Days of Our Lives has been a soap a little off the beaten path since the 1990s when James Reilly’s vision for the show took shape with characters being buried alive and possessed by the devil. However, even those fantastical plots were character-driven and told with heart. Unfortunately, over the last few years, nearly every DAYS plot has seemed like nothing more than a parody of an actual soap.
Days of Our Lives Left Us Feeling Empty
While the characters we knew and loved were still there, everything they did seemed rushed to advance an outrageous plot. We barely knew what our favorites were thinking or feeling in quick soundbite-like scenes that didn’t connect us to the characters at all.
Watching two DiMera brothers and their girlfriends try to one-up one another wasn’t heart-filled soap opera. It just left a bad taste in our mouths and bored us to tears. When half the town ate tainted Sweet Bits biscuits and spent a few episodes high out of their minds, all they could think about was sex, in a series of cringe-worthy hours that couldn’t end soon enough.
Now, it’s like a flip has been switched and we can’t wait for more.
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The Change In DAYS
During the last few weeks, DAYS has become something entirely different and it’s like night and day. The scenes are longer, characters show emotion and heart, plots are grounded in relative reality (for a soap at least), and we feel something when watching again.
Holly’s (Ashley Puzemis) New Year’s Eve overdose brought tainted street drugs and opioid use to the forefront while highlighting how parents can miss the signs that their kids are turning to substances to dull the pain in their lives. Holly’s erratic childhood and the neglect she’s felt from her grieving and preoccupied mother are not being swept under the rug but instead are used as a very real reason for her actions.
DAYS also dug into history when Eric (Greg Vaughan) sat by a comatose Holly’s bedside and remembered how she once called him “Daddy” and he thought of her as his daughter before throwing it all away to help his friends with a crisis in Africa.
Rather than Mayor Paulina (Jackee Harry) having some mystery disease with no name (a la Eric Forrester on The Bold and the Beautiful), Paulina has cancer. Ignoring her symptoms while forging on with her busy life is very in character for Paulina. It’s also brought home the importance of cancer early detection.
We even have secrets and romance, very important soap elements that keep us coming back for more. How long can Ava (Tamara Braun) hide her drug trafficking from Harris (Steve Burton)? How long can Theresa (Emily O’Brien) hide Alex’s (Robert Scott Wilson) true identity from him when he’s fallen hard for her?
DAYS has also been making us smile with some of are reunited couples finding one another again — namely Johnny (Carson Boatman) and Chanel (Raven Bowens) and Sarah (Linsey Godfrey) and Xander (Paul Telfer). We’re not sure how long this new Salem scene will last, but we definitely like what we see and will keep tuning in hoping to get as much of DAYS’ true heart as we can.
Days of Our Lives streams weekdays on Peacock starting at 6 AM EST. Remember, you can always find the latest DAYS spoilers, recaps, and news on Facebook at Days of Our Lives Daily. Also, meet fellow fans and talk all things DAYS with our Facebook community group.
