Anna Yolei

So I guess we're all supposed to forget that she his her fling with Rick for months, knowing Phoebe still had feelings for him, huh? Interesting. And probably a set up for Tann, but TBH I'll take anything that isn't her pining for Ridge and Steffy is owed some karmic payback for everything she's done to people since 2010 so I'll take it. I remember when Liam, in one of the few instances where he took the initiative to speak up rather than let life force him into an action, told Steffy about his kiss with Sally. There was no hiding and I don't even remember him making too many excuses about it. Nor was he having flashback to said kiss over and over again. When even the faithless wonder himself has more examples of personal integrity than your "heroine," you've got a huge problem.

I feel like this pathetically inept writing is intentional at this point and I have no idea why anyone things this is compelling at all. At least with early B&B Ridge, you could see his motivations for the things he does: he cared about his father's happiness, and for this reason he was willing to marry Taylor and make that work, as one example. I have no idea what, if anything, makes the guy tick or why he behaves like this. It made some sense when he was a young, dumb, horny 20 something who wanted a warm hole to stick his dick in, but for a man this close to forty? Who is supposedly happy in his relationship and who understandably believes Thomas is an actual danger to their children? Why does NOTHING seems capable of putting a fire under this guy's ass?!

All of this. My God, would it have killed him to at least confront Hope first before slinking off to Steffy's arms? I mean, let's be real here: the reason Thomas was able to get into Hope's head all those years ago was because of his pattern of dipping out the minute anything gets too hard for him to handle. It was the reason Hope pushed him onto Steffy when she thought Beth died, even if TIIC refused to explicitly acknowledge that. I'm here for him getting custody of Beth but as a husband, he's always sucked and TIIC propping Thomas doesn't change that.

Their previous relationship prior to MA's casting could be measured in days. Thomas was a rebound when Liam married Steffy in Aspen and Steffy pushed it to keep her out of Liam's way. They had one weekend in Cabo and by the time Caroline Spencer hit the scene three months later, they both had seemingly forgotten about it. Which was stupid, lazy, hamfisted, in-the-moment writing that is par for the course for modern B&B. That was also before Thomas decided to use his child yet again to wreck havoc on Brooke's life and try pushing his way back into Hope's life romantically. Honestly, if B&B can't be bothered to respect even bigger, more substantial plot points in canon--up to and including tanking all the development of the previous Thomas when they managed to salvage him after his "misunderstanding" with Caroline--then I don't see why I have to be beholdened to respect one stupid throwaway line that the writers themselves decided to go back on when they made him crazy again. I am no fan of Liam's but having THAT guy near THAT specific daughter is a step too far. And before anyone says it, yes, he should've cut off Wyatt for sticking with Flo too. If I never see that heifer again it'll be too soon but since TIIC haven't been shoving her redemption down my throat for the last two years, I don't feel the need to rail on her these days. That I do agree with. It's the route they should've continued with in spite of Pierson Fodé's suddenly departure from the show. They could've taken a few weeks to recast rather than reset the clock and do....all of this. And if they had to have him and Hope together down the road, to at least find a way of doing this that didn't involving him abusing his own child.

Currently there's a Twitter discourse about romance in TV and younger people pushing back on how over prevalent it's been in media. And frankly, stupid shit like the way Thope's been written is a good bit of the reason why it's happened IMO. Romance need not be removed entirely as some call for but damn if Thope doesn't check off every issue people have with TV relationships: ✅ Turning the characters OOC to make it work ✅ Ignoring previous history ✅Blatantly obvious the only one who wanted this was the creator ✅ Every other possible story being ignored to prop it up ✅ Insulting the audience's intelligence I haven't hated a soap pairing this much since Phyllis and Billy on Y&R and TPTB over there have had the good sense to pretend that never happened after Michelle Stafford returned to the role (I don't think the two have even been in the same room since then!). Hell, it might even surpass Lily and Holden as my all time NoTP by the time it's all said and done.

