Bill C.

Oh, Brad Bell. I get what you were trying to do with this interview, now that I've read it, but you can/could only defend so much of this story. And that much is not much at all...and the irony is that the interview pretty much completely implodes with two exchanges: The former's dangerously close to blaming the victim there, Brad. Especially in light of how the scene played out onscreen. And that's absolutely not good. I still remember this kindasorta happening with Ridge and Brooke right about ten years ago, and while then we had Nick at least willing to rip Ridge's head off (albeit before Brooke stopped him, of course) here...we've got Ridge punishing him by keeping his son from him? Okaaaay...

HK seems like a nice young lady, so more power to her. But I have to wonder what this means for Snowflake Pollyanna, let alone Perfect Hair Forever itself.

So true, LittleIggy, but if we gigged everybody on this show for whining (degrees of such notwithstanding) Bell-A probably would have been wiped out in an earthquake sometime around 2004... That said, we're very likely about to go from Man Brady whining about Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! to him crowing about how he brought the great Ridge Forrester down. I'm genuinely uncertain as to which scenario is worse.

I'm actually going to give the show a couple of points for today. The minute Katie told Bill about Douglas's paternity it was only a matter of time before he dropped that bomb on his own, and we all knew it; his doing it to the (ahem, other) woman he loved in order to stop her pain from her eldest child bailing for parts unknown with her grandchild actually made sense, at least to me. That said, it was only marginally less manipulative than Thomas finally agreeing to keep The Secret...let alone Katie interfering in Ridge's life in the first damn place (and then lying to his face today about keeping The Secret to herself, just to dot that last I). And I'm a little frustrated by the whole thing up to this point, though it didn't quite go as I expected it. Meanwhile...I think I seriously need Show to finally go ahead and get that Quinn/Liam hatesex over with. It's literally the last thing left you can do with them, Show (since Quinn's not pregnant--yet?). Doooo iiiiiiit.

The show managed to keep an official lid on Kelly Sullivan leaving pretty much up until it happened, but JFP's possible ouster is admittedly an order of magnitude more important. If it has indeed just happened within the past week or so, though, it's probably right on the edge of "keeping it quiet." And, to be fair: we'd still be stuck with Pratt, at least for a while longer. That said...if they bring Chance back (and where did that tidbit come from?) he at least has to end up in the Bordello for Depressives. He may not necessarily take it over unless Billy gives it up, but I could see that happening by override-level mandate (a la everybody dragging Billy for the redecorating of it).

It'd actually be an interesting juxtaposition the show could address: an FYI-style "classic" newsmagazine show versus a TYT-style "editorial" newsmagazine show. ...I didn't know I wanted this so damn much until now.

Vivienne taking the high road--after admittedly saying she "prayed on it"--and forgiving Julius for his one (colossal, titanic, fucked-up, etc.) lie would have been okay, IMO, if she at least hadn't asked him to move back in right away. It would have been great if we'd seen her being conflicted about it prior to this, however, but if they couldn't show Thomas's purported change after Rape Night...yeah, this wasn't happening either. (Dammit, show.) Maya and Nicole endlessly bitchfacing Sasha was just the obligatory "this misdeed trumps the previous ones" sidebar. OTOH, we got Katie going completely tone-deaf and blabbing to Bill about the Douglas lie and then expecting him to actually keep it a secret. This had better be the opening for him or, perhaps more likely, Rick to screw with Ridge and thus Ridge to properly blast her for sticking her pretty nose into this whole mess to begin with. If we need anything out of this blazing hot mess, we need that.

Yup, Douglas was absolutely enamored of KKL today. It was almost too adorable. And as openly manipulative as I know the show's been about it, I still need Katie to get tased for being such a cheerfully unaware snowplow about the Douglas lie. Obviously it was all leading up to her inadvertently letting someone know the secret--and even her closing our friend the P.O.D. didn't stop that--but God damn is she being all up everybody's asses about it. Even Bill randomly going "Yeah, fuck Ridge, I don't want him running FC now" didn't place next to that (though at least we've gotten lip service about Ridge's seemingly weird command decisions up to this point, which at least makes some sense in context).

