Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

James, Joe, and Ali were great, and the setup was fine, but the execution was off.



Oh, thank goodness. I was worried there for a moment. After all, EJ doesn’t have enough pointless scenes arguing with Dr. Rolf



Remember how back in June/July there was the whole Ejami adventure to meet Stefano in the ambulance because breaking into the mansion was much too dangerous? Yet now EJ’s able to break in with just a credit card, and there’s no killer laser beams or anything to avoid. Days, where the plot drives reality instead of reality driving the plot. And if only the show had shown me what credit card he used so I could open my own account



Apparently Stefano is going for a pseudo-hip 2002 Vegas hotel/B-level Bond villain motif here.




“Father bringing people back from the dead and ruining my chances with Samantha isn’t that surprising. But Father forcing me to see John without his shirt on, well, that I simply cannot forgive.”



“I mean…do…you…have…any…idea…of…what…you…have done?” EJ had thought his Shatner impression would lighten the mood, but Stefano wasn’t interested.



“I'm going to make sure that your purpose never sees the light of day.” You see, if EJ were still a villain, he’d never be stupid enough to warn Stefano of this ahead of time, much less stay in the mansion when making the actual phonecall. But since he’s a hero now, he has to go around warning the evildoers with inane platitudes and allow the villain to interrupt him foiling his plans



“Who are you? What have you done to my son?” Sigh. I miss Evil EJ too. If only you weren’t on Days, Stefano. If only you all were on some other show where you could be one big happy evil family.



“Apparently I am your conscience” and “What I saw downstairs in that lab -- you are not the man I thought you were.” Do you know just how stupid EJ sounds with these words coming out of his mouth? He sees Pawn John down in the basement, and he’s shocked and appalled even after he used the tarot card on Steve, after his father kidnapped Sami to take the twins’ stem cells, after Carmine was sent to kill Lucas, after everything that’s happened since last November? I know the show is operating at Defcon 4: Operation Whitewash and Ignore Evil EJ, but it would have been so much stronger for EJ to have acknowledged his father’s legacy of evil that he chose to uphold and then demonstrated to him that he has turned away from it. I understand that EJ is naïve and blind towards his Father, but the emotional impact of EJ’s epiphany moment for me was diluted instead of strengthened. EJ should have been resigned and saddened that his father wasn’t serious about ending the feud or supporting his wishes yet not surprised. Not at this point.



“But now I'm -- now I think he might be some kind of sociopath.” I laughed for hours about this line. There’s so many things wrong with it, including the 2 by 4 to the face of “LOL, EJ understands his dad is evil now, LOLOL!”, the disturbing fascination by the Days writers with the word sociopath, and the amusing irony of EJ labeling someone with the term that Kayla and the rest of town painted him with for months. At least Samantha called him on it, although her “EJ, I have known my entire life that Stefano doesn't care about anyone but himself, not even his own flesh and blood” was also silly for not pointing out that her situation was fundamentally different from his own. She was not raised by Stefano with no outside moral reference points.



“E.J., I have never seen you this shaken.” Show, show. Don’t tell. And if you have to tell, rephrase your dialog to be a bit less expositional. “EJ IS TRULY HORRIFIED BY STEFANO-HE HAD NO IDEA!!! OH NOES!” Spare me.



Apparently EJ and I need to flashback to events that happened earlier in the same episode since neither he nor I are smart enough to recall what happened a half an hour ago


The Verdict:



I love you, Days, I truly do. But at least pretend to try with your characterization and dialogue once in a while. There is something above “hilariously awful.”