Waaait a Minute! Is Days of Our Lives Making Us Fear for Ben’s Life When It’s Really [Spoiler] That’s Getting Killed?
Monday, April 25th, 2022
Is a lethal switcheroo in the works?
Aw, hell! Days of Our Lives spoilers for the week reveal that Andre offers Ben a chance to make a deal with the devil — which, according to Soap Opera Digest, is his freedom in exchange for using his Necktie Killer skillset to murder Johnny. Having been altogether redeemed, Ciara’s husband turns down the ghoulish offer, at which point Andre shrugs and says, in essence, “Okey-dokey, I’ll kill you then.”
Obviously, we are meant to be afraid, be very afraid, that Ben won’t live to see his and Ciara’s baby grow up. But what if the soap is setting us up to think that “A” is going to happen when in reality, it’s sneakily setting “B” in motion? In other words, couldn’t the show be ratcheting up our anxiety over Ben’s fate only to actually pull a fast one and bump off Johnny instead?
As it is, Allie’s twin brother can’t get a whole lot higher than he already is on Satan’s [bleep] list. He fought his possession hella hard and no longer serves any purpose to the demon. Well, other than its delight in his angst over Tripp’s growing closeness with Chanel. So wouldn’t Johnny be every bit as expendable to the devil as Ben is? Wouldn’t Andre just go ahead and eliminate Johnny as another threat to the master plan that’s being executed by the forces of evil?
Review soaps’ all-time craziest storylines — for better and worse — in the below photo gallery.
Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
1/16
<p>You’re going to see a lot of <em>Guiding Light</em>’s Reva Shayne on this list. And the sanest of the reasons why is the early-1990s revelation that after she plunged to her “death” off an unfinished bridge in the Florida Keys — “Worst… vacation… ever,” declared her soulmate, Josh Lewis — she’d wound up convinced that she was an Amish woman named Rebecca.</p>
Image: Sean Smith/JPI
2/16
<p>Oops. In 2010, <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> had Brooke Logan celebrate daughter Hope’s high-school graduation by sneaking off to a corner of the party and getting it on with her “destiny,” Ridge Forrester. One teensy problem: Erm, that <em>wasn’t</em> Ridge that she boinked, it was Hope’s boyfriend, Oliver Jones. Somehow, thanks to their masks, neither of them realized that the bodies they were fondling didn’t belong to their significant others!</p>
Image: NBC screenshot
3/16
<p>Forget burying the hatchet. In the early 1990s, <em>Days of Our Lives</em>’ Vivian Alamain instead buried alive the thorn in her side, Carly Manning. But that was just the show’s opening act. Its wildest plots were yet to come. Keep scrolling; you’ll get there.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
4/16
<p>One of daytime’s earliest, bat-guano-crazy storylines was set in motion in 1981, when <em>General Hospital</em> supercouple Luke Spencer and Laura Baldwin embarked on a quest to prevent the stone-cold Cassadines from using a secret formula hidden in the base of a statuette called the Ice Princess to make a popsicle of planet Earth. Now if you’ll excuse us, we need to go get a sweater…</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
5/16
<p><em>Days of Our Lives</em> mixed<em> E.T</em>. and PYTs in 2002 when a meteor shower dropped on Salem scantily-clad twins Rex and Cassie, who weren’t really Martians at all but the genetically engineered offspring of Roman Brady and Kate Roberts. Which, come to think of it, was almost as much of a head-scratcher as the hotties having been from outer space.</p>
Image: Sean Smith/JPI
6/16
<p>We’ll never understand why <em>The Young and the Restless</em>’ supposedly all-powerful Victor Newman can’t beat nemesis Jack Abbott fair and square — but he sure as shooting can’t. So in 2015, he let Jack be abducted by his insane ex, Kelly Andrews, and replaced him — even in wife Phyllis Summers’ bed (eww!) — with a nefarious lookalike, Marco Annicelli. Keep it classy, Vic.</p>
Image: CBS screenshot
7/16
