Michael

What a thrilling preview. "These people face challenges." How exciting!

Ashford and Brooks overlapped for about two months in fall 1993, but I don't think they interacted -- or, if they did, it was only in passing. Jennifer only got involved with Peter after Ashford's Jack left town, and Jack's return as Valley was tied into realizing that Jen was with Peter.

Yeah, it seemed like that, but the plan was so silly and muddled, and like we said above, he was... acting like a DiMera, just like his crazy mother was. I had the same thought about Johnny. They could've fully made him an anti-DiMera.

Right! A line from Jack to Steve would've made sense. This could also be more (semi-illogical but understandable) fuel for Jennifer and Jack with regards to the custody case. Chad was just kidnapped by someone who terrorized them for years. Why would they want Thomas and Charlotte exposed to that? I might be dense, but I'm not understanding exactly what Peter's plan was. He wanted to eliminate the other DiMeras in order to... get revenge for being neglected? He didn't bother coming home for almost 30 years! And I know he's bitter that he did prison time for his crimes while "the other DiMeras get away with everything," but most of the people he kidnapped weren't criminals. Tony, Chad, and Theo are "good DiMeras." Kristen was LITERALLY IN PRISON for like the 15th time when he nabbed her. EJ's a bastard who has gotten away with a lot, yeah, but he was the last one abducted. Meanwhile, Stefan and Jake waltzed in out of the fog and had homes in that mansion and chances at the CEO spot within like a year. Peter could've had that if he had made a mild effort. It doesn't help that they haven't (I'm two days behind, so maybe this is a yet) explained where the hell he was for all this time.

The biggest red flag for me was when Peter referenced EJ sleeping with Abigail and didn't acknowledge that she used to be his stepdaughter, that she's Jennifer's daughter, etc. They just breezed right by it. Even if they're not going to go there, a simple "Abigail was a good soul, so you must've manipulated her" would've been something. Not to mention that Peter is probably Jack's most significant non-familial antagonist ever -- a single line about "Thank god he's not able to hurt anyone right now" would go a long way. They keep calling the unit that Rachel and Sophia are in "the adolescent unit," which... Rachel is 10 and Sophia is over 18, so that's not a thing! I get that they want them to interact, but it's silly. Of course, this is Bayview, which told Brady that he could hang Christmas lights in Rachel's room. Yeah, I'm sure those pose no safety threat at all in a psychiatric ward...

I think part of the reason this Peter stuff hasn't landed is because his motives and goals are so murky. He's super anti-DiMera... so he goes and does the most typically DiMera thing (kidnapping and trying to kill his relatives in an unnecessarily convoluted manner). It's so flat and goofy.

This DiMera crypt thing was, like, a bust of comical proportions. But the fallout of the crisis has done some effective things. As this past week went on, the material got stronger. Thursday and Friday were genuinely pretty good! I agree that Ari should've been at the Horton celebration. Why did they even bring her on?! She hasn't had a story in, like, seven months. I feel like she and Jeremy are largely just there to have people with the last name "Horton" around. And poor Shawn, too busy working to attend his family's celebration. I wish they'd just said he was in Hawaii with Bo, Hope, and Ciara's family.

I have a cross-country flight Monday, so I'm saving this past Wednesday's ep through Monday's to download off Peacock and watch in-flight to pass the time. But I'm eager to see DG as Peter.

Yeah, I don't understand Maggie's function at Titan. They made such a big deal out of Xander and Philip sharing the CEO spot and now Maggie just... has power as well? At some point, the Brady Pub got the twangy music cues that they used to use for the Cheatin' Heart, too. That's been bugging me!

I like the idea of the trivia night as a gathering spot for folks, but I can't deal with long-ass scenes of Roman on the microphone.

I'm pretty sure that's Wes Ramsey at 1:52.

It would be a good twist if Rachel LIKED the idea of Sarah and Brady so much that she actually supported it.

The baby was named when Roman was believed to be her father.

I thought they navigated the budget and productions issues decently. As was said above, I'd rather have had five days of visitors and memories than one single episode. I enjoyed this a lot more than the 50th, which had higher highs but much lower lows (like half of Salem being picked off right around the anniversary).

Sami unleashed Jan Spears on Belle & Shawn again when she got Jan sprung from the institution to testify against Nicole in... 2020? Whenever they were all arguing over Allie's baby, I think. That reignited the Belle/Sami animosity. Then Sami caught EJ & Belle in bed together, and it's been like this since.

