Days: Lexie's Death

During the last week of June 2012, everyone came together to mourn Dr. Lexie Carver (Renee Jones). Renee had decided to retire from acting so Lexie died of an illness caused from her time being held hostage in a cave.

Days did the memorial right, even if we didn't see the funeral. There were flashbacks to when Lexie admitted to Marlena (Deidre Hall) that she was the avenger. We also saw scenes with her fighting with Sami (Ali Sweeney) and her relationship with Abe (James Reynolds). What I appreciated was that they did not act as if Lexie always did the right thing. How Lexie tried to keep Zach away from his biological parents Bo (Peter Reckell) and Hope (Kristian Alfonso) was mentioned, also. Having people speak about Lexie and talk about the old stories for Cameron's (Schuyler Yancy) sake made sense, as everyone in Salem knew his half-sister longer than he did. Unfortunately Chad (Casey Deidrick) barely interacted with the family and as another of Lexie's brothers I wish he had more time with his sister and their family.

Lexie wanted everyone to dance together at the memorial. The song "I only have eyes for you", which is over 40 years old played, but it was nice to hear real music. (This song was also used for Carrie and Austin years ago.) Sami and EJ (James Scott) also had a truce for the event, for the sake of the kids.

Everyone was going to try to get along due to their love for Lexie and her child with Abe, Theo. I know Theo is a little boy, but I wish we had seen him more in the last couple of episodes. I did appreciate how he knew his mother was dead, before anyone told him. Lexie died in Abe's arms in her flower garden, while Theo was with Bo, Hope and Ciara. I even like how Lexie watched right after she passed away. Theo loves his family regardless of all the issues among everyone. I wonder if it is due to the autism that they allow Theo to be ignorant of how people don't get along, or if it was how Lexie was able to protect her son from the battles.

My only criticism of this material was what was the point of having them play up a new pairing between Abe and Kayla (Mary Beth Evans). Whenever any soap opera starts having new couple anvils on the episodes involving the death of a spouse I get annoyed. The audience has to mourn the character that was lost, along with the couple that ended. Sorry, I have no interest in seeing Abe with anyone new anytime soon, as Abe and Lexie were together for the majority of the last 20 years. (It didn't help how they are handling Kayla's marriage either, but at least people weren't happy about the idea of a divorce.)

The memorial ended with Marlena reading Shakespeare's The Tempest as Lexie and Marlena saw that play together. While I thought the long quoted passage was interesting, I was surprised by its inclusion.

So all in all, I liked this memorial. Typically these events disappoint me, but for once I wasn't completely frustrated about how a character's death was handled.