Oh, Samantha Gene. We’ve missed you.
Sure, you ate the show for a while there, and you have that obnoxious way of making everything about yourself while refusing to listen to common sense, but you still belong in Salem. It’s amazing how easily Alison Sweeney and Sami just fit back into the tapestry of the show. Whatever it is, Sami and Lucas still have it. Always will. There’s just so much history between the two characters. They can go from sniping at one another to being best pals at the drop of a hat, and it all works. I thought her scenes with John and Paul could’ve been a little bigger, but I can’t quite figure out how. They’re wise to play the fallout, about Sami not wanting to stay at the townhouse because of John, but something about that encounter in the graveyard felt a little soft. And wow, was it shocking to see that Sami and Rafe even have noticeable chemistry — which makes his relationship with Hope seem all the more forced and cloying. I’m sure it’ll be addressed at some point, but I was waiting for Sami to make some kind of crack about Rafe now being engaged to her aunt, especially given how Galen Gering seemed to be playing those scenes as though Rafe wanted to get with Sami. “Need a ride anywhere? Anywhere? In my pants, perhaps?!” And Sweeney was just like, “Nah, I’m cool,” and treated him like an old friend, not a great love.
They even bothered to tie in Sami’s 2015 return and that bizarre wild goose chase about the possibility of an EJ we would never see onscreen being alive. Of course she feels stupid and heartbroken about having gotten her hopes up, which is why she’s so reluctant to do the same with Will. I didn’t necessarily need to see her sobbing in Marlena’s lap over EJ still being dead, but that could read as her just being overwhelmed by general grief and the confusion over Will — and it managed to put to bed a weird, dangling thread and give her a strong motivation in the current story. Fine, fine, you can have it. It’s also nice that they’ve found ways to pay homage to all three of her big pairings within her first few days. And I thought her dynamic with Marlena worked as well as ever.
It’s also nice to see that they found a way to make that cemetery set worthwhile! At least this way, we don’t have to hear any explanations about how both Will and Mickey had their remains transferred to a blue-walled mausoleum…
I know this Adrienne/Bonnie story is goofy as hell, but is it bad that I’m kind of enjoying it? No, it doesn’t totally hang together, or at the least, there are a lot of beats missing. Like, where was the fallout between Maggie and Victor after he announced he plans to divorce her? There should’ve been scenes not unlike the ones Nicole and Eric shared on Monday. But if you squint and accept the moves on a pretty surface level, the scenes themselves are amusing, and it’s stirring people into action. Justin is finally trying to work this out. Steve and Kayla are finally involved. Victor should not be rolling over this easily, so I hope he has something up his sleeve, but it’s giving him and Maggie something to do besides chatter about Daniel, so I’ll take it for the time being. And while the wacky fantasies are not something I need to see every day, they’re true to who Bonnie was during her original run and (strangely) help to ground her a bit as an actual character and not just Evil Adrienne Lookalike. I mean, they could have her express some desire to see her damn kids, but this is a start.
Maggie is still the only one whom I feel should be, at the least, thinking of Bonnie Lockhart. She could dismiss it as nuts, or verify with the prison that Bonnie is still there, or something, but the fact that Bonnie hates her and resembles Adrienne should be on her mind. I’m hoping that Steve and Kayla, who overlapped with Bonnie in 2006-07, get a clue posthaste, as well. Now that they’ve been let in on this, it would be nuts if they didn’t. Also, not super-slick of Bonnie to be visiting Mickey Horton’s grave in the light of day, dressed as the proprietor of Alice’s Saloon, chomping on potato chips, is it? I mean, I’ve never had a single person in my life be replaced by a crazed doppelgänger, and even I would jump to that conclusion if I’d come upon her like that. It’s a case so blatant, even the Salem PD could solve it!
Meanwhile, the other headline of the week is Nicole breaking up with Eric on Brady’s orders. I’m putting discussion of that storyline behind a cut, because it’s impossible to do at this point without hitting on a spoiler. Consider yourself warned…
What Happens in Salem... 