The good news is that Johnny is finally unpossessed.
The bad news is that on Days of Our Lives during the week of 4-04-22, he was tied up in the Dimera crypt while his twin sister ran around town with yellow eyes and evil plans for everyone, especially Chanel.
That poor girl has now had her heart broken twice by the Devil. What is its problem with her?
First, the Devil influenced Chanel to break up Abe and Paulina at their wedding. Then, it possessed Johnny and made him break up with her in front of their entire family. And now it made Allie end their new relationship too.
It’s almost as if the Devil has a personal grudge against Chanel! Maybe it’s jealous of her free spirit or of her ability to turn the heads of both men and women, including a certain set of twins that have been fighting over her for a long time.
If I were Chanel, I’d mix a healthy dose of suspicion with my hurt.
Everyone assumes the Devil is long-gone, but still. It’s strange that both Allie and Johnny would declare their everlasting love for Chanel, only to turn around a few days later and claim they didn’t want her after all.
Chanel might attribute it to bad luck, assume something is wrong with her, or think that the twins were just raised to break people’s hearts this way. After all, they ARE Sami’s children, and Sami has been married half a dozen times.
But while she didn’t know Johnny very well before marrying him, she’s been close with Allie for a long time. They were close friends back in London, and their friendship has grown stronger since they both moved back to Salem.
So Allie’s behavior should feel VERY off to Chanel, especially since it’s a repeat of what happened between Chanel and Johnny.
Allie’s explanation for why she sent Chanel and Nicole contradictory text messages about where she would be didn’t make sense either. Chanel should not have accepted it so readily.
Another frustrating aspect of this new Devil possession involved Abby. It was exciting when she quickly realized Allie had gone to the crypt, but that would have been too easy a resolution to this storyline.
But Abby wasted time discussing her theory with Chad when he showed up out of nowhere, only to get a text from Chanel that Allie had come home, negating her reason for checking out the crypt altogether.
Ugh. This was one of those things that I knew was coming but wished wasn’t. I can only take so much of Johnny being tormented in that crypt, even if one of his tormenters is Andre Dimera.
Andre: I’m afraid I can’t free you, my dear boy, because I’m not your Uncle Tony. I’m your Uncle Andre.
Johnny: Uncle Andre? But you’re dead.
Andre: While I was alive, I made some unfortunate choices. So when Abigail struck me over the head with that urn, there was no destiny for my poor, corrupted soul other than to become the indentured servant of Mephistopheles. He sent me to take care of you.
[Johnny closes his eyes]
Johnny: This isn’t happening. You aren’t real.
Andre: I’m sorry to disillusion you, my dear boy, but I am very much still here.
Unlike Johnny, I could tell that Andre was Andre and not Tony the second he walked in. His whole demeanor was different. Andre has a quiet, creepy way of speaking that is instantly recognizable.
His explanation that he is now the Devil’s indentured servant because of all the evil things he did in life made more sense than anything else in this Deil story. It was a nice callback to that time that Marlena “died” and met Tony and Andre in the afterlife, and it fit Andre’s love of random acts of evil well.
Andre’s presence was a bright spot, as Thaoo Penghliss’ appearances usually are. But is this the Devil’s last hurrah or what?
Head writer Ron Carlivati recently called this part of the Devil saga “the final chapter” in a Tweet. Let’s hope that this really is almost the end of this.
This story has gone on and on and on, with the Devil jumping into someone new every time Salem thinks it is gone. The expiration date on this storyline is long gone, so let’s wrap it up already.
The Devil’s plans all revolve around Ciara’s baby, which it creepily claimed was its own.
So with Ciara getting ready to have that baby soon, maybe all will be revealed, the Devil can be defeated, and it can disappear back to Hell forever (or at least, for another 25 years).
Marlena can’t remember why the Devil wanted Ciara’s baby, and it wouldn’t tell Johnny. That’s supposed to amp up the mystery, but it felt like the writers were making this up as they went along and didn’t know yet what the Devil’s plan was.
We should find out soon, though. Ben and Ciara are having their gender reveal party, and we all know how parties go in Salem.
I tend to agree with Clyde that the idea of a gender reveal party is stupid.
Clyde: So why do these ladies have your sonogram results?
Ciara: Well, they are helping Ben and me with the gender reveal party.
Clyde: What the hell is that?
Ciara: It’s when you bring all your friends and family together and you all find out the sex of the baby together. It’s really fun. Some people go all out. Pinatas, skywriting. This one guy I know even took a giant baseball bat and hit a giant baseball and blue paint exploded everywhere.
Clyde: Well, that sounds kind of stupid to me. Why not just read it?
Ciara: Cause it’s more fun this way.
It’s unnecessary to put so much importance on the baby’s gender, and nobody knows whether they have a transgender child until they do.
Plus, the activities Ciara described sounded ridiculous. At least she only plans to have a cake, not a paint-filled baseball.
Now that Clyde’s invited himself to the party and we know that the Devil has invited itself too, things might get interesting.
Clyde seems far more the Devil’s speed than Allie, though lately, it seems to enjoy somehow embedding itself in innocent, kind people’s psyches.
The demon might be attracted to his dark side and try to tempt him to let it in. But will Clyde surprise us and turn out to be the one who saves the day?
It’s almost a given that Ciara will go into labor at this party, too. She’s made a point of saying she’s not hungry, which could be an early sign that the baby’s coming, and the Devil will undoubtedly speed up the process.
