WTF Wednesday: Virtual Eden

If you were watching Days back around the turn of the century, that headline probably tempted you to throw your computer out the window and set yourself on fire. If not, strap in for this ride, because it’s going to be insane.

After being shoehorned into the show through ridiculous circumstances that probably deserve a WTF Wednesday post of their own, Greta von Amburg learned that she was next in line for the crown of, uh, Amburg. When she and her new pal and sorta-love-interest Austin traveled to Downtown Europe to begin the proceedings, they learned that Prince Amburg (or someone acting on his behalf, I don’t remember) required Greta to complete some tasks before she could claim her title. And the tasks were to be held — I’m totally serious here — in a virtual reality Garden of Eden.

Before you ask any of the four thousand questions suddenly clogging up your brain, just watch this:

I mean, WHAT?

(Note: it’s strangely difficult to find clips of this online. This dubbed clip of just a few short scenes was all I could find. I want to know who involved with this decided that they had to wipe as much from it from the internet as humanly possible. I also love that it’s titled “Austin Peck,” because come on — the only way I could see anyone greenlighting this madness is on the basis of “Let’s have Austin Peck run around in a loincloth for a few weeks,” since god knows he was far more qualified to do that than he was to do things like speak English and approximate the inflections and behaviors of real human beings.)

Basically, Greta and Austin had to fight through a series of challenges, including extreme weather, strange monsters, and a whole bunch of other fuckery, in order to earn Greta’s crown. Aside from the concept of “virtual reality” being really hilarious in a 1999-2001 kind of way, it’s just like… who was the Prince of Amburg to set all this shit up? Stefano? And this went on for weeks. Every damn day, we’d go from reasonably normal scenes of the young Philip/Chloe relationship and Nicole seducing Victor to THIS craziness. It’s truly mind-blowing to watch any of it now.

Also, just imagine them trying to do this on the show’s current budget. We wouldn’t see a badly CGI’d snake; we’d see Austin pointing toward the camera and yelling, “Look!” before they cut to a commercial, and then we’d cut back to see him and Greta running back onscreen to talk about how they defeated it. And there would probably be a bench.

Anyway, this would hands-down be the worst thing that ever happened in Days of Our Lives history had it not paved the way for Greta’s Coronation Massacre, which is in my top 5 favorite Days moments of all time.

That lavish party! Nicole wearing her J. Lo dress and I Dream of Jeannie hair! Sami with a garter over her face shrieking about “the tape!” Stefano randomly announcing, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes” while Lexie turns to him with that “The fuck?!” face. And the assassin screaming, “Hasta la vista, everyone!” as he runs out. Every part of this is gold. And if Virtual Eden was the price we had to pay to get to it… well, I won’t say it was worth it, but I can only be so mad.

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Tags: WTF Wednesday

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