Whoa There, Days of Our Lives! As Salem Gears Up to Honor Its First Family, the Show May Be Destroying It!
If there’s one thing we’ve gleaned from Days of Our Lives’ big 60th anniversary celebration in November, it’s that it’ll be a love letter to the show’s first family, the Hortons. EJ’s opening the Tom Horton Free Clinic and has asked for as many family members to return to town to celebrate with a grand gala. And that sounds absolutely perfect to us!
Or rather, it would, if we weren’t left wondering what Days of Our Lives is doing with the Hortons in the meantime! First off, there’s Jeremy’s return, inexplicably getting so much redemption offscreen that he went from criminal and abuser to teaching children.
Of all the Hortons, we’re not sure any fan was clamoring for him to come back, and even more bizarre, everyone but the Johnsons seems ready to brush his misdeeds under the rug and welcome him back with open arms. And somehow, he’s turning into… the reasonable one? Because at the same time, his own family is being so stubborn and unforgiving elsewhere, we’re just about fed up with them!
We’re talking, of course, about how they’ve been treating Chad. First there’s Jennifer, who came back to interview family about Tom, and ended up spending most of her time railing against Cat and having no problem using Thomas to make Chad feel horrible about Cat — and his own parenting skills! Steve and Kayla tried to remind her of everyone they’ve all been able to forgive (including Jack), but it all seemed to fall on deaf ears.
And as for Thomas, he’s now taking advice from Rachel, trying to run Cat out of town by making his dad feel utterly miserable, and threatening to live with Grandma Jennifer if his ex stays.
Then there’s Julie, who ran out of her own store on Thursday, seemingly just to return home and tell Chad he was horrible, Cat’s horrible and he’ll never be forgiven, no matter how much he turns his life upside down just to make the Hortons happy.
By the time Chad finally had enough of Julie and pushed back, we were ready to yell at her right along with him! And it looks like a whole lot of viewers are feeling the same! When we asked who folks were siding with on Facebook, the vast majority said Chad.
Lana Street Jones shared that she’s with “Chad for sure! Julie has gone past unreasonable. I normally love Julie but she is being ridiculous now.”
And Christina Ciampaglia wrote, “What Cat did was wrong but she was put into a horrible position, she knows what she did was wrong and she has shown remorse. Chad forgave her, and I think the rest of the family should as well. Jennifer is so annoying right now… apparently it’s ok to be married to a rapist but forgiving someone for doing something they didn’t even want to do is bad?”
In Thursday’s recap, Da1989 was outright cheering Chad’s outburst, commenting, “Chad should have told everyone to [bleep] off a long time ago, but I’m glad he’s finally putting his foot down and taking charge of his life. But what he really needs to do is to move out of the Horton house and back into the Dimera mansion so he doesn’t have to hear Julie and Jennifer bashing Cat 24/7.”
And over on X? BJ Van Griffin had a hilarious response to the “Horton self-righteousness” that seems to be going around. “I hope Chad proposes to Cat in Horton Square right in front of Tom and Alice’s plaque!” OK, maybe that’s a bit harsh.
In the end, we’re not saying we don’t understand their anger towards Cat, but their attitude has been so over the top and just downright mean, it’s destroying what empathy we can muster. Right now, Maggie’s just about the only Horton we can tolerate, and she’s pretty much a Kiriakis at this point!
Maybe it’s all building to a grand moment of forgiveness for the 60th anniversary celebration, but by then, it could be too little too late.
