Ejami: Sex, Death, Sound, Light, and Colour

Okay. 

Did I win a contest?

I'm not talking about the poll I won in regards to whether or not Sami and Rafe would make it a year out from under Cordiglay's thumb.  I mean some sort of contest I may have forgotten I'd entered that won me the best two back-to-back episodes of Days I've seen in the longest time.

 

 

James Scott and Alison Sweeney were magnificent.  I'm not sure how much choreography went into those fight scenes, but the whole thing had me awestruck.  They were circling and striking out at each other like a couple of cobras, hoods flared, spitting venom.  I loved every second of it.  From the moment EJ crashed to the ground, Sami flying to his side so they could comfort each other, to the last lingering look that passed between them before Sami rushed home to see Johnny, I found that the whole thing progressed naturally, and it was VERY EJ and Sami. 

Sami and EJ in the moment.

I heaved a huge sigh of relief.

I wasn't worried about things on Alison and James' end of things.  I've missed the Sami we've been seeing this passed week.  I was worried that we were going to get more of the same from Sami when the reset started.  I'd mentioned how pitiful she looked when Rafe was acting like a dick over losing his job, and poking a stick at her inferiority complex and fragile relationship with Carrie.  I was afraid that the Sami I loved so much once was gone forever because it just didn't look like the writers were going to change anything.  When Sami responded to Rafe being a douchebag by slipping into the shower with him to be his loofah, I could have sworn I saw my hopes and dreams for a Sami redux going down their shower drain, along with Sami's dignity.

But then came the shooting.  I hated the idea of another child caught in the crossfire scenario (usually it's Sami and EJ's crossfire), but the second Sami freaked the fuck out at the police station over Marlena not being there, it was like the clouds had parted and I finally saw the sun.  Not just because it was angry Sami, but because I found myself agreeing with her.  She made good points - Marlena's grandson is missing.  Her daughter is hysterical.  Whether or not John is guilty is irrelevant.  Instead of comforting Sami, Marlena was trying to convince John (for the umpteenth time) that none of the madness surrounding them all right now is his fault.  Once she was sure John was safe, she should have been with her daughter.

When Sami was reaming out everyone around her, and people kept apologizing on her behalf, she wasn't putting up with any of that bullshit.  She was unapologetically pissed off.  It was like someone kept trying to dim the lights by putting scarves over the lamps and she just kept burning them all up one after the other.  This is the woman I remember.  As far as I'm concerned, Sami Hernandez isn't fit to lick Samantha Gene Brady's boots.

Don't turn around, Rafe. You'll turn to sto-- Oh, wait.

Leading up to the episode, one thing was perfectly clear - Sami and EJ were paralleling in their panic and ensuing guilt, and it was a wondrous thing to behold.  And even more wondrous?  Seeing them acknowledging it, in some cases even defending it.  When Roman and Rafe were being all hush-hush about the possible Johnny-spotting out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, so as not to upset Sami, EJ was the only one who understood what she was going through enough to tell them they were acting like idiots.  "That's perfect, isn't it?  Let's not tell the hyper-sensitive woman anything that might upset her delicate sensibilities.  We'll leave all the hard work to the big, tough policemen."

Rafe and Roman "couldn't find their thumbs on a map".

While Sami was having problems with pater and mater, EJ was also getting into it with Johnny's Nonno, whose slip of the tongue almost had EJ ripping it out of his head.  "My son is not collateral damage!  He is my son!" 

Lexie (who was apparently hanging out at the mayor's office with her husband, "monitoring the search") and Nicole were both incredibly unhelpful.  Nicole - soap gods bless her - tried, but I found her "I love Johnny just as much as you do" statement to be positively ridiculous, and incredibly patronizing.  Nicole, you haven't lost your shit yet because you're more mature, or because you're more capable of rational thought in the face of a personal crisis.  You haven't lost your shit yet because Johnny is not your son.

Nicole is literally fading into the background.

So while Sami's anti-Brady tendencies were finally resurfacing, so, too, were EJ's anti-DiMera tendencies.  Feeling alienated from everyone around them, they sought out each other.  Or, rather, Sami sought out EJ.  Again, I loved it.  If I hadn't seen the promo, I would have been shocked. 

EJ is usually the one to reach out and hold a rather ungrateful Sami when she breaks down, as we saw him do when Johnny was wheeled into surgery last winter.  He did it once again at the police station.  Sami gravitated towards the only person she knew could identify with what she was feeling as she was feeling it.

The Fight

I loved that they brought up the attempted murder, the Sydnapping, their mutual failings as parents, et cetera.  What I loved most of all?  That EJ and Sami are the only couple in daytime who can get away with these kinds of scenes.  They both give as good (or as bad) as they get.  This is their happening, and it freaks me out.  There is no other couple like them out there in Soapdom.

Do I think EJ framing John should have come into this?  Nah.  After the last year of Dena Higley's reign of terror, the original sin thing goes out the window.  I didn't buy Brady blaming Arianna's death on EJ, and I'm not going to buy Johnny's disappearance being EJ's fault either.  Yes, he played a major part in it, and he's the guy who handed the shit over to be lobbed at the fan, but Sami made a potentially-fatal error aswell - she went against her "gut" and brought her kids to a public place to meet up with a man who was receiving death threats. So my opinion is that they can both be really crappy parents.  Parents who love their children, but crappy parents nonetheless.

I digress, though.  The fight was amazing.  They tangoed (then tangled) all over that living room, and it was magnificent.  I actually caught myself holding my breath a few times.  When EJ brought up Grace, when Sami called EJ "disgusting", when EJ spun and cried "I never should have lost control!" 

