Updated Nov. 6 2018: They brought EJ back with a different actor, because the original EJ did not want to play EJ again. I stopped reading the spoilers for Days that were posted on my google news feed, because it kind of ruined the surprise. Please leave any comments. I am willing to give this storyline a chance, but I did not like EJ and Sami, but it was better than EJ and Rafe. The whole issue with EJ and Sami was the it was just them fighting all the time. They got married, but the whole thing was like practical joke in which Sami stops the wedding and refuses to marry him just for revenge. Then it was just the two of them fighting for custody of the many children. I never felt they had the chemistry to be a super couple like John and Marlena or Bo and Hope or Jack and Jenn, because they just hated each other. I find it so hard to believe that Sami really wanted him back enough to travel the world looking for him. All I can say is I really hope the new actor will represent a change in the storyline, so it is not just so evil.
Updated March 13, 2018
Days has been renewed again. There are some idea being talked about on Facebook. One of them is the issue of Hope and Rafe. They are broken up at this time, but the issue was that Hope looked too old. Hope looking old is an issue. She was never that great an actress, I thought, but I still enjoyed the character. I like the Bo, Hope, Bille triangle, but now Hope needs to take on a more matronly role. In a 2014 she swore, she would never get plastic surgery, but she has had fillers and breast implants. Her face is looking better now, as if she had some fillers, but her neck is very distracting. She has a large canyon in the middle of her neck with two vertical ridges on either side. I don’t know if this if from her being underweight? I don’t know if the whole I am never getting plastic surgery was some kind of dig at Marlena? I know Marlena looked at one point, as if her eyes would not open all the way, but that issue has resolved. I think it’s very hypocritical for Hope to act like she is all natural and superior, when she has huge breast implants, at least double DDs on a very thin frame. She really needs to fix her neck or retire or start taking on matronly roles or always wear scarves. She was once of normal weight, but for many years has been stick thin. I think larger women aka Anna, are more beautiful and more suitable for romantic roles. Anna and Tony is the romance that I wish they would bring back. They should also bring back Bo, and have Hope stay with him. That would work better, than trying to place Hope in romantic roles that need younger women. Her aged neck would be sign that she is well married woman, and Bo still loves her in spite of her neck situation.
Updated: October 19, 2017 There has been an improvement in Days of Our Lives lately, bring back cast members, and I am a cautiously optimistic that Days could return to the glory days under James E. Reilly Head writer: December 21, 1992 – January 5, 1998; August 11, 2003 – August 9, 2006. I started watching around 1992, because I remember I had moved into a new house and the show came on after the news. But, after James Reilly left the first time I got discouraged, and I stopped taping Days on the VCR and did not watch it for years. Then when he came back in 2003, I ended up watching again, but I did not have internet service and I had no idea what was wrong with Days. Why did the show decline and why did it improve? These things were all mysteries. The second time James came back I had TiVo and I watched everyday and even became obsessed to the point in which I was writing a daily summary of Days in my Live Journal Account because nothing was happening in my life worth detailing in Live Journal. When James was writing the show was creative and similar to the Original Twin Peaks. When James was not writing the show was an unwatchable program of mundane characters living boring lives and having equally boring romances. I also had high hopes for writer Dena Higley, but I was let down. The story did not improve, characters (whom I cared about) were unceremoniously dumped. And even when characters I liked such as Sami & Lucas, and Carrie & Austin returned, nothing interesting was done with the characters. I learned the magic of Days could not be created based on characters whom I had bonded with alone. The show lives or dies by the head writer. The new head writer is Ron Carlivati, and I like what he is doing so far.
