You Had One Job, Days

"Sami had discovered that her 'perfect' mate, EJ, had a wandering eye and had been unfaithful to her for months.  But instead of what most women might do in such a situation: confront her disloyal husband (fiance in this case), throw a couple of vases in his direction, or go the more civilized route of seeking advice from a marriage counselor, my mother chose another direction entirely."

Let's ignore the grammar goofs and the fact that it's factually incorrect ("unfaithful to her for months"?), and let's focus on what, according to the writers of Days, most women might do if they discovered their significant other had fucked a cheese doodle. 

After being emotionally devastated, a woman might "throw a couple of vases" or "go the more civilized route of seeking advice from a marriage counsellor".  I remember being cheated on and thinking that I was a wretchedly ugly girl incapable of ever truly being loved.  I could barely chew through a piece of toast for a couple of weeks.  A friend of mine tried to back over her husband with her car when she found out he had been having an affair with the same woman for two years.  Women handle these things differently.  If someone I loved had flippantly remarked that neither of us handled what had happened to us the way most women would, I'm pretty sure I'd be getting force-fed in a hospital after another suicide attempt, and the "someone" would be in another wing of the same hospital recovering after being pulled out from under the back wheels of my friend's SVU right now.  Both of us handled the bad news in different ways, different from each other, and different from a million other people.  The one thing we had in common, though, was that we both needed a little peace, love and understanding, fer fuck's sake.  

I think the biggest mistake the writers have made so far (and there have been many), is channeling their inability to relate to women through a twenty-year-old man who can't work a condom, let his father go to jail for a crime he committed, then let his mother almost go to prison trying to keep that same crime covered up years later so that he could share custody of the daughter he conceived with his cotton candy-headed ex-beard.  

Nevermind the obvious - that old, white men are telling women who have had their hearts broken that they should "throw a couple of vases", or go "the more civilized route and seek advice from a marriage counsellor", then be done with it.  Why do I think Will was the worst possible candidate to sound off on Sami?

THE DE-EVOLUTION OF WILLIAM HORTON

Will has almost always been a shrunken little weenie.  And then he saw Sami fucking EJ on the DiMera sofa, and, just like Sami's gorgeous gams that night, the clouds parted and we got to see the sun.  Or the son, as the case may be.  Chandler Massey, of course, was brilliant.  Suddenly he was holding his own with the likes of Alison Sweeney and James Scott.  Suddenly Will was the perfect blend of his mother and father - sharp-tongued and sporting a chip on each shoulder like Sami, and frequently sensible and sarcastic like Lucas.  And yet Will was still also himself.  On a show that is often guilty of recycling stories within months of each other and has a nasty habit of trying to make the younger characters "the new [insert name of beloved legacy character no longer under thirty here]", it was nice to finally watch Will come out of more than one closet over the course of those months that seem so long ago now.  He wasn't "the new Sami" or "the new Lucas".  He was one of a kind.  Was.

So what happened?

GUY WILSON HAPPENED

Nothing against Guy Wilson.  He's a decent actor and he's cute as a button.  But Chandler Massey's Will throwing his mother under the bus isn't the same as Guy Wilson's Will throwing his mother under the bus, and I'm not just saying that because I think it's a fucking disgrace that Sami is being thrown under any buses given the motivation behind her actions these days.  Towards the end of Chandler Massey's tenure, the writing for the character had taken a bit of a nosedive.  He was domesticated far too soon, and by the time Guy Wilson took on the role, he was married off, and the transformation into Gay Maggie Horton was complete.  

If this was Chandler Massey's Will from 2011 -- the Will with balls the size of Saturn, the Will who got drunk and sardonically announced that Sami being a bitch made him a son of a bitch, then tried to blackmail a DiMera -- I would have totally bought him wanting to destroy his mother.  He was young, angry and trying to get who he thought he was, who he actually was, and who he wanted to be to gel.  When Chandler Massey left, Will was a shadow of his former awesome self, but there was still the hope that, given a decent storyline, he could kick ass and go toe-to-toe with the likes of Sami and EJ once again.  But Guy Wilson is still wet behind the ears, which is at total odds with the character he plays now who is supposed to have grown to love his mother in a real and honest way, foibles and all.  He had also come to respect EJ, who has shown himself to be, at various times, a loyal friend, a father figure, and a mentor (even if it was mentoring him in the art of scheming to get shit done his way).  Every recast has to embody the spirit of the character while also making him his own, but this is a completely different Will.  It's something that takes time, and it's something I believe the writing and the actor have to do as a team.  That ain't happening here.

WHO WROTE THE FARCICLE?

The article is a disaster on so many levels.  "Will" contradicts himself dozens of times and seems to know things he shouldn't have a clue about.  For example, how did he know what happened between EJ and Sami when she visited him in his cell?  What makes him think Abigail fell victim to EJ's charms, or that it was an ongoing affair (neither of which are true, by the way)?  He sure does a helluva lot of speculating in this article.

Why doesn't the allegedly talented writer know the difference between "empathy" and "sympathy"?  Why did he keep referring to Sami, Kate and EJ by their first names as though he were writing a report on what he did on summer vacation to read in front of his class?  Why didn't he mention that the shrewd business woman Sami has been in cahoots with all this time is his grandmother?  Full disclosure, remember Will?

Seriously, Days - if you're going to attempt something like this, do it well or don't do it at all.  It doesn't bode well when you can't even write a decent article - not even a decent fake article.  You might be thinking, "Diggy, you can't write for shit and your grammar is equally terrible."  Okay, yes.  The difference is that I'm not getting paid to do this.  I didn't have a job to do.

WHY?

So I'm sure someone thought it would be cool to post the farticle itself for us to read.  But it reeks of something Days does far too often - try to tell us what to think and how to feel, who wears the white hat and who wears the black.  And I think that in this case, Days has gotten it so very wrong.  They continue to forget who their audience is.  Will publicly humiliated his mother, the same mother still raising three young children who get to head out every day to face a town filled with hypocritical schmucks like their older brother.  Schmucks who aren't obligated to keep their thoughts to themselves or censor their opinions on the matter to make them more child-friendly, I might add.  He tried his damndest to keep Cheese Doodle's name out of this hot mess to protect her (though why he feels the need to protect her if he believes she is just a victim of circumstance, I have no idea), but the only truly innocent victims in all of this - his brother and sisters - are expected to fend for themselves?  He doesn't approve of his mother forcing Abigail to do "the walk of shame", but that's essentially what he's sentenced his siblings to do to and from school everyday come September.  

Wow, Will.  Way to sympathize.  Or is it "empathize"?  Ah, who cares.