The Case for Chloe

There was a time when I really loved Chloe.  And I still love her, I guess, despite the huge rift between us right now.

Like just about every character currently on this show, I'm chalking up her extremely out of character behaviour to something or someone poisoning Salem's water supply - a twist that will be revealed some time within the next three years, or when Dena Higley is asked to pack up her little laptop with "Hard as Hell" and "I am woman - hear me bore" decals on the lid.

If you're reading this, O Powers That Be, take note.  This can all be fixed with someone waking up and proclaiming that the past few months were "all just a nightmare" or "someone has been tainting the town's booze supply".  I know it's sort of the same thing that would happen in a story written by a twelve-year-old once the twelve-year-old lost interest in it and just wanted to hand the stupid thing in, but really - is the current situation at Days so different?




Chloe was once the girl we rooted for.  She was smart but shy, beautiful but modest - and by modest I don't just mean that her boobs stayed obediently in her top.  Chloe was the relatable one.  When the velvet ghoul girl cloak fell from her shoulders, we cheered (even if it took ten bloody minutes of Philip complaining about her choice in outerwear while Chloe asked him about a dozen times to just take the damn thing off of her).

Our little Chloepillar was turning into a beautiful butterfly, and we ooed and ahhed over her as she dazzled us over and over again - like when she blew everyone's eyebrows off their faces singing at Shawn's sixteenth birthday party, or whenever she told stuck-up, frizzy-haired Jan and her useless boyfriend (whose name I can't be bothered to remember) to shut their pie-holes.  Okay, she didn't say "pie-hole", but that's because Chloe was also a lady.  These were the Days of Yore, when an acid-tongued retort from Chloe would entail more than just the words "you bitch" and would have us triumphantly snapping our fingers in all sorts of geometric shapes.

How did we get from Chloe baring her soul through song to Chloe baring her booty to...well...everyone?

Much in the way that I dismissed Nicolas Cage after Moonstruck - choosing to believe that he retired to some far off land to raise emus and make ceramic mosaics, leaving behind his own Efar in his place - I choose to pretend that this Chloe we're seeing is a different Chloe.  An entirely different character who just happens to have the same name.  If my Chloe had been betrayed the way she believed Daniel and Carly had betrayed her, she would have confronted the two of them with white knuckles sharpened into shivs and fire in her eyes.  My Chloe isn't dumb enough to be sucked into one of Vivian's ridiculous plans.  And my Chloe would know better than to leave a baby alone in a house with the oven on.

When I read KC's interview in which he said that Chloe would be suffering from postpartum depression, and that the show would finally be able to showcase Nadia Bjorlin's acting chops since before DH's evil reign began, I was a little excited.  Again - I never learn.

Cordiglay's idea of postpartum depression is truly mind-boggling.  I'm almost certain that the term "postpartum depression" was only tossed in there for us "housewives" to sink our teeth into.  Oooh...lookit Days!  So modern!  So in touch with issues affecting women today!  Ripping storylines straight from the headlines!

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Postpartum depression and "my husband dumped me for willy-wonking my step-son-in-law" depression are two very different things.  There were instances where I was thinking, "Okay.  This might be able to work if they stay on track".  I make jokes about it, but when Chloe told Maggie that she was starting to feel like she didn't exist, I thought they were onto something.  Seeing Chloe sitting at Maggie's kitchen table zonked out while Parker cried in the background?  I can see that.  The writers, rather than focus on the main issue, which was supposed to be Chloe adjusting to life as a single mother and trying to emotionally bond with her new son, focused on her bellowing about Daniel leaving her.  But then Days decided to get all dramatic on our asses, and when that happens, nine out of ten times the consequences are disastrous.  Not the kind of disastrous that makes for good television.

So we get Chloe rambling on about how good mothers make cookies while a loony tune plays in the background.  We get Chloe making the decision to leave Parker in the house alone with the oven on while she rushes off to get his prescription.  I just couldn't buy it.  I could buy Maggie making cookies to cheer Chloe up, then maybe having to rush out for something (magical fairy dust for the cookies) and asking Chloe to keep an eye on the oven.  Maybe Chloe falls asleep and can't wake up.  She's been exhausted lately.  Perhaps she takes more pills than she can handle and falls asleep, leaving her dead to the world around her.  Parker is screaming, the oven is smoking, Maggie's cookies are ruined...This is drama I can buy into. 

I think the writers have forgotten that it isn't always about the event itself - It's about how the characters/actors/writers handle said event.  Chloe, who doesn't look so hot after the paternity thing as it is, is shamed into a suicide attempt rather than coming to the decision to take her own life through the natural progression of her improperly treated depression - which would have been able to hold its own drama-wise if it was backed up by good storytelling and great dialogue (Days is incapable of manufacturing both right now).  Sure - Chloe taking too many pills and falling asleep doesn't sound exciting as I'm typing it, but that's what writers and  talented actors like Nadia Bjorlin are for. 

If Days had bothered to do any research on the subject, or had even just read a Wikipedia entry or glanced at a pamphlet on postpartum depression, writers could have crafted an amazing story for Nadia that could actually end up empowering and redeeming Chloe in the end (something the character has really needed and deserved desperately for some time now).  A potentially good story has been spectacularly derailed due to what I can only hope is laziness and not incompetency (it's the lesser of the two evils, I think).  The rush job the writers did on this made Chloe's afterschool special of a house fire look downright negligent without the strong foundation it required to establish that the character is suffering from a very real mental illness and isn't just an imbecilic bimbo.

You can't have it both ways, Dena.  You can't take a sensitive, controversial subject like postpartum depression and lather it up into schlocky soap drama the same way you could...say...strand someone on an island.