End update
second update re character Nicole Oct. 19, 2017
Nicole played by Arianne Zucker is leaving and her last day ironically will be on my birthday Oct. 20. I see this as a birthday present. Nicole has been a thorn in my side since 1998. I notice this is exactly the time in which James Reilly left as a writer. I never liked her from the beginning and did not want her as a character. She was a late comer to the party in my eyes, although to many others I can see that she is like an older timer on the show. It was not so much that she is a poor actress, but she was not given interesting material. She tired to do her best, but she had some kind of strange skin condition. Her face a Sebaceous Hyperplasia, that I found distracting. It was so large on the screen. After a while, she had it removed, but more of these skin issues continued to crop up. Makeup was not able to cover or correct them. The lighting could have been adjusted, but they seemed to film Days in a rush with little thought to inconsistencies and mistakes. I will never forget the time Sami was rushing to check on infant Will, and she was not wearing a bra.
Nicole’s current plotline has been bizarre and unrealistic, but yet not interesting. She is current in love with two men who could be brothers named Brady and Eric. But, Eric Brady is the name a character who is Sami’s twin brother. For a long time I believe that Eric and Brady were the same person. I fast forwarded them as much as I possible could with the primitive Comcast dvr that I am forced to use because Ukiah refuses to update to the Xfinity newer DVRs. I am still not sure if Eric or Brady is Sami’s brother or who these two identical looking men are. Are they played by the same actor? I did look it up online, but I could not find out. I don’t care which man she ends up with only that she pick one of them and lives happily ever after with him.
I thought she was good with Deimos, who was a temporary villain. She hated Deimos, then she loved him. Then she stabbed someone to save Deimos, causing her to lose custody of her baby. Then she stabbed, and killed Deimos. I never watched when she with a character named Daniel. Daniel was the father of her baby via surrogate mother Chole Lane. Daniel occurred when I was on strike from watching Days and I was wishing the show would be cancelled. Eric killed Daniel in a drunken car accident, but his ghost came back when Deimos placed a drug in the champagne at a party. Watching Nicole is as cheerful as watching someone die of cancer. She was also married to Victor at one point. I forgot she was ever married to Lucas, I checked her Wikipedia for the character, (not for the actress) and there is a list of all her marriages and affairs.
Updated October 20, 2017
Eric committed suicide over Nicole. Nicole left town without either Brady or Eric, but swears she will someday get back with Eric or at least won’t give up on him. What a terrible ending, who wrote this? Eric is most likely not going to die as Jennifer found him in time to save him.
end second update re: Nicole
Days Of Our Lives Summaries for long time fans
I found that I had written plot summaries for Days and saved them in my files. I wanted to bring some of them back into this blog.
Stefano was a rich and powerful Italian like Tony Soprano. He also had a son named Tony who is about 35, played by Thaao Penghlis. Tony was changed into Andre, they are the same actor, (who is Greek). Since Tony had been killed so many times for being a villain, they had Tony die and brought him back as Andre. One can think of them as the same character. Again it is more complex than that as Andre and Tony both were alive at the same time, but it seemed to me, after not watching for a long time, that Tony was still on the show and they were calling him Andre. It was really weird. I had to adjust to the name Andre. Now Stefano is off the show because the actor has died.
When the characters were stuck living on an Island, Roman and Abe had held Tony prisoner and they wanted to beat the truth out of him, but Marlena begged for his Mercy. She is a living Saint, and can’t stand to see anyone hurt.
Later, Stefano was given a grandson who was played by actor named James Scott. his name on the show was EJ, and he was an English actor with an English accent he completely did not fit in with being Stefano’s whereas Tony/Andre at least looked like he could possibly be related to Stefano in some way.
