Cheers ‘n’ Jeers

Can I just say how delighted I am by this welcome home party/Horton Center fundraiser/festival of narcotics going on at the Martin House this week? I don’t necessarily mean “delighted” in a positive way, but at least I’m giggling a lot. I mean, there are actual extras, which always thrills me, and you had that amazing fake-out cliffhanger of Hope screaming, “You can’t drink that!” in the middle of Eric’s speech, only to return from commercial and learn that she didn’t want him to toast with water because it’s bad luck, plus Deimos dressed up as Colonel Sanders/Drew Donovan and not being recognized by people who were six feet away from him.

This reminded me of when Jack showed up to the Horton Town Square opening with a beard and stood within earshot of Jennifer and Maggie, neither of whom recognized him because, you know, facial hair. I also can’t really handle/comprehend the insanity of Deimos taking the time to whip up a totally new formula for Halo — a formula that has completely different effects than the old one. That one made people black out and feel wretched, whereas this one… makes you horny and goofy, which just seems like a completely different drug to me, but hey, what do I know? I’m no CEO or drug kingpin!

I did legitimately enjoy the younger characters babbling all drunkenly at the end of the episode, though. Can we have more of that? It gave me shades of the Great Pot Brownie Book Club Incident.

A lot of things Abigail does these days confound me, but showing up to this party dressed like some sort of Elizabethan-era hussy (you know, exposed shoulders) is really up there.

This is actually a way more flattering photo of the dress than anything that appeared in motion in Tuesday’s episode. She had more ruffles going on than Maggie Kiriakis dressed up to sob over Daniel in her living room.

Jade was also working a similar silhouette earlier in the week, but with fewer ruffles and 100% more bra strap.

I don’t really know that White Jade (as opposed to the original Jade) seems batshit crazy so much as deeply, troublingly stupid, in that she doesn’t seem to have any sense of normal human behavior or consequences, but I sort of enjoyed her interactions with Eric on Monday’s episode. Any time they put two unlikely characters in a scene together, I at least wind up paying attention, and Greg Vaughan was definitely playing the subtext — since it wasn’t actually in the dialogue — of how Eric had a “sex” (rape) tape made of himself that destroyed his life. I’d have liked for a little more of that to be actual text, but it was an interesting tie. Jade could still fall into the river and I’d never ask where she went, but at least I felt like focusing enough to find out what was going on in these scenes!

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What Happened in Salem: Week of June 19th

While the “Great” Island Adventure wrapped up in the span of one episode…

Before leaving town for New York, Chloe told Nicole that she and Holly belong together and handed the baby over. Nicole and Brady were grateful and then insisted on spending an entire episode crowing about how happy they are and how things are finally perfect, which in true Salem style conjured up a call from a judge, who decreed that Nicole isn’t fit to be a parent and placed Holly in foster care for 60 days. Nicole told Brady that she plans to prove that she’s a fit mother, which will probably mean telling the judge all about how she was engaged to the Great Daniel Jonas, and if he deemed her worthy, who is anyone else to say otherwise?

Read the full recap to catch up on What Happened in Salem last week!

Once You Go Black…

I know I’ve been ragging a lot on how retirement-age John Black seems to be the only agent the ISA wants for anything, but let’s just take a moment to reflect on how great his hair looks now that he’s stopped coloring it.

I love John the most when he’s, like, being a dad and talking about the Cubs and “That’s a fact”-ing, so this going gray really works for him. It’s almost enough for me not to be irritated about these endless scenes of him leaving on another damn mission and promising Marlena he’ll be back soon and blah blah. Hasn’t this been going for like four hundred years?!

 

Always Be My Baby

After this entire months-long baby Holly debacle, Days managed to “redeem” Chloe in the span of an episode, which was actually pretty impressive.

“No, Nicole, your hair, uh, it looks great. It’s beautiful,” she lied, as only a true friend would.

Oh, wait. No, it wasn’t that. That’s dialogue that not even Dame Judi Dench could’ve gotten through without bursting into laughter.

