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Beyond the Gates gave us the payoff we’ve been waiting for since the show’s inception in a series of episodes last week that had us glued to our seats!
Dani Dupree Richardson, played by Daytime Emmy nominee Karla Mosley, finally had a showdown with Hayley Hamilton, played by Marquita Goings, the woman trying to kill Dani’s ex-husband, Bill (Timon Kyle Durrett).
“I’m coming for that ratchet bitch and Hayley is going to pay for what she has done!” Dani vowed to her daughter, Naomi (Arielle Prepetit).
For their performances, TV Insider is bestowing our Performer of the Week for Daytime honors on Mosley and Goings.
Ironically, it may have been Dani’s hatred of Hayley, whom she not so affectionately calls “Fayley,” that blinded her to Hayley being not just a homewrecker but also an attempted murderess.
Bill kept having trips to the hospital as Hayley’s poisoning doses took effect, but it wasn’t until last week that Dani had the epiphany that Hayley was looking to become a very merry and very wealthy widow. We saw the light switch flip in Dani’s brain. Yes! Once the realization came to her, Dani couldn’t fire off her suspicions fast enough to Naomi.
The week had begun with an ailing Bill turning to Dani. The two exes had both remarried since their divorce, but that didn’t stop the pull between them. Dani was drawn to Bill, despite herself. Deep down, Bill knew he’d made a mistake with Hayley but he was never able to quite fully go there.
Dani played off Bill’s illness but when she realized he was truly unwell, she raced to his side, stricken with fear. Any doctor would assume that Dani was still his wife if they came into an ER together. Still, Dani had no illusions about her place in Bill’s life. She’s his ex, and bantering with Bill was a way to protect herself from getting hurt.
With Naomi’s help, Dani got into Bill and Hayley’s home and found incriminating documents in a wall safe, which she was able to open thanks to Bill keeping the “same old tired code!” It was spot-on for her character to take a playful swipe at her ex for being so predictable! But this wasn’t a game, especially when Hayley arrived home, armed with a weapon.
This is when Dani made a near-fatal mistake. She rubbed in Hayley’s face that she’d been caught, forgetting what Bill’s new wife was capable of doing.
Dani probably could have talked her way out of it if she’d just yelled at Hayley and made her way to the door, claiming she was there to see Bill, whom Hayley thought was off on a business trip. Instead, Dani fired off some delicious zingers to her ex’s lethal spouse that won’t soon be forgotten!
“Welcome home, Hayley!” Dani smirked with a tone that sounded like she was saying, “I know something you don’t know!” Dani hastened to add that Hayley wouldn’t be living there much longer. This is where she overplayed her hand by letting Hayley knew that she knew she was poisoning Bill!
Hayley played innocent, but Dani announced that Bill would be tested for all kinds of poisoning. Then, we saw Goings make a shift in Hayley’s persona. She no longer had to play the feisty second wife, trying to prove her place in Fairmont Crest. Hayley dropped her façade. She whipped a gun out of her purse faster than any of the six original Charlie’s Angels could have done.
“Got to love a full-circle moment, don’t you?” Hayley said. Goings dropped her voice a bit when she delivered that powerful line, referencing the tag in BTG‘s first week when Dani had taken out a gun at Bill and Hayley’s wedding.
All of a sudden, Hayley’s claim that she was defending herself from Bill’s irrational ex had a lot of weight to it. Mosley’s Dani went from smiling like a Cheshire cat to seeing her life flash before her eyes!
Hayley thanked Dani for wearing gloves for her expedition as it would support Hayley’s self-defense position. “I heard something downstairs, Bill’s out of town and after the mugging, I was so terrified,” Hayley said, already performing how she’d explain shooting Dani, killing her. “I grabbed the gun! I was so scared.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” Dani announced, prompting Hayley to slip back into her true persona. “Bitch, please,” Hayley smirked. “I work and sleep with the most decorated defense attorney in the DMV. Bill builds self-defense cases out of nothing.”
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” Hayley said as she cocked the pistol, ready to fire. First, she made Dani sweat, suggesting that she beg. Dani threatened to haunt Hayley for the rest of her miserable life. “Don’t come here, girl! I will be in St. Barts, toes in sand…” Hayley chuckled.
Just then, Jacob (Jibre Hordges) and Naomi entered, saving the day! The lawman ordered Hayley to drop the gun. Immediately, Goings seamlessly reverted to victim-Hayley, insisting that she was the innocent party.
Later, Dani threw in a little humor when she visited Bill in the hospital, telling him that he needed to change the code on his safe as he’d been using it “since the Obama days.”
Dani delivered the death blow (figuratively speaking, of course) when she said, “Bill, Hayley wasn’t playing house – she was playing endgame. Bill, she never loved you. You were just a means to an end.”
A lesser actress would have chosen to have her character rub it in Bill’s face that he’d made not horrible choice, one that could have ended his life. Mosley opted for compassion instead of doing the “Bobbi Adler Told You So” dance.
Bill remained in denial, but that didn’t last long. On Friday’s episode, he got the damning lab work that proved Dani wasn’t lying. At the police station, Bill slipped into lawyer-mode as he asked a few questions of his wife. He quickly realized that he had heard enough, quipping that he felt he lost an IQ point for every second he spent with her.
Brava to Mosley for playing Dani as a woman who still has great love for her ex-husband and used that love to save his life. And Goings has proven Hayley Lawson Hamilton to be a bona fide super-villainess!
These episodes weren’t just wins for Mosley and Goings, but the shows were also a victory for series creator/head writer/executive producer Michele Val Jean, and the entire BTG company. After over a year of planning, the show climaxed a story that involved not only Dani, Bill, and Hayley, but also the Dupree family and Leslie Thomas (Trisha Mann-Grant). These shows have elevated BTG, as the series has proved it can deliver classic soap opera moments!
Beyond the Gates, Weekdays, CBS
tvinsider.com/1293195/beyond-the-gates-karla-mosley-marquita-goings-dani-hayley-bill-poisoned/
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Daytime TV Performers of the Week: ‘Beyond the Gates’ Stars Karla Mosley & Marquita Goings Shine in Long-Awaited Showdown...
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