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Fiona’s done a bad, bad thing on Days of Our Lives. Actually, Fiona’s done a few. There’s lying to Xander about being a recovering alcoholic and attending meetings. Getting drunk with Brady, someone who was a recovering addict, over and over again.
Driving him home while wasted and running Sarah down with a car, paralyzing her. And now, framing Brady for the hit-and-run and letting him wallow in his misery and guilt.
It’s a harsh entrance for a character who we were excited to finally meet after years of mystery surrounding Xander’s mom. In fact, it feels like it’s way too harsh.
Serena Scott Thomas spoke with Soap Opera Digest about the whole thing, admitting that, “Coming up with the plot to make it look like Brady was driving is fiendish… profoundly malevolent. It really is devious to the point of evil.”
And we can’t really argue with that. If Fiona came in as a villain, that would be one thing. Evil parents are a tried and true staple of soap operas.
But she’s clearly supposed to be a complicated person who’s done something bad and has panicked. Scott Thomas went on to tell SOD that Fiona does feel guilty over what she’s doing. Brady is “this really nice guy, and she was finding their relationship really comforting and fun, but now she has to use him and endanger him to save her own skin and for her relationship with her son.”
We’re supposed to feel conflicted about her, and want to root for her to come out of this alright. But the problem is, we don’t know her well enough to give her any benefit of a doubt. We don’t have a connection with her.
And as Scott Thomas herself says, what she’s done and is doing is so far beyond bad that she’s just acting… evil. How do you come back from that?
Days of Our Lives had a chance to introduce Xander’s mom, give her a rocky relationship with her son and, in time, win us over. She could have been a liar who was willing to say anything to repair her relationship with her son. She could have been shady and underhanded. But to paralyze her daughter-in-law and frame her lover?
It feels like such a wasted chance and a mistake of a character. And it’s not new. Remember Jada’s sister, Talia? We finally got to meet some family of Salem’s (now) top cop, only for her to poison half the town and try to destroy Chanel and Paulina. Then the show tried making us feel bad for her as the victim of an abusive relationship. But no one was buying Days of Our Lives’ attempts to rehabilitate her, and Talia was quickly sent away.
In the end, all Talia really did was give some people drug-induced hallucinations (that led to Nicole and Eric conceiving baby Jude). Fiona’s been on our screen for just a few episodes and she’s already done far, far worse.