Genuinely one of the best ways I've seen a show write in a pregnancy was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where Nana Visitor's character Kira just ended up being the carrier of a child for another couple that was expecting on the show through off-screen implantation mid-pregnancy because sci-fi. :P No one ever found out he was anywhere near the scene. They had the best opportunity to address that when Justin locked him up that time, and even the actor himself said he brought it up to Bell, but TIIC were like "lol no" That's truly the part that pisses me off. As a romantic partner, Liam has had this coming for the better part of a decade but Thomas has never been a good father to Douglas and was willing to let her be miserable about Beth to keep her. Make it make sense. 🤦‍♀️ I will say it's pretty odd that Hope "I Made Saving Virginity Till Marriage My Entire Personality In the Early 2010's" Logan having no bit of hesitation in all of this is definitely....a Choice™ that feels unearned and out of nowhere. Why the strolling in public as thought no one could possibly find them? As for Liam, I will fully support him getting some custody of Beth as he is well within his rights not to want his child anywhere near this bastard but it would be really neat if he was allowed to stay single for a bit. I've never seen any character be as wholly defined by their relationship drama as he has been--even Finn for the blank cardboard cutout he is got a story with Sheila without Steffy. What happen to Liam's stepdad whose name he replaced with Bill's? Where were his prep school friends? Does Kelly have siblings with cousins that he is in contact with?

Exactly this. Even Ridge was allowed to grow and mature in the early days as Caroline died and when Bridget was presumed to be his daughter. Liam OTOH is still the same rudderless pissant waffle in 2023 that he was in 2011, despite none of those issues he had with Hope--specifically, her not putting out--existing any longer and for that reason alone it's no surprise that few are pulling for Lope, regardless of how gross Thope is.

They were split up when Hope met Liam. She tried giving Oliver a second chance after some time but she very understandably couldn't make herself move past him boning Brooke, accident or not. NGL, if TPTB wanted to do a cheating story w Hope, having her give Oliver a look after years of putting up with Liam's shit would've been a far better route than this mess.

I genuinely forgot Katie worked at FC. (where HAS she been, anyway?) I don't think they would have attempted this at all with Fode, whose version of Thomas didn't know Hope existed and was grossly obsessed with Caroline II for the longest time. Even if TIIC decided not to put MA with Sally, I'm still salty that they pushed a hard reset on all the personal growth the character had made after deciding to let Caroline go. Besides everything else, this is why many of us have not bought into the idea of Hope being his one true destiny. But also, it's okay that characters change and grow. Jill Abbot of 2023 is not the Jill Foster of 1973. Hell, even Adam is being allowed to grow beyond blaming Daddy for all his problems. Hand to God, even Ridge and Bridget had more support in the fandom than Thope does and that was so unpopular that both the studio AND Lee Philips Bell had words with Brad to end that foolishness. It the words of James T Kirk: "Let them die." It was woefully outdated back in 2010. For a number of reasons, teens are less sexually active than their parents were (ie, better sex education, the acknowledgement of asexuality being a thing) but B&B went with the most tired, played out way of doing a story about waiting. And it would have been sooooo easy not to, given all of Hope's history, but instead it was all about Liam and doing another Brooke versus Taylor not. Yawn.

She got a huge portion of Taylor's stocks for her efforts there, but shecs current co-CEO because Quinn wanted to buy her acceptance into the family after she married Eric and he gave her full power of attorney shortly after they got married. But it had nothing to do with any of her inate talent any more than Katie gifting Hope HFTF to spite Steffy had to do with her. Granted, the OG Forrester kids are definitely nepo babies too, but the writing was such that it was clear that these kids were well trained and knew what they were talking about. Felicia as the baby of the group wasn't just handed her own line just because she sold a few designs in Milan, for example, and despite the 2000s revisionist history about Thorne, Eric definitely valued his input into the company just as much Ridge and Kristen--after all, what good is a design without quality fabric? Nowadays the Forresters are the living embodiment of Robert Kiyosaki's three generation rule: where wealth in any given wealthy family lasts on average three generations because it stops being an issue by the time the grandkids arrive and they're essential stupid about money. Except instead of cash, it's about a functional way to run a damn business.

