Add another candle to that cake!

Days of Our Lives turned 57, and Doug and Julie celebrated the anniversary with a nod to the series' first storyline in 1965.

There was plenty of drama on Days of Our Lives during the week of 11-07-22, but the tribute to the show's long history was the best part.

Days of Our Lives' anniversary happened to fall on Election Day, so the celebration was intermixed with the drama over at Paulina's campaign headquarters.

While Abe and Paulina anxiously waited for results, Doug embarrassed Julie by telling Shawn about her teenage shoplifting escapade.

The set-up belonged on a sitcom. Julie had again been accused of shoplifting because she thought Doug paid for her mink stole, and Doug thought she paid for it.

Once that was straightened out, Doug couldn't help but mention that 57 years ago to the day, a teenage Julie was arrested after stealing a similar coat from Bartlett's Department Store.

This all happened before Doug was in the picture, and nobody remembers the exact date of a teenage misadventure, but that's okay. The flashbacks and tribute to the show were more important than the set-up.

Tom and Alice Horton were Days of Our Lives' backbone until Macdonald Carey and Frances Reid's 1994 and 2010 deaths. The plaque in the Square honors their memories, but we rarely, if ever, get flashbacks featuring them.

These flashbacks were from the pilot episode, which younger viewers may not have ever seen in its entirety. Days of Our Lives was a very different type of show then. Alice and Tom seemed young, a different actress played Julie, and the scenes had a warmer, family-drama vibe.

It was as fascinating to realize how far this show has come as it was exciting to have a few minutes with the cast that started it all.

Julie is the only character from the original cast still in Salem, so it made sense for her and Doug to lead the tribute to the series' founders.

It also set her and Doug up nicely as this generation's version of Tom and Alice. These two now offer support, love, and advice to young relatives and carry on the Horton tradition of celebrating family.

Unfortunately, things didn't go smoothly for Paulina's election.

Abe might have been premature in his decision to resign as mayor. All the votes hadn't been counted yet, so it was possible that Paulina hadn't really won. In addition, this Chanel scandal might cause a ton of trouble for Paulina's new governorship.

It would help if we had any idea what Chanel did. The writers are dragging this out past the point of no return.

Viewers have stopped caring about this secret, and Days of Our Lives has gone to ridiculous lengths to keep it hidden.

It all should have come out when Chanel was arrested. Instead, we got silly plot twists so that the writers wouldn't have to reveal what was going on:

• Shawn arrested Chanel for murder without having any details to share about who she was accused of killing.
• Belle took Chanel's case but ordered her not to tell her what it was about so that she wouldn't be "prejudiced" when she read the police report.
• Abe learned the details off-screen and spoke cryptically to Paulina about how sorry he was for Chanel's burden.

The only one of these things that made any sense was Abe's support of Paulina, and even that was marred by the audience not being in on the secret.

Do the writers even know what Chanel did? Or are they making this up as they go along?

This type of scandal should not derail Paulina's governorship now that she's been elected. While it's true that she now has two daughters in jail, that is not the kind of thing that destroys political careers.

The only problem for Paulina is that if she were to pardon Chanel for whatever this is, she would look like she was using her position for her family's gain and would be going against her campaign promise not to pardon criminals for no reason.

So all she has to do is avoid those kinds of moves and conduct herself in public as someone who supports and loves her daughter but won't abuse power for Chanel's sake.

The police also should have arrested Chanel in private -- that's what generally happens when politicians or their relatives get into legal trouble. The cops usually don't make public spectacles of these types of things.

If this were written at all realistically, Belle would have the case thrown out. Trask is prosecuting Chanel based on stolen evidence, so whatever's in that file shouldn't be admissible. In addition, Trask was violating Chanel's Miranda rights all over the place.

She attempted to sneakily question her without an attorney present, tried to throw Chanel's attorney out of the room, and responded to being told Chanel was represented by counsel by trying to talk her out of hiring Belle as an attorney.

That SHOULD be the end of this case, but in Salem, lawyers are all incompetent, and violating suspects' rights is par for the course. Ugh.

This story never made sense even before Chanel's arrest. Paulina has a lot of money and lawyers on speed dial. Why didn't she hire a lawyer for Chanel years ago when the mystery incident happened?

Even if she thought Chanel was a spoiled brat at the time that needed to fend for herself, things have changed. At the very least, Paulina should have called an attorney the second Sloan came sniffing around and threatening to expose Chanel's secret if she didn't get money.

Instead, Paulina opted to have her PR person become a renegade PI who stole files, then made the boneheaded choice to procrastinate about shredding the damn file once she finally got it.