There was a big controversy over Sami’s relationship with EJ, because EJ Had taken Sami to the remote cabin and told her he would kill Lucas if they did not have sex. This caused many people to call for the termination of the Sami EJ story line. But many fans who call themselves fans of Sami and EJ and the word for it was Jami, or something like that. And Days of Our Lives justified the couple by citing the fact that the super couple Luke and Laura had also started out with a rape. So, the fans wanted Sami and EJ to be together also citing the number of children between Sami and EJ during their long tumultuous relationship. I did not keep notes on the Sami and EJ relationship first because I got really annoyed with Days of Our Lives many times which would cause me two quit watching the show, for extended periods of time and sometimes weeks months or years. When I turned the show back on again EJ and Sami had already been involved for number of years. I never watch them get together and for this reason I don’t claim to be a good chronicle are of Days of Our Lives. I did see the cabin scene, because somebody uploaded it You Tube. Upon which it was promptly removed by NBC. NBC does not allow or sell full access to the entire scope of the show Days of Our Lives now. You must forgive the number of mistakes in this dialog because I’m using speech to text and my hands being so injured are not able to type long passages, although I may go back and make a few corrections to this file.
Even as an unreliable narrator of Days of Our Lives I can see Wikipedia does not have a complete summary of the story of Kristin. I can successfully summarize the story of Kristin. Kristin Dimera fell in love with John Black. Kristin had been sent by Stefano to steal John Black away from Marlena because Stefano wanted Marlena for himself. Stefano kept Marlena inside a cage for a while. It looked like a large bird-cage. That was the point in which I started to watching Days of Our Lives because there was no Internet at the time, and the soap opera just came on the TV after the news. The year must have been 1991 or 1992. The news was on at noon, Days of Our Lives started at 1:00. I had been watching a half hour soap opera called Loving which I really liked but it was canceled. Loving was the first soap opera that I ever watched, except when I was a child and the baby sitter used to watch the Edge Of Night and As The World Turns. As The World Turns is mentioned in story of Chris Foley inside the Novel the Pale King by David Foster Wallace.
Before Marlena was in a cage, she had been possessed by the Devil which cause her to levitate. Although John Black was not Marlena’s original husband he has been involved with Marlena since I started watching. Marlena was originally married to Roman Brady but Stefano use John Black to break up her marriage. Kristin was also a daughter of Stefano who did not look even slightly Italian. After Roman Brady came back Marlena realized she loved John Black more than Roman Brady. And the actor who played Roman Brady was replaced with somebody who seemed to be much less attractive.
James E. Riley was the writer whom, I preferred. After he left are once again I got very upset, and when on a hiatus from watching Days of Our Lives. According to Nietzsche, it is wrong to give a positive reward to someone who has treated you badly. Nietzsche further explains that if two continue to reward someone who has treated she badly you give them no incentive to change, and you will never receive better treatment. My Hiatus is from Days of Our Lives were under protest of boring scripts, boring dialogue, and boring plotlines.
I had to admit that this meant I missed some good scenes on Days of Our Lives, but I also felt extremely inconvenienced by the large number of commercials and then need too fast forward them away was too much effort for me.
However, the story of Kristin is one that I know well. Kristin was in love with John Black and she was having his baby, but she accidentally miscarried the baby so she hired look-alike Susan to carry the baby which was in fact Stefano’s baby which he impregnated her when he was dressed as Elvis and she thought she was having a dream. Susan was an Elvis super fan. When EJ is introduced he is artificially aged because she is supposed to be the grandson of Stefano and the son of Susan.
There was also another Kristin look-alike who was a Nun. It was not really clear just how the Nun fit into the plotline. Although I do recall the Nun and saying something threatening like such as “you had best beware.” Note: many characters on Days used to say announcement which one may think was foreshadowing, but usually nothing came from it.
So eventually John found out Kristin was lying about everything, and he got back together with Marlena. So, Kristin knowing that Marlena was allergic to penicillin placed a piece of candy with penicillin inside in the eye candy box, on Marlena’s coffee table. Marlena’s is young child Belle? was going to eat the candy but was somehow saved that the last-minute. As punishment Kristin was put on an island in which she would be stuck there forever like the fate of Julia in the I, Claudius book by Robert Graves. Then she was gone from the show for many years, and I always wanted her back. This may have been one of the reasons that I stopped watching and since James Riley had left the show nothing supernatural was going on.
