Another one bites the dust. After having been conked over the head with a brick, Jack has become Jack-in-a-box, said box being a coffin.
As he lay in a coma, the prognosis did not look good for poor Jack. Lexie gave Jen the grave news that he had sustained brain damage. Considering the usual amount of brain activity among the Salemites, I tend to think a brain-damaged Jack would fit right in.
Jack was in an irreversible coma. Jen was forced to make a difficult choice – would she keep her husband as a shell hooked on life support? Or would she support his last wishes and pull the plug?
Please. The first one, obviously. In soapies, there are no irreversible comas that cannot be reversed by the miraculous healing power of love. Foolishly, Jen chose option no. 2. She pulled the plug.
The writers killed Jack! Bastards! Damn them all to an eternity of watching videos of naked Marlena! And just to make it completely resurrection-proof, they had Jen donate all of his organs.
Great. Throw away any chance of bringing Jack back for a PSA about organ donation. Remember, kids, the Salem Stalker endorses organ donation. So go fill in your living donor cards at the nearest hospital now.
Goodbye, sweet Jack. And remember, kids. Apply to be an organ donor so you too can save lives if you get horribly murdered.Unfortunately, Jack’s death has triggered a Pavlovian response in young Abby. Now whenever Jen says anything to her, Abby screams “Daddy’s dead and it’s all your fault! I hate you! I’ll never forgive you!” and runs out in tears.
As an angry rebellious tween, she deals with her anger by slamming the door to her room shut and listening to loud music. OK, not so much loud music as some ridiculous-sounding Midi music of some sort that sounded as if it had been composed on a cellphone.
As if to twist the knife in Jen’s heart, Lexie suggested that she combine Jack’s funeral with Abe’s and they make it a double. Clearly, Lexie has lost her mind from grief because that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Maybe she’s been drinking away her pain.
Lexie did make up for it a bit later when Celeste had one of her usual premonitions:
Celeste: Darling, I see dark times ahead of us. There is an evil presence in Salem and it brings DEATH with it.
Lexie: Mom, do you actually see who this evil presence is?
Celeste: Er…no, darling.
Lexie: Or who is in danger of dying next?
Celeste: Well, not exactly, no.
Lexie: Then would you CAN IT with the dire predictions of doom unless you finally manage to pull something useful out your ass.
Really, Celeste, it needed to be said. And please buy a new set of Tarot cards that don’t consist of 99% Death cards.
As Jen cried herself to sleep one night, who should appear to her but the ghostly spirit of Jack, all white and shiningly deceased. Perhaps Jen hit some of Lexie’s secret liquor stash before she went to bed?
It seems that this is real Ghost Jack, there to comfort her through the power of flashback musical montages. He also had some important information about the killer. “The information I have is that…someone is going to die!” he said before fading away.
Gee, thanks, Ghost Jack. You’re officially as useful as Celeste. Now go back to the heavens before we sic the Ghostbusters on you for being so useless.
Just because Jack has been dealt with doesn’t mean the killer is resting on his or her (I’ll use his for clarity’s sake) laurels. No, the killer is hard at work preventing anyone from guessing at his real identity.
He broke into the Salem evidence room, which was left unguarded for some reason. Maybe the cops aren’t as broken up about Commander Abe’s death as they pretended to be and were boozing it up at the local pub. Anyway, the killer broke into the impenetrable stronghold known as the Salem PD and tried to steal the evidence brick before it could be sent for DNA testing.
Hope actually decided to do some police duty for once and took the brick down to the evidence room where the killer knocked her over the head with the brick. Hooray! Sadly, her head is abnormally hard and she managed to recover enough to de-gun him.
But this is Hope we’re talking about, so the killer easily grabbed hold of her wrist, crushing her brittle malnourished bones in the process, and escaped before she could unmask him.
Police Officer Hope Williams-Brady, ladies and gentlemen! Let’s give a hand for one of Salem PD’s finest.
