FAQ for
"Days of Our Lives" (1965)

For the best sources on Days recaps, please visit the following sites:

Soap Opera Fan Days of Our Lives Page: http://www.soapoperafan.com/days/summaries.html

Beth's Days of Our Lives Page: http://www.bethsdayspage.com/days/storylineinfo.html

Official Days of Our Lives site: http://www.daysofourlives.com/show_guide/yearly_summaries.html

Jason47's Days of Our Lives page: http://members.aol.com/jason47b/

There are a few good sources for this information.

Soap Central: http://www.soapcentral.com/days/whoswho/index.php#profiles (scroll to the bottom to find a list of characters)

Soap Opera Fan Days Page: http://www.soapoperafan.com/days/characters/index.html

Here are some resources for fans who want to know what's coming up on Days and some of the behind the scenes information:

Soap Opera Fan Days of Our Lives page: http://www.soapoperafan.com/days/index.html

Beth's Days of Our Lives page: http://www.bethsdayspage.com/days/index.html

Days Cafe: http://www.dayscafe.com/

Soap Central: http://www.soapcentral.com/days/index.php

iTunes sells Days episodes for $9.99 for 20 episodes. You can download individual episodes for only $1.99 each, and episodes for purchase go back about the last eight months.

You can also watch episodes online at http://www.days.nu/ however the site is in Dutch.

You Tube has many users whose channels are devoted to Days of Our Lives. They include HourglassGuy, ShelleForever, madelinehawaii, 86jams, and FrancoMendez.

Beth's Days Page has a list of past storylines retold - some with screen caps: http://www.bethsdayspage.com/days/classicstories.html

This is the result of a popular phenomenon in the soap world refered to as Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, or SORAS.

SORAS is when an infant or child character in a soap opera is aged very quickly by the writers to accomodate new storylines. This is done by recasting the role after the character has been absent for a period of time (it may be weeks, months or even years). The term was coined by Soap Opera Weekly founding editor in chief Mimi Torchin in the early 1990s.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_Opera_Rapid_Aging_Syndrome

If we had to wait for characters to age in real time, Jennifer would just be 29 and Hope just 32, making it highly impossible for Hope to have Shawn, a mid-20s something child, therefore stalling the progress of the show and its subsequent generations.

To get caught up on this storyline, start reading the recaps from September 2003: http://www.daysofourlives.com/show_guide/yearly_summaries_detail_169.html

There is also a detailed, yet-incomplete, summary on Beth's Days Page. Scroll down to "2003 - Salem Stalker" to read the information: http://www.bethsdayspage.com/days/killers.html

The victims: Abe Carver, Jack Deveraux, Maggie Horton, Caroline Brady, Victor Kiriakis*, Cassie Brady, Roman Brady, Tony DiMera, Doug Williams, Alice Horton

* Victor Kiriakis was murdered by Jan Spears. Later it turned out this was a set up and part of this storyline as well.

The "killer" was Marlena Evans. Under mind-control by Tony**, Marlena thought she was killing all of these people. However, she was merely pretending to kill them while they were shot with a dart to render them dead-like, and they were then transported to an island called Melaswen (New Salem), where other long-lost/dead Salemites were also found, such as Billie Reed and Colin Murphy.

**In a recent retcon of the character, Andre DiMera, Tony's cousin, had actually been impersonating Tony all these years and Tony was stranded on a desert island. All actions/crimes committed by Tony from the time Andre died in the quicksand in 1985 until the summer of 2007, were actually committed by Andre.

The location of the ficticious town of Salem has never been revealed in the show's history. Whenever a car's lisence plate is shown on the show it says "The Friendly State" on it.

Steve Johnson and Bo Brady were in the merchant marines together and were best friends until they got into a fight over Britta Englund, a woman they'd both fallen in love with. During the fight, Bo knifed out Steve's eye. Years later, Steve underwent surgery to repair the scar under his eye and had a glass eye inserted. Steve, now patchless with bleached-blond hair, used his new look to go undercover to infiltrate a shady revival camp. A few years later, Steve got into a fight with one of Victor Kiriakis' henchmen, and his eye socket was damaged beyond repair and Steve had to wear the patch again.

