DAYS Spoilers January 24-28

I’m really surprised how consistently good Days has been for a while now. The characters finally seem a little smarter and being written to their strengths. I still can’t stand that Rafe is making Nicole such a dull character again. I just can’t understand how he’s never been liked by the general audience since he started out on the show, yet still has leading male status. He obviously hasn’t had chemistry with anyone on the show except for Ava. I love how Ava is tormenting him. He’s been tormenting the audience with his presence for years. It’s strange, because he was actually very good on Passions. Oh well! We’re stuck with him for the long run, I guess?

It's been ages since I watched, but I have little doubt Rafe at least has changed much since I had (it's probably the same night since the last time I watched... 😏)
Rafe has always just been so... I was going to say white bread or vanilla, but honestly that doesn't even do enough justice to just how dull he is.  Rafe is a sack of flour.  You can do a lot with a sack of flour, but if you bother to add anything else, you don't have anything remotely useful.  They've never given him any interesting character attributes or quirks.  He doesn't like to work on cars or have a gambling problem.  He's not a hothead like Bo was, which I guess is a good thing, but considering how far they push the envelope with Gabby, it's so strange that they aren't will to do anything with Rafe that might make him the least bit interesting.  I mean, has even just fooled around with a married woman on the show?  Because pretty much everyone else has been a side piece at least once in their run; or been the one doin the cheating.  It's a tired trope, but at least it'd be something.  I had an idea way back with FakeRafe, that I thought would have been interesting, if Rafe started having these weird dreams and lapses in memory from around the time he was held by the Dimeras; and as he investigates, bits and pieces in his memory start to fall into place and he eventually find out that Rolf used his chip technology to give the FakeRafe access to the real Rafe's memories, to make him more convincing.  But he eventually uncovers that there had been an incident where Rafe had escaped and was loose in the Dimera compound.  FakeRafe caught up to him and actually killed him; which caused feedback in the chip, damaging FakeRafe's real memories and making him think he was the real Rafe.  Basically giving him this crisis of identity and he doesn't know who he really is, sort of paralleling John's arc; and he has to cope with the reality that there's this side of him that isn't a good person, and is in fact the man who essentially killed him.

I do recall way back - I think this was back when James Scott was still on the show, they flirted with the idea of pairing Nicole with Rafe; and at the time it didn't seem like a bad idea.  Ari, at least once upon a time, was able to have screen chemistry with just about anyone.  She could carry a scene with a mop.  But from the sound of it lately they've dialed her down and sapped a lot of what made her so great to watch.  And I think that's something the show has always struggled with, regardless of who's writing.  They don't know how to write nuance into their characters; they either have to be doing something full tilt, off the wall crazy (of be the subject of the crazy), or they're the saintly, pearl clutching do-gooder.  And when the take a character like Nicole and have her reform, they don't seem to know how to take that energy that made her so great to watch as an antagonist and channel it with her as a protagonist.