♥ Trouble In Paradise:
Disaster Stalks
DAYS' John And Marlena
On Their Hawaiian Honeymoon...
Trouble In Paradise - Marlena Spends Her Honeymoon Looking For Her Missing Husband:
An idyllic Hawaiian honeymoon takes a tragic turn this week on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, after John vanishes without a trace and Marlena fears he could be dead.
John and Marlena's romantic getaway was derailed when Gina had John kidnapped. After planting a "drowning" woman out in the sea - knowing that John would try to save her - Gina's minions tranquilized him and lugged him into a submarine.
"Whether John drifted out to sea or went under or whatever happened, Marlena doesn't know," Deidre Hall (Marlena) says, noting that her character "is in a state of high anxiety. There's no notion that anybody is involved (in John's disappearance) at this point. It's just, 'This can't happen. He's a strong swimmer. We can't have come this far and be torn apart like this.'"
Marlena promptly calls Bo and tells him what's transpired. As Bo heads to Hawaii to help with the search, a Coast Guard officer tells Marlena there is no sign of John. To make matters worse, there's a big storm brewing, which halts the search. "Marlena is frantic, desperate," says Hall, adding that Marlena prays for John's safety.
Little does she know that John is alive and well on a submarine with Gina. Only it's not the John she married. Gina has reactivated a chip in John's brain that has transformed him back into his former mercenary self. This John has no recollection of marrying "Doc." He's in love with Gina, and hungrily kisses her. (OOPS! This is wrong. Instead of "reactivating" the chip, Gina "deactivated" it so John would return to being "her" John and have no recollection of Marlena or being married to her.)
"John truly believes that he's with his Princess Gina from 1985," Executive Producer Ken Corday explains. "Gina has the submarine set up with calendars from that year. There are no pieces of technology past 1985. It's all 1985. She's going to take John to the rendezvous they had planned fourteen years ago."
"John and Gina had this whole operation with the submarine in the works," Drake Hogestyn (John) adds. "The two of them had been under Stefano's control for a long time and were plotting to get out. They were just doing enough (art) heists to ferret away money to take off on their own. It was all set up how they were going to get away from him, pick up Greta and live happily ever after. Dissolve off into the sunset. As far as John knows, it looks like their plan is working."
Gina is in heaven, now that she's finally able to be with the man she loves. And John is just as happy. "This John is different, like a little Stefano. He was trained well," Hogestyn says. "He does share the same passion for women as the John Black of 1999, only in a little more animalistic way, borderline rough, sometimes. He's a little bit controlling, too. And he likes the fact that Gina is controlling. That's what is attractive to him. They're two of a kind. They have a lot of secrets together. They've been in the trenches together and totally trust one another."
When John wonders where he and Gina are, she says they are off the coast of Hawaii and that John has been unconscious since she rescued him from Stefano. John remembers overhearing Stefano tell one of his lackeys about his plan to turn him into Roman Brady. John is relieved that it didn't happen. "He and Gina have long conversations about that," Hogestyn notes. "He says, 'Can you imagine me being a doughnut-eating, by-the-rules cop, with a headshrinker for a wife and three obnoxious kids?' He goes on and on. 'Could you see me eating tuna casserole on a Friday night?' Because here he is drinking champagne, eating caviar. He's very much the international art thief."
Gina worries aloud about what might happen if Stefano finds them, but John puts her fears to rest. John takes out a gun and cavalierly waves it around, bluntly announcing that he'll simply kill Stefano if he gets in their way. The conversation quickly takes another turn when Gina coaxes John to join her for a romantic dinner. The pair toast each other and begin to make wild, passionate love.
"Do you believe that?" Hogestyn says with a grin. "Yeah, he's on his honeymoon. What a guy! This is the quintessential alien abduction. From the moment he goes into the water and gets harpooned, he has no idea."
Meanwhile, back in Salem, Stefano gets a call from Bart saying that Bo has left for Hawaii, and that John went into the ocean to save a drowning woman but never emerged. Stefano grows enraged, wondering if Gina and John are together. Anxious to find out what's going on, Stefano jets off to Hawaii. If Gina betrayed him and transformed John into his old self, Stefano vows to take care of both of them for good.
Soon Bo arrives on the island. After Marlena briefs him on the situation, Bo tells her that Hope is missing, too, and that maybe she and John are together. "Bo fills in Marlena on Hope's complete reactive behavior at the wedding reception, the craziness, how she stormed out," Corday says. "Bo is onto the fact that Hope isn't Hope at all, that this is Gina. Bo explains that he thinks Stefano may have turned Hope back into Princess Gina."
At first, Marlena can't even imagine what Bo is suggesting. But she is persuaded that Stefano and Hope are involved in John's disappearance. "It's too hideous," Hall says. "The moment Marlena accepts that Stefano or Hope (as Gina) is involved, she knows that she's up against some powerful forces, and it's not going to turn out well. It isn't just the tide that's rolled in. John's not fighting an undertow. He's fighting the devil himself."
Meanwhile, John and Gina eagerly plan their getaway. "They wake up from a torrid lovemaking session, and John says, 'All right, this is the way it's going to be. We're stopping in Paris to pick up the money, then we're going to get Greta and we'll be gone,'" Hogestyn says. But John hasn't counted on one glitch: Gina has left behind the compact he gave her, which holds the key to the safe deposit box in Lugano. "John gets angry at Gina at first. But then he says not to worry, he'll find another way to access the lockbox."
Besides, everything is going right for John and Gina now. They are finally about to have the life they dreamed about. John announces that he'd like to marry Gina as soon as possible. "John wants to be a family with Gina and Greta," Hogestyn says, pointing out the similarity behind this old John and the new one. "There's a lot of the 1999 John Black core in him, that love and trust."
John asks to see Greta right away, but Gina quickly covers, insisting that it's too dangerous to pick up her daughter. She and John can't risk being caught by Stefano, not when they're so close to living happily ever after. Instead, Gina lures John into a sexy dance, and they passionately kiss.
Marlena, whose happiness has been ripped away from her, breaks down in tears, horrified by the thought that John could be under Stefano's control, and fearful that she may never get him back. "It's a matter of physical safety. Stefano was determined that John and Marlena would never get married, and they are married. It has to make him cross," Hall maintains. "Stefano has no scruples. He kept Marlena locked in a cage. He kept John locked in a dungeon. He took Marlena's children away from her. He took Marlena away from her children. He's a hideous human being."
Hence, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Stefano would try to kill John. Marlena's fear is compounded when she encounters a woman who found a ripped, bloody pair of pants on the shore. She is horrified when she takes a closer look and realizes the pants belonged to John. "What's clear is that John was in some kind of terrible danger. There's blood involved, so he's been injured somehow," Hall says. "Whether it was by sharks or blades of a motor or whatever, there's something awful that's happened."
But the worst is yet to come for John. The submarine he and Gina are on suddenly jolts, and John heads up on deck to investigate. When John gets there, he's greeted by the last person he expects to see and realizes he's in for the fight of his life. Will John survive? And, if he does, will he be able to find his way back to his beloved "Doc"?
Corday suggests that fans who are disgruntled about John and Marlena's interrupted honeymoon shouldn't give up hope. "This is a Bo and Hope story, and a John and Marlena story. This is not a John and Gina story," he insists. "Gina is Frankenstein's monster. She's not Hope. What this story will become is a story of Bo's heroics to reclaim Hope and bring her back out of the Gina personality. It's a story of Bo's and Marlena's heroics to save Hope and John from this miserable sociopath called Stefano DiMera."
Janet Di Lauro, SOAP OPERA WEEKLY, 7/20/99
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