This past week on Days of our Lives brought the tears and the drama tenfold, in one of the most riveting, don’t-miss-a-moment, weeks in recent history on any daytime drama series.

While unfortunately the show did not air on NBC during its regularly scheduled timeslots on all coasts (due to the President Donald Trump impeachment hearings) the episodes were available on NBC.com, the NBC app and on the Cozi TV network.

Photo: JPI

And this week we cannot sound-the-trumpets enough for three men; who gave us moments of heartache that will be remembered for some time to come, pulling out all the stops, and showing us why they remain three of the most popular and talented actors in our genre. So many people have been commenting on social media on the authenticity and realness of the performances (yes, it’s within soapy circumstances), but throughout made us feel their pain right along with them.

On DAYS, this was the week they went back in time to finally show the viewers how things ended up the way they currently are in the time jump that happened last November on-air.  And in five “OMG” episodes, head writer Ron Carlivati and his team laid out for us how one fateful night, “Mother’s Day” changed the course of lives for so many in Salem.

Chief among them, Will (Chandler Massey) landing in prison for Adrienne’s (Judi Evans) death, when in fact, he was not the responsible party at all.  But in these flashback episodes, Will’s relationship with his husband, Sonny (Freddie Smith), his father-in-law, Justin (Wally Kurth) is forever changed because he believed he was the one behind the wheel that caused the crash that ultimately took Adrienne’s life, and took Sonny’s mother from him … and Justin’s wife from him.

In the flashback to the horrible night: at the hospital, Kayla (Mary Beth Evans) has told Justin that Adrienne didn’t make it following the injury sustained to her head in the accident, and now Justin has to tell Sonny.  He tearfully tells his son, “We lost her. Your mother’s dead!”  As the men console each other and break down in each other’s arms, Will, who is there, and who was trying to tell Sonny his part in the accident, is horrified to learn Adrienne died.  Kayla asks Justin and Sonny if they want to say goodbye to Adrienne.  Sonny breaks down again at just the thought of it.  And at this point, we are sure DAYS fans are reaching for the hankies.

Photo: JPI

While Will’s guilt is too much for him to bear, Justin and Sonny go say goodbye to Adrienne, It is here that it was almost too hard to watch, but we soap viewers can’t turn away.  That’s because it was just an unbelievable raw performance from Freddie Smith; as a young man who has to say goodbye to the mother he loves and on Mother’s Day to boot. Then, Justin kisses Adrienne’s forehead, remembers the first time he saw her crying in a flashback, and in tears asks his beloved wife, how is he supposed to go on without her.  In addition, Justin recalls proposing to Adrienne with Kayla there beside him trying to comfort him.

Courtesy.NBC

In the hospital waiting area, Will tries to talk to Sonny to tell him that he caused the accident.  Will blurts out, “I killed your mother.”  Sonny, who is so grief-stricken, cannot believe what Will is saying, but then Sonny learns Will was distracted when he was texting his mother Sami on Mother’s Day while in the car because he was so busy. (Yup, Will forgot to do it earlier in the day)  Sonny lets Will have it with: “My mom is dead because you were texting?!” As Sonny’s grief and anger escalates, Justin walks in and learns Will caused Adrienne death and then lowers the boom on Will: “The love of my life is dead…because of you!”

Courtesy/NBC

And if all of this wasn’t enough to have you bawling your eyes out by now, it is punctuated by the ultra-sad moment where a defeated Will has to leave his husband and his father-in-law alone because they don’t want him there.  Before he exits, Will turns to them and says, that he wishes it had been him who died in the crash, as tears stream down his face.

What powerful and effective performances by Wally Kurth, Chandler Massey, and Freddie Smith.  And so, with all of that said, Michael Fairman TV names this trio the “Power Performance of the Week”.

What did you think of the key scenes in Adrienne’s death and the aftermath featuring Wally, Chandler and Freddie? Share your thoughts via the comment section below.

And, for more with Chandler and some behind the scenes content of the car crash, and his thoughts on the storyline, check out his new interview feature posted on the DOOL app Friday night.

In yet another riveting performance by Sterling K. Brown, the highly-touted episode that aired on Tuesday’s night’s This Is Us, had his character of Randall in the spotlight again, as the first of the Big Three trilogy this season.  Next week, look for the installment to center on Justin Hartley’s Kevin.However, last night on the episode aptly titled, “Hello of a Week: Part One”, viewers followed what happened next to Randall following his return home after the stress of flying across the country to get a diagnosis for his ailing mother’s memory lapses (while keeping it from his siblings), and then winding up facing an intruder in the Pearson family home.After Randall offers the intruder money, the guy runs out of the home.

Next, the police come, and Randall installs surveillance cameras and security alarms throughout the house, which ends up being a continued tipping point in his mental state as he obsesses over keeping his family and his home safe, especially when the cops tells him that it is common for a thief to return,. It appears later in the episode he did when Beth’s earrings and Randall’s cufflinks are MIA.

