Bold & Beautiful Went From Zero to 60 In One Day — Plus, Why Next Week Promises To Be Wild!

Bold & Beautiful Went From Zero to 60 In One Day — Plus, Why Next Week Promises To Be Wild!

Credit: CBS Screenshots (5)

Not gonna lie. I considered headlining this week’s column “Nothing Happened On Bold & Beautiful in the Last Five Days” and then, for the main body of the story, just typing, Grey’s Anatomy style, “Seriously.” But then Friday’s episode rolled around and everything changed… 

Doctor Heal Thyself!

Last week, much of the story centered on Steffy’s struggle to process that she’d taken a life and Finn’s difficulty with the fact his wife killed his — say it with me — birth mom. This week, there was a very distinct — and kinda off-putting — switch in the storytelling. As Finn had visions of his dead mom laying in a pool of blood, Steffy was left to coddle her husband and wipe up his man tears.

Obviously, we’re setting up a scenario in which Finn pushes Steffy away as Liam, who’s been circling like a buzzard for months, moves in for the kill. And while I’ve written repeatedly about the fact I want Liam to stay far, far away from Steffy… damned if I wasn’t kinda rooting for him this week. Why? Because Finn weeping over the woman who tried to kill him, Steffy, Li and — over the years — half the cast makes absolutely zero sense. I’m not a huge fan of Ridge’s typically blunt “get over it!” attitude, but yeah… get over it, Finn. You’re supposed to be supporting Steffy, not the other way around.

Of course, there’s a pretty easy solution to all of this…

Call 1-800-Ghostbusters

Years ago, I went to see the movie The Amityville Horror, which was of course legendarily based on a supposedly true story. One of the conversations nearly everyone who saw it had afterwards was, “How much of that haunting would you have put up with before leaving?” My cousin summed my feelings up best by saying, “When the house tells you to get out, you get out.” And right now, Steffy and Finn’s house is definitely sending them that message.

And look, this brings us to a problem with not only Bold & Beautiful but sister soap Young & Restless, too, and that is this: They want to tell us that the characters are these powerful, rich folks with private jets and mansions… yet they don’t allow these characters to behave like rich people. I mean, why in the world haven’t Steffy and Finn packed up and moved out of their murder house? Go to a fancy hotel! Go to Grandpa’s mansion! Or, and this is a crazy idea, buy a new house!

Honestly, I wish soaps focused less on rich people and more on ordinary people. It’s one of the reasons I’ve become so incredibly obsessed with the English soap EastEnders, which features downright common folks and incredibly modern storylines which American soap writers would never attempt in a thousand years. (Here’s how you can watch the show in the US.)

Love or Something Like It

Thomas and Hope’s dinner was fun and cute and romantic… but I’d like to recommend that he stop saying things like, “I’ve been thinking about our history.” Because there are some dark things back there you might not want Hope (or anyone else) thinking about, Tommy Boy. Of course, because this is Bold & Beautiful — which routinely has characters ignore anything that happens to be inconvenient to the currently unfolding story — Thomas means Rome in general and this moment in particular…

More: Annika Noelle teases the big Hope twist! 

On the surface, that seems like a pretty awesome memory to be reflecting on. But in reality, it’s the moment Hope kissed a man other than her husband. It’s also a scene which left many of us thinking, “OK, there’s clearly something going on with Hope. Does she have multiple personalities? Was this just a moment of weakness?”

You know… the questions which the show has never really answered. Hope underwent a radical personality switch — what I’ve referred to as “The Sexual Awakening of Hope Logan” — without a single bit of explanation offered, then or now. But maybe, just maybe, we’ll get a clearer understanding of where her head’s at next week.

Bring. It. On.

Last week, Steffy and Hope clashed in a way that felt very odd. Hope was trying to support Steffy, who wasn’t hearing anything the blonde had to say. They wound up kinda sniping at each other, and it all felt a little off. In reality, however, I now realize that it was setting the stage for what’s about to go down.

You see, next week’s teasers reveal that the Steffy/Hope feud is going to kick into high gear again. Why? Well, because of Hope’s relationship with Thomas. Given that Friday’s episode ended with Thomas once again asking Hope to become his bride, it seems safe to assume that next week, she’s going to refuse to put that ring on her finger.

More: This Sheila twist would thrill Bill Bell!

The real question is why. She’s certainly been showing all the signs of a woman in love over the past couple weeks. But hey, if they decided that Hope wants to continue to have a more casual relationship with Thomas — who may or may not accept that — I’m all for it. This soap far too often plays by some old-school morality where there are only two options: Single or dashing down the aisle. If they have Hope say, “You know what? I did the marriage thing with Liam and it didn’t work out so well. I’m happy with the way things are now,” I’d be 100 percent down with it.

Daddy Issues

I get that Luna wants to know who her dad is. But did anybody else find it weird that the reason she suddenly demanded Poppy spill the paternity beans was… so she could talk to the mystery man about the night she slept with Zende?

I can’t help feeling bad for Poppy. She has clearly done an amazing job raising Luna, and it’s not as if she purposefully slipped her daughter those “special mints.” I still don’t get how Luna didn’t realize she’d gotten her mom’s drugs, as I’m betting they weren’t in similar containers. (Although how easily could the show have explained this away by having Luna comment on her mom’s cute “mint” case and having Poppy later present her with one of her very own. I swear, half of my issues with this show could be solved so easily if someone just bothered to say, “Hey, how do we get from here to there in a way which makes sense?” instead of just ignoring logic!)

But what I didn’t expect was that at the end of the week, Poppy would show up on Finn’s doorstep saying she needed to talk to him. Why? Because Luna’s asking questions about her pop. Now, there have been some subtle (for this show, anyway) hints in the past that Finn might be Luna’s father, but fans have largely pooh-poohed them as trashy speculation. But it’s beginning to look a whole lot like maybe Finn and Poppy did the horizontal mambo during the time that they were living under the same roof…

Random Thoughts

• When Liam was talking to Bill about how traumatized Steffy was by taking someone’s life, wouldn’t it have been incredibly easy for the writers to slip in a line about that time the men plowed down Poor Dead Vinny? Sure, it turned out to be some weird, misguided suicide, but for weeks, Liam damn near lost his mind because of the resulting guilt.

• We flashed back to Thomas and Hope’s time in Rome quite a bit this week, letting the show get their money’s worth out of that remote. Heck, I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to work in those drone shots of Ridge and Taylor sharing a smooch. Oh, wait, we don’t mention Taylor. My bad! (Maybe if and/or when the role is recast again.)

• I really, really need the show to stop having Zende moonily flash back to the night he slept with Luna. He knows it wasn’t consensual, no matter how he might like to frame it. It’s just beyond gross to have him fantasizing about rape, accidental or otherwise. And there is a storyline waiting for him that is so much better just dying to be told. (Details here.)