Stephen Nichols (Steve Johnson) often complained how his eyesight would be affected wearing the patch, so the patchless Steve storyline was created to assist Stephen. However, irate fans complained that they preferred Steve with the patch, so the writers created the incident with Victor's henchman as a way to give him back the patch and apease the fans.

Philip Kiriakis and Mimi Lockhart signed away their parental rights to the baby with the assumption that Lauren, the surrogate, would terminate the pregnancy. Meanwhile, without their knowledge, Bonnie Lockhart, Mimi's mother, was paying Lauren to keep the baby so that Bonnie could raise it when it was born. Bonnie figured that being half-Kiriakis, the baby would net her a lot of money in the future from Victor, Philip's father. Bonnie soon went to prison for an unrelated crime and therefore could not pay Lauren.

When Hogan Sheffer came on as head writer, this storyline was dropped for several months. Eventually, it picked up again. Lauren began calling Philip, leaving harrassing messages for him about his child. Philip was confused as he obviously did not think he had a child and did not know who this woman was calling him. With help from his sister, Billie, Philip eventually tracked down Lauren and put the pieces together that she, in fact, did not terminate the pregnancy. Lauren had ditched the baby, whom she called Tyler, at Salem University Hospital and skipped town, forcing Philip and Billie, and later Belle and Philip, to chase her to several cities all over the US. Eventually Philip, Shawn and Belle tracked down Lauren but in an unfortunate accident, she fell down a flight of stairs at the hospital and died, never able to tell Philip where Tyler was.

Meanwhile, an infant baby boy was abandoned at the hospital and was placed in the care of Steve and Kayla Johnson. They named the boy Pocket and took care of him until he became ill due to poisoning. Steve and Kayla were suspects and Pocket was taken away from them and placed in a new foster family. It turned out that Pocket actually had a rare congenitive disease that was causing his illness, and Steve and Kayla were cleared of any wrongdoing.

By this time Philip had figured out that Pocket was in fact Tyler and wanted to fight Steve and Kayla for his son. He was adamant that he be given the child but since he had signed away his parental rights, his case was limited. Belle and Philip had a talk and Belle told Philip that he was using Tyler to replace what he lost with Claire, and that Tyler would be better off with the new foster family who loved him and could take good care of him. When Philip saw Tyler/Pocket with the new foster family, he decided to give up his fight for his son. Steve and Kayla also gave up Pocket, even though they had grown to love him. Tyler/Pocket is now living with the foster family.

The boy twin is John Roman DiMera, known as Johnny. His father is EJ.

The girl twin is Alice Caroline Horton, known as Allie. Her father is Lucas.

Stefano has eight children. They are:

Tony DiMera - Tony is the son of Daphne DiMera and Enrico, whom she had an affair with while married to Stefano. Although Tony did not learn this until he was an adult, and Stefano still considers him to be his son.

Renee Dumonde - Renee is the daughter of Lee Dumonde, who had an affair with Stefano. Renee was killed by the Salem Slasher (Andre DiMera) in 1984.

Megan Hathaway - Megan was the result of an affair between Stefano and and unknown woman. Megan tried to break up Bo and Hope as she was one of Bo's ex-girlfriends. Megan was murdered by Larry Welch in 1985.

Peter Blake and Kristen Blake - Both were adopted by Stefano from their mother, Rachel Blake, the lady in white. Last we saw of Kristen she was trapped in a harem on an island. Last we saw of Peter, he was in prison.

Lexie Carver - Lexie is the daughter of Celeste Perrault and Stefano. Lexie is married to Abe Carver and will soon become the new Chief of Staff at the hospital.