Photo by: NBC

Throughout the episode, flashbacks to Randall’s childhood showed little Randall, unable to sleep and afraid of monsters, who then asks his dad, Jack to stay with him through the night.  Jack sleeps on the floor, but when Jack eventually gets up to go to his own bed, he tells Randall who comes running after him, “to be brave: and that he needs him to be the easiest child to care for since Kate and Kevin are handfuls.

This laid the foundation for how Randall deals with others, by not letting them know his inner most feelings.   The writers juxtapose Randall’s dreams throughout where he feels he can’t get out whether it be screaming through a locked window at his mother to get out of the storm, or watching some creepy guy touch Beth and he screams so loud, but you can’t hear him,

In addition, in flashbacks, we see how a college-aged Randall needing college-aged Beth to spend countless nights with him. At one point he tells her, “I just feel so helpless, like I have no control over anything,” especially following the death of his father Jack.  Beth says she can understand. She had bad dreams after her father passed away, but after she talked to a therapist she began to feel better.  In a key moment, Randall agrees to attend an grief group with her, but that plan goes awry when on the day they were heading to the grief counseling group, Randall’s family has an emergency and he could not go.

The theme of Randall seeking counseling surfaced later in the episode after Randall was struggling to hold it together as City Councilman at the Town Hall, which did not go unnoticed by Beth or by Malik’s dad, Darnell.

The next day, he tells Randall that he himself needed therapy and suggest he do that to.  Randall says all he needs is his runs around the city to help him clear his head.  But that takes another drastic turn when Randall comes upon a woman being beaten and proceeds to pounce on the aggressor.  Next, Randall with messed up arm from landing punches on the guy, ends up being touted as a hero for saving the woman’s life.  He is not comfortable with that and he begins to lose his grip.

In the culmination of the episode, locking himself in the bathroom in his home, Randall begins to cry and phones Kevin.  Thank God his brother answered, as he seems to be the only person Randall feels he can talk to, and has, through his life.  At the time of the call, Kevin is in bed with what looks to potentially be Sophie, because he was heading back to Pittsburgh for a funeral of one of her parents.  But is it Sophie, or another woman?

During their call, Randall begs Kevin just to talk, and to please  distract him. Kevin promises his brother, “I’m the guy that’s gonna get you through this,”   Will Kevin ultimately help Randall, or will what happens next become the huge rift that we know exists between the brothers in the flash-forward viewers learned about episodes ago?

This Is Us executive producers, Issac Aptaker, and Elizabeth Berger weighed-in on revisiting Randall’s anxiety and panic attacks with Entertaintment Weekly. “This is something that was hot on all of our minds, because over the past year, a couple of the writers in our room had had people break into their homes when they were home,” shared Issac Aptaker.  “People would come in and we would see the impact that it has on you when someone invades your space like that — the aftermath and the fallout. So, as we were looking at what Randall’s season would look like, and what would be potentially the breaking point for him with all that’s been brewing this year, it was at the front of all of our minds at how upsetting something like that can be.”

“We’ve seen that Randall is someone that is so in touch with his feelings emotionally, and he is so willing to talk about everything, but there does seem to be this block with him when it comes to therapy, where he just does not want to engage,” says Elizabeth Berger. “That really fascinated all of us and got us thinking, “What’s that about? And how do we get him to a point where he has his back against the wall and has to move past coping mechanisms and keeping things just below the surface and finally deal with them?” And this felt like a really compelling way to go about that.”

When all was said and done, Sterling K. Brown delivered a nuanced and masterful performance as viewers watched Randall slowly but surely, struggling to cope with all the pressure, and horrific events that happened to him one after the other, as Randall’s anxiety and panic attacks were about to reach epic proportions.

So, what did you think of last night’s This Is Us? Sterling’s performance? Comment below.

The long-awaited and highly-anticipated reunion of Nikolas (Marcus Coloma) and his son, Spencer aired on Monday’s episode of General Hospital.  And it reminded us all how much we love Nicolas Bechtel as the young Cassadine.

While Ava (Maura West) first talks with Spencer in order to prepare him for his father’s appearance and that he is alive; when Nikolas shows up and receives a hug from Spencer, it appeared all might be OK between them, but how could it be? Nikolas let his son believe he was dead for over three years!

Next, Spencer lays into his father for choosing claiming the Cassadine fortune and keeping hidden over telling him that he was alive; leaving Spencer alone with two broken legs, in a boarding school in Europe, and grief-stricken.

The best scenes were actually shared by Maura West and Bechtel, when Ava tries to reason with the disappointed and disillusioned young man over his father’s return, which has a double meaning for her.  She says, “The person you love most in the world just came back to you. That makes you the luckiest boy on the planet. Can’t you see that?”  For Ava, she is obviously drawing a parallel to her losing her daughter, Kiki and wishing she was alive.

Kudos to the actors in these scenes.  Watch them below.

WATCH: Nikolas has high hopes for his reunion with Spencer. @NicolasJBechtel @MauraWest @marcuscoloma #GH pic.twitter.com/pX1f3J358t

— General Hospital (@GeneralHospital) January 21, 2020

Then, let us know what you thought of Spencer finding out that Nikolas was alive via the comment section below.