Credit: CBS screenshot (6)

Filling in for Richard this week at the helm of the Bold & Beautiful Soapbox, I got super lucky. In the last five days, the show kicked off a murder mystery, delivered some Stephanie-worthy sanctimonious smugness (minus the brooch) and gave claws to a character who badly needed them. R.J. and Luna were on, too, though; eh, guess ya can’t have everything. Grab your electric-blue sport drink and get comfy as we discuss the good (Bill and Poppy’s morning nookie, or so we were told), the bad (may we never hear “H-O-T-T” again!) and the ugly (Thomas re-proposing to Hope at what was basically his and Paris’ engagement party).

 

 

 

 

Who Left Tom Singing the Blues?

I give Bold & Beautiful credit for trying to beef up the number of suspects in its “Who killed Tom?” murder mystery by having Jack and Justin show up outta nowhere at Il Giardino the night he was drugged. But then I also have to take that credit away, because so far as we know, there’s no reason why either of those characters would want the formerly homeless guy dead. And the culprit is pretty obviously going to be one of them, right? The show isn’t about to write off Li, who gets more fun, the more tightly wound she becomes, or Poppy, who is perched on the verge of years of great storyline as the lover Bill can’t trust but also can’t quit. I suppose the guilty party could be one of these other suspects. But let’s be real. It’ll be a lot easier for the soap to send someone up the river that it hasn’t been using in ages, anyway, than someone who serves a purpose on the canvas.

My money is on Jack being behind the crime. Li seemed genuinely surprised to run into him at the eatery, so they don’t appear to be in cahoots. But if Poppy gave him a heads-up that Tom was threatening to re-ask questions about Luna’s paternity, Jack might have taken action to ensure that the same secret be kept that prompted Li to (I assume) tamper with Luna’s paternity test: He, like his ex-wife, doesn’t want it coming out that Luna is the result of the summer fling during which Finn got way too close to Aunt Poppy. (Remember the scene in which she basically came out and told him, as well as us, “You’re Luna’s dad, dude!” and Dr. Dimwit just didn’t get it.)

I’m most intrigued, though, by the suggestion in the show’s Friday “next-ons” that another murder may already have occurred. What, exactly, did Sheila happen upon at Il Giardino that made her scream? How grisly would it have to be to freak out a character who once shackled her shrink, killed an accomplice with bees and shot pretty much everyone she’s ever met? And if a second body has turned up, whose? Is my Jack theory going to be shot to [bleep] that fast because he’s joined Tom in the hereafter (whether heaven or someplace H-O-T-T; sorry, couldn’t resist)!

Will the Real Poppy Nozawa Please Stand Up?

At this point, I guess Bold & Beautiful is committed to Poppy being a gold digger. So it doesn’t make any sense that she would’ve once warned Luna to stay away from the Forresters, who are basically well-dressed vaults. And it doesn’t make any sense that she wouldn’t have landed herself a Richie Rich long before Bill. She’s lovely and fun and carries a little something-something in her purse that ensures that her mood always improves along with her breath. By soap standards, she’d already be on her fourth ex-husband! 

But OK, we’ll go along for the ride regardless. Poppy certainly seemed to lean into her role as mistress of the manor quickly enough. While Deacon and Hollis were already at Il Giardino on Tuesday, and Luna and Zende had punched the clock at Forrester — not that any of them were doing anything that could be called “work” — Poppy was hanging at Bill’s in the above outfit. Which she was gonna need, too, because for a money-hungry temptress, her poker face is nonexistent!

That said, if Bold & Beautiful is going to play any continuity whatsoever — not a sure thing by any means — Poppy obviously didn’t kill Tom. She started off Tuesday’s episode like someone who (a) wasn’t aware that he was dead and (b) was still worried about the threat that he posed. What was up with the waterworks when she found out, though? Wasn’t Tom supposed to be a fling, one of many? Are we now supposed to think he was the love of Poppy’s life? Sorry, but that whackadoo flashback sure didn’t sell me on that idea. 

