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I keep waiting for any kind of hint that she still exists. Did she really just pop up to kiss Liam, have lunch, and make Steffy jealous? What was the point, since the jealousy didn't move the storyline even an inch?

I'll be genuinely shocked if it's anyone but Tom.

This. Whenever Steffy fixes her mouth to imply Hope is a slut, how is her immediate response not "which one of us needed paternity tests for both of her pregnancies?" And when she said Brooke ran through her whole family, how is the response not "like you ran through the entire Spencer family?" Yeah, sure Steffy can be a hypocrite, but it's maddening when nobody is allowed to ever point out the hypocrisies.

For a while there, it seemed like she actually wanted him, back when she was getting all squirrelly whenever Nina asked her about helping her get Sonny back. But then that kind of faded away, and then it just wasn't clear what the fuck she wants. The best I can make out now, she wanted to use being close to him for that second hand hit of power, or something, because even after she stopped making heart eyes at him, she was certainly enjoying being lady of the manor. But now she just seems like she's scrambling to survive and not lose her daughter, without any real plan.

That happened after he had already decided Ava was the only person he trusted. Jason wasn't known to be alive again until after that meeting where he stopped the guy from shooting Sonny. And Ava was at that meeting with Sonny because he only trusted her. So, if being betrayed by the two people he was closest to was what caused him to get so close to Ava, the timing doesn't fit for it to be Jason or be about Jason's return and working for the FBI. But, he did start shutting people out when he found out the full story of Carly and Michael (for different reasons) paying Dex to work with him.

Thinking about this, I gave myself a new fear for the show - Tom is killed and everyone, including Deacon, assumes Sheila did it because, well, Sheila. But, really, Poppy did it. And once the truth comes out, everyone has to apologize to poor misunderstood Sheila for accusing her and doubting that she's changed.

What, exactly, does Carly think she's going to accomplish if she goes and turns herself in? Jason is back in town. His family all know he's alive. He can see his kids now. Carly getting her dumb ass thrown in prison and being away from her own kids isn't going to mitigate what happened with Jason and his kids. Danny and Jake aren't magically going to get back some portion of the past two years if Carly goes to prison now. All she'd be doing is spitting in the face of everything Jason did and gave up for her. I mean, I'm all for her finally paying for her own crimes instead of letting everyone else fall all over themselves to bail her out or take the fall for her, but this makes absolutely no sense. When is Natalia going to show her homophobic side to Sonny? I half expected, when they were talking about the people close to them betraying them, her to talk about how her daughter has betrayed her by not being straight. God knows that's what she actually thinks. Also, this has been dragging on so long that, when he talked about the two people closest to him betraying him, I honestly could not figure out for a little while what he was talking about. When I think of the two people closest to him, I think Jason and Carly, but that didn't make sense with the timeline of him taking Ava in and trusting her above everyone else. Because Jason and Carly getting married was way before that, and Jason wasn't back from the dead yet when he was already in deep trusting Ava. I finally figured out he must have been talking about Michael and Carly with the whole Dex thing, I guess? Natalia, for one, will be thrilled if Kristina decides she needs to try to keep the baby down the road. Blaze would be out of there so fast. You could tell she was panicky as soon as Kristina mentioned taking some time off after the birth. If Kristina actually does decide to keep the baby, the next thing she'll see will be a Blaze shaped hole in the wall of her apartment.

