Eve Donovan was always a troublemaker, but never a murderer.

But on Days of Our Lives during the week of 8-17-20, she hit a new low as she gleefully planned to force Ben to kill Ciara on the anniversary of Paige's death.

And if that wasn't bad enough, pretty much all of Salem disregarded Hope and Rafe's boundaries to try to push them back together. Sheesh.

Eve has a right to grieve her daughter's death, although she wasn't the best mother while Paige was alive and the writers have always refused to allow JJ to grieve for the girlfriend he lost too.

But Eve does not have the right to kill someone else to make herself feel better about Paige's death, and she certainly shouldn't be cackling gleefully over it.

If Ben kills Ciara, it'll only put Hope -- a woman who has been sympathetic to Eve and let her off the hook for previous bad behavior because she understood what it was like to lose a child -- in the same position Eve is in.

As Claire pointed out, it won't bring Paige back. It won't get Paige justice, either. It'll just cause more pain and make more people hate when this date rolls around on the calendar.

This whole thing is incredibly disrespectful to Paige's memory.

Her character has mostly been forgotten, except when it's convenient to some Eve-centered plot.

Paige was a lot more than Eve's daughter, and Eve never treated her well. In addition to constantly standing up to her manipulative mother (including disowning her after the Eve/JJ fiasco), Paige was an intern at the hospital who had earned her position at a record-breaking young age, a sweet girl who tried her best to be patient with broken souls like Eve and Theresa, and a pianist who lost her heart to JJ when she heard him play guitar.

The tragedy of her death is not that Eve has suffered. The tragedy is that a young woman who had a ton of potential and her entire life ahead of her had her life snuffed out for no reason at all.

And the writers don't realize that any more than Eve does, since they use her life and death only as a prop to push Eve's latest crazy scheme forward.

If the writers wanted to commemorate her death, there should have been scenes of Eve actually remembering Paige -- and some of the flashbacks should have included her arguing with Paige over JJ and regretting the crap she said and did to her.

Instead, we got Eve clutching a teddy bear and crying she missed Paige while gloating about her plan to cause another innocent young woman's death.

It was disgusting and inappropriate, and it definitely does not constitute justice for Paige. Plus it was yet another example of the writers depicting a woman as "snapping" after dealing with intense emotions. 

That does no favors to either women or people with mental illness, despite the great job Kassie de Paiva is doing with this nonsense.

Even leaving the messaging aside, the plot developments in this story were ridiculous.

I know Salem operates on its own set of rules, including people being able to wander into hotel rooms whenever they feel like it.

But Ben and Ciara happening to order room service and then Vincent happening to show up to deliver the food along with another dose of the mystery drug was way over-the-top even for Days of Our Lives.

And then Vincent just showed up in Ben's room again, too.  Come on!

This whole magic villain with magic drug thing Days of Our Lives has got going on is way overdone. If you have to rely on unexplainable coincidences, fantastical drugs, and good guys unable to walk away from bad guys to make a story work, you've gone wrong somewhere.

Meanwhile, across town Sami seems to have finally learned her lesson after John's collapse. For now, anyway.

Sami always takes a few steps toward acting like a mature mother of three, only to backslide quickly into adult temper tantrums and violence toward her enemies. This time around, she's been even worse than usual, so I'll take any break from that behavior I can get.

But I can see the writing on the wall with this.

Belle didn't let Sami get a word in edgewise, not that Sami isn't capable of forcing her way in when she wants to. So she doesn't know that Sami was screaming at John just prior to his attack.

And Sami left that part out when she told Marlena what had happened.

So obviously, someone is going to find out and spill the beans and then everyone will turn their anger toward Sami, blaming her for John's illness. And Sami will likely decide she might as well go back to being out of control since no one likes her anyway.

It's both predictable and aggravating. While Sami should feel guilty about saying horrible things to John before his aneurysm, she didn't cause it. Stress doesn't help, but aneurysms don't burst without warning, either. 

And her family should support her efforts to change after discovering her words have consequences, not disown her for past mistakes she can no longer change.

The confrontation with John, of course, came on the heels of a similar confrontation with Eric and Nicole.

Both sides were wrong on that one. Eric and Nicole shouldn't have disregarded a restraining order, and Sami shouldn't have disregarded her daughter's wishes just because she doesn't agree with them.

A lot of this drama could have been avoided by going through proper channels. Justin and Belle should have been having this conversation, not their clients. But what would be the fun in that?

