Bill C.

In relative fairness, IIRC, Quinn sent a text from Liam's phone to Bill at some point saying he was off getting his head on straight or something. It was glossed over, but at least it was there. As for today's episode: I really wish they had followed up on Caroline's "Whaaaaat...?" face when Ridge suggested they move into House Forrester. Just one scene of him convincing her it was a good idea would have been nice. And I'm honestly lukewarm on the idea that Gandalf is crashing at the guest house because the main house doesn't feel like home any more; it works, but it's SO DAMN CONVENIENT. OTOH, Katie finally got to ask Bill the questions she should have asked weeks ago...and I'm not sure if his answers were completely genuine. But then she said she couldn't live without him, and that just made things worse...

Dare I say that Ridge's justification for putting Stephanie's portrait back up in its place of prominence actually made sense. Sure, he was typically smug about it to Rick, but it still made sense. (And since Maya's portrait basically marked her ascension to sainthood, well...) It's still a flimsy catalyst for this latest round of Ridge vs. Rick, but then all the gracefulness was eaten up by Katie's surprisingly slow descent into the bottle...

And that is why my sympathies still largely lie with Katie on this one. Brooke's status as the siren--or, rather, THE Siren--of Bell-A literally goes back decades, and her crazy-ass "following her heart" almost as long (certainly in the decade I've been watching this show), and in an almost literal sense every single woman on the show has lost to her at some point. (Except Steffy, I suppose, but since that goes to the Quad of Doom Mark II...) Not even Jan Brady had to deal with that kind of history; even if Katie intellectually realizes she may have "won" with the hot guy, and her own stuff at/with Spencer Publications, she's still not quite able to get past it. That works, even if they're kind of pushing it a little more stridently than I would prefer.

At least for a hot minute we got Bridget and Rick going on about how this has been the longest Brooke has been without a man or some such, which is/was simultaneously all kinds of wrong (and Gandalf rightly called them on it) and all kinds of right (someone had to go there). Katie's ongoing Stephanie-like bitchery is doing the character no favors, even if exacerbated by booze. And it's all on Katie--Heather Tom is rocking it, and to some degree it's the most consistent opposition to Brooke's mindset (heartset?) in a while, but it's admittedly getting a little one-note. And as for Thomas and Caroline: all this had BETTER be a swerve. Just saying.

If we had actually seen more of Quinn and Deacon's relationship imploding onscreen, I think it would have helped offset the zero to sixty rush she did towards "gentle.". It might not have helped with her actually putting the Waffle in her oven, but...a little grace never hurts, even in the face of crazy. As for Katie...I'm simultaneously wanting her to cheer the hell down about the whole thing and wanting her to continue responding sanely, if staggeringly bitchily and vaguely Stephanie-like, to Brooke's personal crazy. Even if it's literally the last thing you'd expect from this fakakta show.

The somewhat depressing aspect is that this definitely goes back a few years on this show...and others... The show's at least been consistent, IMO, with painting--or trying to paint--Quinn as a fruit loop who's at least succumbing a little to either Liamnesiac's gentler charm or some sort of fantasy taking shape in her head based on this epic lie of omission. Which way they're heading, though, seems to change on a whim...and that screws up what consistency there is, and so on.

I'm surprisingly ambivalent about today's episode. I think it might have flowed better if we hadn't gotten two instances of Liam veering off at the last minute before Quinn fully enticed him into bed--let alone the montage of her and Liam, and Wyatt and Steffy, getting it on. (Verdict's still out on Liam and Steffy looking up at the same moon.). A little less mooning and a little more macking, and...okay, it still would have been gonzo, but at least it would have been much more graceful. As for Caroline's false alarm...by normal soap rules, does that confirm she's indeed having Thomas's baby or is it a consistent swerve? (OTOH, cuuuute nurse extra!)

I suppose the show could swerve us all at this point and have Caroline's baby indeed be Ridge's, but after yesterday's episode I don't know. But, yes--if either one of them has to go, it should rightfully be the little incubating baby Forrester-Avant. And it belatedly occurred to me that Pierson Fode's hairdon't in now yesterday's episode made him look curiously like a super-stretchy Drew Tyler Bell...who always looked so much like Taylor's child than Ridge's. Not sure if that was deliberate or the result of an unfortunate hairspray explosion. Messed up as it is, this is SOP for guys on this show...and a couple of others, IIRC...when they do this (and the fact that I can say that and not really exaggerate probably says something): trying to convince their former bedmate that they did what they did out of caring, or because of some sort of extenuating circumstance--or both. In-show, it makes a certain narrow sense...and, so far, is at least usually followed by some justifiable righteous indignation and outrage from somebody. From the outside, of course, it's utterly bonkers and often tone-deaf...but, since a guiding tenet of this show is "It's all about me"...