<p>In one of the most demented stories <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> ever told, we learned that Stephanie Forrester had let husband Eric believe for eons that eldest daughter Angela had been stillborn. Meanwhile, the queen bee had had their microcephalic child looked after in secret — until her wheelchair took her on a fatal roll down a hill. In the aftermath, her careless doctor brought in a substitute Angela, who lost her marbles after being badly singed in a car crash.</p>
Image: Paul Skipper/JPI
8/16
<p>“Go big or go home!” pretty much having been <em>Passions</em>’ motto, perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a jaw-dropper in the mid-2000s when the NBC soap revealed that its malevolent blackmailer Vincent Clark was intersex, then proceeded to have them schtup both their brother <em>and</em> father. And <em>then</em> had them give birth to their own half sibling. Mm-hmm, it was so out there, there was no coming back!</p>
Image: Paul Skipper/JPI
9/16
<p><em>Days of Our Lives</em> came to resemble <em>Night of the Living Dead</em> in 2004, after the Salem Stalker — Marlena Evans in Jason Voorhees drag — laid waste to half the town before being killed herself… <em>and</em> turning up alive and well along with all of her loved ones on the island of Melaswen (New Salem spelled backwards). Who was to blame for the horrific bait and switch? Tony DiMera, that was who. Only even <em>that</em> reveal was a trick: He turned out to be his lookalike cousin, Andre!</p>
Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
10/16
<p>Art aficionados don’t come any more enthusiastic than <em>Guiding Light</em>’s Reva, who in 2001 became so fixated on a painting that she allowed it to transport her through time, first to Edwardian England, then to the Civil War era, WWII Germany… You name it, she went there. Short of <em>Family Guy</em>’s time-tripping baby Stewie Griffin, no one is more well-traveled than the so-called Slut of Springfield. (By the way, this photo <em>isn’t</em> from that plot, it’s from when she was the princess of San Cristobel; don’t ask.)</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
11/16
<p>It might have been the pandemic that inspired <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> to pair poor, mental Thomas Forrester with a murderous mannequin that resembled the object of his obsession, Hope Logan. How much safer could love scenes get, right? But the big shock of the twisted arc that resulted wasn’t its ingenuity but its poignancy; in the end, the whole weird mess was less bonkers than it was brilliant.</p>
Image: Courtesy of the Everett Collection
12/16
<p><em>Dark Shadows</em> was knock, knock, knocking at death’s door in 1967, when the gothic soap’s creator Dan Curtis threw a Hail Mary — or was it a <em>Hell</em> Mary? — and disentombed long-in-the-tooth vampire Barnabas Collins. Ironically, the move pumped new life’s blood into the show and made it, however fleetingly, an overnight sensation.</p>
Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI
13/16
<p>By 2007, <em>Young & Restless</em>’ embattled Lauren Fenmore thought that she was finally rid of the evil nurse who had stolen her husband, son and peace of mind. “Not so fast,” replied Sheila. The Michael Myers of daytime had inexplicably had herself plastic surgery’d to look like Lauren’s pal, Phyllis, only to be “killed” yet again and returned with her old face to <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> in ’17.</p>
Image: ABC screenshot
14/16
<p>There would be no phoning home for the <em>General Hospital</em> E.T. who landed in Port Charles in 1990; roaming charges, don’t ya know? Following a brief stay in the orbit of Anna Devane and daughter Robin Scorpio, the space cadet obtained the critical intergalactic crystal that would send him rocketing back to planet Lumina, leaving behind a doppelgänger to woo his benefactor.</p>
Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
15/16
<p>After <em>Guiding Light</em> “killed” Reva for the umpteenth time in the late 1990s — or was it the umpteenth-and-seventh? — “widower” Josh was so sick of using air quotes to describe their relationship that he just up and Xeroxed his death-defying wife, a to-hell-with-it gambit that had viewers saying, “Well, hello, Dolly!” to a replica that grew up as fast as she was put down.</p>
Image: Gary Null/NBC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
16/16