Maybe she should have partnered with Nicole instead. Nicole knows a thing or two about shredding evidence.

Hopefully, Chanel's secret is a big misunderstanding. I would love it to turn out that she had an illegal abortion, but that would be too uncomfortable for the conservative part of DAYS' fan base, so they likely won't go there.

I don't like the idea of both of Paulina's daughters being convicted murderers. Not only is it unfair to them (Lani's shooting TR could reasonably be constituted as self-defense, and Chanel's case sounds like an accident that resulted in someone's death), but the Carver-Prices are the most prominent Black family in Salem.

Having two of the only Black characters in legal trouble for taking someone's life reinforces stereotypes. Let's not do that, please.

Abe also shouldn't have resigned as mayor 30 seconds after being elected. That would piss me off as a voter.

He caused all of those voters to waste their votes. And they voted for him, not his Deputy Mayor. This behavior makes a mockery of democracy.

The Ava kidnapping Susan story has so many problems it's hard to know where to begin.

This plot device involving Charlie appearing to Ava to encourage bad behavior has to go. It's almost as bad as 2021's endless Devil story!

EJ's response was to kidnap Tripp, which brings Steve and Kayla into the story but will probably trigger Ava to do something even more horrendous to EJ.

This whole thing could have been avoided if Ava had gone to Seattle with Tripp in the first place. If, as rumor has it, the writers wanted to end Ava's story, why not do that and save us the torture of sitting through this?

The Susan-napping nonsense has all the campy tropes I could do without: Xander in a clown mask, everyone (except maybe Victor) accepting Xander's strange behavior and Bonnie's sudden disappearance without question, and lots of silly behavior coming from the captives.

Susan: Adrienne? Did you come back from the dead to save me?
Bonnie: No.
Susan: You're an angel sent from Heaven then.
Bonnie: No. I'm Bonnie.
Susan: Oh that's right. You're Justin Kiriakis' wife. He certainly does have a type in women, doesn't he?

• Permalink: Oh that's right. You're Justin Kiriakis' wife. He certainly does have a type in women,...

Xander's role in this will eventually come out, and then what? He'll be on the outs with Sarah and maybe with Jack and have to prove himself again.

Or will he hook up with Gwen again? Please, let's not go there again.

Leo is also trying to turn himself around, but he seems to be moving toward a relationship with Sonny while Sonny is still married to Will.

Ugh. Sonny was never the cheating type -- he fended off Paul's advances for the better part of a year, and Paul was far more reasonable a match for Sonny than Leo could ever be.

Why does Days of Our Lives have to turn everyone into a cheater? This Nicole/Eric stuff is bad enough.

Nicole and Eric's kiss and Nicole's sudden decision that she was in love with Eric didn't scream romance to me.

All of Salem has been pushing Nicole and Eric together since he returned to town. Rafe accused Nicole of gaslighting him, but it seemed like he was doing that.

He insisted that Nicole had feelings for Eric and wanted to cheat on him, refused to accept that it wasn't true, and stormed off angry.

Nicole needed more self-control, but it didn't seem like she gave in to feelings for Eric. It seemed like she got tired of arguing with everyone and decided she might as well feel what they wanted her to feel.

This also is why she cheated on Eric with Xander: they fought, she couldn't reach Eric to fix it, and she went for the first man to give her attention.

Rafe also refused to acknowledge Jada's agenda even though he's aware she purposely gossips to him about Eric and Nicole. Get a clue, Rafe.

The Jada pregnancy wrinkle is annoying.

First, I'm sick of Salem women learning they're pregnant when they faint and end up in the hospital. Understandably, someone who works long hours in a high-stress job might lose track of their periods, but come on!

This "twist" also likely means that Eric will stay with Jada for the baby's sake, while Nicole has already broken up with Rafe. Why are these stories always written to punish Nicole?

She and Rafe had a great friendship that could have been the foundation for a strong relationship if the writers had only given them a chance. Instead, they were little more than an obstacle for Nicole/Eric, and Nicole is the only one who loses out in the current scenario. Boo!

This is almost as annoying as this Alex/Stephanie/Chad triangle.

Alex is the consolation prize that Nicole feared Rafe was to her; Stephanie is only going out with him because Chad doesn't feel ready to date.

Plus, Alex's behavior wasn't just pushy or annoying. He was harassing Stephanie. The last thing Days of Our Lives should be doing is sending the message that that type of behavior will ultimately succeed.

Sound off, Days of Our Lives fanatics. Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know your thoughts. And don't forget to check back on Sunday for the latest Days of Our Lives Round Table discussion.

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.