Stephanie Vs. Brooke All Over Again

Steffy is so far out of line in the way that she’s interfered with Hope and Thomas’ relationship that she can’t even see the line from where she is these days. As much as I love Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, her character has become insufferable. And here’s the weird thing: I dig it. Why? Because it is so, so, so Stephanie. Steffy has essentially transformed into her grandmother, turning a blind eye to anything she doesn’t want to see and a deaf ear to anything she doesn’t want to hear. There’s no talking to her, no reasoning with her. In her world, it isn’t even my way or the highway because she doesn’t acknowledge that the highway exists!

Ultimately, all of that makes Steffy’s fights with the superlative Annika Noelle’s Hope — and they are constant — feel like classic Stephanie vs. Brooke clashes. Steffy tells it the way (she thinks) it is, and Hope insists that she won’t play the carpet and be walked all over… even as she gets walked all over. The irony is that we always imagined the show turning Steffy, Liam and Hope into a redo of Taylor, Ridge and Brooke — and, I suppose, for a long time it did. What I didn’t see coming, though, was Steffy, Thomas and Hope being turned into another Stephanie, Ridge and Brooke — and it is the same thing, right? Steffy/Stephanie is moving heaven earth for not a love interest but a loved one (Thomas/Ridge) in order to keep him away from the blonde she hates (Hope/Brooke). Paris has just wound up being cast in the role of Taylor!

 

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Wednesday’s episode fascinated me, though perhaps not the way that Bold & Beautiful would have wanted. During it, I realized that the show is playing the same storyline twice simultaneously. On one end of the canvas, you have Thomas replacing Hope with Paris even as he tells his ex-lover — while gazing dreamily into her eyes and stroking her face! — “You have to stop this.” On the other end, you have Bill replacing Katie with Poppy and admitting that “sure” — he actually said “sure,” too, like “Yeah, why not? I guess so” — he has feelings for Luna’s mom. But “what I wanted is you, is my Katie.”

If you ask me, Hope is coming off pretty reasonable and hitting the nail on the head when she asserts that Thomas didn’t run toward Paris, he ran from her. Meanwhile, he continues to act as if Hope had rejected the idea of ever tying the knot. “You didn’t want to marry me,” argued the broken record, “so I had to move on.” I just wanted her to scream, “I didn’t want to marry you right that [bleeping] second, a hot minute after my last divorce! And you didn’t have to move on, Beavis, you could’ve just slowed the [bleep] down and kept enjoying the sexy, satisfying relationship we were having!” Of course, logic like that wouldn’t work on a Bold & Beautiful character. Hope seems to be the only one who understands that marriage is not something a person requires like oxygen and water to exist.

On the plus side, I’m loving feisty Paris. She’s beyond delusional if she thinks that Thomas wouldn’t dump her in a heartbeat (the way he did her sister, Zoe) if Hope said that she’d changed her mind and wanted to race down the aisle. But at least this version of Paris has some real fight in her. (Not for nothing, but that hand looks more than ready to do some slapping, too!)

I’m not loving Katie’s reaction to Bill and Poppy, though. It could have worked if the soap had let us see Katie’s feelings for her ex reawaken as it dawned on her that he was shutting the door on them forever. Instead, overnight she was all about Bill again. (Apparently, she and Carter called it quits off screen. That’s how dull that coupling was — they didn’t even get to break up on screen!) On top of the whiplash-inducing return of Katie’s feelings for Bill, she’s just been kinda mean about his change in relationship status — and entitled, too. Did anyone feel sorry for her in the slightest when she complained that she now felt like an “interloper in my own home”? Ma’am, that hasn’t been your home for years. And ask almost any divorcées in the real world: They do not have an open-door policy where their former spouses are concerned!

