A little combination

Anna figured out in one lip-lock what has eluded the residents of Salem for the past 20-odd years: Tony is not Tony. He is Andre DiMera, Tony's look-alike evil cousin.

Hey everyone! I would like to first apologize for there being no column last week. It was entirely my fault. I had sent it off to our editor and I suppose it never found its way there, as I have been having a lot of problems with my email. I can't change it as it's linked to everything I have, so hopefully the problem is now rectified and the column will post in a nice, timely manner. I have combined last week (7/9) and this week's (7/16) columns, but I have tried to condense it to keep it from being waaaaayyyy too long. So, sit back and enjoy, and I hope that there will be no more email issues.

SANTO & COLLEEN

I must first start by saying that I am completely in love with this storyline. Alison Sweeney and James Scott are doing so well with their "alternate" personas and the story has me completely sucked in. So, the story is that Colleen was a novice with a convent order and Santo was hit in the head by something I can pronounce but cannot spell, so forgive me. Anyway, two local guys brought Santo to the church for first aid and/or prayer and he set his sights on Colleen. She was obviously smitten too, but very conflicted, as she was training to be a nun, so she sent Santo a letter claiming to want one of the handkerchiefs that his wife had made for him to sell as a gift to her father. Santo, of course returned to Ireland to give her the hankie, but she kept avoiding him. He ran into her father Pete (who looked a bit young to be her dad, but hey they had kids younger back then) and little brother Shawn and asked after Colleen. Pete then proceeded to try to attack Santo in church, nearly beating the priest to get at Mr. DiMera. Apparently, Pete didn't believe that Colleen would waste a week's wages on some frou-frou piece of silk for him. And the thing is, he was pretty much right. That little piece of silk was Colleen's excuse to see Santo again. Little brother Shawn ran to go get Colleen to break up the near melee and she spoke with Santo privately. Eventually, the conversation became a little too much for her, as she ended up running out the back. Here is where I thought James Scott was fabulous. He looked so sad after Colleen ran away and then he left the handkerchief on one of the back pews. I just wanted to reach through the screen and give the guy a hug. Well, I usually want to hug him, but that's beside the point. Both of them did such a stellar job.

Santo did come back the church, this time with his son, an approximately ten year old Stefano. I've got to say that when Colleen introduced a little, now-Grandpa Shawn to little Stefano, it really creeped me out, kinda like when the posters for Star Wars came out with little boy Anakin Skywalker and the Darth Vader mask superimposed over his cure little face. I could not watch those scenes without cringing a little bit, because Stefano looked so happy and innocent, and you just know how things are going to turn out when those two grow up. Anyway, Santo invited Colleen to have a "picnic" with him to "thank" her for tending to his head wound, which she at first refused. She later had a change of heart and asked her very greedy priest if she could spend an hour with Mr. DiMera to hopefully get him to donate some money towards a new roof for their church. Well, Santo got a little surprise when Colleen showed up with an older sister chaperone for their little lunch. He just sucked it up and entertained both ladies. Santo then asked Colleen if she would be willing to bring Shawn by to play with Stefano, as he wanted him to have a friend. Colleen asked why Stefano could not just go home to his mother, at which point Santo revealed that his wife was dying and he didn't want Stefano to see his mother so ill. The other nun was so taken by his story that she was trying to urge Colleen to have the boys play together. You know that's bad when another nun is trying to get you to spend time with a handsome Italian man with a really good (and hey even possibly true) sob story. Colleen did end up bringing Shawn by to play, this time without a chaperone. Santo asked Colleen to meet him again, this time in plain clothes. He told her it was a pity for someone so beautiful to hide herself away from the world, which nearly got him thrown off a cliff. She hustled her little brother away, but since we all know this can't be the end of the story, I can't wait to see what happens next.

