Panopticon

If she can't wear pantsuits in the afterlife, Doc refuses to go!

Don’t forget “dead” when she was a “serial killer” during the Melaswen story. The infamous presumed death when the killer accidentally got her twin sister (who amazingly stayed dead!). Likely too many near-deaths to count: thrown in the pit by Stella, fell off a window ledge while counseling a suicidal teen and left comatose while DH did an outside project, etc. Even her “best death” when she was off the show for five years in the late 80s/early 90s was two deaths in one. First most of Salem thought she died when the house blew up. The Rojohn realized she was alive and being held captive by Orpheus… only to watch her plane blow up.

Yes, Mrs. Hall is different from the books... since she's not really in the books! She's just a name. She wasn't based on a particular real-life person the way James, Siegfried, Helen, and Tristan were. She occasionally appears to hand food to James. She has no backstory, no challenges, no goals, no family, no relationships, no inner life. Even the original television adaptation wasn't "true to the books" since that Mrs. Hall, by virtue of being part of a visual medium, at least got to hint at having a thought in her head via facial expressions in the background. I love that this adaptation decided to add a three-dimensional Mrs. Hall. I understand that it won't be to everyone's taste, but I fail to see how it's "pandering." Pandering suggests appealing to someone's worst instincts. Is wanting to see the full life of a woman-- who was previously shown existing only to serve men-- such a terrible desire?

Maybe Jill and Derick can get their grift on to get tuition money for the kids? They’re not inexperienced in the art of getting stuff for free, even if they’re generally less successful than Team Vuolo.

I don't know, I think it's perfectly possible to be aware but unbothered. From a character point of view, dining with the help in the kitchen would hardly be the most eccentric thing Siegfried ever did. Throw in the fact that he hired her while spinning off his wife's death and dealing with an adolescent Tristan who had lost both of his parents and then the sister-in-law who stepped into the parental role... "it simply isn't done" going out the window just isn't a stretch to me. He breached protocol just by hiring Mrs. Hall without references, as she herself acknowledged. Theirs was never going to be a traditional relationship. I see Siegfried ignoring the class stratification when it suits him as a feature, not a bug. And even in the original television adaptation, by the time World War II rolled around and Siegfried wanted to conserve resources, he brought Mrs. Hall to the table with everyone else. The times were changing and he clung to the old ways only when it happened to suit him.

And as I recall straight out of real life too. Both Alf Wight and Donald Sinclair were said to be great veterinarians with no aptitude for the business end of things.

Lol, Kate taught CHAD to make spaghetti and meatballs!?! Maybe Lucas when she was a young broke single mom spinning off a relationship with an abusive husband and trying desperately to come up with the money to search for Austin/Billie. I get that the show doesn’t care about Lucas. But that doesn’t mean that they can wantonly give memories that could only realistically be his to a character who didn’t know Kate until she was a rich scheming grandmother/businesswoman who only set foot in the kitchen if she was ordering around the chef or spying on someone.

Try using your powers for something bigger next time. I admit Allie wasn’t exactly mesmerizing but she’s hardly the worst character on the show….

Like they say in sportsball, availability is an ability. Good for Days for continuing to avoid cancellation and making itself eligible for awards.

Kim in particular crossed my mind too. Her sister is dying, her bio-brother and ersatz-brother are both in the process of being widowed, and her other brother is already “dead.” I realize the show can’t force Patsy Pease to appear if she doesn’t want to, but writing around Kim’s absence is one more way the story is going to be weaker than it would be in a perfect world. Unless Kim finally decided to live up to her Best and Brightest monicker and realizes, like the viewers do, that death is so much a temporary inconvenience in Salem that it no longer raises the stakes at all. Maybe she left a voicemail like “Hi Kay-honey, sorry to hear you’re dead for a while. Give me a call when you get back. I want to hear all about it, and if you give me a date I’ll send you a Goldbelly from that restaurant in Pasadena you like so much?”

That totally makes sense, but I wish the writer had tossed in a line where she actually said as much. It could have been a nice moment between Helen and James (or Helen and Mrs. Hall or Helen and Jenny, etc.)

If this was shot about a year ago the first omicron wave might have made them decide against having a lot of extras in the scenes. Because realistically you KNOW the whole community would have shown up to see if Helen would go runaway bride twice in two years.

Another classic Alex clip: And his final episode (just before he burns down Salem Inn for the insurance money and is packed off to prison):

I always enjoyed the clips of Alex I came across. He spent a lot of time getting punched in the face and calling everyone m’dear in the midst of his shameless schemes, but he was consistently charming.

Oh, so Stephanie doesn’t rush to her mother’s death bed? Sorry, Kayla, that’s what you get for raising your daughter to be a cousin-uncle lover. I wonder what it is about Stephanie as a character that’s made multiple writers many years apart so fixated on having her couple up with her relatives and so eager to sneer at the idea that adoptive family is real family.

Yes, Andrew and Jeannie (as she was then) occasionally made cameos when they visited with Kim in the mid-90s. Presumably because Shane was entirely off-screen for a decade while CS was in his sitcom star phase, the kids were blonds to match Kim. It was especially weird with Andrew, since in the 80s and early 90s when he was a heavily featured child character he always had dark hair and huge dark eyes. So much so that it was hard to believe that the Salemites ever thought that Victor was his father. To the show’s credit, when Andrew’s true paternity was revealed, Shane had a line to the effect of “I did notice that he looked a lot like me but I didn’t want to say anything because I was afraid I’d sound crazy.”