For me, he comes off as so much of a Xerox of Patrick visually and audibly that it's distracting as hell. Maybe it's because he's still new?

Thomas's apology tour (get off the forums, TPTB!) wouldn't have been that bad if he hadn't gone all the way to "Yeah, I think I might want kids someday." Seriously, that was as subtle as Quinn's "Here we go (barely concealed squee)" face or Steffy's overly theatrical gasp upon seeing she had finally received a message from Liam. OTOH, at least Wyatt didn't look thirsty today. And the recurring red flag of Liam's left eye either twitching or just seeming off makes me wonder if the show is going to go all the way to some sort of major brain issue for him, requiring surgery... which will let him get his memory back...eventually?

This episode is where the show actually lost me for a minute. Revisiting Quinn and Deacon's breakup in such a ludicrous-speed fashion didn't help Quinn's case, IMHO, or WTHQuil. It just accentuated the plot-driven aspect, in a way that neither RS nor SK could overcome. I'm not averse to Quinn feeling she might want something different in a man...which goes back to our gentle waffle...but wow did they blow through it doing eighty. And Wyatt admitting that he sortakinda proposed to Steffy something like (until told otherwise) three or four days after Liam went thud didn't help either. I'm still hanging on for the crazy, but this was a big stumble on the way there.

Quinn getting a flashback to an unhappy childhood...in black and white, even? Not even remotely subtle, show. (See also Stephanie in therapy, 2006-07.). Not that making her at least a little sympathetic is bad; it's just that we've been here before, in kind of the same fashion. And I'm STILL not entirely sure about what's up with Deacon at this point, apart from being Plot's Bitch. OTOH..Katie seems to have backed away from the crazy (for the moment), so halfsies?

Sam at least trying to be more proactive in the Basement of Doom would absolutely have been welcome, since she was at least intact enough to plug in a space heater, and the fact that they filmed precisely that and then cut it for whatever reason does chafe a bit. Then again, these are the same yahoos that snipped part of the Scrubs wedding, so I'm unfortunately not that surprised.

For me, Bricky was always Bridget and Nick. I wasn't necessarily opposed to Brooke and Nick, but oh lord...

Since Bernie apparently kept his brother and sons almost completely out of the loop regarding his real agenda, his keeping his wife out of it as well just makes sense to me. It's just one more thing cementing his status as a sociopath/narcissist, IMO, if a charming one. (And if you think of Karen Hill, Henry Hill's wife--see also Goodfellas, especially since Madoff went all the way there with his parting monologue--her being relatively okay with presenting a united front against a threat to her husband until he directly wronged her makes a grim, messed-up sense.) Watching the ABC News special after the second part of the miniseries, I thought it was similarly light and fluffy--considering--in tone to it. Going from that to PBS's 2009 Frontline episode about him and some of his associates was a bit of a shift, but they all in the end cemented one thing: this guy probably did need to be buried alive.

Dare I say that if/when the show ever brings Hope, they're going to have to find somebody else for either Ivy or Steffy quick. (Or swerve us by hooking her up with somebody like Zende first, I suppose.) And that goes straight back to ch1's comment that In the ten years I've been watching this show, unfortunately, this hasn't really changed that much. There was definitely more of an attempt to show characters moving or trying to move on from their respective waffles, however, before the Junior Quad of Doom rolled into town. (And in relative fairness Liam still tries to be a good guy to his exes, more than Ridge usually ever did.) We were allowed to get invested in couples--I'm still a Bricky fan after all this time for instance, though oh how the show did them so wrong--before it blew them the hell up, and let alone before they ran the idea itself into the faultlines underneath the ground underneath Bell-A. This is something TPTB have seemingly forgotten, or simply dismissed as irrelevant for whatever insane reason over the years (see also: Zencole).