Even just from the time I've been watching, Steffy has more than 3. She slept with all three Spencer men and Finn. I wasn't watching when she was with Marcus or Rick, did she sleep with either of them? I had the impression she was not a virgin when she was going after Liam, so I've always assumed she slept with at least one of Rick or Marcus. I wish that, when Steffy calls her "Brooke 2.0," Hope would just say "thank you! I love my mother, and she's 100 times the woman you'll ever be." And when she had her line about how Brooke "ran through our family and tore it apart," Hope absolutely should have responded with "you mean like you ran through the Spencer family and tore them apart? Remember when you weren't sure if Kelly was Liam's or his father's?" Why is nobody ever allowed to throw Steffy's shit in her face like she does with everyone else? I was really hoping that Finn would show up and overhear exactly what a nasty viper his wife is to Hope. And yet another episode ends without Hope getting to take her son home and spend some time with him. She should have noped out of even one second of Steffy's bullshit to go get her son and go home. Steffy really takes being exactly like Granny seriously, and that includes her incestuous vibe. God help whoever Hayes dates when he's older. Especially if it's Beth. No matter how much Steffy may have loved Beth when she had her, she'll just be another unworthy Logan woman when she's grown up. I'm predicting that Bill will have officially adopted her before it comes out that she isn't really his. At that point, the two of them will probably continue on with their father/daughter relationship, and Poppy will eventually be out of the picture. I'm kind of surprised we didn't see Sheila overhearing Tom and Poppy talking about Luna. Then we'd see her threatening his daughter's safety to keep him in line. And God knows she'd love to have something to hurt Bill with.

I just have this vision of TJ, any time any tiny thing goes wrong, blaming the baby's Sonny genes. Baby spits up on his nice shirt, "I knew it was a bad idea having a baby with Sonny's DNA!"

Seriously. She should have just walked right out of that office the second Steffy walked in.

I laughed at how indignant Sam was that Dante was upset about her stupidly committing a crime. Like he said, Sam, you're making him an accessory to your crime. That endangers his job and his freedom. And if you both go to jail, who takes care of all of your kids? They all go to the Q Home For Abandoned Children? Laura can take on Rocco along with Ace? Maybe if Valentin gets his dumb ass sent to prison, Laura can add Charlotte to her roster, too? All of the kids in Port Charles who aren't Liz's or Maxie's kids will be divided up between the Q house and Laura's apartment? Maybe Laura and Tracy can hold a draft and pick who they each get. And, honestly, Sam, I know it's been a handful of years or so, but don't you remember when you were doing time and were so desperate to get out and be with your children? Do you want a repeat of that so badly that you helped Spinelli pick pocket an FBI agent and encouraged him to hack into the FBI system? I'm in love with the tour of people telling Carly she's a dumbass. More, please! The Finn/Violet scenes were so well done and completely heartbreaking. I'm guessing that once Finn is done with rehab, he'll sign on with Doctors Without Borders for a while. That has to be the reason he was referencing his time with them recently. And this show loves to write a parent out to go do charity work and forget about their own kids. I hope that the show takes the opportunity of all these changes and loss in Violet's life to mature the kid up from the precocious kindergartner persona they've had her stuck in for years to something more like her actual age. Jophielle can actually act, but the way they've written her has been so obnoxious. Is the show just forgetting that Sonny was on the wrong med dose and off the rails? I mean, Sonny's baseline even while medicated is slightly off the rails, so he's not all calm and collected now, but he hasn't seemed nearly as short-tempered and hostile eve since shortly after the wedding scenes. Also, I'm kind of rooting for Carly to get together with Brennan. Not because I ship that or anything, but because I want her to hitch her wagon to another criminal and really embrace that that's who she is. And I don't want her to end up with Jason because I feel like that would be rewarding Carly for decades of being the absolute fucking worst. And I don't want her with Jagger because I want to be able to like him. The translation of Diane saying she knows not to ask was basically "I know it was Spinelli, because I'm not an idiot. And because I'm not an idiot, I'm not going to allow who it was to be said out loud."

This episode largely felt like filler. Steffy is just the most insufferable character. I think I hate her more than Sheila. And I really hate Shela. At least people are allowed to call Sheila on her shit and say what she is regularly. The only pushback Steffy ever gets is being accused of making everything about her Forresters vs. Logans bullshit. And even that can only be uttered every now and then, and Steffy is allowed to gaslight away in response. I want Hope to try to slap her again, and, if Steffy grabs her hand to stop her, she can sweep the leg, in a cute nod to her father's Karate Kid work. I got rage-y when Paris said she was going to go get Douglas and get him some food. He has a mother who hasn't seen him for months. I think she can leave Princess SuperBitch's 10,856th lecture to stay away from whatever man Steffy has her undies in a wad over, to go get dinner with her son. Who is this man, and what has he done with Ridge?? On a shallow note, I cannot believe that the same people responsible for Hope's wardrobe are also responsible for the disasters that keep appearing on Steffy.