With the only piece of evidence gone, however would the idiots at the Salem PD figure out the killer’s identity? For some reason, Maggie volunteered to go under hypnosis again, except this time she let Marlena do it. Why would she let Marlena Ali, the woman who punched her in the face during the last hypnosis session, anywhere near her? I wouldn’t let that quack prescribe blister cream, never mind put me under hypnosis.
Maggie’s hypnosis yielded an important clue as she remembered the killer’s evil eyebrows. She drew an identikit of the evil eyebrows, which hold the key to the killer’s identity.
Of the seven suspects, particular emphasis has been placed on a couple lately. Sami and Lucas have had to defend their innocence from their own son, Geeky Will.
Geeky Will: Mom, Dad, what were you doing the day Jack was hit over the head?
Sami: Are you implying that we had something to do with his murder?
Geeky Will: It’s just that the kids at school, in between beating me up and dunking my head in the toilet, say that you guys are responsible for Abe and Jack’s deaths.
Lucas: Of course we’re not responsible, Will. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.
Geeky Will: Phew, that’s a relie…
Lucas: Or else I’ll kill them!
Geeky Will: Man, I am going to need sooo many years of therapy when I grow up.
It is not just Sami’s possible psychopathic rage which makes her a bad mother. Her maternal faults run far deeper than murderousness. She was the only mother who did not bake her son a cake for his school’s annual Halloween party.
Dear God almighty! Sami didn’t bake a cake? Call social services at once!
It was Rex who fell most under the spotlight as the killer. In a most welcome and unwelcome return respectively, Cassie and Philip discussed the murder and whether Rex could have been involved. Philip declared that Rex was clearly the most likely of the seven suspects to be the murderer.
Cassie shut him up by pointing out that he was related to four of the seven suspects. Hee. And ew, especially when you consider that he’s secretly related to Rex, making it five. Brady then arrived and Philip randomly punched him. Hooray! Did I say Philip’s return was unwelcome? Not as long as he’s punching out Brady, he’s not.
Rex’s guilt seemed to become more and more certain, whatever he did. He used his genius to fool a lie detector test, returned to the scenes of the crime, gave Marlena a necklace that looked like a throttling chain and, worst of all, tore up Maggie’s newspaper picture. Innocent papier mache making or murderous intent?
Philip, Shawn and now John are convinced he’s the killer. I’m not so sure. I’ve studied his eyebrows carefully and they are distinctly different from the evil eyebrows in Maggie’s vision. As Philip says, “It’s got to be Rex. We already have proof that Rex is extremely dangerous.”
How so? Dangerously hot? He has killer headaches? What proof do they exactly have? Oh right, he’s violent towards baked goods and likes to smash things up on occasion. Please. If breaking things was a sign of murderousness, half of soapiedom would’ve been arrested and locked up a long time ago.
Besides, Shawn has shown far more violent tendencies than Rex ever has what with his desire to punch people out every five seconds. I’d be locking up my door around Shawn, that’s for certain.
Then there’s Belle. No, she’s not a murder suspect (as if) but everyone is for some reason obsessed with her and her reactions to the murderer. Everyone is all “Poor Belle” as if Belle’s relationship troubles are the worst thing to come out of the murders.
Stupid Shawn even uttered this putrefying line: “Damn that murdering bastard! I’m going to kill them for what they did to Belle!” Oh shove it, you Belle-obsessed doofus. It’s not Belle who got shot or hit over the head with a brick so you might want to shut up about how she’s been so horribly affected by these terrible crimes.
Just when I couldn’t take any more of this insane fixation on Belle and her safety and state of mind over everyone else’s, John mercifully made a suggestion that Belle should fly off to Milan until the danger is over. Belle accepted.
Hooray! Belle is off to Milan and that means I won’t have to see her! Unless…unless this is all part of some evil plot by the writers. The Salem Stalker will kill everyone else in Salem and the seven suspects will finally all be thrown in jail for their constant death threats. Then Belle will return and be the only Salemite left and the show can finally be renamed Belles of our Lives.
Oh dear. That scares me more than the Salem Stalker’s evil eyebrows ever could.