Opinion Article
This was a sad week for the Hortons as well as the fans of the show. As you know, Bill Hayes (Doug) died at the end of last year. The show has finally written his death into the show. Jack tried to wake Doug up last week, and he found out that he passed away. It rocked everyone’s world when they found out the news. The audience finally get the chance to see the cast react to what happened. We had to wait a long time to see the Hortons’ reactions to the news. The show focused on Doug’s passing for most of the week. We will talk about our thoughts about the tribute to the actor and the character.
The writers decided to bring people back for Doug’s funeral. Liz (Gloria Loring). Marie (Maree Cheatham), and Steven (Stephen Schnetzer) back to the show. They are characters who haven’t been on the show since the 80s. We weren’t watching the show when they were front and center so it was strange to see new people. It was nice to see them again. We give the writers a thumbs up for including some history for those of us who didn’t watch the show during that time. Liz and Marie had a soapy history because of an affair. Liz slept with Marie’s husband back in the day. We would have loved to see that story unfold. Checking YouTube would be a great idea to find out the history between the characters. They still have heat between them, and they exploded on each other during the service. It may not have been the right time, but it was a break from the grief. We do have a nitpick about what happened between them. For some reason, Maggie expected them to move on from what happened between them. She was with Neil too, so why weren’t they mad at her? She’s supposed to be family to Marie, but she was with Neil too. If we’re mistaken about that, we are sorry. We weren’t watching the show at the time so we could be wrong about that.
As we mentioned in the previous paragraph, Steven was brought back to the show. He’s Julie’s brother. We have never seen him on the show. We didn’t know that Julie had a brother. He came back to help Julie. Who told him about Doug? Why would anyone call him when he hasn’t been in touch with Julie? He became involved in a mystery. The Hortons accused him of stealing Alice’s necklace from the time capsule. He felt like he had a right to the necklace because it belonged to his grandmother. It’s strange that he felt like that when most of the people at the Horton house were related to Alice. We don’t know if Steven is going to stay in Salem now that the funeral is done. If he doesn’t stay, it was good to see the actor on a soap opera again. If you ever watched Another World, it would be a treat to get a chance to see him on TV again.
Jack, the right Jennifer (Melissa Reeves), Shawn, Belle and Hope were back too. They have been on the show, and it was great to see them back. It has been a long time since Melissa Reeves has been on the show, and it was a breath of fresh air to see her playing Jennifer again. She was the actress who worked with Bill Hayes so it made sense to have her come back to say goodbye to his character. Reeves has chemistry with Matthew Ashford so she is the one who should be back any time they write Jennifer back into the show. It felt like no time went by when she returned to the show. We know that she won’t be back when the character returns, but it was amazing to see her back on screen. Hope is one of our favorite female characters on the show. She’s one half of our favorite supercouple (Bo/Hope). We were cheering when we heard the news that she was returning to say goodbye to Doug. There’s no way that she would have missed seeing Doug when she was his daughter. We are grateful the writers decided to bring her back instead of having the character be in another room. It was great to see her back on the show. She and Peter Reckell (Bo) are truly missed as part of the show. We are looking forward to them being back on the show next year. To get back to Hope, she was suspicious of the guy who claimed to be Doug’s grandson. She asked the right questions about him. The man did show up out of the blue claiming to be Doug’s grandson. We already went through a con job with the fake Abby. It looks like we’re dealing with it again. Hope wanted to know if someone talked to Charles (her half-brother through IVF) to find out if he had a kid named Doug. It’s hard to believe she was the only one who thought to call him. Shawn and Belle are back on the show too. They have been missed too. The show needs more characters their age on the show. They are breaking up and dealing with the aftermath of that. The writers are keeping them for a long-term storyline.
Did anyone else feel the tears falling when Julie spoke about Doug? It had to be hard for the actress to get through the scenes when she was married to Doug in real life. He was more than just a TV husband. Bill Hayes was her world. Susan Seaforth-Hayes did an amazing job with the material. She nailed all the emotions a grieving widow should have during her time of grief. The actress made us feel her pain. We couldn’t stop crying watching her pour her heart out to the man she loved for the majority of her life. The writers gave her a chance to express how she felt about losing the love of her life.
We’re not sure how we feel about the stranger who approached Julie. He introduced himself as Doug’s grandson. We needed the writers to utilize the history of the show to explain the connection. The storyline needed exposition because we didn’t think Doug had a son. Jennifer and Hope suddenly remembered that Doug had a child through IVF. It’s something that’s never been discussed while we were watching the show. The reveal happened after he passed away. It’s good that Doug’s death allowed another story to develop, but the story has holes in it. How did Doug III know to find the Hortons? Where has he been all this time? What happened to his father? Did he know Doug? Who told him that Doug died? We could probably come up with more questions, but we’ll stop there.
We know that we talked about the funeral a lot in this article, but it was the focus of the week. It’s time to shift gears. EJ decided to pay Joy to leave town so Johnny wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of seeing his mistress around town. For some reason, Johnny didn’t want him to pay for her to leave town. Did he enjoy her being there? Why would he want her to stay in town? He might enjoy the attention he received from her. Joy agreed to leave town. She told Alex that she was leaving, and he got upset. Alex wasn’t involved in the situation, so why would he care if she left town? Did he like the idea of Johnny squirming whenever Joy was around? Alex went to Johnny, and they got into an argument about it. Chanel walked in and heard the end of the argument. We weren’t surprised that she didn’t hear the important parts of the argument. It seems like the writers want to dumb Chanel down for this storyline to work. We think she may know what happened between Johnny and Joy and that’s why she makes so many comments about him being faithful. Is it possible that she’s giving him the rope to hang himself with it? Chanel goes out of her way to mention that he didn’t cheat on her. It feels like she’s waiting for him to confess to what he did. If he wanted to do that, he should have talked to her about it. She still would have been mad about what he did, but the extra lies wouldn’t have been attached to it.
The opinions in these articles are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TVMEG.COM or its other volunteers.
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