More: Pics from the Forresters’ Fourth of July bash

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fireworks

On the Fourth of July, Katie (or I should say the writers) really steamed me. All this love-of-my-life crap with Bill might have flown if, on breaks from her recurring husband, she hadn’t gotten engaged to Ridge, boinked former stepson Wyatt and decided that Carter was the sorta stand-up guy she deserved. Obviously, Heather Tom and Don Diamont sold the hell out of the material, but Lord & Taylor, it was tacky of Katie to basically throw herself at Bill years after their last breakup. She wasn’t that needy even when he was pretending to be in love with Sheila! And she has the nerve to say that she gets a bad vibe from Poppy?!? You’re literally macking on another woman’s man, and you’re still gonna sit in judgment of her?!? How exceedingly self-unaware and Logan-y!

Friday’s episode (recapped here) left me wondering (repeatedly) why Hope had bothered to attend the Forresters’ Fourth of July shindig. Was it just to sulk moodily across the room from Thomas and Paris? “I can handle it,” Hope told her mom. But why bother handling it? Why put herself through that? I guess it was all just a big set-up to put her in place for Thomas to… wait, what? Prove his love and commitment to Paris by popping the question to Hope one more time? Nah, that has to be another one of Hope’s fantasy sequences, right? I mean, we can all agree that from day to day, scene to scene, Bold & Beautiful only has the slightest interest in making any sense at all. But to go from wedding planning with Paris to asking Hope to be his bride… within minutes? Eesh. Maybe he only proposed to demonstrate that Hope still wasn’t ready to say yes and never would be. But him genuinely hoping the third time would be the charm isn’t out of the question, not on the show that, only days earlier, had Bill go from making love with Poppy and planning their future to an hour later admitting that he missed “my Katie.” The word “fickle” doesn’t even begin to cover it with these people!”

Moving on… I don’t even know where to start with the weirdness of Paris agreeing to get married in the Forrester living room. What woman wants to tie the knot at the same place that her sister almost married the same groom? It was even more bizarre when Eric started telling Paris where people usually stand during living-room nuptials. I half-expected him to pull out pictures from Zoe and Thomas’ wedding as a visual aid. And what on earth was with Eric’s suggestion that Carter officiate?!? Dude, that’s the guy who dumped the bride at the altar for your wife. The whole thing made my brain hurt. How can Thomas babble on about giving Paris her dream wedding when the plans so far include the same venue at which her future husband almost married her sister and perhaps an officiant to whom the bride was once engaged?

Mister and Miscellaneous

See above for the manner in which doc Finn broke the bad news to Deacon and Hollis that Tom had died of a drug overdose. Are you sure, Finn? Are you? • Wouldn’t Zende have had a greater and/or any perspective on Luna suddenly being a part of a big family, what with his having been adopted into the Forrester clan? • Is the only thing Luna is missing to be a Disney princess a musical number and friends who are, like, mice and birds? I mean, there’s sweet, and then there’s sugar-shock sweet. Take it down a notch, writers. Unless this young lady came out of Willy Wonka’s candy factory, there’s no reason for her to be so saccharine in 2024.

Speaking of Luna, how funny was it when Mom sincerely told Bill that she’d tried to raise their daughter to dream — as if the ideal one wouldn’t be finding her passion or making a change in the world but waking up one day to find out that Daddy Warbucks actually is her daddy. Still, the funniest line of the week goes to Bill, who walked into Katie’s office, found her working — or at least tapping away at her computer — and asked, “Do you ever slow down?” Like she or anyone on this show ever actually works. She’d spent the morning discussing Paris’ engagement with her and the next little while browbeating him about his insta-family. • What website would send out a “news alert” touting an “exclusive” about the death of a “Beverly Hills restaurant worker”? Wouldn’t it at least have led off the headline with the fact that Tom had once been a “well-known musician”? • Did Katie forget about Rocco when she called Bill her first true love? • Finally, is Grace ever gonna be filled in about Paris engagement? ’Cause her take on it is bound to be a hoot!