They've pulled out some great, less common flashbacks for this week! Even if the transitions in and out of some of them have been... heavy-handed, I'll take it. I only got about halfway through Tuesday's episode this morning and will have to finish later, but I was actually surprised that Sami forgave Lucas so easily. I assume this is the new regime's way of clearing the decks there. Just very un-Sami to accept an apology so readily. I'm not sure what to make of this thing with her being engaged, except... Maybe something toward the end of the episode invalidates my theory, but I'm trying to make sense of why they threw that in there.

Thanks for sharing the info. I find it helpful to have it laid out so clearly.

That mostly does seem to be it, but

They've really leaned into the "Anna is kooky" thing since... maybe not her return in the 2000s, but since Tony's death in 2009 for sure. And yes, this weird little Tony interlude reeks of an Andre swap. Ugh. Did anyone catch that establishing shot of the neighborhood that the Horton home is allegedly in? It looked like a planned subdivision or a golf community or something. Such a weird mismatch. I did like a lot of the dialogue between JJ/Theo and Jen/Chad, though!

I think the chest is supposed to carry the character for us. The novelty of that wore off about eight years ago for me, but here we are. Also, I just waded through this ridiculous back-and-forth about women in their late 30s (if that's even the age these characters are) conceiving children, and I keep seeing people mention that Sophia committed arson by starting the dorm fire. Did she?! We saw Holly knock the candle into the trashcan. I feel like I'm hallucinating. Was this revealed at some point?

I'm two days behind, so there might be info I don't have, but Tony didn't buy DiMera back, right? He used the information about the fraudulent letter as leverage to get Xander and Philip to GIVE him DiMera back.

The optics of the JJ/Theo storyline continue to be really messy. As was just mentioned, the original storyline did this annoying thing where it gestured at an important social issue but didn't actually engage with it. Theo was committing a robbery at the time of the shooting. JJ was trying to stop a robbery in progress, not targeting a random black person. He also knew Theo personally -- which of course doesn't prevent or erase bias, but this wasn't someone he was only judging based on race or appearance. It was like they wanted credit for a topical storyline but without doing any of the work to engage with the real ugliness of the actual issue. The scenes in this revisit of that storyline have been strong, but they don't entirely make sense if you actually remember what happened. I do think JJ acknowledging his implicit bias wasn't supposed to be an admission of guilt, per se -- it was protecting him by having him acknowledge that all white people have implicit bias, and acknowledging it is the first step toward correcting behaviors. So for him to deny having it would've been more of a red flag for Jada, I think. Also, unless you're suggesting a triangle in which Theo is torn between Ari and JJ... Ari and JJ are biological cousins, so they couldn't play that a pairing there. The dialogue among Johnny, Chanel, and Holly was driving me nuts today. I know they were trying to string the whole thing out for dramatic effect, but Sophia sent those photos "this morning" so that they'd arrive while the social worker was there. Johnny said that they were sent "last night," which wouldn't make any sense unless he hadn't checked his phone AT ALL since the night before. Or am I losing it? And if those were the first messages or photos he'd allegedly gotten from Holly, how would the Anonymous Birth Mother have witness Holly sexting Johnny long enough ago to write that letter? They set up all these specific details and now they're playing fast and loose with them.

To be clear, I think the blackout mostly sucked and the logistics were executed poorly. I just think they mostly explained the timing of Sophia’s dumb plan. And it is DUMB: she is already worried about being connected to that baby… so she writes an anonymous letter identifying the mother as someone who knows both Johnny and Holly — well enough to have seen what Holly was texting.

The timeline didn't really make sense. The social worker came 30-45 minutes early, then they sat around eating pastries. Meanwhile Sophia sent the text and was later informed by Ari that Holly's whole episode happened "around 9 a.m." so... once again, time is a flat circle in Salem.

They showed a flashback to Sophia overhearing the exact time of Johnny and Chanel's scheduled visit from the social worker, so I presume she sent it at that time so it would pop up during the visit. That's about the only part that DOES make sense. Convenient that it arrived right as the anonymous letter was being read. And either the photo came from Holly's phone, which means Sophia stole it, or it came from Sophia's phone which would be easy to track. I wasn't clear. I assume the reason Holly was hospitalized in the morning was so that it'll eventually come out that Sophia set this all up since Holly couldn't have sent the photo, thereby clearing Johnny's name.