Has your week been bold and beautiful? Did you come out of mothballs to revive a nonexistent marriage? Did you float whichever way the wind blew? Did you sign up for a duet, forgetting what a rockin' solo act you were? These and more situations faced the Forrester-Logan-Spencer-Walton-Buckingham-Finnegan clan this week!
Somebody stop me spinning and take off my blindfold, Scoopers! It's been a week of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, "Bold and Beautiful" style. Quarter's quandary at least got a natural twist with Carter wanting Quinn to run off with him. And maybe, just maybe, I could believe that bringing Deacon into Sheila's orbit was the plan all along. But then there's Bill coming in for a Batie rehash, and Paris...oy! Let's Scoop about it!
What the hell is going on with Paris? When Zoe first exited L.A., I said the act had left her sister, Paris, rudderless. I wasn't wrong, but this week, I see just how not wrong I was. Instead of sitting down and crafting a solid story for the youngest Buckingham, it feels like there's some serious coin-flipping going on in the writing room. First, Paris moves in with Sinn, then crushes on Finn, and now she's gonna room with Thomas?
Her saga alone made me dizzy, and that's not just the blood sugar talking. I know finding your own pad is far from angelic in the City of Angels. Twenty people for every application, sky-high rents, credit checks, etc. So, I might buy that Paris, who works for Forrester Creations and has plenty of her own money, has been bunking with a friend since leaving Steffy and Finn's house of hotness.
But things started going wrong when Thomas was on track to buy a house (yay!), yet decided to sublet his apartment. Yo, that's not Thomas' apartment, it's Vinny's. Maybe Thomas' mannequin signed things over to Thomas when we weren't looking. Clearly the intention was to have Thomas and Paris living together. I will admit that the seller of Thomas' would-be house flaking out was one of the better constructs.
Still, we see where this is going, right? Wasn't Zende's pique a little above average concerning Thomas and Paris sharing a place? Is Zende just mad that Paris is moving everywhere but in with him? It really feels like Paris is just being wedged into random situations to see if they work. Isn't Paris way too young for Thomas and his man bun? His first wife, Gabriela, wasn't much older than Paris, and that happened in 2005.
Paris' latest turn is all the less satisfying because we know it isn't gonna stick. Besides, if we really need to throw a third party into Zaris (Pende?), forget Thomas -- we still haven't gotten confirmation that Zende and Nicole are divorced; surely, it's not impossible to bring Reign Edwards in for a few episodes to rock Paris' world. See, I just came up with that sitting on my couch. Why can't B&B?
Out of freaking nowhere, Bill showed up at Forrester to take another run at winning Katie back. Yeah, his pecs were welcome, but Batie has been a bad idea since Bill locked heart recipient Katie in a tower in 2012, and that was before Brooke entered the picture. Katie admitted that the thought of Bill and Brooke always hurts her. Maybe it hurts more because Katie put Brill together in the first place?
Bill played all his greatest hits, though he left out "With You, I'm a Better Man," which I found almost disappointing. Look, Don Diamont knocked it out of the park, guiding Bill through unusually vulnerable territory in Bill's attempt to get Katie to give him "one more chance." But, as Katie herself said, "This all feels very familiar." I was glad, at least, that Katie questioned why she kept putting herself in demeaning situations!
Letting Katie go back to Bill would be one of the unhealthiest messages B&B could ever send. And they're not even getting their own history right. "I miss my wife," Bill cried. Batie hasn't been married since 2016! Bill married Brooke after that, and Katie was married to Thorne for a while. Batie is deader than dead. Hell, I'd sooner see Katie with Deacon! That would give Bill apoplexy, don't you think?
Well, even though Quinn and Carter's extramarital sexing was "exposed," and everyone had it explained to them, chapter and verse, that Eric had not only sanctioned Carter as Quinn's sidepiece, but he'd come up with the idea, Ridge still had to confront Quinn at work as if she were the siren leading Eric into destruction with her song. "I thought Eric made it perfectly clear," Quinn noted. Word 'em up, y'all.
