KerleyQ

That's some revisionist history by Thomas there. "She could have rejected me outright and not taken the ring, but she's been wearing it around her neck." Um, yeah, because you pushed that on her. You insisted she wear it around her neck until she was ready. And I was just cracking up at Steffy going on and on to Thomas about how awful Hope has been to him. Yeah, let's rewind the tape on that one, shall we? Yeah, sure, Thomas took the driver's seat on the lie that Hope's daughter was dead. Sure, he abused and manipulated their son on more than one occasion. Sure, he was going to drug her to rape her. Sure, he was going to kidnap her when he realized that the truth about Beth was coming out. Sure, he framed her mother for a CPS call about their son and then tried to force their son to support that lie. But what is all of that (and more I'm leaving out) in the face of Hope being direct, honest, and consistent about the fact that she is not ready to commit to a new marriage five minutes after divorcing Liam? What a fucking monster she is. You all know I've never been into Thope, but seriously, Hope, look at him acting like a petulant child whose parents told him they aren't going to McDonalds today, but maybe later in the week. The very first time something in this relationship didn't go his way, he stormed out angry and sat there and listened to his sister reading you for filth. We all know Thomas isn't going to take Steffy's advice and fully end things, but Hope should absolutely tell him that they need to take a break because he has shown zero respect for her clearly stated boundaries and for the way he immediately went with anger over her telling him the same thing she's been telling him over and over - that she needs some time before she's ready to consider getting engaged. If Thomas wants to be mad at someone, he can either look in the mirror, or he can look to his father who gave him the advice to go big that led to him thinking he should propose again.

I'm assuming Finn. That has to be the reason for the scenes of him being so concerned about her safety around Thomas.

No wonder Brooke was so confused.

For the love of God, Luna, just buy yourself a 23andMe kit already. And I hope that, if Poppy does turn around and tell Bill, "well, actually, it was you," that he is smart enough to get a DNA test instead of letting his paternal infatuation with Luna override his common sense. How Steffy and Liam can sit there with straight faces, knowing how easily Hope forgave them for banging and WTD, The Sequel, and act like Hope kissing Thomas was the worst most unforgiveable, marriage killing thing to have ever happened to the Lope marriage... Fucking sanctimonious hypocrites. Oh, look, Thomas stormed out in anger when he didn't get his way. And his talk with Steffy was borderline incel, a la, "I put in the time and work, she owes me what I want." Dude, Hope told you, over and over and over, not to pressure her on the engagement issue, and that she would let you know when she was ready. Your disappointment is all on you, because you decided that she has to be ready now, and she didn't go along with that plan. You still don't see and value her as her own independent woman, you see her as an object you want to possess, and since you've gone x days without a psycho episode, she should just fall in line with the plan. She took a big step by telling him she loves him, and instead of realizing that she was taking a step forward with him, he just focused on how mad he is that it wasn't the big leap he's demanding. And, Steffy? If you want your psycho brother to be in a good mental space, maybe don't keep harping on how you think Hope has done him wrong. Maybe instead, you should see how upset he is over being denied and suggest he speak with his therapist (and, dear God, not your mother). Hope is a fool if she puts that ring back around her neck. Clearly he is getting the wrong message from that, so she needs to tell him to take it back completely.

I'm so squeamish that we're going to get Finn not remembering they hooked up because he was drunk or he took some of Poppy's "mints." The Luna/Zende "misunderstanding night" was bad enough, but a "misunderstanding night" where a college kid fathered a child with his aunt and doesn't even remember they hooked up? You'd think after decades of Stephanie's bullshit, both Ridge and Brooke would be at least a little hesitant to dive so deep into their kids' love lives. But, nope, they're just going to go ahead and take up that mantle. And, I completely agree on the "no pressure" bullshit. All he's done is pressure her in various ways since the moment she asked him to give her time and not pressure her. And this time, he was applying even more pressure. I really did not like the way he's just telling her "it's time." I believe she told him, multiple times, that she would tell him when she feels like it's time. Not to make this too much about my personal anecdote, but I dated a guy in college who had a similar "I know what's best because I love you so much" kind of bullshit about him. Once I recognized what a pattern it was, I was out of there. Hope needs to stick to her guns, even if she's wavering a little, because this is such disrespect for a very reasonable boundary. Give the ring back and tell him that she will tell him if she's ever ready for that, but she refuses to wear the ring around her neck any longer, because he will not stop pressuring her. And, yeah, I'll never be OK with him having any kind of pseudo parental role in Beth's life. Nope. Not OK. Shallow time: that dress is ugly. It's a bad color for Hope. It technically fits, but in the least flattering way possible. It somehow makes her chest look saggy, which is absurd. And then, the camera panned to the back of her head while No Pressure Thomas was, again, proposing, and I got a look at her hair. If I was remotely invested in this pairing, I'd be offended that they sent AN out on set with that hair for what could be some big pivotal romantic moment. But, since I hate watch this pairing, I just laughed for a good few minutes over how bad they managed to make poor AN look for the big romantic moment.