This is the second custody battle Eric has been involved in. I keep expecting someone to bring up his fight with Chloe for custody of Holly, but so far no one has. Instead, Nicole and Sami are busy tearing each other to bits over who has the worst past.

At this rate, if we get an actual custody hearing it looks like the lawyers will be arguing over whether Sami kidnapping baby Belle 30 years ago is objectively worse than Nicole kidnapping baby Sydney in 2008.

They might throw in the irony of Eric's baby having been switched at birth to cover up its death just like Sydney was switched with Grace, who died soon after.

What's next? Choosing the parents based on who gives the baby a better name?

This custody case should be settled based on what's in the child's best interest, but this storyline has never been about that. It's been about Sami wanting to decide for Allie while Allie is determined to have anyone but Sami raise her kid. 

Speaking of arguing over the child's best interest, Gabi had a point about Will and Sonny's proposed move...until she decided she was never compromising no matter what.

Sonny and Will's move came out of nowhere, and Ari has already begun her school year in Salem. So Gabi was right that uprooting Ari right this second or making her move to Arizona mid-year weren't great options.

But Gabi's refusal to even visit with Ari or her insistence that she has to go to summer camp in Salem too were a bridge too far. 

All three of them have custody of Ari and all three of them are important to her. Gabi needs to compromise somehow, even if it's as small as visiting with Ari for a few weeks during the summer.

Otherwise, she'll be the next one in court arguing over custody, and that definitely isn't in Ari's best interests.

Plus, Ari will soon be a teenager and capable of making her own decisions about which parents she prefers. If Gabi insists on blocking her from having any time with her other parents, Ari will again declare she hates Gabi...and this time be old enough to mean it.

Anyway, getting back to John's collapse, this is another story that could end up being emotional if it doesn't go in a ridiculous direction.

This is not the way it ends. Heroes don't go out laying in a hospital bed hooked up to a bunch of machines. You know that, right? That's what you are, John Black. You're a hero. And I'll never admit it, and I'll kick your ass if you ever repeat it, but you're MY hero.

Steve

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I couldn't help thinking about Marlena's living will issue and wondering if John had updated his or if Belle will be stuck executing it too.

But Steve and Marlena's scenes at John's bedside were phenomonal, even if we've seen this kind of thing recently when Marlena and Julie were the ones in critical condition.

The only thing missing was that Steve might be thinking of Bo during this. Bo was his other best friend and brother from another mother, and he died soon after Paige did.

So potentially losing his only living best friend must bring back memories and feelings for Steve, and it would have been a nice touch if the writers had included that.

Meanwhile, Hope is not thinking about the upcoming anniversary of Bo's death at all. She's too busy debating whether or not to tell Rafe about her feelings for him.

I've never been a fan of this couple, so the repeated conversations about this were particularly irritating.

Everyone was determined to push the couple together, and Ciara's response to Rafe being uncomfortable with this line of conversation was to apologize and then keep pursuing it.

Talk about disrespectful! It wouldn't be acceptable if Rafe did that to her, and it shouldn't be acceptable for her to do it to him.

And Hope's encounter with Rafe at her home was straight out of the 1950s. It was silly that Hope "almost never" does laundry and sillier that she thought the right way to deal with a broken washing machine was to call her semi-boyfriend instead of a repair person.

Her ploy was all for naught, too, since Rafe was the first guy in Days of Our Lives history to have an actual undershirt on when he was forced to remove his shirt after a mishap and the whole encounter resulted in nothing but awkward conversation and longing looks.

For many viewers, this nonsense was a distraction from the highlight of their week: Philip's return.

Philip is a popular character, especially among fans who have longed for him and Chloe to reunite since Jay Kenneth Johnson left Days of Our Lives in 2011.

Unfortunately, so far his return has mainly consisted of imitating Brady's attempt to blackmail Victor into giving him Xander's job.

The last thing we need is another war of the CEOs story while the Jake/Gwen/Chad/Gabi story has taken an awful turn. Plus, snobby is not a good look for Philip.

Philip also ran into Shawn, so there's some potential there, though I could do without another repeat of the Philip/Belle/Shawn triangle that seems to have followed these characters well into adulthood.

Your turn, Days of Our Lives fanatics. What did you think of Philip's return, the latest developments in the Eve storyline, or Hope and Rafe's potential reunion?

Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and share your thoughts.

And don't forget to check back on Sunday for even more discussion as our Days Of Our Lives Round Table team tackles all these issues and more.

Days of Our Lives continues to air on NBC on weekdays. Check your local listings for airtimes.

Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on X.