Days of Our Lives Spoilers October 30 – November 10

Wedded Miss

First off, let’s get to the weddings because Eric and Nicole are married! To the wrong people. Not that I necessarily think they should be married to each other, but between their baby and the fact that it’s clearly what they both want, these marriages may break Salem records for the speed at which they fall apart. I guess that depends on how long Melinda and Leo get away with giving Nicole’s baby to Sloan.

But before rushing into his nuptials, Eric proved Sloan one hundred percent right while talking to Marlena. It doesn’t justify her actions, but he is with her only because he can’t be with Nicole and have their baby. I still don’t love what they’ve done to Sloan, but hey, she was right not to have faith in Eric. Which… is about as far from a healthy relationship as it gets. (Side note: I love that Sloan didn’t wear white.)

And as for the increasingly lackluster ceremonies themselves… I miss the days of big weddings, but I think the budget just isn’t there anymore. Like the rest of daytime, Days of Our Lives‘ keeps shrinking. I feel like perhaps, unless there’s a major sea change, the Xander and Gwen/Leo and Craig double wedding fiasco may be the last big wedding event we’ll see. With that said, maybe they could at least use some clever camera angles and editing to make it seem like we’ll have big weddings again.

It seems like more often than not, the show deals with the limitations by having folks decide to have their weddings at the last minute. Some romanticism and buildup to an actual big day could go a long way. Then again, it’s not really necessary for couples we know are going nowhere like Nicole and EJ and Eric and Sloan. So in this case, sure. But I’m glad that EJ at least scoffed at those pigs in a blanket for a DiMera wedding…

Nightmare Country

Halloween episodes are always more “out there” on Days and people tend to either love them or hate them, with little in between. Yeah, they’ve done the dream thing before, but I enjoyed figuring out the movie homages. Holly’s was Scream (petition to get Raven Bowens play the next killer in Scream VII, anyone?), Chad’s was Pet Sematary and Sloan’s was… well, any zombie movie? I’m not sure what Paulina’s was. Fatal Attraction?

More:Time to recast Abigail?

While I won’t spend a lot of time on this year’s Halloween, I will say, it at least tied into the characters’ fears thematically — and maybe gave us a little preview of how things could go nightmarishingly wrong when some of these issues come to light. Like, if nothing else, it was clear how much Chad is not just worried about his late wife “destroying” his current attempt to build a life, but that he’s also kind of afraid of Stephanie ruining his life. Their relationship is just as clearly wrong at this point as the newlyweds, but at least Chad didn’t give in to pressure and rush into marriage.

Now, let’s see where this Everett thing goes. I don’t think he’s bad news, at least not in any way other than as a spoiler for an already crumbling relationship. He’s his own character. For now… I had a wild theory about what woke him up from his coma (which you can see if you agree with here), but there’s a pretty limitless amount of room to let it play out.

My big question, though, is: If his and Stephanie’s relationship was going so well and as serious as they make it seem, why did she just jump straight to, “Oh, he ghosted me,” and not, “Oh my God! Is he OK?!” Hell, I’m no relationship expert but my first thought if I lost communication wouldn’t be, “Ghosted. Sad face…” so much as, “Call all the hospitals!”

The Wrong Death?

I could tell lately (and definitely from the comments on last week’s soapbox) that a lot of folks just want Gabi dead and gone. There’s still time for that to happen, but I think it’s a whole lot more likely she’s either thrown into jail or goes on the run to avoid it. Oh! Maybe she runs off to hangout with Vivian in her hidey-hole! I’m sure they’d both love that. Either way, after how cruel she was this week, I’m ready for at least a Gabi break. I know she’s capable of this kind of viciousness, but we’ve just about run out of redeeming qualities for her for the moment.

Li committed (or tried to commit) some pretty heinous crimes, but I still feel bad for him. And while I got a glimpse of this before, I wish we´d gotten more earlier because it would have done so much to lend weight about why he was so desperate to keep Gabi. I really think Remington Hoffman was underutilized.

Li was too often a one dimensional, power hungry character, but there were moments that I could see Hoffman allowed to shine, like Li´s fear and instinctual reaction to his father’s anger. And he completely nailed Li´s emotions as he haltingly told Marlena how his father had destroyed his first relationship. Therapy doesn´t wrap up as quickly or neatly as his did (no offense to Marlena’s incredible talent, of course), but those were some well done character scenes.

Whodunnit?

By Friday, Li was clearly unhinged, but I would say another good Friday cliffhanger would have been Li and Gabi meeting with the knife, so you end the week thinking “OK, this is it, this is how she goes,” only for the rug to get pulled out from under us on Monday. But then that might make it tougher to get out of it having to be Gabi who killed him. And it’s pretty clear that she didn’t do it. But that doesn’t mean she won’t be punished for it.

More:Remington Hoffman and Dan Feuerriegel tease EJ/Li team-up

But who would actually want to kill Li? I know he wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular outside of Wendy, but to kill him? Megan for some reason? Dr. Rolf? Li’s father? There’s got to be something more going on here. We got a huge jump before the Stefan bursting in to find Gabi over a dying Li. There’s a lot of this story that took place in that time frame. Hoffman and Feuerriegel both teased that EJ and Li would be working together, but now he’s dead.

They could have worked together to fake this and set Gabi up for the slammer, but per Soap Opera Digest (RIP!), headwriter Ron Carlivati seemed to assure us he is dead. And that would be a shame, because the show finally gave him depth and feeling and backstory just before the end. We’d gotten glimpses of it before, but suddenly, in his final few days, Li was suddenly all-too human. No matter what, it seems pretty clear that this is going to chase Gabi off, rather than kill her. That’ll at least ensure that some day, she can come back.

Hopefully, with less of a tendency to tick everyone off.

Stray Thoughts…

• Gabi’s kind of a terrible actor. And that is not easy to do, so kudos to Camila Banus on that “Oh no, I’m so kidnapped, please help me!” spiel.

• When Johnny pressed her on the family member she had a crush on, couldn’t Holly have said Chad, Stefan — any of the other DiMera men than EJ?? Fake crushing on her step-dad just upped the ick factor even more.

• Johnny´s asking Holly if she was being bullied was such a well-done, subtle way to get across how he views himself as the protective older brother. I loved the writing. But then the next day they hit us over the head with Johnny reiterating over and over that he was almost those exact words: the “protective big brother.” Bye-bye, subtlety.

• All that stuff with Gabi telling Stefan about Zombie Nick as Everett showed up on a stunned Stephanie’s doorstep would have had more of a point and been filled with more tension if the show had kept Blake Berris’ return under wraps until he was on the screen.

Check out our November Sweeps photo gallery to get a better idea of where these storylines are all heading… and where they should head!