Was a clown invasion on anyone else's bingo card for Halloween in Salem?

So far, three people have scared EJ by showing up at the Dimera mansion in a costume plucked straight out of Stephen King's IT.

You never know what's real, fake, or seriously scary during Halloween episodes, and the holiday started a few days early on Days of Our Lives during the week of 10-24-22.

The annual (but rarely seen) Horton Town Scare festival brought cute costumes and some screen time for the kids before the adults got in each other's faces about who was and wasn't dating.

Holly and Rachel were far more tolerable during these scenes than they've been recently. Rachel's mostly lost the attitude now that she's gotten what she wanted, and Holly was happy celebrating Halloween even though her mother wasn't there.

The cute costumes were beside the point, as was most of the festival. The children ran off to explore off-screen; viewers didn't get to share in the fun. Instead, the party's point seemed to be for everyone involved in this Kristen mess to snipe at each other.

Kristen couldn't help gloating that Brady was "hers" now, despite Brady standing firm in his declaration that Kristen had won the battle but lost the war.

Chloe should stop taking it personally and let Kristen brag. One of these days, Kristen's going to accidentally confess to the whole plan to rub her perceived superiority in Chloe's face, and that will be that.

Meanwhile, Gabi took the opportunity to proclaim loudly that she was over Stefan while privately being shocked that Chloe and Brady had broken up, leaving Chloe available for Stefan to win over.

Enough already! The only interesting thing about any of this is the question of when this plan will fall apart so that people can be with the person they want to be with.

Kristen's blackmail of Brady reached disturbing new heights, with Kristen implying she could force Brady to have sex with her.

I wish Eric had pressed charges years ago instead of falling victim to a similar scheme. This isn't entertaining. It's gross.

It's also utterly predictable, and the only reason Kristen is getting away with it is that certain Salemites have left their brains elsewhere.

That might be changing, though. John has figured out 95% of the truth and is determined to determine why Brady is letting Kristen call all the shots.

While Brady and Kristen were fighting in the Square, John shared his suspicions with Marlena. Unfortunately, Marlena didn't buy it, mostly because she didn't know about Kristen's claim that the women will need a second dose.

Did Kristen make that up? Someone should ask Roman if he needed a second dose after ingesting the same poison 25 years ago.

Orpheus also seems to think that his enemies have won this round, judging by the mildly threatening note he sent the women. Of course, everything is about mind games with Orpheus, so it's hard to tell what he wanted, especially since he's not on-screen laughing about it.

He might want to get into Steve's head and live there rent-free, or he might be planning something big. Steve and John are likely to lose their tempers over this note, while Orpheus will claim he was congratulating them on their win.

It's too bad that Joey and Tripp are leaving already. They don't know for sure that Kayla is out of the woods, and there are probably stories they could get involved in if they stayed.

Kayla: So... Stephanie told me that it's far more interesting to be in Salem than in Seattle.
Joey: Oh yeah? Did she tell you why she feels that way?
Kayla: Oh, come on. You know there's never a dull moment here. We have our own supervillains. We have paranormal activities. There's Dr. Rolf raising people from the dead, and of course, you have your wildly fascinating family who lives here.

• Permalink: Oh come on. You know there's never a dull moment here.

Plus, with Orpheus making threats, it would be better for the whole family to be together so that Steve can keep an eye on them.

However, Kayla's attempt to get Joey to stay contained some of the best lines of the week, especially her comments about the weird goings-on in Salem.

Meanwhile, Stephanie wasted an entire week trying to go after Sloan herself with a ludicrous plan that was doomed to failure from the get-go.

She decided to steal some counterfeit bills that Steve and John used to catch a drug dealer and have Chad pretend to pay Sloan off while she broke into her apartment.

Soap plans are often this goofy (see, for example, JJ's method for neutralizing Theresa back in 2013). But this one involved a lot of unnecessary risks, especially when Stephanie's father is a private investigator.

Instead of stealing his fake money and picking locks herself, why didn't Stephanie consult Steve? If she had a professional on her side, she might not have come up empty-handed and impressed Paulina instead of pissing her off.

Chanel also could have handled this differently. The best way to get ahead of a blackmailer is to expose the truth yourself. That removes their power altogether.

But instead, she refuses to tell Allie what's going on and keeps running to Paulina in a panic. That's not going to end well.

It's also time for Days of Our Lives to let viewers in on what the secret is.

Withholding info temporarily can create interest, but it's dragged on too long, and now the lack of progress toward finding out what this is all about is merely annoying.

Getting back to Stephanie, if she hadn't handled this so stupidly, she wouldn't owe her freedom to Alex.

We also wouldn't have had the dubious pleasure of Alex tricking Sloan into handcuffing her to the bed -- which he acknowledged was a ripoff of what Ciara did during Beyond Salem Season 1.