Though Ridge wasn't wrong when he blustered that Quinn and Carter could have said no to Eric's unconventional marriage-fixer, Ridge seriously needs to take a bottle of chill pills. "He knows it's wrong!" Ridge insisted to Carter about Eric's choice. Maybe Ridge is torqued he didn't think of it first! The way he waffled between Brooke and Taylor, wouldn't it have been just like him to suggest making them a throuple?
Quinn accused Ridge of being the one to cause Eric to feel bad about himself. Yup. Meanwhile, at the Forrester compound, the well-meaning Katie was pretty much doing the same thing, forcing Eric to answer questions about a predicament he had already resolved to his satisfaction. When Quinn showed up, I half expected her to have more fantasies about doing Katie in with candlesticks. But no such luck.
Eric shouldn't have to keep explaining himself, and perhaps the writers got a sense of that, because they decided to take things in a new direction. Eric hydroplaned on the information superhighway by asking Quinn if she loved him enough to leave her feelings for Carter behind. Pa Forrester suddenly decided that opening up his marriage had been a big mistake.
Hey, it's a fashion designer's prerogative to change his mind, but given how dead set Eric was on making this arrangement, he caved awfully fast. That might be because Ridge showed up to browbeat his not-dad again. Can we maybe have Ridge and Brooke deal with aging getting in the way of their own sex life instead of inserting them as town criers into every storyline?
So, Quinn went over to Carter's to tell him sorry, she is closed for business. But before Quinn could hang that sign on her nether regions, Carter suggested relocating the company. Everyone knew about him and Quinn, so why not just load up the car and get the hell out of Dodge? "I'm a married woman," Quinn protested. For real, Quinn? You just now noticed that?
Quarter obviously isn't leaving on an extended road trip, so there's not a lot of other places this story with them and Eric can go. What do you think should happen? Personally, I'm Team Eric, and I don't think he needs any more stress in his life to aggravate his already serious ED. But if Quinn splits with him, for soap's sake, please let's not put Eric with Katie. Her increased presence around him makes me worry.
Deacon Sharpe is back! He may think he's lost his mojo, but believe me, he hasn't. Yowsa. Hard to believe he spent four years in prison for shooting at Quinn, though. Quinn made her own giant sword and sat atop Liam, ready to stab him through the heart with it, and she didn't do a minute of jail time! But whatever Deacon's rap sheet, Brooke, Ridge and Liam made it sound worse than it was.
Seriously, I had to go over our comprehensive character profile of Deacon (which I wrote!), and the worst stuff Deacon did was over on Y&R. I am also not at all about Brooke coming down so hard about Deacon. Unless it's because Brooke is really that pissed at herself when being reminded how Hope wouldn't even be standing there if Brooke hadn't boffed her other daughter's husband.
"Deacon will say all the right things," Brooke warned Hope. Oh, you mean like he must have before Brooke had the big O with him on her office bed? Brooke's hostility toward Deacon would make more sense if she hadn't had an amiable enough friendship with him when they were going to A.A. together. And where is Liam's righteous outrage about Deacon coming from, exactly?
Liam was quick to remind Hope that Deacon almost ruined things for them in Italy. Yes, Deacon forged the letter that made Liam think that Hope had ditched him at the altar, but no one made Liam kiss Steffy and throw his iPad to make it suddenly start videoing the event. Liam messed up things in Italy more than Deacon did! And Liam could say Deacon aided Quinn in keeping him hostage, but Deacon did try to stop Quinn from killing Liam and took the cliff dive meant for Liam himself.
I admit I'm feeling more sympathy for Deacon than I do his chastisers. And why is Brooke tweaked that Hope had been writing to Deacon in secret? Brooke was the one who got dumped after her own Italian wedding to Ridge because she had been texting Deacon in secret! Bridge and Liam are so busy fumbling over their own histories that Deacon just keeps coming out smelling like a rose, over and over.
Putting Sheila Carter into the path of Deacon Sharpe is either the most obvious move in soap history, or the greatest combo a soap has put together; I can't decide which. And the reason I can't decide is that there are just still too many unanswered questions about Sheila that are keeping me from enjoying her return. For example: Sheila and Deacon sat drinking at Il Giardino? Is Sheila still working there?