He definitely doesn't or else he would've made sure Flo was buried under the jail for deceiving Steffy (since he no longer even pretends to like Hope anymore) instead of springing her to bone Shauna. Ridge Forrester's priority has always been Ridge and pleasing his mother. And he's all out of mothers.

This story is highlighting exactly why Liam is the most hated character on the show besides Brooke with many people. You'd think that for all that he correctly identifies Thomas as a danger and a predator that **THIS** would finally snap him out his perpetual Shounen Anime Love Interest mode to do... literally anything besides bitch and moan and be an active participant in the events unfolding around him for fucking once. But no, because we can't have nice things, TIIC have him sticking to this same nonsense he's been doing for *checks watch* thirteen years. It made some sense when he was a young, horny 20-something but even then it grew old fast. What's the excuse for this now?

Hope sees to work more as a curator who goes over branding and image than a direct designer, not unlike her mother Brooke....who has never picked up a pencil to draw either, but whose lingerie and men's line in the 90s made FC a pretty penny and who no one has desputed ownership of.

To be entirely fair to Ridge, he certainly never held his tongue about his opinions on Rick during the Kyle Lauder years either. Rightfully so IMO: it would've been just as ridiculous for Ridge to ignore Rick's rather gross relationship with Phoebe and his subsequent scheming and manipulation to drive a wedge between them, to say nothing of the shit he pulled with Steffy when all that failed, as it would be for Brooke to pretend like the last four years didn't happen. Well, last fifteen if we wanna go ALLLLL the way back to him firebombing Rick's car. At any rate, there is no "choosing" with Ridge because he has kids with them both for reasons other posters have beat me to laying out. Plus the lie the Taytots tell themselves about Taylor being dumped for Brooke was nothing but fake news and poison fed to them by their mother and grandmother. Speaking of poisoning, re: the thing about Taylor and her kids versus Brooke and her family is something I had never considered and while I don't think any of it was intentional, it fits so very well that Taylor's love would have conditions that would be inconceivable with Brooke. Like, for example, when Rick dated Taylor. She was furious AF about that and shat out enough bricks to build the Empire State Building twice but she never threatened to disown him or cut him off financially or otherwise. Likewise, after Nick fucked off to bang Bridget after seeing her kiss with Ridge, I don't think Brooke ever had a single cross word to say to her about that and I genuinely cannot remember that they ever had more than a one episode conversation about it. Granted, there were probably still enough Bill Bell writers left to tell him son that a blow out fight probably would not have played well, given....all of that mess, but I absolutely could not ever see that if Taylor has a daughter not related to Ridge and the same thing happened. Thank good Jack Marone was born a boy and related to Ridge so we will never find out for certain.

Sadly, I suspect this sort of consistency in terrible, repetitive writing isn't coming from the day-to-day writers but from the top down. I've seen this exact similar trajectory as a Star Trek fan in the 2000s as the executive producer to took over TNG after Gene Roddenberry stepped down (& who got the position because Roddenberry's bitterness about his divorce drove away everyone else involved who was vastly more qualified but that's a looooong story) and each series because more bland and repetitive than the last, a curse that's finally been broken when new blood came into the franchise when Discovery hit P+. Likewise, Seventh Heaven at its best was ever exactly prestige TV, but when Brenda Hampton took over, the drop in quality was less of a drop as much as a being slingshotted off of Mount Everest at the speed of sound. And she basically recycled those same two plots of sex and people talking about others having sex on her subsequent series,The Secret Life of the American Teenager ie, the only show that hand to God is even more repetitive in its dialogue than modern B&B (Eight. Damn Episodes. of "Does Amy know about the baby". In a 22 episode season 🤦‍♀️) Which is a lot of words to say that when something is consistent shit or goes off the walls is some truly bizarro way (like, "Somehow, Palatine returned" level batshit, or GoT S8), it's almost always someone at the top driving that. And B&B is fairly unique in that it's only had two EPs in its 36 year history, unlike Y&R that has periods post-WJB where it was bad in unique different ways with each new head writers. It's no coincidence that the show felt like it shifted considerably after 2002, when Brad Bell took over. I imagine the only reason no one receives visits from beyond the grave by Stephanie is because Susan Flannery made it quite clear that retirement meant retirement and she wasn't going to be John Abbott'd. And after carrying the show for 25 years at that point (especially in the later seasons when nothing BUT her acting was saving the sow at times), that retirement is well deserved.