This is where I am with this story now. Before they introduced Poppy and Tom having some kind of history, I was convinced Li fucked with the test because she feared it was Jack or Finn, but now it's looking like Tom is involved in that somehow, so, yeah, probably a false positive. Also, they have clearly changed direction on this story for some reason. They set everything up to make it seem like it was Finn or Jack. We had Finn recalling how Poppy lived with them when he was college age, which lined up with the timing for her to get pregnant. We had her being so afraid to say who the father was. And we had Li's over the top hatred of Poppy along with her not even wanting Luna in town or around Finn. At some point, they seem to have decided to change gears. Maybe when they decided to do Hope/Finn, they didn't want him to be in two front burner storylines at once, or something. So they hurried up and did the Bill/Poppy/Luna happy family and tied Tom into it. I am so waiting for the first time they hook up and Steffy finds out about it. I'm happy to find that, based on their recent scenes and Hope's fantasy scenes, I actually like them together and think they have chemistry, but Steffy losing her perfect husband to Hope already had me invested in the first place.

As soon as I was relieved that we were done with Hope begging the psycho, in sweeps Princess SuperBitch to gloat and be a general asshole. Yes, Steffy, Hope thought a kiss on the cheek was going to ensnare Thomas in her evil lair. I really want Hope to just be done with Thomas, because he's showing her who he really is. Being married, to anyone, was more important to him than building a relationship with her. "I thought if I just kept asking..." Asshole, the one thing she specifically and clearly requested of you was to not keep asking, to let her have some time to process her divorce and get to a place where she was ready to get married again. Why would you think that asking over and over again was the way to go when she was so fucking clear that it was not? Just shows that Thomas never valued Hope as her own person. She was just the object of his obsession that he had to have, no matter what. And now he's pissed off at her because she dared to have her own feelings about things, so he's marrying the next woman he came across. When Paris was going on to Ridge and Steffy about how she knows she and Thomas are real and are going to move forward and be together forever, blah blah blah, I was wondering if Ridge was flashing back to him and Bill playing Statler and Waldorf at her disastrous non-wedding to Carter. So, Tom was a popular musician before he partied his career and good fortune away? Yeah, he was definitely at that music festival. Apparently Li is going to be right about her sister looking for rich men to suck dry. Makes you wonder if she knew who Bill was when they hooked up. Maybe she ditched Tom to hook up with Bill? Oh, and one more thing, why the hell did Hope not nail down Douglas spending a while with her at the cabin since he's been away with Thomas for months?

When he says "Paris and I have something special, too," that's not a one woman man. He's acknowledging that he feels something special for more than one woman. Just because he's engaged to one woman, doesn't mean he's a one woman man. Liam wasn't a one woman man when he was married. It doesn't make a difference. Which, again, is a sign that he is not a one woman man. He's engaged to one but isn't over his feelings for another. That's just a page right out of Waffle's playbook.

On the other hand, I think her feelings for Thomas were a reaction to years and years of never being Liam's one and only, along with having it drilled into her head that he was the only person who could save her line, so he was some kind of heroic figure. She just kept mentioning how much she loved having someone who loved her and only her. It was part of damn near every conversation she had with Thomas. It always felt so clear to me that she was working some shit out with him (along with having better sex than the Waffle ever gave her, apparently). I think Finn is actually the kind of guy she really wants. He's a devoted husband, and he's a genuinely nice and honest guy. Liam had the "nice guy" thing going for him but was a waffle. Thomas was devoted, but he's a psycho. And Thomas basically did the same thing to her that Liam did. Liam cheated on her with Steffy, waffled back and forth between them, and she kept taking him back, but the second she kissed Thomas, he just up and left, and suddenly Steffy was the one and only great love of his life. Thomas put Hope through hell of all kinds over the years. She kept giving him chances and then even got involved with him, which was what he has been saying he wants for years. But the moment she did something he didn't like and just asked him to be patient until she's ready for another marriage, he leaves town and immediately gets engaged to another woman. Both men had her up on this pedestal and expected her to put up with their shit, but the second she wobbled a little bit on that pedestal, they had to punish her, even though her wobble paled in comparison to all she's endured and forgiven from them. They're both toxic for her.

