If Days of Our Lives’ Gwen Is Bad, Jack Is *Way* Worse — Here’s Why

At least we understand why his surprise daughter has been such a monster to him and his family. Why he’s being such a jerk to her, knowing what she’s spent her entire life believing? Not so much.

Days of Our Lives’ Jack can kiss goodbye that Father of the Year nomination. Upon learning for sure that Gwen is his daughter — and why she was hellbent on destroying his family with Jennifer — he demonstrated so much insensitivity, we wouldn’t trust him to own a pet rock, never mind raise a kid.

First, even holding the paternity-test results in his hands in the February 2 episode, Jack couldn’t bring himself to say to Gwen, “I accept that I’m your father.” Instead, all she got was “I won’t challenge the results of this test.”

Gee, love you, too, Daddy.

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Jack then completely shrugged off the validity of Gwen’s anger toward him — and it is valid, given what she had been told forever — and had the nerve to bring up his own hard life as a Deveraux. The years of pain that she’d suffered thinking that she’d been rejected by her father never even seemed to cross his mind. We know that Gwen has declared it open season on Jack’s family, but wouldn’t he have any — any! — parental instinct to take responsibility for her, to make her feel better?

Dude couldn’t even express regret. Rather, Jack just defended himself. “I never threw you away. I never even knew you existed,” he reminded Gwen. “Look, I know you want to feel vindication… you want me to beg for forgiveness, but I can’t be sorry for something I had no part in.”

Jack, how about being sorry that this young woman standing before you is a daughter you never got to know? How about being sorry that she grew up thinking you didn’t care? How about being sorry that you can’t muster up enough humanity to put yourself in her shoes for even a second?

Unbelievably, Jack’s behavior got worse.

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She gets it, Jack — you like Abigail better.

Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI

When Gwen said that she knew he hated her, but it was OK because she hated him more, he didn’t reply that he didn’t hate her, he hated what she’d done to Jennifer and Abigail. He didn’t reply that he didn’t — and couldn’t — hate her, he didn’t even know her. He spat that she could go ahead and hate him, “but Jennifer did nothing to you. And neither did Abigail.”

Way to rub salt in the wound, bro. Got it. That branch of the family gets unconditional love, the branch standing before you with a shiner gets another reminder that she ain’t them.

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Finally, Jack blew his last chance to extend an olive branch to Gwen. Whereas a compassionate person, one with even the vaguest curiosity about their newfound child, might have asked, “Where do we go from here? Is there any way we can get to the bottom of all this and… get to know one another?” Jack inquired what she wanted from his family next and offered her a check to disappear.

If we were Gwen, we’d take that check and bid good riddance to bad rubbish. Then, on our way out of town, we’d pay one final visit to Abigail. “I envied you my entire life,” we’d say. “You got our father.

“Now that I’ve met him,” we’d conclude, “I don’t envy you at all anymore. I feel sorry for you.”

What do you think, Days of Our Lives fans? Some anger on Jack’s part is completely understandable, but didn’t he come off not just like a terrible dad but an awful person? On your way to the comments, check out the below photo gallery of an actual good parent in action: the inimitable Alice Horton.