Assuming the show will still be on in five years, I put money on either Kelly's boyfriend or Will Spencer once he's come of age. But truly, Stephanie Forrester II has been more Brooke than Brooke ever was. It's been forgotten by time how truly out of character it was for Brooke to schlep Deacon because the one thing the show has hammered in was the fact that she was a good mom to her kids and family was a big thing for her, especially in the early years. Meanwhile Steffy for all her big game about family didn't think twice about trashing her cousin's relationship with Liam, hiding her involvement in her other cousin's death and even throwing the brother she claims to love now under the bus because she didn't like his girlfriend. Banging Kelly's boyfriend would just be an extension of the she she already does.

What makes that one even worse is Felicia was one of the few people who was very much in support of Eric and Stephanie's first divorce and was the person that told Stephanie that she really needed to stop defining herself by her marriage. At least Steffy and Thomas could claim trauma around having Taylor gone during their formative years to explain away their nonsense but these two acted like their parents were some loving couple for 50 years before Donna showed up. Outside of some rather gross implications (that Bell learned nothing from, given that shit Eric ED story), this was exactly the type of dynamic story that B&B has been lacking for so long. It's been clear for a long while that no one writing the show has been interested in developing their younger set, and that was obvious back in the mid 2000s when Bridget was wasted on Nick and Phoebe was put in a triangle with men who were closer to 30 than 20.

I give until the end of Tanner Novlan's contract. Let's just be glad that TIIC aren't working this pregnancy into the show.

Liam Spencer may be the only person with sense where Tom-Ass is concerned but he's still Liam Spencer at the end of the day. He has let Steffy skate on far more devious shit than this. ISWYDT ;) Given the Bells' connections and the fact that this is the most widely viewed soap opera in the world (to the point that an Australian band even made a chart topping song about the show!), there's very likely a payout here.

I don't support scab work, but for B&B, I'd gladly make an exception because these plots? woof. Seriously. This was tiresome even when their daughters were still teenagers and them fighting by proxy was a huge part of why I couldn't fuck with either Steam OR Lope back in the day. It often felt like the adults wanted the relationship to work more than either Hope or Steffy did. But now when the kids are in their mid-30s with children of their own? Just no.

A thing that he has been doing for the last four or five years, and who Hope has fully supported until now, which makes this fight all the more ridiculous. Maybe in a vacuum I could like this, but you thankfully got to miss out on the eight months of Hope having absolutely nothing to do but cry about her baby--save for the moments she bonded with Douglas, who was grieving over his own mother--and the infamous scene of Thomas nearly decking his kid for telling the truth. I feel you on the Liam circa 2013 hate, but this is too high a cost for me. TBH, I know very few fans who felt that Flo had earned any kind of redemption either. TIIC tried to do a speedrun on that too and it worked as well as the one on Thomas. But Flo for all the shitty justifications she pulled about why she did what she did, stopped being actively shitty from that point. (or at least, stopped being *that* flavor of shitty) Thomas never has, and even worse, he continues to drag an innocent kid into his mess. Yes, soap villains may have been able to walk back from some truly heinous stuff, but that's after years of decent behavior and even then, they don't have the entire universe kissing their ass, not even Victor Newman or Sonny. I'd argue that he had a bigger moral responsibility to clue Hope and Steffy in but even putting aside, his shit behavior after Beth was found has just left a bad taste in my mouth and it's made all the worse that we've already gotten a much better redemption for the character a year before Matthew Atkinson was cast that was just memory holed for the purpose of forcing this pairing to happen. I can definitely respect this. There's been a movement of sorts in fandom (less so B&B than other popular fandoms since about 2015 or so) about this sort of thing, like the never ending Reylo debate in Star Wars. All I ask is that the writing makes some narrative damn sense. If Hope's moved past his role in Beth being kept from her AND torturing Douglas AND lying to another woman to try to get her back AND blowing up her mother's marriage AND whatever else I'm forgetting about at 6 in the morning as I type this then so be it but there has to be some logic beyond "waking up in love with someone new." As @KerleyQ said earlier, I don't have have a problem villains getting what they want after deciding to be honest. But they have to ...you know... actually CHANGE. Which TIIC had the perfect window for when Thomas got Bill and Liam out of jail but they just... didn't. :\ Fully agree. Michael Muhney himself had a shit ton of fans and the...I'll be charitable and say "polarizing" opinions around the character got the TWoP Y&R thread shut down more than once, but other than some fans enjoying Nick's face getting cracked because Sharon was finally moving on from him, it was definitely not popular.