Today's episode finding a way to work in "Cha cha cha!" had me metaphorically throwing things at my TV, let alone Wyatt going full Thorne and sort-of proposing to Steffy. But then it got to The Kiss, epic swelling chick-flick music and all, and damn if I didn't do a metaphorical fist-pump. As batshit gonzo as it is, Rena Sofer and Scott Clifton are carrying the hell out of this story; if anybody else were involved, I seriously doubt it would be working at all. That said... Liam is admittedly the gentlest of the Spencer men, and throwing in Deacon probably the gentlest that Quinn's been involved with on any sort of recurring basis. My reading of things is that she's being won over by his gentleness, while Liam...his side could go either way in the end, where he's actually been attracted to Quinn before but stomping it down because she's the Devil or he's just transferring his feelings for Steffy onto her due to his amnesia. And with all that out there...Quinn does not need to be Liam's next actual SO. I will only accept it if, as said before, it's handled like Ava and Morgan on General Hospital: they just can't stay away from each other. (Lampshade their chemistry, show. I double dog dare you.)

I still don't hate Valerie, but the show just had to turn her to eleven today in the face of Lulu's apology. Then again, nobody usually gets to be the SANE wronged party on this show. I was only half-watching this ep, though, so I missed most of the stuff with Nik and Hayden. Particularly the red lighting...wow, subtle, show.

We really need Wyatt to hook up somehow with Sasha. If nothing else she could bang the Thorneness out of him. As for Adam and Eve...this should theoretically cinch that WTHQuil will indeed get it on at some point, but the spoilers posted above seem to fly right in the face of this.

Richard Dreyfuss was definitely the highlight of part one--his Madoff is/was definitely a sort of Palpatine-esque puppeteer, but with charm to spare. The recurring Casino vibe of the whole thing was probably a distant second, if occasionally as subtle as a brick. That said, no lie...the thought that stuck in my head and depressed the hell out of me was that if even a fifth of everything that happened in part one actually happened, this man probably should have been buried alive or something. OTOH, Frank Whaley's Harry Markopolos seemed just a bit too numbers-geek for the rest of the show. That probably accentuates my one serious complaint: the tone, in general, seemed oddly light and breezy in places considering the subject matter. I suppose they didn't want to make it too dark, but still.

In that regard, yeah, Zencole has been consistently cockblocked for a while now. And that is how Sasha will get Zende--the boy's got needs, and as per today's episode she's totally fine with going full skank to satisfy them. (And I'm morbidly curious as to what kind of expression SD Vanessa Williams, er, Nicole will bust out for that.)

Nicole is actually a virgin, surrogacy aside. She and Zende sortakinda tried to rectify that a few weeks back, but that attempt almost literally and visibly withered and died; after that, AIUI, was when they decided to wait.

I'm a little fuzzy on it myself, HeatLifer, but AIUI Jake was indeed hit by a car. Helena had him snatched from the hospital and replaced with whotheheckever's soon-to-be-dead kid (which was oh so briefly mentioned in-show, IIRC, and then dropped like Sam down a staircase).

I want to support Sasha, at least WRT Daddy Dearest, but her letting her bitch flag unfurl just a touch in today's episode definitely harshed the buzz. (OTOH, I'm seriously wondering if Julius's "You got me there" in this ep was an ad-lib of Obba Babatunde's. Felisha Cooper's reaction seemed genuinely amused.) And it didn't help that Sasha had apparently stolen at least one of Nicole's boyfriends long before either of them ever got to Bell-A. OTOH, the young-adult crowd is actually vixen-free at the moment...and they're blowing their potential new vixen on Zende. Where's Thomas at? He needs a tall drink of crazy. The thing with Zende and Nicozzzzz...sorry, where was I?...right, the thing with them is that they're not good or bad. They're just dull, which might actually be worse. Sasha might theoretically be the thing to give them a jolt, but it just as easily might still turn out to be the equivalent of swimming upstream and suck horrendously in the end.

This episode was completely ruined for me five minutes in when they did that long shot of Sam on the basement floor with a huge tank of FLAMMABLE LIQUID in the foreground. From that moment forward, 90% of everything was "Okay, when are they going to blow it up? When are they going to blow it up? Dammit, BLOW IT UP!" Not even Anna, Robert, Mac and Felicia combined could offset that (and I rather liked their overall competence and snark, God damn it). Then again, it was ruined all over again when Monica showed up with full-on bedhead. As for Ava putting the kibosh on her non-professional relationship with Paul...as much as I adore MW and Ava, the 10% of my brain that wasn't cheering on the propane tank in Liz's basement was lamenting the side-piece suddenly wanting respectability.