Ah, the brain tumor: the last resort of writers who have realized they've written themselves into a hole and they can't get out of it. That said, considering we're talking about an eight-year-old who tried to commit murder, I'm a little inclined to let it slide. Tie it back to the car accident that killed Jenna and we're good. Having read that same recap, though, I'm kind of flipping out in that we're also apparently getting Meredith seducing Victor. GAAAAH.

An in-continuity Designing Women reboot, especially if it invoked Julia's memory (let alone the Marjories)? Plus Aisha Tyler? I'd be all over that. The catch is that Sugarbaker's was ultimately owned by four people, IIRC: Julia, Mary Jo, Suzanne (later Allison, and later B.J. Poteet), and finally Anthony. You'd need to sort that out somehow. ...I'm oddly not averse to this, if just for the mental image of Haley Joel Osment hosting a YouTube podcast called FYI. That might skew a little close to The Newsroom, though, so a full-on reboot might actually be a better (and more acidic?) idea.

Dare I say that today was a good hair day for JY, though he was a long way behind Vanessa Williams-chibi and probably about even with Ratchet Psylocke (I'm surprised it took me this long to make that connection with Felisha Cooper). It was all submerged underneath Rick's eternal Jan Brady game, though, and nearly naked Thomas correctly reading Ridge for wanting him out of the way. (Let alone the oh so subtle positioning of Ridge, and Caroline and Thomas, on opposite sides of a table.)

I'm blaming it on a Twitter exchange, but I still think that if Sasha needs to hook up with anybody besides Soulverine it should be Thomas. It'd be one really tall, really pretty coupling. But alas, instead we have TEH BAYBEEZ...or rather THE BABY, since Sasha actually confessed to lying about the pregnancy test after only seven episodes. (Possible setup for Sasha actually finding out she's pregnant later? I got nothing.) As for Thomas deciding to stay in Bell-A to be close to his kid...and, apparently, screw with Ridge a bit...at this point, is anybody waiting for anything besides this secret to be exposed?

Sasha swishing a home pregnancy test stick in a just-used toilet bowl...even if it was offscreen, I think I was more weirded out by that than anything else the show's thrown at us since at least Quinn and Liam's first night together. Even over the usual Avant/Forrester sanctimony. Even over Rick continuing to keep his Jan Brady game tight, now in little Lizzie's name. Even over Ridge, the King of All Frigging Cosmos, sending his son the prince off to go make a katamari in friggin' Shanghai as a "necessary sacrifice" in order to prep him for one day running FC. (Caroline still not being completely on board with this...I guess it's another nail in the coffin of her marriage.)

I'd just settle for a come-to-Jesus speech from Robin, TBH. Anna's needed that for a while, and Dr. Xerox's efforts don't really count. It almost assuredly has to be a redshirt on general principle, so that reduces the suspect list to two: Dr. Mays, whom we conveniently haven't seen in a while, and Bizarro Maxie. Conversely, if it was going to be a name, it'd have to be Dr. O--and if that was the case, it'd be the thing that ushers her off the show. Not sure if that's a good thing at this point.

Having somehow never seen this catfight before, my hope was that we'd at least get something akin to Sheila and Lauren busting up a lab on Y&R back in the day...but, of course, this fakakta show actually completely wasted a genuinely nice buildup moment on a catfight that we didn't even see. Damn, they didn't even swerve us and cut back to a thoroughly trashed bathroom. OTOH, Lucas isn't dead (yet?)...so...halfsies.

This is kind of where I am too. Seriously: considering Coma Week, I've had no problem with the idea of Billy going through a minor personality swerve--the guy nearly died, so his being less of a lively snarker and more of an overtly sarcastic grump after that actually made sense to me. It still does. The problem? They didn't stop there.

Sonny being all the way up Alexis's angsty, mascara-overdriven ass about Julian, and Julian being all "We're in this together, girl--bad boys for life," was a pretty major buzzkill and really all I remembered from today's episode other than Lucy blah-blah-blahing about the Nurses Ball to Felix and Thick...ahem...Bizarro Maxie. Good angst fodder for NLG, to be fair--at least up until Alexis decided not to burn Julian's shirt, because of course--but even then it was a bit...much. Okay, actually, there was Sabrina apparently leaving her son at Monica's door. Which, apart from Sabrina's link to Tracy, still makes negative sense without any sort of explanation...

