easily because her radioactivity melted the snow around her. That’s why their outfits were dry and clear when they got back. The snow just parted in front of Paulina, melting into radioactive puddles of slop.

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The thing is, even the folks writing the snow saga weren’t unaware of how absurd it all was. That hit home with Marlena telling John, “This is like the plot of a bad B movie. Except it isn’t funny.” Well… it was kind of funny. From Julie’s juggling of phones and mute button mishap to Marlena’s delivery of, “They can’t go anywhere near her: She’s radioactive,” I chuckled.

Playing Games

And along those lines of pointless stories, Days of Our Lives created an entirely new generic collectible card game (I’m assuming it’s supposed to be something like Magic: The Gathering) for Thomas and Chad to play, just for Thomas to give the tower card back to Konstantin with nothing happening. Thomas taking the card had no point but stalling! So there goes my idea that that’s going to stop the wedding. But at least it was a minor filler tactic, instead of a localized snowstorm that even Chad and Thomas commented on being bizarre.

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But there was that self-awareness in the writing again. And I saw it echoed with Theresa, too, telling Konstantin the part we all have been thinking: “Oh my God, I just can’t believe a woman as smart as Maggie would be gullible to fall for a con artist.” Amen!

It’s like they’re acknowledging that these premises are being stretched beyond incredulity as they stall for time. Hopefully, that means they’re reaching their conclusions soon. And I think there might be more reason to think that than just hope.

Buckle Up

In rapid-fire succession this week, we got movement on practically every actual story out there. Eric, refusing to take Sloan on her word about their finances, overheard Leo talking to his blackmailed wife. Maggie and Konstantin got engaged, which, one way or another has to mean this is drawing to a close. Everett finally signed the divorce papers after a dressing down from Rafe. And the big one? Stefan was freed and joined with Kristen not just to take the “crown” from EJ, but to finally figure out what happened to Li and get Gabi out of prison.

It’s like the snowstorm story (How can the island be so close to Salem that Paulina has influence over it, but have such a localized April blizzard that nothing happened at all in town??) was one last dam of stalling before opening the floodgates.

At least I hope they’re open. But I’m guessing there may have needed to be a lot of filler to stretch things out to hit the right beats for May Sweeps. I had a decent amount of fun with February’s sweeps stories, so my fingers are tightly crossed that May will pull us out of this slump.

Slowing things down so glacially that they lose momentum isn’t great, but the reality is, we’re in a transition period right now as we approach the end of the Writers Strike material. If I were a betting man, I’d say things are going to start ramping back up for sweeps, which will lead into the end of the strike material and the return of the permanent writers. At that point, we can expect them to wrap up the stories quickly that they don’t like and move with lightning speed onto new ones.

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The surprise April snowstorm could be a pretty potent metaphor as we got one last surprise burst of “winter”/filler before “spring” arrives and things start turning around. Or it was just silly and pointless. But I’m hopeful that the next few months are going to be a wild ride.

Press Relief

I was almost disappointed in the press conference. There was a lot of build up to it only to have everyone (and the viewers) miss it. It was such a cop-out. But the fall out was more fun than I expected. There were so many moving parts as folks bickered and fought, split apart to confront each other, plot and whisper, only to come back together again.

There was Nicole laying into EJ, joined by Xander and Chad confronting him, only for EJ to run off and needle Ava and Harris, then come back over to calm things down between Nicole and Stefan, after which Nicole went off with Chad to talk about her future — with the paper, you can be sure. And there was Stefan’s dramatic entrance, shocking everyone that he wasn’t in prison and facing off with EJ over who had the greater blackmail material. Stefan handily won that once he threatened to destroy EJ’s relationship with Nicole.

I loved the choreography and the movement, and while people avoiding prying ears by walking just a few feet away is a bit silly in theory, I was happy to suspend disbelief. They mostly avoided the awkwardness of seeing everyone in the background go quiet while the groupings we’re focused on talked by pulling in tight on each confrontation. I think it mostly just set things up, but I enjoyed the way it was done.

Tough Talk

Was anyone else confused by Wendy’s talk with Tripp? She went on about how she can’t take this constant danger anymore and implied it was because of Tripp and his mom. I thought she’d say, “And that’s why we need to break up,” but instead… nothing happened? She’s not leaving, that much I’m sure of. Because Victoria Grace was very much a part of the 15,000th episode celebration which isn’t airing until December — along with her TV brother Remington Hoffman.

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Plus with Kristen calling Wei Shin, her plotting with Stefan to find out who really killed Li and the chances of Li actually being alive, sending Wendy off just as we’re getting back to her family and their mysteries would be crazy. Maybe the show should have her find and kill Clyde. I wouldn’t hate that.

Stray Thoughts…

• Marlena’s face when Stephanie mentioned hoping Everett would continue with the hypnosis was perfect. Way to keep that doctor/patient confidentiality in the face of a blatant lie.

• “There are other reporters at The Spectator. Send one over and I’ll be happy to comment.” There are?! I learned something from Rafe today.
• So Konstantin claimed he’s genuinely fond of Maggie… but he’s still going to take her for everything she’s worth. That just did the opposite of humanizing him. “I know she doesn’t deserve this, but I’m ruining her anyway.”
• Konstantin’s ex-wife killed their daughter. I’m calling it now. I don’t know why, but they just jammed her in there this week. She did it.

Celebrate 15,000 episodes of Days of Our Lives with our behind-the-scenes photo gallery and the show’s big bash below.