I did really enjoy the character Vivian Alamain, also but she was terminated, and at the point I also stopped watching again to punish Days of Our Lives for doing things that I didn’t want them to do.
Kristin was not being sold into a harem, although Susan spent time in the harem because Kristin put her there. The island Kristin was put on was a tropical island, and she was in a kind of the tower. Her last words the show was “I have to stay here forever.” Unless the island was the harem? My impression she was going to be alone. I need Wikipedia to show proof, because Wikipedia has an entry on Kristin where she goes into a harem. But the whole thing is inconsequential, and I am just nitpicking.
But when they brought Kristin back, I didn’t watch those episodes. The reason was it seemed that nothing was going on there was no plot or it was too slow to get started.
Before I started to watch, apparently, Kristin was introduced to Salem when she was mugged and saved by John Black. I was not watching that early, but I do remember a magic mirror, that Stefano installed in the house that Kristin and John were staying in and each time John looked into the mirror he was hypnotized to fall in love with Kristin.
One would simply think that Stefano’s overall goal was to make Marlena whom he called “Queen of the Night” fall in love with him, but it all much more complex than that.
I would like to be able to go back and watch everything from the beginning without commercials by Subscription. I cleared missed a lot of early Kristen, Marlena’s demonic possession, and many more things I want to see.
So many new and unwanted characters were introduced to the show which made the quality decline. First and foremost, was Rafael Hernandez and his large family of characters including his Sister Gabriella, his mother, father his brother Dario. Rafe was introduced as a love interest for Sami which broke up the relationship between Sami and EJ. Rafe started as Sami’s bodyguard. Not one good thing has come out of the Rafe plotline. Fans called it “The Rafes of our Lives” because they were so many of them.
So instead of being the original story about the Bradys and the Demaris, It was now about Rafe and his family and all the all of them are terrible actors. All the new characters confused and convoluted the original plot and story to the point in which it was nothing like the original story, which I believe that now the writers are hoping to get back to.
I am publishing the notes I took when I was making a daily summary of Days of Our Lives. I regret not taking notes during my favorite part of the Show which was the point in which Kristen played by Eileen Davidson was also playing Susan. But here are the few notes I found. I found things I don’t remember happening. I found a character named Jan whom I had completely forgotten, because she did not really fit into the storyline.
Start episode summaries
August 4, 2004
On the subject of the “Days of Our Lives”, which is my favorite soap opera. I think everyone is watching now hoping Sami and Lucas are going to get married. I think I have been with Sami and Lucas for over 10 years, it is hard to remember. Just as we think they will get married, they get into another big fight. Lucas just asked Sami to marry him, but she won’t say yes, because she thinks he is plotting against her. Sami appears to have serious mental illness, but looks very pretty. Sami loves Lucas, but she hates his mother Kate. They have one child together, a boy named Will, and he wants them to get married. Everyone is praying that Will’s Dream will come true.
(Originally Sami was in love with Austin, and using Lucas to help her win Austin, but eventually she changed to loving Lucas. Lucas is still on the show as of 9/7/2017, but Sami, Austin and Carrie are out.)
Shawn is presenting living a cage being held prisoner by Jan for some months now. Yet, it still looks buff, and not like a POW.
In spite of being handcuffed to the bed, kept in a cage, tortured and drugged, he remains rebellious. He should tell Jan he loves her so she will let him out of the cage, but he won’t for three or four months. I kind of lost track of the time. Now, you the reader are saying this can’t be sure, what kind of sick kinky soap opera is this? People on Days are commonly held prisoner, it happened to Marlena.
Once Stefano used a mind control machine on John Black to force him to fall in love with Kristin, instead of Marlena. Marlena was married to Roman, but Stefano tricked her by replacing him with John Black. She lived with John as man and wife, but later found Stefano had tricked her. She had to choose so she chose John over Roman. Then later Stefano kept her in cage for months, and he tried to break her and make her love him. The strange thing that Stefano did was to introduce John Black to replace Roman and the whole goal, was I believe to cause Marlena to fall in love with him. It makes no sense at all.