Alex and Sloan's sexual escapades were stereotypical BDSM porn, too, and had little in common with how most people who are into it behave in the bedroom.

If someone had to be handcuffed to a bed and tricked into having their stuff stolen, it was Sloan, though. She's even more reprehensible than Kristen or Gwen.

Sloan has no redeeming values, and this week alone threatened to have someone beat up Leo and threatened to expose Chanel's secret. This character can't return fast enough to whatever hole she slithered out of.

It figured that Leo accidentally exposed Chad's ruse, but why did Stephanie think this idiocy would ever work? She should have used real but marked bills, not counterfeit ones. Trickery 101, Stephanie! Sheesh.

Leo seems to want to be a different man nowadays, but I'm not sure I trust it any more than I trust Gwen's 90th attempt at redemption.

Abe: If you had vetted your new hire more closely, you would have found out that Mr. Stark was facing multiple felony charges.
Paulina: I knew you looked familiar. You were recently arrested for the murder of Abigail Dimera and the stabbing of Sonny Kiriakis!
Leo: Hello? I was totally exonerated!
Abe: You were hardly innocent. You blackmailed Sonny into marrying you and you conned Craig Wesley into becoming your unlawfully wedded husband. So do you sense a pattern here?
Leo: I... have excellent taste in men?
Abe: You are a golddigger.
Leo: I WAS a golddigger. Now I'll be earning my own gold working at a legitimate job.

• Permalink: I WAS a golddigger. Now I'll be earning my own gold working at a legitimate job.

It was ridiculous for Paulina to hire him without vetting his background. How does she know he's not Sloan's client, planted to cause her trouble?

She dropped the ball this time for a supposedly shrewd, successful businesswoman! Abe was correct in everything he said, though naturally, Paulina didn't listen.

Let's hope he doesn't disappoint her! Maybe he can do the impossible and neutralize Sloan while Stephanie continues making empty promises and engaging in stupid schemes.

One of the week's worst events was Rolf getting the upper hand over Gabi.

Gabi attacked Rolf and got a full confession out of him, only for him to trick her into letting him go so he could inject her with an amnesia-inducing drug. When she returned to the Square, she seemed like a Stepford wife and said Rolf had reassured her that he'd done nothing to Stefan.

This only drags out the inevitable. Now it's a race to see who regains their memories first: Stefan or Gabi.

Stefan is well on his way to winning that race. Despite the fun he's having with Chloe, a cloud gathers over his face whenever Gabi's name is mentioned, and he seems upset about having signed the divorce papers.

Gabi and Li will probably go ahead with their wedding, which means the truth will come out then. Days of Our Lives loves to ruin weddings this way.

Wendy's also trying to expose the truth, but what will she do when she learns it? Li is her brother, but Gabi is her friend, and while she wants to expose Li to gain leverage for herself, she might not want to go ahead if it means blowing up his marriage.

Eric and Nicole have the opposite problem: they can't forget their feelings for each other no matter how hard they try.

This story took a predictable, contrived path on Days of Our Lives during the week of 10-24-22. After Rafe convinced Nicole to rehire Eric, a model left the company high and dry when they needed to do a photo shoot, so naturally, Nicole stepped in.

I'm not an expert on modeling, but this doesn't seem like a realistic situation, and the response was even more ridiculous: the company wanted more photos ASAP. It demanded Nicole continue to serve as a model.

This might have been a compelling story about Nicole, her reservations about returning to modeling, and her realization that she is a beautiful woman inside and out. But the modeling itself was beside the point.

It's all a vehicle to put Nicole and Eric into a situation where he has to be around her while she wears low-cut dresses.

We already did this several years ago when Nicole tried to work with Eric at the parish; only then it was a far more believable and honest situation. This one is manufactured drama that's been done to death. Let's move on already!

Days of Our Lives ended the week with what was supposed to be a Halloween shock: Charlie again rose from the dead to bother Ava.

This happened after the three scary clown encounters. Oddly, Ava wasn't wearing hers anymore while in the crypt.

To me, this suggests a setup for a Halloween fantasy sequence. Head writer Ron Carlivati loves those; the only time he didn't have one since taking over as head writer was in 2021 when he opted for the Devil causing trouble instead.

Will Charlie's appearance be a dream sequence, or does Days of Our Lives have something more sinister in mind? Hit the comments section with your thoughts!

Don't forget to check back on Sunday for the latest Days of Our Lives Round Table discussion, where several passionate fans sound off on everything that happened on Days of Our Lives during the week of 10-24-22.

In the meantime, if you have an opinion on who had the cutest Halloween costume, vote in the poll below.

Who had the cutest Halloween costume?

Days of Our Lives streams exclusively on Peacock. New episodes drop on weekdays at 6 AM EST / 3 AM PST.

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.