"Paris and I have something special, too." Welp, there goes the main draw for Hope when it comes to Thomas. How many times has she heard about the "something special" between Liam and Steffy? That should have snapped her right out of it. Him being "a one woman man" was his main appeal, and now that's no longer true. Thomas may be moving on, but he definitely enjoyed rubbing Hope's face in it a little. "I propose, and she said yes." It also highlights that it's clear he's just obsessed with being married. Douglas knows exactly what kind of man his father is. He knew he needed to reassure everyone that Thomas is actually into Paris and wants to marry her, or they'd all suspect he was using Paris to get Hope back. I can't buy for a second that Steffy knew Thomas was dating someone new and didn't stage a "he's so over you" parade past Hope's office and home and then give everyone the day off work to celebrate the occasion. "Thomas Has Moved On From Hope Day" would become an annual FC corporate holiday. And I laughed out loud when she fixed her mouth to tell Ridge "it wasn't my place to say anything." Since when has that even stopped her? I also laughed at her saying "Thomas decided to go to Paris." Like it wasn't entirely her idea. She practically packed his bags and flew him there herself. I appreciate that Ridge is not just jumping on board the happy engagement express here. He should have some concerns about this. Dare I say Ridge has been a decently better character recently? I wonder how long that will last. I think at least a part of Hope's anguish here is also that she saw Thomas walk in that office and thought that him being back for her would solve her crush on Finn. I don't think it's a coincidence that the timing works out that she's just spent days having her mother lecture her about how she needs to put an end to her feelings for Finn right as Thomas is returning. I think this is actually going to make her crush on Finn stronger. Especially because, unlike his wife, he's going to feel bad for Hope and want to be there to support her. And, yes, Paris referring to everyone else by their relationship to Douglas ("your father," "your aunt," and "your grandfather") but calling Hope by name to him was pretty obvious and a combination of bitchy and desperate. Also, for all of her saying she's confident he's over Hope and in love with her, and she's not insecure or threatened at all by Hope, she certainly had a nice bitchface going there when she told Steffy and Ridge that Thomas was talking to Hope. I wonder if this show is even going to remember that Paris and Hope were friends, or if she's just going to join Steffy's anti-Logan bitchy brigade.

Oh, hell no! Thomas is such a toxic parent. He used that child to try to lure Hope in, and made Hope his new mother because he thought it would help fulfill his own obsessive desires for her. Hope is established as his mother, legally and emotionally, and she has been ever since Caroline died. Now, because she told Thomas she wasn't quite ready to get married again, five minutes after her divorce, he's got Douglas calling someone he's been involved with for about two minutes "mom"? After taking their child out of the country for months with no warning, because he had his fee-fees hurt? This has parental alienation written all over it. Bill's "and nobody can take you away from me" was quite an anvil.

I saw some speculation (not a spoiler at all, just someone's guess on Twitter) that Tom used to be a wealthy man before he met Poppy and she's somehow responsible for him losing everything. That would certainly fit in if the picture of Poppy Li keeps painting for us is accurate.

Unless I blinked and missed it, I don't think they even involved him in the brief storyline where Emma's death was revisited.

That's what I was guessing. Or he was just someone who hung around where her dealer did business. But, I'm still going to cling to my "he's Luna's father" pipe dream, because I want the laugh. Definitely. We'll see exactly how much of her pushing Thomas to get out of town was about genuine concern for him, and really thinking Hope was bad for him vs. just being a way to score a "win" in her Forresters vs. Logans war. Because I'm guessing she won't hesitate to shove him at Hope and let him suffer all the pain she claims Hope causes him the second she thinks it will keep Finn and Hope apart. I think it's setting up him being pro-Hope/Finn while Brooke is more on Steffy's side, for some reason. Either that, or him being loving towards Hope will just be one more thing for Steffy to whine about in her eternal victim monologues. The only way it makes sense is if Li had reason to fear that Jack or Finn might be the real father. I could see her deciding that it would be better to fake Bill being the father than to find out it was one of them instead. It would be such a waste to have Thomas offscreen and out of the country for a while, setting up a perfect opportunity to rehab/reset the character a little bit, and then bring him back just to have him up to exactly the same old shenanigans he was pulling at his worst. Which means, of course, that's probably what they're doing with this story. It would be more interesting if he truly is in love with Paris, and realizes that his love for Hope was unhealthy obsession, but everyone in LA keeps accusing him of using Paris to make Hope jealous.