Brad Bell does love a good pseudo incest storyline. At least this time, both people would have known the whole time that they weren't blood related? Yeah, murder would definitely be on the table. Hand me Steffy's stabbin' knife and tire iron. If Finn is Luna's dad, and Li has known all this time, then I'm going to have to take back some shit I've said about Li since Luna came to town. Although she still shouldn't have been so shitty directly to Luna. She didn't do anything wrong, and she'd be Li's granddaughter, despite how gross her origin story is. The only thing that is going to be hard to explain is why Finn never did the math. He's a friggin' doctor and he didn't figure out that the baby born approximately nine months after he hooked up with his aunt could be his? Did Finn take some of Aunt Poppy's famous mints before they hooked up?

Why do I feel like this could refuel all of the "is Finn Luna's father" talk? Also, I usually see spoilers for the next week by Wednesday, and I can't find any for next week. Is something major going to happen that they don't want out ahead of time?

I don't think they're going to make Bill really Luna's father, but I think Poppy is either going to lie to him that he really is, or she's going to ask him to pretend he is because she's afraid to say who it really is. And since Bill is already super attached to Luna, for some reason, he'd go along with pretending to be her father if Poppy convinced him he'd be protecting her by doing so. Hat tip to Luna for basically using the "mints" story to try to guilt Poppy into telling her who her father is. I cracked up at Steffy hanging up on Liam. More of that, please. But, Steffy, come on, your sainted mother is a world renowned psychiatrist, and when your husband is sitting there telling you how he's seeing his dead mother, and how he is having images of himself in her place, you don't think to suggest, at minimum, a little grief counseling? Listening to Hope's dialogue today with Brooke, it's still so much about "Thomas makes me feel more important than Liam made me feel," not so much about "this is how I feel about Thomas." There's a contrast to "I've opened my heart to him," and "he's given me every piece of his heart." I give credit to the dialogue and the way AN plays things, because I legitimately can't tell which way things are going there. One day (like yesterday), you think it's definitely going to go full steam ahead. The next day, you've again got Hope pulling her punches when talking about how she feels about Thomas and focusing far more on how he feels about her, and how that is refreshing for her, making it seem more like this is a rebound because she's hurting from Liam not being all in like that. Also, "and he's not obsessive about it any more" felt like someone (Hope, the writers) protesting too much. And Thomas bringing up Brooke to Ridge and talking about how she doesn't want to give his relationship with Hope a chance, feels like the buildup to Thomas doing something crazy. If he starts feeling like Brooke not being on board is the reason Hope hasn't said "yes" yet, what would he do about that? That dress seemed familiar, and I finally remembered where I've seen it before. It's a knockoff of this:

Brooke "OK, let's just change the topic away from Thomas to the Taytot I can occasionally stomach." Me watching Thope today "oh, are they actually finally going to do something somewhat date like instead of just banging? Oh, no, wait, they're just going to eat and bang, aren't they?" Have they been on any kind of date, other than sightseeing in Rome when she was still married and just intended for it to be one day out of time? And Ridge going on about how they're so in love was a big old anvil of what's to come, especially juxtaposing Thope/Sinn/Bridge talking about Thope and Sinn. Also, you can see Thomas restraining himself from being more aggressive in trying to get Hope to stop defending Finn. I doubt he's going to be able to restrain himself much longer. If I had to guess, I'd say he's going to start pushing harder for Hope to agree to marry him, and he's eventually going to lash out at her about standing up for Finn and not just focusing all of her attention on their relationship. I have to say that they could be going in kind of an interesting direction in how they're breaking up Steffy and Finn. As the song says, sometimes love just ain't enough. They've each got an emotional wound from what's happened, and those wounds are in direct opposition to each other to the point where they're each not the person to comfort the other. Finn very clearly loves Steffy and wants to make things work, but every single time they start getting close again, he's triggered. Instead of some big blowup, or one of them banging someone else in a weak moment, let's see them actually discuss how this just isn't working for either of them, because it's too painful. Or, you know, they'll just give us Steffy's third WTD storyline.

