Days of Our Lives Review Week of 2-28-22: Nightmares From

Thank goodness everyone escaped the island with their brains intact, except for Sarah, of course.

On Days of Our Lives during the week of 2-28-22, Kristen had an unnecessary last trick up her sleeve, in which she planned to make all of her prisoners forget who they were.

Luckily for Steve, Kayla, and Abigail, Kristen’s plan failed due to an unlikely source: “Renee” dumped the poison and replaced it with goat milk.

It was a bizarre end to the ridiculous island storyline, but it still beats everyone wandering around, unsure of who they are!

It’s bad enough that Sarah thinks she’s Renee Dumonde. I’m not sure why she dumped the poison since she seems loyal to Kristen and convinced that Steve is a serial killer, but she saved everyone’s life anyway.

Maybe there are some remnants of Sarah hidden deep in her psyche. That’s the only way this makes sense.

Once everyone returned to Salem, though, this campy storyline hit new heights — or lows, depending on your point of view.

Sarah was taken to the hospital, as she should have been, but for some reason, no one called Marlena in to help her.

Instead, we were left with Kayla trying to convince a delusional Sarah that she is not Renee Dumonde, who died in the early 1980s.

Steve and Kayla were easily duped into letting Sarah escape the hospital, too. She suddenly dropped her resistance to having any tests done, which nobody found suspicious, only to run away the second she was alone in the room.

Did anyone NOT see this coming? As soon as Steve offered to “let Sarah rest,” I knew what would happen next.

It got sillier from there, too, with Sarah deciding to show up at the Dimera mansion. My prediction: she’ll regain her memory when a frustrated Anna shoves her, and she hits her head!

Tony: I’m sorry you’re going through this.
Anna: Don’t tell me you’re sorry when you played along with her delusion!
Tony: Anna. Sarah is mentally ill. She needs compassion and kindness.
Anna: But what if your kindness drives your sane wife out of her mind?

You can hardly blame Anna for not wanting to go along with Sarah’s delusions. “Renee” holds a violent grudge against Anna and is determined to steal Tony from her by any means necessary. Plus, Kayla refused to help once she showed up at the mansion.

Kayla offered some nonsensical line about how Sarah isn’t a danger to anyone, which Anna pointed out was BS, and then insisted “Renee” stay at the mansion pending a court order to get her medical treatment. That’s just asking for “Renee” to try to kill Anna in her sleep.

While Days of Our Lives doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to mental health issues, they usually at least make an effort. Having Kayla in charge of Sarah’s care instead of Marlena made no sense.

Marlena’s recommendations would hold much more weight since she’s a psychiatrist and presumably knows what she’s talking about. Plus, she’s a close friend of Anna and Tony’s and would likely help them through this crisis.

Instead, we were left with Kayla seeming incompetent, which partially resulted from her trying to offer psychiatric treatment when she’s not a psychiatrist.

She’s also usually not so gullible. Why is she two for two with letting people escape? It was only the day before that Kristen somehow got out of her bonds and disappeared, which could have been prevented if Steve and Kayla had locked that door.

That shouldn’t have been that hard to figure out since the two were imprisoned in the same room for several days.

The Renee Dumonde thing was good for a few laughs and some connections to DAYS history, but now it’s already worn out its welcome.

At this point, it’s yet another DID/doppelganger story.

Sarah insisting she’s Renee is no different than Abigail insisting she was her alters. Nor is it substantially different from Steve believing he was Stefano, Hope thinking she was Gina, Ciara’s amnesia about her love affair with Ben, or any of the other doppelganger stories we’ve been treated to in the last several years.

It’s also no different from the Devil storyline, another doppelganger story with a supernatural twist. First, Marlena wasn’t herself, and now Johnny isn’t himself.

How many stories like this do we need? Can we please move on to something more realistic?

Everyone thinks I’m your granddaughter, Sarah Horton. But I’m not. I’m Renee Dumonde and I’m going to take back my life.

Sarah

Xander’s chance run-in with Sarah is interesting, though.

He’s going to try to get through to her, and it’s going to put a damper on his enthusiasm for marrying Gwen no matter what he says.

After all, Xander felt that “Sarah’s” rejection gave him the closure he needed so that he could move on with someone else.

But now he’s aware that Sarah never rejected him, and worse, her kidnapping led to her forgetting who she is.

How can Xander NOT want to help her? He might claim he’s a good friend, but Gwen won’t believe that, and she’ll be right.

One fascinating thing that might come out of that is an alliance between Anna of Gwen of sorts. Anna will want “Renee” out of her life, and Gwen wouldn’t mind shipping Sarah off to some mental hospital where she can’t interfere with Gwen’s relationship with Xander.

And Anna vowed that she would never forgive Gwen nor want to be her friend, so that seemed to be telegraphing the writers’ intentions to have them work together.