If Kristen was already a licensed social worker when she was engaged to John and playing mommy to toddler Brady, and Brady is now 50-ish, maybe Kristen is old enough to be senile?

It was Kristen who paid Xander to murder Sami and Lucas because they were in a position to reveal her masquerading as Susan. The negotiations about Sami's life being worth more than Lucas' were also very funny... although EJ eventually pulled back that payment and Xander later got the money from Sami to blow up the Eric/Nicole marriage. Much as I don't care for Brady/Kristen, I think that they're also just a better physical match than some of Brady's other pairings. EM is such a big guy-- not only tall but broad-shouldered-- that it's easy for him to give off creepy dominating vibes while doing normal soapy emoting. I also used to flinch during Brady/Melanie scenes because even though they didn't really argue, MB is so tiny that EM's contortions to get himself in the same camera frame with her looked painful. Obviously in the real world height has zero to do with couples looking great together or being great together. But in soap world, viewed through a camera, sometimes it matters.

I think the writers are pretty clearly playing both sides still, so you may not be entirely unhappy with the scene. She throws the entire not-party as an excuse to see Gerald... and then proceeds to ignore Gerald so completely in favor of Siegfried that Gerald walks out without talking to her. He only returns for the kissing scene because he grabbed the wrong coat. And Siegfried staring at the two of them as they kiss is most definitely open to the jealousy interpretation.

Jada: Before my dad died he told me about the time he almost had to step in as best man at a wedding because the other best man was busy knocking his adoptive father, the serial killing senator, out of a tower before he could shoot the bride and groom.

Worst: Salem genuinely believes that Lucas might have violently murdered his own niece, before Lucas goes to prison for a kidnapping it never made sense for him to have committed while serial killers and serial rapists continue to walk the streets with impunity. (I guess technically the kidnapping thing was last year but since the failed wedding part was this past summer I feel justified in continuing to complain about it.) Best: That promo for the show’s conversion to online-only where Billy Flynn is eager to set his senior citizen co-stars up with streaming services, only to have 97-year-old Bill Hayes inform him that Peacock is super easy to understand and he doesn’t need any help. Well-acted, well-meaning, heartwarming, great cast integration, funny, sweet, and who doesn’t love Bill Hayes for his continued ability to adapt to changing times?

Oh, it was a full-on affair and poor Sarah knew it. There was a good scene where Sarah walked in on Neil and Maggie in flagrante delicto and told Maggie “you should be ashamed. I’m ashamed.” Boyfriend-less, barely-been-kissed Sarah also got backed into pretending that Maggie’s birth control pills belonged to her because she didn’t want to tell Mickey “yeah, Mom doesn’t want to get pregnant by her affair partner.” Plus, Neil was completely insufferable at the time. He genuinely expected Sarah to embrace him like a long-lost father, never mind that Sarah already HAD a father who Neil had just betrayed horribly. Because in Neil’s mind he hasn’t done anything wrong and no one had any reason to be upset by the affair. Sarah’s actions were sympathetic in a way… but they didn’t exactly speak to mental stability or a strict moral code.

I'd hate to see Victor's legacy as a character reduced to that "anybody order a hooker?" quip with Eve that wormed its way into almost every tribute. I know the line was well-delivered. I know KDP was a strong enough acting partner to reflect the line. I know KDP was a somewhat strangely chosen recast many many years after the original Eve storyline. I know Eve did a gazillion terrible things in her life. I know that she fell in love with her pimp back in the day. But. Eve was fifteen years old when she hooked. She was literally a sexually exploited child. She was thousands of miles away from the adoptive parents who raised her and was afraid that if she approached her biological father he would reject her over the behavior of her presumed biological mother. She prostituted herself because she, in her adolescent mind, saw it as the only way to obtain food and shelter until she was able to ingratiate herself to Shane. Hooking led to physical abuse at the hands of her clients. Hooking led to the stillbirth of her half-sister. Hooking led to her classmates betting on whether they could get her into bed and Eve's nearly successful suicide attempt. But yes, isn't it funny for Victor to taunt her about her childhood abuse decades later? Victor did many more interesting, exciting, and brilliant things in his life-- both good and bad-- than take potshots at a sex abuse survivor.

At this point I assume Sarah is an immoral person who has no issue with Xander’s repeated kidnappings, attempted murders, etc., even if she occasionally says she does for show. I think of Sarah as the teenage girl who drugged Neil and claimed to have been having an affair with him in the hopes of ruining his life (she didn’t know he was her biological father). Yeah, that person might be okay with Xander trying to murder half the people she knows for the pettiest of reasons. (Also: I loved Maggie Horton and had no patience for Maggie Kiriakis.)

I enjoyed the Christmas special. It was a bit sad, but that’s almost a given considering the historical backdrop. There was a heavy enough hand with the callbacks to earlier episodes that I might have thought it was the permanent end of the series if I didn’t know better. Tristan stowing away on the train the was he did when he first arrived. Siegfried making up words to Mrs. Hall’s amusement. Mrs. Pumphrey wanting Christmas visitors in her empty house. And of course “merry bloody Christmas!” But basically the script just asked Sam West to milk Siegfried’s pseudo-parental angst for an hour and he delivered. I never thought anyone but Robert Hardy could play that role… and I have so enjoyed being so, so wrong. Also, that was a very patient horse. And I swear it looked sad when Siegfried explained he was going to let the horse compete when it wasn’t sound because he had to protect his brother.