Either way, chaos will rule the day once this party gets underway.
It’s too bad that we have to have this Devil nonsense just when Ben and Ciara finally have a reasonable storyline.
Clyde getting out of jail and demanding to live with them so that he can make a fresh start could have provided this couple with a semi-realistic conflict. Ciara doesn’t trust Clyde, period, while Ben wants to believe his father has changed.
And Clyde is trying too hard to show Ciara that he intends to contribute to their family unit, doing everything from making her breakfast to offering to paint the nursery. That could have been the beginning of an intriguing story in which it’s hard to tell if he’s well-intentioned or trying to assert control over Ben and Ciara’s lives.
Instead, Ciara and Ben’s lives will go into a tailspin because of the Devil, and that’s a shame.
Similarly, I’d like Chanel to have a real chance to choose between Allie and Johnny, and how can she when the Devil keeps interfering with her relationships?
That’s one of the biggest problems with this Devil storyline. It makes it impossible for characters to make legitimate choices because there’s always this evil demon in the background interfering.
Case in point: Belle and Shawn wouldn’t be having this idiotic argument if the Devil hadn’t disguised Jan as Belle. And now I have to wonder if it’s still exerting some influence over Belle because her behavior since learning about Jan’s pregnancy has been ridiculous.
Belle has been throwing a tantrum for days because Shawn didn’t tell her that he had sex with Jan, even though she knows that Jan and the Devil tricked Shawn.
It’s ridiculous for Jan’s pregnancy to cause this rift between Belle and Shawn. This is exactly what Jan and her new BFF want, and Belle should be smart enough to realize it.
Constantly harping on the fact that Shawn didn’t tell her right away isn’t a good look, especially not during Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
While this situation is unrealistic, the fact is that he was tricked into having sex he didn’t consent to. Now his wife is berating him for being too humiliated by the experience to tell her about it right away.
Not cool, Days of Our Lives.
Belle also doesn’t seem to realize that she has the upper hand here.
Yes, Jan’s baby technically ties Jan to Shawn forever. However, Jan is in jail. That means that Shawn would likely get custody of her baby, and it would hurt Jan deeply to know that Shawn was raising that child with Belle.
While Jan could get out of jail in the future, Belle is a lawyer who surely could file a petition to terminate Jan’s parental rights on the grounds that she is unfit and adopt the baby.
Belle is probably too nice a person to do this, but she could completely ruin Jan’s life over this baby, and the best part would be that if she did, Jan would have done it to herself by raping Shawn and then trying to use the baby to break up him and Belle.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the story is going that way. Instead, Belle is flogging a dead horse. She refuses to forgive Shawn and keeps moving the goalposts. First, it was that he lied to her, but now it “doesn’t matter” if she forgives him because he’s having a baby with his rapist.
Belle’s behavior was obnoxious and out of character, to the point that I was glad that Shawn threw Belle’s past infidelity in her face. He was right; the affairs with Philip were consensual, while his encounter with Jan was not.
And to make matters worse, Belle is already inching toward an affair with EJ and will probably take comfort in his arms sooner rather than later.
Tony’s treatment of Anna was also annoying.
Anna probably shouldn’t have stabbed Sarah with the syringe. But Tony’s total lack of consideration for everything Anna’s been through was ridiculous to the point that I had to wonder if Andre took over his life again.
Anna had every right to be upset that her husband had moved out of the house and was pretending to be into “Renee.” Tony has not once stood up for Anna against “Renee’s” near-constant barrage of insults and threats, and he’s gone as far as making up phony stories about how he’s going to divorce Anna.
This isn’t helping a person with a severe mental illness. It’s enabling. And since no one was willing to acknowledge that, nor were they willing to give Sarah the only potential cure for her condition, it’s unsurprising that Anna took matters into her own hands.
Of course, it would be too easy if Sarah got her memories back right this second. Now she seems to be stuck somewhere in the past, thinking she’s a little girl.
This is a perfect excuse for that annoying baby voice that Sarah often puts on for no apparent reason. Ugh.
Everyone involved in this seems to have selective amnesia, too. Maggie was all for Rolf’s experimental cures when Will thought he was EJ. And no one remembers how a few months after taking the medication, Will’s memories came flooding back at his wedding to Paul, and he called the whole thing off.
Now, Maggie was eager to flush the drug out of Sarah’s system, and everyone thought Anna was unreasonable to want to put an end to this whole mess.
It didn’t help that Gwen switched the drugs (and as an aside, why was the syringe left on a counter where Gwen could get to it? Chad could have brought it directly to Maggie!). But still, Maggie didn’t know that, and her out-of-character bad attitude contributed to the problem.
Elsewhere, Rafe and Nicole had some genuinely romantic scenes. While I didn’t like that Rafe took his shirt off in the living room before heading to the bedroom for privacy, I DID like that these two spent time talking rather than jumping into bed.
Ava was more tolerable out of Rafe’s orbit. I enjoyed her needling Gabi and telling Jake that it was too easy for her to resist doing it.
And finally, EJ was the latest person to try to run someone out of town. His bribe was doomed to fail because if Clyde disappears to parts unknown, a warrant goes out for his arrest for violating his probation.
Everyone in Salem thinks they can tell someone else to leave town. They don’t have the right to do that, no matter what the person has done to them. For that reason, I was glad Clyde turned EJ down, even though I don’t like Clyde.
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 after 8 PM EST / 5 PM PST.
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.