Then the slap, the kiss...

The Grief Sex

If it makes me the devil, so be it.  I loved the grief sex.  The production values were brilliant, music worked well, and whoever decided that the rest of the episode should play out without a single word being spoken between the two made a masterful move.  The looks on their faces and the body language throughout spoke the unspoken.  Soap folk have a habit of thinking viewers are bumpkins who need their faces pushed into things to understand them, so I was fully bracing myself for some awkward dialogue to follow the sex scenes, but was most pleasantly surprised.

They were able to make it look authentic.  Primetime authentic, I mean.  Sami untucking EJ's shirt, EJ holding onto Sami's thigh, Sami arching her neck every which way, EJ's shoulders rolling with their movements, their combined grunting, gasping, and moaning...Yowzah!  Because this was needy, desperate, soul-shattering grief sex, there was no time for undressing, so yes - everything had to be implied, and imply Jamison did.  They implied, and implied, and implied.

Is it wrong?  If you're an Ejami fan the odds are good that you'll get it.  Sami and EJ are complex characters that love and hate hard.  This sequence of events makes perfect sense as far as this pair is concerned.  If you're not an Ejami fan, it doesn't matter if you get it or not.  It's meant to be horrifying to people who don't understand the characters. 

 After Monday, any sex on that couch is going to

look like cousins fighting over a Snuggie on movie night.

For instance, look at Will.  If he's going to catch his mother having sex with another man, the writers really have to go big or go home.  Will has seen Sami do so much heinous shit over the years that he can't just catch her commiting boring ol' adultery. 

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

What could be more horrifying for Will than to see his mom having primal sex while she thinks her six-year-old son is missing and his loyal, ever-lovin' step-father is somewhere out there eating sandwiches off the floor that taste of guilt and despair?  With his arch-nemesis, of all people!  Gadzooks!  So if you get it, you get it.  If you don't, you're not expected to.  The only two people expected to get it are EJ and Sami, in the heat of the moment.

Will had me all caught up in his trauma until the last
second when he unleashed the jazz hands.

I don't know where it's going, but I do know this - it's on.  EJ and Sami still have that electric chemistry (though they never lost it - they were criminally removed from each other's orbit).  Rafe and Nicole might as well start making and throwing sandwiches at eachother.  Who knows what's going to happen from here on in.  I find the idea of EJ and Sami having this huge secret between them to be absolutely delicious, and so very soapy.  And it's about freakin' time.

Because I was so enthralled by James Scott and Alison Sweeney, I've overlooked a few things.  But it's all coming back to me now.

Horton Bio-Dome

Okay.  What the hell is happening in Horton Square?  It's been mentioned a couple of times that it has a roof.  Is the square heated, though? 

How do you get in and out of the square during a blizzard in a mini-skirt without freezing your doughnuts off?  It's driving me crazy.  I need answers.

I was confused when Madison started talking to Nicole about EJ.  Was Madison trying to convince Nicole that she was in love with EJ to get her attention off of Brady, or is she just a younger, lube-wielding, cucumber-slicing Mary Worth?

One-Eyed Johnny

A six-year-old kid with one eye manages to evade both the police and the FBI for twenty-seven hours by hiding...under...a table.

This begs several questions.

If the pub was still taped off and locked up, what thoughtful enforcer of the law set up all the chairs and draped the tablecloths over the tables again?

How did Johnny manage to get back into the pub after supposedly running off?

Since Ally was also on the floor with Sydney and Johnny when the shooting started, why wouldn't someone have asked her ages ago if she had any idea where Johnny may have disappeared to?  Oh, wait.  Nevermind.

Between Johnny having limited peripheral vision, and Austin and Caroline mentioning more than once that the upper level of the pub was being renovated, no one could come up with a better explanation for Johnny's disappearance?

Obviously there are so many more, but...yeah.  I don't want it to rain on my grief sex good time.

Ding Dong

Will knocks lightly on the door, completely ignores the doorbell, then proceeds to pull out the key he still has, for whatever reason (you'd think he'd have gotten rid of it just out of principle), entering a house that may or may not be empty. 

I'd love to see what would happen if Will arrived at the Smugnest to find EJ sitting on the couch drinking Rafe's beer.  You know, because there was no answer when EJ tried knocking on the door, so...you know...

Other Stuff

I liked that Bo and Hope...hmm...I liked Bo and Hope.

For the first time in a long time, I really felt like they were in sync again, rather than around the time of the reset when the dialogue was telling me one thing, but the performances seemed to be telling me something different. They're Bo and Hope again.

My heart went out to them whenever I caught a glimpse of them suffering in silence in the background while watching Sami going through what they went through with Zack.  I loved that Hope stayed overnight at the smugnest with Sami like the devoted aunt she once was.  I'm still not sure what to make of Bo's weird James-Hetfield-half-goatee thing, but I found I was so distracted by everything else going on, and by their performances, that I barely noticed it.  In fact, it actually started to look good after a while.

Sami and Kate

Sami and Kate actually made me teary.  I loved watching Kate try to take Sami's mind off of things for a few minutes by attempting to strike up a cat fight.  But it was when Kate said, "Austin and Lucas survived you.  And Johnny will, too" that I lost it. 

It was too perfect, and I think it was one of the most comforting things anyone ended up saying to Sami.  Aww, lookit what a big ol' softy I am.  I'm getting all misty-eyed again.

Phew.  Okay.  One pretty damn good week, two incredible episodes.  Make sure you tune in on Monday.  You won't be disappointed.  If you are, you're welcome to come back here to complain.