Benjy Hawk DiMera - Benjy's mother, Ellen Hawk, had an affair with Stefano. Benjy was recently murdered by Andre DiMera, who stole his liver to give to Stefano.

EJ Wells/Elvis Junior DiMera - Stefano artificially inseminated Susan Banks with his sperm to create a baby for Kristen and John Black. Stefano dressed up as Elvis Presley to fool Susan during the insemination. Susan was a big Elvis Presley fan, and believing her child was fathered by Elvis himself, called the baby Elvis Junior.

They are all related through Victor Kiriakis. Victor is Bo's biological father, which makes him Shawn's grandfather. Victor's late daughter, Isabella, was Brady's mother, which also makes him Victor's grandson. Philip is Victor's son with Kate. Therefore, Philip is Shawn and Brady's uncle, and Shawn and Brady are cousins.

Claire Brady, the daughter of Belle and Shawn, has been SORASed slightly to allow the character to have lines and interact more with other characters on the show. She is now being played by 4-year-old Alina Foley, real-life daughter of comedian Dave Foley. The twins who previously played 2-year-old Claire, Ava and Olivia White, are no longer on the show.

The story was really dumb and makes no sense.

The question is, why has Stefano had it out for the Bradys for the last 20 years?

Technically, it started with Roman busting up Stefano's crime ring roughly 20 years ago, but it's since been retconned (retroactive continuity) that Stefano already had a beef with the Bradys for some reason unknown to them and Roman taking Stefano done for his illegal dealings was just the latest thing a Brady's done to piss him off.

So last summer it began with Sami and Lucas on their honeymoon, helping build houses in New Orleans. They were helping on a renovation of a building they discovered was Mason Blanche, Stefano's place in New Orleans where a lot of bad stuff went down in the early 90s. In taking down an exterior wall (they were never clear why they were demolishing a wall, let alone an exterior one...) they found a box with a letter in it, written in Italian. The only word they could make out was Dimera. They brought it home with them and showed it to Bo, Hope, John and Marlena. Doug and Julie just happened to return then and Julie could read Italian, somewhat, so that she could handle anything transactions or what have you, on their worldly travels. She read that it was a letter from Santo Dimera to his son Stefano, on Santo's deathbed. He was telling him that he had been in love with this woman and that the Bradys took her from him and that Stefano must make them pay. He then told Stefano that they could be found in America, in the town of Salem.

The group learned the woman's name was Colleen. Caroline heard this and noted that she had come across the name Colleen while going through some of Shawn's old thing. She asked him about it, but he refused to talk about it.

Shortly thereafter, Anna (Brady) Dimera, Roman's ex-wife and Carrie's mom (and subsequently Tony's ex-wife) came back to Salem and with her; she brought some letters that she had found with some of Tony's things. She was going to take them back to Tony, but thought they Bradys might want to read them, as it had something to do with them (I can't remember how she knew that. Around this time a photo Colleen Brady was found, I can't remember if it was by Caroline or who or how) but she was the spitting image of Sami. It was then shown that Stefano's father, Santo, was the spitting image of EJ (with a cheesy mustache; and we'd learn much later, a bad Italian accent)

The letters Anna had were from Colleen to Santo; somewhere down the line, Tony had come into possession of them. They decided in order to get the whole story; they would need to find the letters Santo wrote Colleen. Rather than see if they could find them elsewhere first, they simply went with the assumed logic that Stefano would probably have had them stolen a long time ago and was actually in possession of them. So Bo and Hope went to Stefano's mansion and, with a little help from Steve, Hope snuck in and snooped around (the living room) and just so happened to find the letters under the sofa (okay, technically, under the cushion of a chair, but either way, it was incredibly contrived)

Now, for whatever reason, both letters were in Italian. Never mind that Colleen came from humble beginnings and where she would have learned Italian (as she apparently did in the first place) is anyone's guess. So they had to get the letters translated. Even though Julie translated the very first letter, suddenly they had to have someone at the University translate them. Then all the vets spent the entire summer, sitting around "reading" the letters. That's it. No other story for them.