September 3, 2004
Shawn escaped from Jan, yet neglected to tie Jan up, so she is now hunting with down dressed as Nun with a large hypo filled with tranquilizer.
Days can be completely absurd and unbelievable when they take things this far into the ridiculous. Clearly Shawn would have called 911 and gone to the hospital to get treatment for his injuries, since he can barely walk, not go to the church to look for Belle where Jan is waiting for him. Without TiVo, it would be too difficult to watch, because I need to quickly fast forward past all the junk, to get to the interesting parts.
After Tony has ruined the device, for the second time, the only ones left under the force field are discussing those who tried to escape. The device was the force field that was keeping them all on the Island, but I am not sure.
I once had a pair of gloves, I got in London at Harold’s and they were better than any other gloves, I have ever had. The were black leather with red silk lining. I lose the left glove, and so I tried to mail order new ones, but the ones I received were not up to the par of the original pair. I called them my magic gloves and I was very distressed to lose one of them. I liked to pretend the gloves were magic, and therefore losing one would give me a 50 percent power reduction. And I tried later to replace the gloves, and I could not find any that were well made from Harrods or otherwise. They must have started making them all in China, so I had to buy gloves just where ever I could find them and they fit. That was the end of brand loyalty.
Marlene has to be dead, because she was stabbed in the heart with a pen knife and also embalmed. She was later brought to the Island, and it must have been one of her many doubles who was killed.
Right now, September 2017, Marlena has an evil double named Hattie. Days is filled with doubles, even Rafe had a double called evil Rafe, and on Twin Peaks the Revival, they had many Cooper doubles. All major characters have had doubles, I believe and sometimes many doubles. I think it has to do with budgeting, by making the same actor play two roles. It saves money.
September 13, 2004
Today on Days, Hope is tormented by bats. John gets angry at Tony and grasps him by the collars, just the hint of violence to come. Tony is not afraid of him, and replies, calmly and defiantly. “You always wanted to go there, didn’t you.?”
September 14, 2017
Today on Days, nothing hardly happened, they don’t follow each plot line, each day, so I have to wait until tomorrow to find out what happened to Tony.
Billie was brought to the island, by the Controllers of New Salem, who play God with the prisoners on the island, by playing with their emotions. Marlena swears revenge. They cut to a fire, as she screams, “Hell Fire, and they will pay”, but Marlena is a total wimp and she can’t do a thing. This happened a couple of days ago, but I did not mention it earlier. I would be surprised if they follow the foreshadowing, and have Marlena exact revenge.
Billie was attractive girl who was played by two different actors. Her role was to steal Bo. Brady away from Hope. Billy used the pregnancy to win Bo over but then she had to leave.
Marlena swears revenge on the controllers of New Salem, but she is completely hopeless, maybe John can exact revenge? He was a former Mercenary. He was a priest, at first, but Stefano brainwashed him and made him a hired killer, then replaced him with Marlena’s husband Roman. She could not tell them apart. Impossible in real life, but true to Days.
Shawn finally got away from Jan, or is this another trick? I won’t know until Monday because the episodes end with Shawn being free, but he can’t find Belle and Phillip just yet.
Sami has a psychotic delusion about Kate and she swears to “kill” her, but Kate is near by in the next booth, and hears insane Sami talking to herself about how she will get rid of Kate.
Kate says to herself, “If it is war you want, it is war you got.”
Kate was to later frame Sami for the murder of Franco Kelly. A man who looked Italian, but had an Irish last name, go figure. Sami was almost put to death for this, but at the last-minute, it was proved that Lucas killed Franco because he loved Sami. Lucas never went to jail for what he did because they pinned the murder on a mob boss.
At one point, Stefano tricked Sami into being a man called Stan who would go and do evil things, just like Stefano tricked Hope into being Princess Gina, so she could steal jewels for him.
Macy Makes Magic 