Days Filled With Soap Tropes This week — Plus Writing For Your Audience

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Days was great fun this week as usual. Paulina’s back and watching her with Marlena was a treat, and seeing her scheme begin to unfold kept my interest. We had several soap tropes jump out at us and I even have something to complain about.

So many soap tropes

Kate’s faking amnesia and faking blindness, and blackmailing all in the same day is such soapy goodness. She’s not even faking blindness to get the guy back. She’s doing it to get back at him. That’s the only reason I can get by this. Blackmailing Dr. Blackmail himself, Snyder, is the icing on the cake. Pure soapy goodness, really. The only glaring problem is that it’s making Gabi jealous and insecure when she, according to Jake, doesn’t need to be. It’s a bit manufactured. I like my Gabi being kick-ass not dumbed down. And I liked her friendship with Kate which is now ruined because of a man.



Chanel ruining Paulina’s scheme

I love that Chanel has a plan in motion to have her own sweet shop at Horton square, but we already know Aunt Paulina’s up to no good and doesn’t want her daughter to get caught up in whatever she has planned for unsuspecting Salemites. It’s intriguing. And I adored how Chanel asked Allie for the Horton family doughnut recipe so she could make it for Salemites and that the only reason why Julie gave it up is so nobody else would hear about the infamous Book Club meeting where JJ unwittingly swapped his weed doughnuts with the regular ones and everyone got baked. Hilarious!

Those abs!

My Chanel told Lani she walked in on Eli naked and oh boy, is she a lucky woman. I admit that I laughed aloud. I’ve never seen a female character written who was so open about sexuality.

That said…Lani felt disrespected and didn’t like that Chanel objectified her husband. I hear her. Not everyone is comfortable with others checking out their partners, and Chanel did go too far. I’m not bothered by people checking out my sexy husband. I’ve literally have sent pictures of him flexing his muscles to friends, but then we’re both secure in our marriage. Eli and Lani (who are smokin’ hot together!) admitted they’re both jealous and insecure as though it was a good thing and it made it a little unclear to me about why the scene happened except to show how free and open Chanel is. Was it foreshadowing something else?

My problem with this scene is that once again, Days doesn’t know or possibly they don’t care that their audience is mostly women. They created this scene to show how a man was objectified. Not a woman. There are always stories on our show about how men are disrespected, men are victimized and it’s not wrong, but it’s tone-deaf. About 98% of all viewers are women and 1% are male viewers who are, from what I can tell, feminists. With that in mind, who are they writing this type of scene for? Write for your audience. Women. Or you wind up pissing us off.




Highlights:

Xander and Julie’s scenes were fun. I could have done without her calling him fat, (is the show obsessed with weight?) but when she punched him in the gut, I was here for that. An elderly woman hitting a sexy thing like Xandy. Hilarious.

Gwen and Xander already have chemistry and because they’re both bad seeds, I’m excited for whatever comes from them.

It was good to see Philip get a backbone and admit he cares for Chloe still, and I also enjoyed him yelling at Dumb Bae for being the reason Chloe was in the hospital. He’s right. If our Brady wasn’t so clueless, Chloe wouldn’t have been kidnapped and shot. But Brady’s apology was as good as it gets and I was there for it. Well done. This may prove to be a great love triangle after all!

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