Of course, Anna and Gwen will end up at cross purposes if they work together. Sarah regaining her memories would solve Anna’s problem, but she needs to stay oblivious to solve Gwen’s.

The Devil storyline continued moving forward at the same time as all of this silliness. It was mainly annoying, but Johnny’s attempt at rebellion was interesting.

Johnny’s still in there somewhere, fighting to regain control of himself and patch things up with Chanel. If he has the strength to exorcise himself and expel that Devil from Salem for once and for all, that would be a unique twist that might make this storyline worthwhile.

Either way, Johnny’ll have quite the mess to clean up now that Johnny exposed Allie and Chanel’s one-night stand. Allie again disowned him, and Chanel wants nothing to do with him, so how will he make things right once he’s restored to sanity?

Tripp and Allie have some patching up of things to do, too. It’s irritating that nobody immediately kicked Johnny out for trying to sabotage Tripp and Allie’s engagement.

Tripp must have had his doubts beforehand, or he wouldn’t have listened to Johnny, who he has no use for since Johnny broke Chanel’s heart.

The best thing everyone involved can do now is to give Tripp space.

Roman and Kate’s advice was well-meaning, but they couldn’t force Tripp to take Allie back, and they both should know that.

Roman’s support of Tripp was odd, too, considering that he had doubts about this marriage when Tripp approached him weeks ago.

It might have made for better drama if he and Kate were on opposite sides of this. Thanks to Salem’s twisted branches of the Brady and Horton family trees, Allie is a granddaughter to both of them, but that doesn’t mean they have to hold the same opinion about the implosion of her relationship with Tripp.

And with Roman and Kate already weathering the storm of her keeping Philip’s continued aliveness secret, butting heads over Allie and Tripp’s relationship implosion would have put their new relationship to a further test.

Anyway, the one thing that won’t help, besides everyone pressuring Tripp to take Allie back, is if Allie leans on Chanel for support.

The girl needs other friends, preferably ones she’s not secretly attracted to. Ciara has her own problems, but Allie COULD turn to her anyway. Or how about placing a long-distance call to Claire?

Leaning on Nicole might be a good idea, too. After all, she’s been like a surrogate mother to Allie since Allie’s pregnancy, and she recently went through something similar.

As for Ciara and Ben, why on Earth did they spend the better part of an hour debating whether Johnny was possessed or not?

The evidence is right in front of their eyes. All they have to do is recall what Julie told them.

Her stove caught on fire for no apparent reason when she was about to deliver them that cross while Johnny was there. Johnny delivered the cross, after which it kept turning upside down.

And Johnny has not been acting like himself and has been doing cruel things like breaking up with Chanel in front of both of their families.

What was there to debate? This is an open-and-shut case here.

It’s especially infuriating because Johnny is wandering around Salem wreaking havoc while Ben and Ciara have lengthy conversations about whether he’s possessed and who to turn to for help.

His attempts to seduce Gabi and convince her that Jake is a backstabber are annoying. At the very least, Gabi should stop with this out-of-character keeping her suspicions to herself. She’s not the kind to be easily intimidated or manipulated, so why is she letting Johnny call all the shots?

This is eating up screen time that could be used for more realistic stories.

As a member of the LGBT community, I’m thrilled with Craig’s coming-out story, but not so much with his choice of boyfriend.

Leo Stark doesn’t make any sense as the man that made Craig unable to hide his sexual orientation any longer. He’s unsuitable for anyone for all the reasons that Chloe and Brady enumerated, and he’s also far closer to Chloe’s age than Craig’s.

May to December relationships happen in both gay and heterosexual communities, but you’d think someone would at least mention that!

Craig should have fallen for a fellow doctor he met at a medical conference, not some goofball selling nuts to doctors in a chipmunk suit.

The silliness of this pairing interferes with the story’s believability. Craig also was coming off as incredibly naive and gullible, and that’s not who he is.

As for the whole mess with TR, please tell me that Paulina isn’t going to take her former abuser back!

The smart thing to do would have been to throw those flowers in the garbage or to ask Abe to sign the card so that she could pretend they were from him.

Making a special trip to tell TR off only encouraged him to believe there was hope for reconciliation. Plus, he was able to give Paulina some story about how he changed after he went to prison and is no longer the man who abused her.

Let’s not go there, please. Yes, people can change, but Days of Our Lives has played too fast and loose with abuse stories as it is, and there’s no need to send the message that abuse can or should be easily forgiven.

It’s your turn, Days of Our Lives fanatics. Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know your thoughts on this week’s goings-on.

Eager for more DAYS chat? Be sure to check back on Sunday for the latest Days of Our Lives Round Table discussion.

Days of Our Lives airs on NBC on weekday afternoons. Check your local listings for airtimes or watch on Peacock TV weeknights after 8 PM EST / 5 PM PST.

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Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.

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