But that emotional exchange between Chloe and Nicole worked really, really well, I thought. Chloe’s talk about the voice in her head that kept telling her it was wrong to keep Holly from Nicole added some much-needed depth to this whole thing, and the mere act of doing the right thing and leaving Holly with Nicole actually worked for me in terms of wiping away months of ickiness between the two women. I might be in the minority, though, in that I didn’t think Chloe needed a ton of “redeeming” here. The setup was contrived as hell, but she carried that baby and then genuinely feared leaving her in Deimos’s care. She told Nicole repeatedly that all she had to do was end things with Deimos — a man exhibiting signs of being a controlling, callous psycho at every turn — in order to have the child, and Nicole refused. When Nicole finally broke up with Deimos, right before the actual custody hearing, there was evidence that Deimos had tried to bribe the judge. Why should Chloe have believed Nicole then? And don’t get me started on Chloe apologizing for Brady being shot. She didn’t force Nicole to kidnap that baby, or Brady to go along with her, or Deimos to hire Xander, or Xander to pull that trigger… That’s like blaming Trader Joe’s for the pizza binge I went on last weekend, because they were low on thin-sliced chicken breasts when I went shopping earlier in the week, so by Sunday, I had nothing left to make for dinner and obviously my only remaining choice was to order Domino’s and shame-eat the entire thing. Uh, yeah. Let’s blame Trader Joe’s. And Chloe.

Anyway, this entire thing was sloppily written at best, so much so that it’s tough to dissect anyone’s motivations or actions in a clear way because there were ample amounts of contradictory evidence right there onscreen. But at least it’s over, and Nicole has her baby, which is something most of us have been rooting for since 2009 even though she is really trying my damn patience these days, and Chloe can head off to New York for a bit and then come back and be treated like an actual human being by other Salemites.

ISAARP

“Um, John? How did we wind up on Gilligan’s Island?”

The ending of the Island of Misfit Young Lovers was so hilariously rushed that they might as well have had Ron Carlivati pop up onscreen and tell us, “I really do not want to deal with this any more than you guys do, okay? So just pretend something exciting happened to get them back to Salem.” I mean, that’s essentially what’s John explanation was, anyway: “Uh, we were flying around these islands and we saw dense cover, so we decided to check it out and you dopes were so busy talking about your love lives that you didn’t even notice a jet flying overhead or landing, so here we are!” Couldn’t he at least have said they saw the flare that was shot off last night and had finally narrowed its location down to this island? Good grief.

I still can’t get over the fact that there have apparently been all sorts of law enforcement officials looking for these people — and the plane they crashed — for days, and these two 60-somethings were just flying around and happened to find them. Then again, half the people trapped on the island were law enforcement, and they were too stupid to even ration their food supply, so maybe it’s best we all rely on the veteran agents here.

I’d be curious to know how this was actually supposed to end and what was cut. Not curious enough to watch it play out, but you know, I’d read a short summary or something.

What Happened in Salem: Week of June 12th

Another week of terrible decision-making and self-righteous ranting from various Salemites…

On the island, everyone continued to fret over their romantic foibles while not worrying too much about the fact that they all might die on a deserted island. Chad and Gabi decided that they want to be together. Lani confided in Eli about the lack of progress in her relationship with JJ, whom she started dating after their drunken fling caused his old girlfriend to dump him. In a throwback to the Passions school of medicine, Sonny somehow managed to talk Paul out of Jungle Madness with his love.

Check out the full recap to find out What Happened in Salem last week!

Time to Face the Past

This week, we were reintroduced to Anjelica Deveraux — mother of Justin’s oldest son, Jack’s former stepmother, and the person currently out to steal the Spectator. And while I always appreciate a bunch of historical references, I confess that I was a little distracted, for two reasons. The first is that of course her office in New York City is that godforsaken blue room, and the other is, uh…

I literally cannot tell if this woman is supposed to be 42 or 75.

Look, I make it a rule not to talk about the actors’ physical appearances, aside from styling. Wardrobe, hair, and makeup are all elective, so they’re fair game, but I think it crosses a line to harp on people’s bodies. But then I’m like… isn’t this styling? Because that ain’t the face she was born with. I know that there’s an insane amount of pressure upon people, especially women, in Hollywood not to commit the heinous sin of actually aging, but I kept being pulled out of the scenes by the fact that it looked like she was struggling to speak through an extra layer of stuff glued over her actual face. And that blazer, which is definitely fair game.

As for Anjelica’s reappearance: we’ll see. Seeing her and Steve trade barbs was moderately fun, and Morgan Fairchild can do bitchy very well. I like that they dug into her affection for Jack, too, but this all seems rather random without Alexander in the picture, yeah? Still, it’s something fresh, so let’s see where they go with this. If history is any indicator, it’ll probably just be that same damn room redressed as a hotel, but hey.