Smooth Criminal: A Beyond the Gates commentary by Soap Central founder Dan J Kroll for the week ending May 1, 2026.
Don’t have time to read the entire column? You can now stream an audio/podcast version of this commentary — complete with off-script silliness and bloopers. And it’s totally free to download or stream. SPOTIFY | APPLE MUSIC | AMAZON MUSIC | iHEART RADIO
I understand that television is a business. There is money that needs to be made, but this year’s sportsball coverage could not have come at a worse time. As I have mentioned in previous columns, there are some viewers who have been critical of the pace of Beyond the Gates’ storytelling. Others claim that the show is boring because “nothing ever happens.”
While I don’t agree with those assessments, for the purpose of the introduction to this week’s column let’s just say that the critics are right. The Monday, April 27, episode featured the most storyline progression in weeks – and then the show was preempted for the next two days. Just as the show gained some serious momentum – poof! – it was put on ice.
Luckily for those of you reading my column or listening to the audio version, I won’t let a little soccer get in the way of talking about all of the action taking place in and around Fairmont Crest.
Another of the criticisms I’ve seen about Beyond the Gates on social media is that the good guys never seem to win. We have marriage-blower-upper-and-part-time-attempted-murder Leslie “LSD” Thomas strutting around Fairmont Crest with a bottomless trust fund. Hayley, also a marriage-blower-upper, has been slowly, eeeeeeeeeever soooooo sloooooooowly, trying to kill Bill and take his money and no one seems the wiser. And then there is Joey, who ordered the murder of his money laundering partner’s husband so that he would be unimpeded in getting said partner into his bed.
Did I miss anyone?
Dirty Diana Hayley
It looks like the walls are starting to close in on at least one of the do-badders. The list of people suspicious of Hayley is growing and as the pressure rises, Hayley is getting more and more sloppy.
I thought the Tomas and Vanessa scenes were great. It looked like things were going one way, and then the writers did a little shuffle, and things took an unexpected turn. Tomas sat down with Vanessa at Uptown and nervously told her that he wanted to talk to her about something. Honestly, I thought she might think he was asking about her escort business. Side note: does Heart Attach have women on its roster or is it strictly geared toward women? And if they only have male escorts, do they also cater to gay male clients?
I’ve gotten off-track. Tomas delicately poked around for details about Vanessa’s dealings with Lynette Wise. He must have gone to the same college as Smitty because his question asking was terrible. Thank goodness Dani came along to add a little pep to Tomas’ step.
Initially, Dani was disinterested and wondered only if Bill was “smelling toast.” It was funny to see Dani immediately go to her phone and Google Lynette Wise’s name. When Tomas revealed that Hayley was the one who was going to have put up the money for Lynette’s home, Dani became very interested.
Tomas was the first to become suspicious of the Hayley/Lynette connection. Naomi was the next to pick up on things being not quite right. Eventually, Bill sorta almost joined the parade, but he still seems to only be suspicious of Lynette. Now, Dani has jumped on the float – and even Vanessa might be interested in finding out the truth.
Beyond The Gates | Photo: CBS
Blood on the Dancefloor or Beat It?
Even if it appears that Hayley’s attempt to land a whale might be circling the drain, there’s still no absolute certainty that she’ll be exposed any time soon. How much longer can Hayley and her medicine dropper evade capture? And what happens after she’s exposed?
In order for Hayley to remain a viable character moving forward, she needs to have a Plan B. There are no backup love interests. Her job is tied to the man she’s conning. Ditto to her living arrangements. She has no friends. All she has, really, is Randy.
Will Bill give Hayley a chunk of money to make her go away and keep the fact that he was duped out of the headlines? Will Hayley simply leave town with her tail between her legs or will she sneak off to St. Barts and the house that she has been trying to convince Bill to buy her? Remember, Bill has made it a point to say that he wants the deed to the house to be solely in his wife’s name. Might Hayley repent and realize that there’s more to like about Bill than his top-notch sex game? Or does Hayley end up at the bottom of the Potomac with Lynette?
Blood On the Dancefloor
I have a question about this whole blood theft operation taking place at Garland. Admittedly, my mind tends not to work in a criminal manner and this might be a silly question. My question is simple: How are they getting the blood out of the hospital without raising any suspicions?
