It was Halloween in Salem, a fact which drives home the reality that I’ve been writing ridiculous articles on this crap for a year already. A whole year of writing such meaningful thoughts as
likening Belle’s golden cherry to Narnian Turkish Delight, noting
Colon Murphy kisses like a dog, calling
Lucas the Dread Pirate Roberts because of his unfortunate facial hair,
and pointing out just how gay Brady is - sometimes,
pictorially.
I’d feel proud if I wasn’t so horrified.
But enough about the many, many hours I have dedicated to the art of Days-mockage. Back to the show itself. It was an even more memorable Halloween than usual for the citizens of Salem; one which featured ridiculous contrivances, ridiculous writing and ridiculous attacks.
With every single source, from the Salem Spectator to Jack’s Ghost to Celeste’s Breasts, predicting that Maggie would be the next victim of the Salem Stalker, the Salem PD immediately set up an officer on guard outside of the Horton household.
Surely this would deter the killer’s attempts to murder Maggie? Heh heh, yeah right. What do you think?
It was Halloween after all, perfect place to sneak around in a disguise without enticing any suspicion. Rex in particular got hold of one of those Jason Voorhees masks from Friday the 13th.
The other Salemites’ costumes weren’t nearly as morbid and wouldn’t afford any real disguise whatsoever. Why do I mention them then? Because I get to play my favourite game: psychoanalysing soapie characters’ choice of costumes.
Philip was wearing a boxer’s costume, all the more convenient to get in punch-outs with Brady and Rex. I’m just surprised that Shawn wasn’t wearing a matching outfit so he too would be dressed perfectly for his violent tirades.
Mimi went as a cheerleader, which is extremely appropriate considering she’s president of the “Shawn/Belle forever” fanclub and has been their personal cheerleader for years now. This could also provide a clue into her psyche. She secretly wishes to be a popular cheerleader type like her adored best friend Belle. That explains the hero-worship Mimi has for Belle.
(Man, stupid Belle even managed to worm her way into this article when she wasn’t even on this week.)
A cheerleading outfit also means she has pom-poms handy if Shawn starts annoying her with his “Your boyfriend’s a killer!” crap and she needs something to shove in his mouth.
Bonnie’s an easy one to figure out. Bonnie decided to go as a cowboy because she’s all about the Country-and-Western music. Her cowboy outfit was loud, tacky, and trashy, much like Bonnie herself.
As for Cassie, well, she decided to go in skimpy lingerie, a black bob wig and a whip. Hmm, who knew that Kate had donated her old clothes to the Salvation Army shop? Apparently Cassie’s costume was some sort of hooker dominatrix. Ahem. Make of that what you will. I promised myself I’d cut down on those kinds of jokes about Cassie myself.
And that was it for the costumes. I know, boring, right? Cassie’s was by far the most fun one and no other real characters even bothered to dress up. I guess you can count Geek Will but I don’t really. He wore a pirate’s costume if anyone cares, all the better to cover up the black eye he gets from the constant beating-ups he gets as a result of being a giant geek.
Maggie sadly did not deign to dress up as a duck on a chair to symbolise her status as sitting duck. She rather decided she’d stay home and hope that the cop posted outside her house would protect her.
Fool, relying on a member of the Salem PD to protect her. This is the same police department that let the killer easily obtain access to the evidence room and steal one of the murder weapons. It’s the same police department that has police officers tail the seven suspects only to let all seven of them slip away every time.
For Pete’s sake, their clue-board consists of a bunch of pictures of the suspects and Maggie, and a drawing of the evil eyebrows. How can the Salem Stalker possibly elude this crack team of cops?
No cookies for guessing what happened next. The killer did indeed manage to elude the single cop posted outside of Maggie’s house. The Stalker comfortably lurked about, staring through the window and tearing up pictures of Maggie.
Tearing up pictures, hey? Sound like anyone we know? Course it does. That is because all possible evidence is now pointing to Rex, meaning that he is in no way the killer. Even this show can’t be this obvious as to have the likeliest suspect actually be the killer. Look for some sort of shocking (read dumb) twist in who the killer turns out to be.
Have I psychoanalysed Rex’s costume yet? No?
Rex decided to go as a psycho serial killer as a defiant challenge to all the shitheads who keep saying he’s so obviously the Salem Stalker. It’s his “*bleep!* you” to Shawn, Philip, John and the rest of them.
Unsurprisingly, the Salem Stalker happened to be wearing the same mask as Rex as he went after Maggie. Which makes the POV shots from behind his mask all the more perplexing since the Jason mask has two separate holes while the killer POV is through a single hole.
Silly me, there’s me expecting logic and consistency from a show that has all seven suspects always coincidentally disappearing simultaneously every single time there’s an attack. I’m convinced the seven of them are all part of some super secret club that meets to mess around with the police and make fun of them. Maybe they’re Illuminati or Knights Templar or something.
As the killer lurked and the teens ran around trying to find Rex, Maggie strolled to the kitchen and noticed someone skulking by the door. She then did the stupidest thing ever by inviting the skulker inside for tea, despite having been warned by everyone not to open the door to anyone.
To be a little bit fair to her, the killer wasn’t wearing their mask at the time and it was someone she knew well. But it’s still a completely stupid move that’s made even stupider when you consider her one-way dialogue with the black-clad, gloved and completely silent killer:
Maggie: Why, it’s you! Hello, my dear acquaintance who I will conveniently never mention by name so that your identity remains a mystery.
