Days: Aiden Leaves Salem (Again)

Today (October 25, 2016), Aiden Jennings left Salem to move back to Portland to be closer to his son Chase. Below are my thoughts about this development.

Aiden was thought to be dead, but he was replaced by an impostor. The character came back, and we found out what he'd been doing the months he was away from Salem. This was done primarily in one episode, which I  wrote about after it originally aired. Aiden, as he was held hostage, continued to love Hope (Kristian Alfonso) even as she believed the worst of him. She reunited with her long lost love Bo and then mourned him, and then moved on to her friend Rafe (Galen Gerring). Aiden's returned stalled that relationship, and Hope felt that her time with Aiden was past due to his part of attempting to kill her.

Instead of taking defeat gracefully and moving on to someone else, Aiden decided he still wanted to be with Hope. He continued being DA to cause issues, and got audio evidence to prove that Hope murdered Stefano. Rafe and Roman (Josh Taylor) lied to protect her. They were going to lie again to save Hope, but Aiden and Hope arrived before that could happen. Aiden erased the audio file lifting the blackmail. While this may seem like a good thing, the reason why he deleted the file was problematic. Aiden coerced Hope to go out with him and then wanted to force her to have sex. Hope told him this is the equivalent to what Chase did to Ciara. Considering Chase raped Ciara, this was rather disturbing. I'm glad that it stopped before we had yet another story of this nature.

While I like Daniel Cosgrove in general, this return story didn't really solve anything. I did like that they wrapped it up rather quickly, but it felt like they realized it wasn't working and made this decision. Due to how far in advance Days tapes, I sometimes wonder how they decide if something isn't working as we occasionally get stuck with bad story way too long. Hopefully Cosgrove gets another gig on a prime time series, as it would be great to see him play a comedic role as that is one of his skills.