Before anyone starts, this is not an indictment of the writing team. I am not claiming that this sort of thing is not possible because I know these sorts of things happen in the real world. What I want to know is how?
The last time I was in a hospital, everything was bar-coded or QR-coded. In order to administer medicine, the nurse had to scan the patient’s ID bracelet and then scan the medicine. I’d imagine that all of the blood has some sort of scannable code on it. Is Grayson not logging some of the donations into the hospital’s system? Might there be a tech genius on the Impaler’s payroll that is able to delete inventory from the hospital’s computer system without anyone noticing? Is Lia moving such a nominal amount of blood that it doesn’t even sound any kind of alarms?
None of this is probably crucial to storyline, but I watched Murder, She Wrote for years (and still watch reruns before I go to bed). I feel like I need a Jessica Fletcher figure to explain everything to me at the end of the episode. But that’s just me.
Annie Ashley Are You Okay?
Do you know what is sounding alarms? All of these little microaggression threats that DracLia is making to Ashley. Last week’s column was the first time that I put Ashley on my list of people who could be offed – or at least seriously harmed – as a result of this whole red market thing.
We are all walking contradictions. Perhaps that’s why I am so fascinated by how Ashley seems to be able to be okay with the fact that Grayson has clearly been lying to her for however long they’ve been dating. I know that we’re supposed to feel some sort of sympathy for Grayson because he got involved in the blood theft operation because he needed to help pay for his mother’s Parkinson’s care. I don’t.
Beyond The Gates | Photo: CBS
Or maybe I do. I just don’t think that Grayson’s mother factors into how I feel about the storyline. Ashley is still furious that former flame Derek “faked” paralysis when he didn’t fake paralysis. He lied about his recovery. He was very much paralyzed at one point. If Ashley is able to forgive Grayson, then I might become a permanent member of Team Derek.
I know that criminal enterprises and their employees don’t tend to be sentimental and have feelings. It should probably not surprise me that Lia is making these veiled threats toward Ashley as a way to keep Grayson in line. But I can’t help but wonder if she’d really go through with it. I guess if saves her butt, everything is on the table.
Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’
Speaking of DracLia – I’ve decided to keep using my nickname for her because I like it – I still want to know what led her to the dark side. We’ve only just met her, and when we did, she was already part of this criminal enterprise. But she must have been a decent, non-blood-thieving person at some point, right? What caused her to trade her Hippocratic Oath for a Hypocritical Oath? There has to be a story there and I want to know what it is.
I’ve seen a few theories on social media about who Lia might really be. The one with the most traction is that Lia is really Joey’s long-lost sister, Heather. Joey would have to know that she was in town, right? Is he lying about her being lost? Another theory put forward on social media is that Joey is the Impaler, the kingpin of the “red market” operation.
Now that we know Lia is evil, I can’t help but wonder if she is somehow involved in the malpractice suit against Madison. I have no hard evidence and it doesn’t really even make any sense, but it was really weird for Lia to demand strongly suggest that Madison take a sabbatical while the malpractice lawsuit plays out.
Malpractice lawsuits are fairly common. Do the claims against Madison constitute such gross negligence that Madison needs to be prevented from seeing patients? I guess the Garland board of directors thinks so. A more likely scenario would have been the hospital requesting that Madison have mandatory supervision when interacting with patients.
Beside, Behind, and Beyond The Gates: The Speed Round
Here are some of the thoughts and observations about other things happening on Beyond the Gates.
Heal the World
Jessica might need to take a few more classes in mediation. Her attempts to diffuse the fallout from her secret upstairs smooching with Tyrell were… not so great. While things eventually did seem to get resolved to everyone but Tyrell’s satisfaction, it was a meandering path through misogyny and the patriarchy to get there.
In the Closet
We’ve gotten to know Vernon a lot better in this second season of Beyond the Gates. In 2025, Vernon was very much an also-in-the-scene kind of character. In 2026, he’s become a lot more front burner.
First, we had his epic smackdown of Leslie at the country club. This week, we got to see him go toe-to-toe with Joey Armstrong. It was kind of a boss move to reject Joey’s invitation to chat with him at the bar by saying, “We’ll sit over there instead.”