Between today and yesterday we got a couple of moments where Rick and Maya were basically all "Yeah, incubator, stay here while we go do such and such" (most notably the end of today's episode where Nicole was literally all alone in her hospital room and even Vivienne was gone). This is what makes me wonder if Vanessa Williams-chibi is indeed really going to be okay with, circumstances aside, giving up her baby to her sister and brother-in-law. That said, I actually didn't like Soulverine's hard 180 today on Nicole's surrogacy--and I'm not even counting the whole "My planet needs me" lie he made to Sasha, followed by his jacking some scrubs and sneaking into Nicole's hospital room. It came off as really abrupt and graceless and entirely in the name of glomming Zencole fully back together again, and it's something they really could have done a better job with.

That's a thought that didn't occur to me...would the show actually let Nicole just go ahead, hand over the baby, and bounce? Has any soap ever done that?

I'm still, curiously, just fine with Thick Maxie. 'Twas good that Monica (and as of late Leslie Charleson has actually been looking decidedly less Botoxed and more, well, good) got to nail her once for being a blabbermouth, though. The rest of the episode...other than Julian basically backing the bus up over himself, the thing that stuck out to me was NLG's mascara. I mean hey, the lady did just fine (if admittedly screechy), but damn.

Today's episode was...not bad, but a little disjointed. Quinn's panicky apology tour went to 11 today, which was really only trumped by her straight up confessing the whole thing about her and Liam's cabin getaway to Lt. Baker (with hot dog)--but apparently not revealing Deacon's involvement at all. This was counterbalanced by Liam...not forgiving her, since he did let her get carted off, but continuing to be privately confused about her. I guess this is a slow burn to whatever they're going for here. And then there was Nicole suddenly in labor--seriously, they skipped over the actual start of it? Who does that? Even if they were just trying to rush to the part where Nicole was left all alone in her hospital room (an echo of how she'll be out in the cold as "just" Maya's baby mama) and Soulverine was resisting Sasha's relatively gentle macking by being worried about her?

I'm thinking it was the Twins, back when they were actual twins.

Urg. I'm really not liking that spec about Lucas...but it also doesn't make any apparent sense as to how the show would kill him off. He's not involved in anything remotely shady, except through Brad--and since that goes back to his and Rosalie's secret I'm not sure the show wants to go back there--and there's no obvious openings for any collateral damage-level violence at the Nurses Ball (except for that vague spoiler about Liesl deciding to somehow ruin it, and I have no idea what that entails).

That's a nice take on it, Petunia...and it even gives a nod to the whole "The scandal would destroy us" excuse Ridge has been using on top of helping to flesh out Caroline's side of affairs. The flip side is that the show's been downright paranoid about busting out the R-word, or even having Caroline say Rape Night was anything other than "complicated" (which, for better or worse, does have a precedent on this show). The gag is that the show's gone so hard on both Ridge wanting to bury the whole situation and punish Thomas for what he did, and Man Brady whining about how Ridge needs to go down for screwing him over, that strike three--the show's general tendency, IIRC, to make this sort of thing about the men over the women--almost doesn't even register at this point. It's that blindingly obvious where this has to go, and Caroline (or at least her marriage) is probably more collateral damage by the time we get there.

What bothered me about it, though, were all his sardonic expressions throughout the whole thing. He stopped short of actual eye-rolling, but still...and, yet, he was still more respectful than Anna. Girlfriend deserves so much better than to run around demanding JUSTIS4DOOK!!1!, but here we are. Conversely, Dr. Xerox being all set to perform last rites complete with a bottle of whatever that was he used on Carlos's forehead...prior to today, when did he say he was a (lapsed, non-practicing, whatever) priest? Obviously, I missed it. And Nikolas having Rayden's stuff thrown out at the same time she's being advised to straight up rob him? We're moving into overt black comedy with them now, show? Yeah, let's see how this works out for you.