THE TEENS Oh, my God, where in the world are they going with this story? So, Max went to Bo and Hope's to get Jerk-emy moving to make their flight and found some strange, crying, possibly traumatized, foreign girl in the living room. Max is trying to figure out what's going on, while simultaneously trying to figure out where the hell Jerk-emy was. Well, he didn't wonder about that very long, as Jerk-my started screaming at the girl to get her lazy butt up because they had to leave. Max cold-busted Jerk-emy and tried to figure out who the girl was and why she was crying. Jerk-emy spun some story about picking the girl up at the Cheatin' Heart and tried to get all player-to-player with Max. Max did walk right into it though when he started in on Jeremy about cheating on his niece, since Max used to date her himself. But anyways, this incident seemed to make Max even more suspicious of Jerk-emy and he demanded to see what was really in the crates of designed knock-offs they were transporting. Jerk-emy and the extra from Cheech and Chong's last adventure brought up one of the containers and showed Max that it did in fact contain nothing but clothes. Then Burnout told Jeremy that it was a good thing that Max hadn't decided to look through all the containers, as he would have found out what they were really shipping. Okay, wait, hold the hell up. What in God's name is Jeremy really shipping? I still think drugs, but I mean, damn is it body parts or something? Since the DiMera's are involved it cannot be anything good.

Now Jett is snooping around the cargo area trying to figure out what Jerk-emy's side deal with Max is all about. He finally cornered Max and got him to admit that he and Jerk-emy were running clothes. After the whole fake-fiancee thing with Danielle, I am betting dollars to doughnuts that he is some type of undercover cop or agent. Notice that Danielle is a lawyer, graduating from OSU with a law degree (I have to say as a loyal Ohioan, I am loving all the references to my home state). I bet that they are somehow working together to try to bring down Jerk-emy and his associates. Of course, Chelsea had to stick her nose in his business and background checked Danielle, so now she knows that Jett's fiance is married. Jett spoke with Danielle on the phone and let her know Chelsea blew her cover, but that they could probably still use Chelsea. Yeah, cop.

Chelsea then decided she wanted to help mend Jett's "broken heart" by sticking her tongue down his throat. He was (smartly) not having it and pushed her away. She skulked off somewhere, and perhaps remembered that she has a boyfriend.

But the coup de grace was Jerk-emy and Stephanie in the hot tub. She was lightly teasing her boyfriend about being too chicken to talk about his feelings. So of course the normal, human reaction is to grab her by the head and hold her underwater for what felt like way too long. But remember, you must do this with a completely blank, yet psychotic look on your face. Then when Steph came up gasping for air, Jerk-emy blurts out "I love you okay?!?! So just shut up and relax before you lose the best thing you ever had!" Then he just leans back and closes his eyes like nothing out of the ordinary happened. Okay. Obviously, they are setting us up for the teen-summer-abusive-relationship storyline. While this does make Stephanie and Jerk-emy a bit more interesting, only in the sense that it's not that airheaded soft porn dialogue that they have been having, I'm having a hard time with Stephanie still. She is getting in everyone's face about Jeremy like nothing happened. She got into Max's face and was all gleeful telling Jeremy that Max didn't trust him, and then she asks Chelsea why she doesn't like Jeremy and when Steph got a real straight answer out of her (Chelsea didn't want to get into it because she didn't want to fight) Stephanie just flips out all over her. It seems to me (and I'm just playing armchair shrink here) that Stephanie knows what Jeremy really is, but she is too into him to care. So she is asking other people about him, hoping they will tell her what she wants to hear and when they don't, she becomes angry because she knows they are right. I just wonder how far it's going to go, and honestly, how bad Steve is going to injure Jeremy when he finds out.

EJ, SAMI & LUCAS

EJ confronted now-faux Tony in his car, while faux-Tony was watching Roman's every move at the Brady Pub. EJ was insistent his children not be harmed, but faux-Tony just doesn't care, because either it is the twins or Stefano, and we all know that Stefano must live forever to properly execute his reign of terror over all of Salem. Faux-Tony pulled a gun on EJ and ordered him out of the car, basically telling him that he would get to Sami and the twins no matter what EJ did. EJ snuck around the back of the pub to warn Roman of what Tony's plans were. After much arguing (and honestly, I don't blame Roman for hating EJ's guts) Roman asked EJ if he was willing to turn state's evidence against Tony, and in the process prove that he is really on the Bradys' side. EJ seems very reluctant to do so, but he did tip him off that Tony was going to take his GPS in exchange for a ten minute meeting with Sami. EJ told Sami that he wanted to see a judge to work out a custody agreement about the babies. He told her that he would like every other weekend and occasional holidays and that the babies would primarily be raised by her and Lucas. Sami seemed very surprised that EJ was being so reasonable and mature, but said that she would talk it over with Lucas and they would work something out.