I agree that SC and JMW have really good friend chemistry. Whenever one of them starts getting romantic inclinations towards each other, though, their chemistry dies. What I'd love to see now, and I think their friendship could survive it, would be for Steffy to just lay into him one time. Tell him that she realizes now that she was always his second choice. And his whole "I love you, it's always been you" bullshit now is simply, once again, his reaction to shit going south with Hope. Say she refuses to be his backup plan anymore, and that even if her marriage doesn't survive the current issues, she isn't going to go back to being his placeholder, because she knows now what it's like to be with a man who only loves her. Then the show can do some extensive searching for someone who has good chemistry with SC. When they have their actress, have Liam start volunteering at a dog rescue, or something similar, and meet a new woman there who he has things in common with. I still think both KM and AN had the best chemistry with Darrin Brooks (even though AN didn't get romantic scenes with him). And when AN started as Hope, she and SC had really good chemistry, but the writing has killed it over time.

Yeah, that's pretty par for the course with this show. Right up there with Brooke not realizing that Oliver wasn't Ridge. Also, let's see Zende on the other side of that situation, and see how completely consensual he thinks it is. I was thinking like an angry sex thing, since they've been getting a bit pissy with each other. And I can see Poppy then holding it over Zende's head to keep him from ever telling RJ (or anyone else) about his night with Luna. Because "even if you break RJ and Luna up, if I tell her we had sex, she'd never get involved with you."

If it happens, I'm thinking it's going to be one night stand kind of thing that just happens, not some intentional "I want this" thing on either part.

Good God, make it stop. Just tell him already. And if he hears all the details of how it happened and still blames you, dump his ass hard. Ridge becoming this big Thope cheerleader makes me feel like he just wants Hope to stay with Thomas so Thomas will stay sane. Is anyone going to try to get the man some help, maybe some grief counseling? Or is it just going to be Li demanding he get over it and Steffy's family all shoving Liam in her path so she doesn't have to deal with her husband's complex emotions over all of this? I was just saying in the episode thread that Bill's side of his relationship with Poppy seems largely about Luna. Either the show is flip-flopping on what they want to do re: who her father is, or they're working on something I can't quite figure out yet with Luna and Bill. And, Hope, I'm no Thope fan, but part of what you're doing here is allegedly about you taking the reins in your life. That should include being a big girl and telling mommy that you're not going to keep having this conversation. Ridge, dude. You do not need to encourage him to be any more aggressive or intense about Hope. Have you considered the fallout if he gets bolder and it doesn't go as he hopes? And does anyone not think he's going to take a page from dad's book and that gown is going to be a wedding gown? Sure, that sounds like a solid way to keep that promise to not push the engagement on her. And, seriously, where are they heading with this Bill/Luna thing?

I was cracking up at Finn's dream. But, yeah, that marriage is dead. He's not going to be able to get over his deep down feeling that Steffy took some kind of glee in killing Sheila. And Zende and Poppy are definitely going to sleep together. If not, the show is wasting that chemistry. He has no chemistry with Luna, and the Bill and Poppy scenes go back and forth between embarrassing (I'm looking at you, Poppy dancing in the middle of the restaurant), and him being focused on telling her how great Luna is.

They spend so much time together that I'd swear it was a chem test. I'm predicting some drunken hookup when they're, once again, talking about keeping Luna quiet.

Agreed. Finn seems to be her current favorite, and she was perfectly content to leave him to die in an alley instead of calling for help for him.

