Does Bold & Beautiful’s Hope Have a Dark Side? Where’s Nicole? Should Bill and [Spoiler] Hook Up? We Have Questions… So Many Questions!
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI (2); Sean Smith/JPI
Late in the week, while listening to The Bold and the Beautiful‘s Steffy and Liam repeat the same conversation they’d been having since Monday, two thoughts popped into my head, practically simultaneously. The first was how grateful I was, given the awful state of the world, to have “my stories” into which I can escape. The other was, “Gee, I wonder what’s going on with some of the people we haven’t checked in on lately?” Read on and we’ll ponder a few other questions which have come to mind of late…
Questions, I’ve Got Questions
Does Thomas now live on Brooke’s couch? I mean, surely he could recover just as easily in a bedroom. In fact, not having people constantly walking through the room in which he’s trying to rest would probably be a nice change of pace. Also…
“Could we maybe, I don’t know, turn up the heat in here?”
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
Why does Thomas look as if he’s ready to hit the slopes? Last week, his headgear indicated he might have just come off the tennis court. This week, he switched out that headband-sized bandage for a black ski cap. When I mused about his fashion choice, a friend suggested the hat was designed “to regulate the temperature of his brain to keep the voices silent.”
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Where are the servants? I kinda miss the days when rich people on soaps had servants. I loved when Downton Abbey‘s Thomas and O’Brien would exchange bitchy barbs about the goings on. How fun would it be to have a butler and maid commenting on the antics of the Forrester family? It could be a really fun way to dispense with the necessary evil that is exposition while at the same time giving us two have-nots whose lives we could also follow.
“The Forresters believe servants should be neither seen nor heard whilst also dressing in period garb and dining on gruel.”
Credit: Gary Moyes, Carnival Films for Masterpiece/PBS, Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Do rich people have pet peeves? How funny would it be to find out that every day, Brooke mutters to herself about Ridge not putting the toilet seat down or leaving the toothpaste uncapped? Given that most of the Forrester employees work in one of two shared offices, does Steffy get annoyed by Zende’s cologne… ’cause you just know he’s the kinda guy who douses himself in the rich-dude equivalent of Axe Body Spray.
Little things like that, especially played on a recurring basis, can make a character feel more like… well, an actual person. They can also give dialogue writers great little jabs to throw into fights. You know, the way you argue with your husband about the fact that he puts the dishes next to, but not actually in, the dishwasher as opposed to what’s really bothering you.
What does Zoe do all day? She always seems to be just, you know, hanging around at Forrester, waiting to be consulted. Giselle Bundchen one said, “This is exactly how I would describe my work: I get there, I put on the clothes, I leave it on the hanger, and I go home.”
Guess she didn’t get the memo about all those meetings and consultations! Also…
On alternate Tuesday mornings, Steffy practices her glaring techniques on Zoe.
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
How much does Zoe make? Like, is she in supermodel territory? Then again, maybe that’s why she’s always hanging around at the office… she’s looking to pick up a little extra cash by doing a few odd jobs. We haven’t seen Pam in quite a while. Maybe Zoe said, “Hey, why pay both of us when I can take dictation? OK, fine, I can’t actually take dictation, but I can scribble notes.
“Also,” she might add, “I can bake more than just lemon bars.” The blasphemy!
Does Hope have a dark(er) side? Watching Annika Noelle literally bring the mannequin to life was one of the highlights of 2020 for me. Most of the year, Noelle has the almost thankless task of playing one of the nicest, sweetest characters on daytime, so it’s great when we get to see her do something different.
Imagine if after finding out that Liam had yet again cheated on her with Steffy, Hope decided to shake things up. I’m not talking about her becoming some kinda supervixen but instead stepping out of her comfort zone — maybe even with hilarious results which would let Noelle show off her comedic abilities.
For instance, picture Hope deciding she was going to cast off her good-girl image by getting drunk and picking up a stranger. But after two drinks she instead, like so many of us, becomes a bit sloppy and winds up falling asleep in the back of an Uber… which happens to be driven by a nice guy who returns her purse the next day.
Hello, new potential love interest whose best quality is that he’s not Liam!
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Is Steffy in need of a visit from Dr. Phil? One of the tactics the TV shrink often uses is to have people watch video of things they’ve said during interviews with his staff. I can see Dr. Phil saying, “Roll the tape” and then carefully watching Steffy’s reaction to this bit of dialogue: “I didn’t think I was going to be able to move on from you, and now I have this wonderful, caring man in my life.”
In his twangiest drawl, the doctor would then say, “Now tell me somethin’… did you have this wonderful, carin’ man in your life when you hit the sheets with your ex? Because if you did, I’m thinkin’ maybe you ain’t moved on quite as much as you seem to think you have!”
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What’s up with Nicole? When Zende first returned to Los Angeles, we were told that he and his wife had run into some issues, but that was about it. Then her dad, Julius — formerly the kinda guy who’d threaten to kick the butt of anyone who even thought about hurting his daughter — swung by to say, essentially, “Eh, ish happens. Time to move on!”
But we’re going to need answers before we sign off on the idea of Zende moving into a new relationship. Which leads nicely to our next question…
Where’s Maya when you need her? It’s kinda insane that she hasn’t questioned Zende about the status of his relationship with her sister. It might also be fun to see her butt heads with Zoe, who basically walked in and stole the role of lead model right out from under her.
“Maya, you wouldn’t be the first woman to struggle with the whole love/hate thing where I’m concerned!”
Credit: Sean Smith/JPI
Why didn’t I think of this pairing before? Speaking of Maya and where she’s been, how cool might it be if she wound up in a relationship with the very last person on this planet she’d ever expected to… Bill Spencer! He could decide to have Eye on Fashion do a piece on Forrester’s hottest designer, Zende, and ask Maya for help contacting Nicole for an interview. Zende bristles at the idea, leaving Maya and Bill — for different reasons — determined to figure out exactly what happened once the couple went to Forrester International. Reluctantly working together, Bill and Maya find themselves undeniably attracted and… well, you know how that goes!
Is Liam this show’s Sonny? It’s long been a running joke among General Hospital fans that if Sonny shares a scene with a woman, there’s a good chance she will wind up having his baby. From what we can tell, Liam seems to be amassing a Sonny-like number of children. Assuming Steffy’s currently-brewing baby was fathered by Liam, that’ll be his third biological tot. He’s also playing surrogate dad to Thomas’ son, Douglas. Given how much longer Sonny’s had to work on his collection, Liam’s a real contender in the Most Prolific Dad category!
More: Fans need a break from Liam.
Got any burning questions of your own to share? Leave them in the comment section and perhaps we’ll raise them in a future Soapbox column. Meanwhile, why not take a gander at the gallery below in which we rank our all-time favorite Bold & Beautiful characters. See if you agree with who landed where, including the much-missed Forrester who scored the top slot.