That's where we last saw her in 2018. Did she stay in L.A.? Why is she living in a hotel that's probably way more expensive than renting an apartment? And you can't tell me she's been out of jail all this time and that Lauren Fenmore doesn't know about it. Speaking of whom, if Lauren didn't shoot Sheila (with Phyllis' face) dead, then who did Lauren kill? Most pressing: is Finn really Sheila's son?
In between Sheila's sob stories about being blocked from Finn, Sheila did acknowledge that Jack and Li had given Finn a stable home. Where are Finn's parents? And what happened to Sheila blackmailing Jack with the info that he's Finn's real father? You'd have thought Sheila would have had Jack doing her dirty work. Instead, she's trying to rope a drunken Deacon into the stooge role.
Yeah, I don't know how much damage Deacon did to his credibility by falling off several wagons at the same time. But he did get in some of the best lines. He'd heard about Sheila messing with "killer bees" and "man-eating Dobermans" (though the latter was a private exchange between Sheila and burgeoning henchman Mike Guthrie, so I don't know how Deacon knew about that).
Deacon didn't want to be associated with a "Sheila-devil" (instant classic! How did I never think of that?) and actually said, "Hayes was Steffy's mother's name before she..." Before she married Ridge, that's right! Speaking of Taylor, Deacon knew about the shrink taking a bullet from Sheila, to which Sheila replied, "Why does everyone have to keep bringing that up?" Historical accuracy and humor? I'm here for it!
What I'm not sure I'm here for is Sheila and Deacon working together to gain access to Finn and Hope, respectively. (I'm sure hoping Finn and Hope don't bond romantically over having similar situations with their spouses rejecting their bad apple parents.) Sheila said she was never good at "this" alone. But teamed with Deacon, they could take the Forresters down.
Really? Sheila was a one-woman rampage, the way she terrorized Lauren in Genoa City -- not once, but twice! After B&B gave up on giving Sheila any nuance at all, Sheila pulled every string in siccing her daughter Mary/Erica on Rick, kidnapping Ridge in South America, trying to steal Eric from Quinn...and Sheila needs Deacon's help? Or anyone's?
Last time Sheila had a man's help, it was from Y&R's Terrible Tom Fisher, and that resulted in Sheila supposedly having kids with him, or so Ryder and Daisy said when they showed up claiming Sheila was their mom. And let's not even start with Sheila's apparent sister, Sarah, who had Lauren's face...and hired Deacon to pull an art heist! See what happens when you don't tie the knots? You get strings all over the place.
Anyway, Deacon knew his cause wouldn't be helped by being seen around Sheila, so he went to Hope to plead his case. (Where was Charlie with his crack security guard skills when Deacon sneaked into Forrester?) Hope didn't know what to believe about Deacon, even though she'd spent years writing to him, but she was just getting around to suggesting a public lunch when Liam showed up and ripped Deacon a new one.
Does Liam work at Spencer anymore? At any rate, Deacon went back to Sheila's hotel room with his tail between his legs, which Sheila picked up on. When Deacon correctly said he hadn't earned a place in Hope's life, as Sheila hadn't in Finn's, Sheila got that crazy look of old on her face, called Deacon a wimp, and bragged that "I always get what I want. Always!"
Girl, you trippin'! You couldn't even get Eric back the last time you were around. I'm open to seeing what she and Deacon get up to, but I am cautiously pessimistic. How about Paris, Bill, and the rest of it, Scoopers? Does it feel like the show is just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, or is it just me? Write on the wall of the Comments section below or the Soap Central message boards, or simply click here to submit feedback. Your comments could be in a future column! Like these!
"John McCook totally deserves the Emmy for his amazing, heart wrenching performance for this hard storyline about aging, loneliness and love. Katie definitely answered her own question...Bill will always be more in love with Brooke...maybe it would be refreshing if a soap tells the story of self love and not needing another person to make you feel whole?" -- "Dorinda's Pajamas"
"...slut Brooke is the last person [to] preach to anyone about morals, be it Quinn or Shelia or anyones else's business she's always sticking her nose into. As far as Eric, Quinn & Carter if they are OK with this agreement, that is all that counts." -- Richie
"I also believe there is no right if John McCook doesn't win an Emmy, he had me in tears with his performance this week!! Ridge and Brooke made me want to slap them hard." -- Ado
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