Stalker: …
Maggie: Why don’t you come inside for a spot of tea? It’s cold and windy outside.
Stalker: …
Maggie: Let me reminisce with you about my life, but not too much because I can’t actually reveal just how close a friend you are to me.
Stalker: … [whips out video camera]
Maggie: So…what’s with the video camera?
Stalker: … [zooms camera in on an extremely ominous shot of a block of cheese]
Maggie: Right. I think I hear the kettle boiling.
Stalker: … [whips out bottle of wine]
Maggie: Oh, unnamed acquaintance! Don’t you know that I’m a recovering alcoholic? Why did you bring that bottle of wine here?
Stalker: …
Maggie: You know, I just realised I don’t know why you’re even here considering you’ve been conspicuously quiet this entire time.
Stalker: …
Maggie: Is that an evil killer mask in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Stalker: … [raises wine bottle menacingly]
Maggie: Oh my God…your evil eyebrows…YOU’RE THE KILLER!!
Stalker: … [smashes bottle over Maggie’s head]
Honestly, when you show idiocy of that magnitude, you deserve everything you get. Which in this case just happens to include a shiny Dummy award for the week’s stupidest soapie character.
Would you believe that Maggie had some stiff competition for the Dummy from the Salem PD? Of course you can because, well…Salem PD. The killer somehow managed to hack into the police computers and transmit a live feed of the murder.
(See what I mean about every single clue pointing to Rex? It becomes more and more obvious that he’s innocent.)
Bo, Hope and Roman stared at the fuzzy live feed and tried to determine just where the killer was striking next. Even though everyone ever had long-since predicted that Maggie would be the next victim.
Luckily for them, Shawn magically sprouted some technogeek skills and wrangled some audio from the live feed. Instead of doing anything that might actually help save Maggie, the cops and teens all watched the Stalker attack Maggie, Mickey and the worthless cop on guard like it was some twisted new reality TV show.
A cartoon, dancing skeleton then appeared, laughing and promising that there was more to come. An animated skeleton dancing? The Stalker
is evil!
The animated skeleton brings up the main issue (okay, one of the many) that pushes this serial killer storyline into over-the-top badness and ludicrousness and makes it impossible to take even slightly seriously. The show clearly isn’t treating the murders with any seriousness so why should I?
They have scenes like Maggie getting murdered put next to scenes of Bonnie hamming it up. Hell, Bonnie in general (though she’s infinitely entertaining) doesn’t belong anywhere near a serious plotline. She’s a broad caricature whose sole purpose is for cheap laughs who ends up hovering at the edge of these plotlines.
How am I supposed to take scenes of Maggie hovering near death in a coma seriously when I’m watching Bonnie and Celeste’s wacky adventures at the same time? Should I really care about Maggie’s deadly fate when the next scene is one where Bonnie has a fantasy sequence of a dead fairy Maggie giving her all her clothes?
Not that I’d take this storyline seriously even if Bonnie wasn’t camping it up, because it is too preposterous not to laugh at it. But I felt legally obligated to point out how schizophrenic the tone has been.
OK, with that done, back to Bonnie and Celeste. They’re an odd pairing but hella amusing together. Throw in some John Black eyebrow-action and you’ve got a group that’ll outcamp the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
And Celeste really needs to buy a new Tarot deck since it was revealed that every single card in her deck is a death card. Ha! That explains everything. That’s what happens when you buy your Tarot sets from the local joke shop.
But back to more serious matters (more serious…riiiiiight), the brutal attack on Maggie. She was rushed to hospital where Lexie immediately got to work diagnosing her. Lexie again? Which imbecile is in charge of putting the recent Stalker widow in charge of both Jack and Maggie when they were brought in? God, Lexie, which higher-up’s coffee did you piss into?
Maggie’s attack caused Shawn had his biannual crisis of faith.
Mimi: Shawn, we must have faith. If we pray hard enough, Maggie will be fine.
Shawn: Faith, yeah right. Prayers and thoughts don’t change anything. I’m sure that Maggie prayed every night not to die.
Mimi: That’s right, Shawn, but have you ever considered that the killer might also have prayed every night for Maggie to die horribly?
Shawn: Answer me this. If God is so great, why is he allowing this?
Me: Ratings.
Shawn: Good people are getting punished! Why?
Me: Exactly! Why are good people like Jack, Abe and Maggie getting offed while annoyances like Belle, Brady, Blockhead and Shawn himself stick around?
Shawn: [sweeps a bunch of stuff off of a desk] SHAWN SMASH! SHAWN SMASH REX FOR KILLING ALL SHAWN’S FRIENDS AND FAMILY! REX KILLER! REX VOILENT AND UNSTABLE!
Mimi: Yeah.
He’s the violent and unstable one.
The bloody bottle of wine was collected as evidence by the police and taken to the evidence room where it will no doubt mysteriously go empty. You think a bit of blood is going to deter the boozy Salem cops?
Just because the Salem PD aren’t even trying properly to solve the murders doesn’t mean that someone won’t solve them. Shawn Dunce and Blockhead Philip are on the case so the murder will soon be…unsolved forever more.
They found Rex with a crapload of incriminating evidence but since we’ve already established there’s no way it’s him, I don’t care enough to comment further. Sure all evidence points to him now, but knowing Days, they’ll reveal that the other six suspects just happened to coincidentally buy that exact same Jason mask.