Days of Our Lives

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. In college, I used to watch Days of Our Lives because my roommate did, and I was in the room at the time, but then I was hooked. And when my husband and I first started dating in college, he would come over for lunch and watch the show with us. But then we both graduated and stopped watching. But I heard that James E. Reilly was returning as head writer, and he created the "Marlena is possessed" storyline, which was so ridiculously awesome that it frightened me, so I had to start watching again. Plus, the summer is always the best time to watch soaps because they focus on the teen storylines to attract the kids who are out of school. So right now, Marlena and a bunch of other boring people (like Roman and Abe) are presumed dead, but really they are on an island somewhere, and on the island is an exact replica of Salem. Which is genius, because they didn't have to build a whole new set -- they just stuck some palm trees in the regular set, which was awesome. And the other thing that my husband and I enjoy looking for is how any male will find any excuse to remove his shirt. Seriously, each day at least half of the male cast members are running around without their shirts on. Sometimes they just got out of the shower, or sometimes they are being held captive in a cage by an insane chick dressed as an old lady, but sometimes they just don't have shirts on for no apparent reason. But truly the most awesome thing happened on Friday. Bonnie opened this honkeytonk bar, and Rex and Philip (played by Kyle from the Chicago season of The Real World) were bartending. And suddenly this musical montage started where Rex and Philip went all Cocktail and started flipping bottles around, and people were line dancing, and the camera was zooming in on a neon sign, and then Belle and Philip were riding the mechanical bull together, and then there was more bottle flipping and everyone was cheering and I kept saying, "This is NOT happening." But it was, and it was awesome.