The Day's Weirdest Question: Should He Stop Making Out With His Niece?

It feels weird to even have to ask this question, but I'm beginning to think that maybe I'm just a prude.  I mean, here I am, thinking that Days of Our Lives attempting to couple up an uncle and niece is disturbing and wrong.  But maybe I'm wrong, and it's all about the blood.  If you don't share DNA, you can totally hook up.  Is that the new rule?  Is it not the case that because Steve and Kayla helped to raise Max, and Kayla's parents adopted Max and Frankie, that Steve and Kayla's daughter shouldn't swim in Max's dating pool?   Does the fact that Max went away to summer camp and didn't come back for 15 years or so, therefore preventing him from being raised around Stephanie, mean that giving his sister's kid the sex eye is totally on the level?  I do realize that this is all fiction, but I'm nonetheless in need of a sampling of public opinion.   Please assess my prudishness.

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Comments

[Sherrell]

Oh no...its spreading! I don't watch Days but on Y&R the potential Lily and Devon pairing has required me to tune out! When I said I wanted Love in the afternoon I didn't think it was necessary to clarify that incest should not be included!

[Cori]

Honestly, it would really depend on the couple. For instance, on Guiding Light (aka the Grandma Soap you don't watch), the most recent supercouple and one of the most popular pairing in recent years was between first cousins who could have been half step-siblings. Reva and Cassie were sisters. Reva had a son Jonathan some years back with Prince Richard. Later Cassie, mother of Tammy, married Richard (this was before Jonathan returned to town...he was sent to live with an abusive father so naturally he wanted revenge on Reva and Richard), making Richard Tammy's stepfather. In fact, part of Jonathan's plan to hurt Reva was to seduce Tammy because she was his cousin/Reva's niece and such a liaison would raise holy hell. That they became the hottest couple GL had seen in sometime was completely unexpected and only happened b/c Jonathan's actor (Tom Pelphrey) is phenomenal and the chemistry he had with the actress who played Tammy could have melted led.

Long story short...that had to be as bad as this Max character wanting his adopted niece. But if the actors/chemistry was as good as it was between Jonathan and Tammy, then no one's going to give a damn.

[esp13]

Here's the thing. In real life, there is pretty much no way this would be acceptable to most people, but I'm willing to overlook a lot of unacceptable stuff on Days, particularly in the name of a couple with chemistry and as much as I hate to admit it, I saw some pretty good chemistry between Darin and Shelley in those hot tub scenes. And yes, I really am that shallow.

As bad as it may be, I can deal with Max and Stephanie because it's pretty clear that they weren't actually raised knowing each other at all. I mean, he didn't even know who she was when she first arrived in town. Whether that's realistic in the "closeknit" Brady family is a whole other story, but that's how they portrayed it last summer/fall.

The only thing I really ask is that if they decide to go down this road again, that they at least deal openly with the issue. Have somebody (anybody) express some squickiness about the whole idea. Make it something that makes them try to stay apart or at least makes the wary of the whole idea. Just don't sweep the whole issue under the rug.

It might be wrong and squicky, but if the alternative is the zero chemistry of Jeremy and Stephanie or the anti-chemistry of Shelle and Chett, I'll take the potential squickiness. But, like I said, I am that shallow.

[Densie]

I think you needed another choice on your survey, somewhere between
Ew and Eh.

Kind of like:
ew, they are psychologically related, but this is not real life, and they are kind of cute together. Maybe I could get used to it. But, probably not.

[Stephanie]

It totally grosses me out. I can not even watch them flirt it's sick.

[Chad]

To be honest, there's been so little fresh blood introduced to Salem since the early '90s, that by this point I just assume that every new romantic/sexual relationship on the show is borderline incestuous.

By the way, since I haven't been watching Days on even a semi-regular basis, have they even mentioned Rene DiMera and Tony's relationship with her? Now that was the incestuous love match par excellence. I'm so old-school that it actually upsets me that Stefano would work with Andre, since he was the guy that killed his own daughter and all that.

[Heather]

Eh. It's Salem, where everyone is relative. As long as there's no blood relation, I'm fine with it.

[Rockin'_Robin]

I fall into the definitely-weird but not totally, totally disturbing category. Once Shawn & Caroline took in Max, he went straight to the upstairs attic, and spent the vast majority of his Brady-years up there or away at camp, and Kayla left town when Stephanie was not quite two years old (and Max was about 8 or 9?). In fact, at one point, Max went SO many years without a mention, I just assumed TPTB ret-conned him to never have existed. I don't know, for some reason I find Jeremy & Stephanie (who share a first-cousin in Abby) more disturbing.....but maybe that's just because Jeremy is such a disgusting slimeball. I get the impression it wouldn't bother him in the least if he & Stephanie actually were first-cousins by blood.

DAYS needs to introduce a new family -- or dig up an old family to re-introduce -- because they're going to keep running into this problem with any Brady, Horton, or Johnson offspring they bring onto the show. Granted, Adrienne's middle boys -- Joey & Victor -- are adopted & not related to anyone, but they would still have been raised with the belief/idea that Stephanie & Abby (if she ever reappears) are their cousins, which sorta puts them in Max-territory with those girls. I suppose Chelsea could be possibility for one of them. Although she is technically Justin's first-cousin-once-removed, she's such a recent addition to the family tree, they probably wouldn't think of her as such. I don't know where they've got Will Brady stashed, but he's of absolutely NO use down the road either. He's a first cousin, a first-cousin-once-removed, or second cousin to practically everyone in town. (thinking about Will Brady's geneology, and who he is related to, will give the most clear-minded person a pounding headache).

Chad wrote: "By the way, since I haven't been watching Days on even a semi-regular basis, have they even mentioned Rene DiMera and Tony's relationship with her? Now that was the incestuous love match par excellence. "

Oh my! Yes! Tony & Renee....they just OOZED sexual tension, even when they believed they were siblings. Totally disturbing. You always felt like they were thisclose to giving in.

[L2_S&K]

Eh, I don't have a problem with it...they are not blood relatives. I've seen enough Jerry Springer to get me through it.

[KLe]

"Long story short...that had to be as bad as this Max character wanting his adopted niece. But if the actors/chemistry was as good as it was between Jonathan and Tammy, then no one's going to give a damn."

That's true, if they were all sorts of hot, no one would care. Well, some would, but most would be "Damn! That's hot!" Max and Stephanie, however, come nowhere NEAR Jon and Tammy on the hotness scale (or the acting scale, to be honest).