Much like his waffle son in the 2010s and Ridge, Bill wants what isn't available to him. Not one singular thing in their history has proved that Bill had some out of this world passion for Katie. He spent half of their marriage sniffing behind Steffy and the second half after Brooke. Katie can be a pill in her own right, but even she is right to be tired of a man who only makes the effort when she's moved on to other people. Even if they improved nothing else, this would go a long way to at least make the show watchable again.

Side note,but I've heard nothing but terrible things about this character for years through the grapevine and he's been the benchmark against which all propped characters are measured agaist so it's great that the GH writers are getting their shit together and carrying this genre. I'll say again that on characters in the history of soapdom have been as propped up as the Marone scions, and especially Steffy. As was noted above, even Victor Newman has people who will call him out, even if he wins far more than he loses. It's always boring when one character gets to be right all the time and lionizes the screentime. I felt that way even when Nick Marone was the Prop of the Year, and he's a character I enjoyed far more at his worst than I ever have Thomas at his best.

As tired as I am of everything related to this miserable slog of a story, I'd rather it be this than any genuine feelings on either of their parts. They managed to fool us with Bill, so I guess anything's possible. Still, this narrow focus on one story is why the ratings have been piss. Which maybe doesn't mean much in a three-man race, but damn, does Brad Bell have any iota of embarrassment for what he puts his name onto? ...that's a rhetorical question, one long answered twenty years ago when he tried making Ridge and Bridge a thing but instead made the benchmark that every bad story was measured against ever since . .until Thope knocked it clean off it's pedestal.

Same here. Besides the hypocrisy of her biggest detractors, it is old and tiring and there's nothing new to be added to that. It only worked as long as it did in the past because of the chemistry between KKL and SF with her phenomenal acting and the long standing history, but none of that is present now for most of the characters between Steffy, who is more Brooke than Brooke Logan ever was. It's not a matter of if she'll steal one of Kelly's boyfriends, but when. That's been par for the course with Liam (and men in general on this show TBH going back to day one of this show, but that's a different rant). Far be it from me to defend Steffy taking a Stallion ride, but her irritation at him kissing another woman that he barely knew when he thought he was dying was definitely worth some irw after all his waffle shenanigans that weren't that far in the past then. But Hope? I'll be the first to say not all the problems Lope have faced were from Liam but lying and cheating have never come from Hope. He damn sure owes her a metric ass ton. That's truly rich given Taylor had the nerve to bring up Bridget even AFTER Phoebe had died as an indirect result of her fucking Rick with all the reflection of a black hole. Homegirl is as transparent as she is immature. Having grown up in NorCal and lived in SoCal for nine years, this is very much true. As one example of this, what's known as the "California" Burrito (ie one with fries instead of beans and rice) should be called the San Diego Burrito because no one north of the 10 knows what the hell it is 🤣 The one thing uniting both parts of the state is that neither claims Bakersfield ;)