The letters were correspondence between Santo and Colleen. One incredibly stupid point however, is the fact that the correspondence amounted to Santo and Colleen going into vivid detail about events the other was present for (in some cases, was the only other person present) And since at the end of it, she was believed to have died, obviously the letters didn't come years later in retrospect.

It all started in Ireland (where the whole thing took place) Colleen was a young novice, who is basically a nun in training; she had yet to take her vows. Santo was a business man/trader from Italy and got caught in the middle of a bar brawl and was injured. For whatever reason he was taken to the church and Colleen was called upon for her medical training (....?) It was (apparently) love at first sight for them, after which the two kept finding excuses to see each other. Colleen was much more coy and reluctant to admit anything of the sort, since she was a novice and it would be improper; especially since Santo admitted had a wife and in fact had a young son, roughly the same age as her brother Shawn, whose name was Stefano. Stefano came with Santo (I think on a return trip back to Ireland) and Santo had him play with Shawn, using the boys as an excuse to see Colleen and get her to see him outside the church. Santo was far more forward with his feelings towards Colleen, always pushing her to take things one more step (meeting without a chaperone, meeting without her wearing her novice habit, meeting without the pretense of the boys playing) At one point he told her his wife was dead, which Stefano would later reveal to Shawn not to be true; nor was it true that she was sick, which was what Santo told Colleen during one of their initial meetings.

Eventually Santo convinced Colleen to sleep with him and then proposed. They were all set to be married and spend their life in America; Colleen had even told the Priest at her church that she was leaving. Shawn felt the need to stop her and told their father what Stefano told him about Santo's wife. Their "Da" found Colleen and Santo and he revealed that Santo's wife was still alive, devastating Colleen. She ran off and next we saw her, she was in a full habit, about to take her vows. Santo came into the church and stood at the back to watch. Colleen turned to see him and suddenly ran off. They found her clothes at the edge of a cliff, which everyone assumed meant she threw herself off, even though they never found a body. For this, Santo apparently blamed 10 year old Shawn and on his deathbed, asked his son to make Shawn and his family pay for his loss. None of this really explains Stefano's actions over the years, especially the extent of the elaborate plots he's cooked up. He has yet to actually be responsible for a single Brady's death. He's even gone to the trouble of healing his supposed enemies when they're dying, seeing to their recovery and in case, genetically engineered a pair of super smart, "perfect specimen", fraternal twins that were Bradys! Nor does this explain the fact that he's been just about equally obsessed with the Hortons and all the family of friends of those two families, nor his penchant for brainwashing people. But on the other hand, Hogan Sheffer's a hack, that couldn't write his way out of a paper bag, so we're lucky the story was even remotely coherent.....

Recently, it was revealed that John Black, Belle's father, is the love child of Colleen Brady and Santo DiMera. However, this does not mean that Shawn and Belle are cousins because Shawn is not a Brady by blood. Shawn's father is Bo Brady. When Bo was an adult, it was revealed that his mother Caroline had an affair with Victor Kiriakis. While Roman, Kimberly and Kayla were fathered by Shawn Brady Sr., Bo was not, therefore Belle and Shawn are not related to each other, although they do share many relatives in common.

COMINGS

1. Bryan Datillo returns as Lucas Horton beginning May 19.

2. Roscoe Born joins the cast on May 29 as Dean Robbins, a characters with connections to another Salemite.

3. Shawn Christian joins the cast as Dr. Daniel Jonas beginning March 4.

4. Linden Ashby begins a recurring role as Paul Hollingsworth (Morgan's father), a customs worker who deals with John on March 12.

5. Kevin Dobson joins the show beginning April 1 as the new Mickey Horton.

6. Arianne Zuker returns to the show as Nicole Walker beginning April 2.

GOINGS

1. Joe Penny exits the show on May 15 when his character Martino Vitali is shot and killed by Bo Brady.