Do you know how creepy and weird I would have found it if any of my cousins stopped in on their way to work to let me know how lucky they think I am to have a guy like my husband? Seriously, that is so fucking weird. Zende should start hanging out with Liam. They're basically the same guy. And if you combine the two of them, you get one Thomas. And, seriously, Finn, either punch that waffle or have security haul him on out of there. What a tool.

Steffy has known for how long now that Finn has some complicated feelings about Sheila. Sure, he's sided with her on banning her, because he gets what a threat she is, but he still had feelings he was working through on all of that before this happened. It would seem pretty obvious that standing there next to Sheila's blood all over their floor would be something he's just not up to within hours of her death. Also, Steffy is hypersensitive about the word "killed." It's an accurate description. It was in self defense, but, yeah, she killed her. I can see being pissed off if Hope had said something like "I can imagine how hard it had to be to actually murder someone." But she didn't say that. And she was trying to empathize. Everything leading up to the "K" word was her talking about how awful and traumatic it all must have been. BTW, is anyone going to remember that this isn't Steffy's first kill? You'd think Steffy would, at some point, be like "I can't believe this is the second time this has happened to me."

When Steffy was saying how things are rough right now, but she's not giving up on her marriage, and she believes she and Finn could work through this, you just know Liam was thinking "but why would you do that when you have another choice you can just waffle over to? That's the beauty of having two options, you never have to deal with the hard stuff!" Finn just needs to start calling security any time Liam drops in on his office.

As someone who didn't see the whole Sugar storyline, I have to ask, would she really go along with that for Sheila, and, if so, why? Is Sugar basically the female version of Mike, with some weird devotion to Sheila that pushes her to do whatever Sheila wants?

Deacon had a quick line in there about Finn having arranged for him to get in and see her. Come on, Deacon, don't you want one more peek at that four toed foot for the road? Pull back the sheet! I can kind of buy that, if that's not Sheila, the toes might not tip off anyone in the morgue, since I doubt she had any official medical records showing it. Yes, people know, but if it's not in her medical records, it might just skate by since having 10 toes isn't remarkable ordinarily. So, if nobody who knows about her toe thinks to ask about it or check the autopsy, then it will go unnoticed. Liam is basically the same as Thomas now. He even went into that low, slow soothing tone for a short moment there while he was assuring Steffy that he'd always be there. I can get why Sheila is beyond a sore spot for Li and all, but does nobody understand that the more they keep throwing "bitch deserved to die!!!" at Finn, the more messed up he's going to be over all of this, and the longer it's going to take for him to reconcile it all for himself?

I'm assuming it's going to come back up now that we've got Hope being the only person sympathizing with Finn and she and Thomas will naturally be on opposite sides of the Finn/Steffy conflict that's building up. I'm guessing that the two of them will become closer, so he'll start worrying more about her being with Thomas, especially if he's no longer with Steffy, so he won't feel a need to listen to her "you have to believe my brother is OK" crap. And since Hope doesn't have the baggage with him that she has with her waffling ex, she might be more inclined to listen to Finn.

"I've never seen anyone work so hard to change." Well, we know where Hope gets it, don't we? Speaking of Hope, I thought she was a good friend to Finn today. He needs someone to listen to him without judgement, and she's pretty much as close to a neutral party as he's going to get, even with her issues with Sheila. I admit, I laughed at Finn not being able to kiss Steffy. Oh, Finn, Liam is going to hightail it over there, and he'll lay his naked ass right on that bloodstain and let your wife ride him. Everything we've seen on screen tells us that it will be subpar sex, but, well, clearly Steffy has never had a problem with his, um, limitations. Ridge, again, you can be technically right about something but still be an entire bag of dicks. Stop telling people who cared about Sheila that she was an animal who deserved to be put down, will ya'?

This week's spoilers. I honestly forgot about RJ/Luna/Xende until I saw them mentioned on Friday's spoilers. I'm still thinking we somehow end up with a Zende/Poppy one night stand (or more).

It's pretty soap opera standard to "kill" a villain for a while once they've outstayed their welcome or if it will facilitate more story. Then, eventually, they bring them back from the dead down the road when they've got a new story idea for them. So my guess is that Sheila isn't really dead, but she is gone for the foreseeable future. So, KB is saying goodbye to Sheila, but she may say hello to her at some point either here or on Y&R.