EJ confronted faux-Tony while he was taking Roman's GPS, but Bart managed to knock EJ out. Next thing EJ knows is he is being tied to the bed in Sami's now-former safehouse and there is a gun being rigged to shoot him as soon as the door is opened. Steve and John come by look for EJ, but Steve was smart enough to go through the window because he sensed something hinky was going on. Of course, super-John heard the noise of Steve breaking the window, so he barged through the door anyway. Lucky for EJ, somehow the bullet did not hit him. They took him back to the pub, where Sami and Lucas happened to be and told them that EJ is the one that tipped them off about Tony getting his hands on their location. Of course, Lucas took this opportunity to throw some verbal jabs at EJ, while Sami at least had the courtesy to mouth "thank you" to EJ, before Lucas ushered her out of the pub like she was his ten year old daughter.

Lucas and Sami both had conversations this week regarding the rape and how to move past it. I, for some reason, cannot believe that Lucas doesn't know that Jack, his own brother-in-law, raped Kayla. I know that it was before Lucas got to town, but for some reason I just thought he would know. Kayla said that she was able to eventually forgive and move past it and she asked him if it bothered him that Sami was trying to forgive EJ for what he did. Lucas seemed to feel better after that conversation, as this is when he and EJ came to their peace agreement for the sake of Sami and the kids. Not that I think it will last long, but it was a nice gesture. Sami, on the other hand, spoke to Hope about how she wants to hate EJ, but she remembers that at one point they were friends and she trusted him. She even let the beans spill about trying to set EJ on fire and not being able to go through with it. Hope told her that eventually she might be able to forgive, but advised her to keep her guard up. I think that was pretty sound advice. I too would like to believe that EJ is changing for the better, but you know what they say about snakes.

FAUX-TONY (ANDRE) & THE REAL McCOY

Apparently, someone over at Days has a hell of a sense of humor. Anna jumps into "Tony's" car and gives him a great big old smooch, and guess what? She figured out in one lip-lock what has eluded the residents of Salem for the past 20-odd years: "Tony" is not Tony. He is Andre DiMera, Tony's look-alike evil cousin. Well, damn. So anyway, John, Marlena, Roman, Bo and Hope all got together to put the pieces together about all the times "Tony" has come back and if any of them could have been really him. Anna comes in and assures them that the man saying that he is Tony is not the man that she was married to. Steve in the backseat of the car asking Tony those questions was priceless, especially since the winner of that 1972 fencing championship was none other than Count DiMera himself, and faux-Tony didn't know the answer. Bo then had EJ call "Tony" to meet him on a roof, where Bo would be waiting for him instead. Andre planned to ambush EJ and kill him for reals this time, but Bo beat him to it. Bo tried to arrest Andre for trying to kill EJ and Sami and Andre decided to jump up on the ledge. He slipped (he really did, Bo didn't even touch him) and Bo was holding him trying to help him up. Before he would pull Andre up though, he asked where the real Tony was. Bart barged in to help his boss up, while Andre said "Bart's back." Then he went splat. EJ (once again) figured out that Andre probably really meant Bart's back. Roman arrested him and the found the map tattooed on the aforementioned spot. To make an exceedingly long story short, Marlena and John went to go find Tony on his uncharted deserted isle and Anna invited herself along for the ride. They found the real Tony and brought him home, but not before Anna pulled a gun on him and asked him a bunch of questions about stuff that happened 25 years ago. After John got the gun out of Tony's face, he actually did remember the answers to her questions. How you like them apples? I feel a bit bad for Roman in this situation though. I know he cares about Anna, but the real Tony is Anna's true love, so that means Roman is out in the cold. Oh well, at least he got some lovin' this year.

SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS

With those ticking flowers Nick is holding, I have a bad feeling that Nick is not going to remember what the guy from the lab told him on the phone. And how rude was Chelsea just ditching Nick like that? This whole back and forth between them is really making me nuts. And I'm sorry, but I don't think she would have been so eager to leave if Jerk-emy was the one to come by and ask her to work that night.

Shawn and Belle are still irking me to the point of barely being able to speak about them. I know that those calls Philip is getting have something to do with his and Mimi's baby, but how long is it going to take HIM to figure it out.

I loved Bo telling Andre "I'm a Brady! You know how we are!

So scoopers, what will happen next week? Will Tony come face to face with his doppelganger? Will the real Tony and EJ team up to bring Stefano and Andre down? What will happen to Nick? What will be the next instalment of the Santo/Colleen story? Watch and find out! I know I will!

Until next time!

Melissa

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