It didn’t look like Vernon’s assertiveness was going to sway Joey, though, since Joey made it clear that he would collect on the debt that Martin owed him. A stern-faced Vernon insisted that the debt was hit, not Martin’s. That seemed to seal the deal because Joey extended a hand to shake on it. Joey does seem to be a man of his word on most occasions, no matter how perverse those occasions might be. I imagine it will be only a matter of time before he proves me right… or wrong.
Remember the Time
I appreciate that Beyond the Gates is acknowledging the anniversary of the anniversary celebration from hell. Yeah, the show is only a year old so they are sort of obligated to mine the past that we’ve actually seen. But I’ve seen soaps blatantly ignore significant events because they either wanted to move on from them or simply forgot. It was also nice to show that everyone remembered the day, even those characters who were not on-screen in the episode.
I Wanna Be Where You Are
When Beyond the Gates debuted the locker room set a few weeks back, I wondered if it was a one-off or something that we’d get to see more often. That answer was revealed this week when we got to see a half-naked Smitty probing his father-in-law. That sounds far dirtier than intended, but I am sure it feeds into a fan fiction tale that is floating out there somewhere on the Internet.
Then — and you can correct me if I am wrong — it looked like the benches were shifted slightly to repurpose the men’s locker room as the women’s locker room where Chelsea was teaching Madison the basics of boxing.
HIStory
If you are wondering what this week’s header image is all about — you’re in luck! I know the guy who made it, and you don’t need a burner phone and conspicuous headphones to get an explanation. Yes, I made it.
There is obviously a Michael Jackson theme this week. A bunch of Beyond the Gates cast members have been celebrating the release of the MJ biopic, and I am getting in on the action, too. So that explains the sparkly glove. The sleeping dog came into play because Vernon asked Joey to let sleeping does lie. The cookie was mentioned flippantly by Shanice when Smitty was asking about blood donations at the hospital. The burnt toast got a shout-out when Dani was jokingly asking if Bill’s actions were brought on by another stroke.
Quick Takes
I wonder who Kat recognized on the list of Lynette’s victims. Is it someone we already know?
While Ted and Nicole’s waxing nostalgic was really nice, most of the conversation was done with the office door ajar. That’s not a big deal ordinarily, but they did mention that Martin killed someone.
Beyond the Gates: Lines of the Week
The Beyond the Gates writing team seems to be having a little too much fun. Here are some of the lines of dialogue that tickled my funny bone or that I found memorable over the past week (and haven’t already mentioned in this column).
“That is geriatric. Put it on a ventilator.”
Leslie’s way of saying that something is “old news.”
“The color is red and the texture is wet.”
Shanice providing her professional expertise for Smitty’s article about blood.
“Something stinks, much like Hayley’s abysmal perfume.”
Dani realizes something is rotten in Denmark, er, Lynette-land.
“Trust me. I have never hated adulting as much as I have this part year.”
Nicole to Ted on their noniversary.
“Girl, get some cholesterol in you. You are no longer a model.”
Dani, objecting to Chelsea ordering a healthy breakfast as Orphey Gene’s.
“She got a slice of cake, not a peace treaty.”
Kat explaining that the cold war between her and Eva was not over.
Gatecrashers: Reader and Viewer Feedback
I love interacting with other Beyond the Gates fans. So I thought I’d create a section to share some of the comments I’ve received on my columns and social media posts. If you’d like to see your comments shared here, you can scroll down to the Comments section below this column and post away. You can also chat with me on Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and/or TwitterX.
A lot of readers took aim at at least one of the criminals I mentioned in this week’s column. Apparently we all had criminals on the brain.
Follow my Random Acts of Dan
That’s all I have for this week’s My View From Beyond the Gates column. Thank you for reading and, as always, please feel free to share your thoughts on my column or Beyond the Gates in the Comments section below.
If you’ve enjoyed my column this week and want to see what I have written about Beyond the Gates in previous weeks, you can check those out in the My View From Beyond the Gates archive.
Have a penchant for gardening, interior design, or fixing up old houses? Check out my Manor Makeover series where I write about all of the things I’ve been up to here at Kroll Manor in Allentown, PA, over the past decade.
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Life outside the gates
Two of my former Two Scoops columnists from Soap Central, Liz Masters and Tamilu, have joined me here on my personal web site — and they are still writing about General Hospital. Liz is on deck with week with a new column called, Cruel Summer.
To read more thoughts, opinions, rants, and raves about daytime television, be sure to check out our Editorial section.
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