That's why Katie's whole "oh, we have to talk about Will" routine is bullshit. It's just her excuse to get over there every day. She's not worried about this all for Will's sake. She's worried about someone coming along who threatens her status as the alpha baby mama in Bill's orbit. Until show tells us otherwise, I'm going to amuse myself by speculating that Tom is really Luna's father. First up, in this episode, it was bad enough that Brooke brought up Hope's crush on Finn in the office again, but this time with the door wide open. Then, Deacon and Tom one-upped that by talking about Sheila with someone else in the room and then not even noticing when Sheila herself walked in. Time and place, people. Time and place. I actually think Thomas/Paris is kind of a good idea. They've both had crushes on each other at different points in time. And maybe the time away, after Hope turned him down again, was finally what he needed to get over his obsession with Hope. I will, however, be pissed if they start having Douglas push Hope away for his "new mommy." When Douglas first appeared in the doorway, I feared he was a Hope hallucination. I still think we're going to find out she has a tumor or something similar. I just hope that it doesn't lead to her just settling right back down with Liam, because everything that happened from the moment she started fantasizing about Thomas was because of the tumor. Also, it would be funny if the show remembers that Finn and Paris were friends, and they have him warning Paris about how dangerous Thomas is like he was with Hope. On the other end of the spectrum, I expect Steffy to be really fucking obnoxious to Hope about Thomas's engagement. She'll be gloating and talking about how Paris is going to be such a great sister-in-law, and how great Paris is with Douglas, etc, etc. Also, I think Ridge finding out Hope has a thing for Finn wouldn't be a big problem. I think he'd probably be happy to pass Finn away from Steffy and over to Hope.

Is Finn allowed to form his own opinions about anybody at all? Steffy loses all of her "she's got a point" credits about Sheila when she shuts down Finn's positive (or even just not negative) opinions on anyone she doesn't like. He can't even tell her "maybe working with Brooke won't be so bad"? She truly has to be one of the worst characters. It's not even like she's fun to hate. She's just a miserable controlling manipulative bitch who hasn't displayed a redeeming quality in I don't know how long. I dislike her more than I dislike Sheila, and I really dislike Sheila. Speaking of Sheila... That poor man thinks he's turning his life around, and he's going to end up being killed by that psycho, despite the fact that he helped Finn and Deacon find her. Brooke, you know what doesn't help someone forget their crush? Repeatedly bringing it up. And in the fucking office? Where eavesdropping is part of every employees' duties? After today's conversation between her and Hope, and putting it together with her headaches, I suspect we're going to find out that Hope has a tumor. But, the twist is going to be that, after she's cured, she still ahs feelings for Finn, and he'll have them for her, too by then. Maybe if Finn ropes his mom into helping him with Hope's case, Li will have something to do that doesn't involve jealous snarling at her sister. I'm embarrassed for Katie. Make it stop. She didn't spend that much time in that house when she lived there, for fuck's sake. And, this isn't exactly the first previously unknown child of Bill's that has turned up. I think Will can handle the shock and doesn't need so much fretting over how he'll take it. Also, it's weird for Bill to even be concerned over whether Katie is hurt by all of this. His night with Poppy was way before he married Katie. And he didn't know about Luna until well after he and Katie were divorced. Nothing in any of this is something that was done to her.

If Li wasn't so busy getting in her daily "you're a gold digger" shots at her sister, I'd be waiting for Li to start calling him this, too. Li calling her son "Steffy's Husband" would be even more fun than when Taylor was sleeping with Eric, so Steffy and Thomas started calling him Eric instead of Grandpa.

First, I just want to say that I'm not shitting all over adoptive families. I would never. If someone told any of my adopted relatives that they weren't really family, I'd be all over them. But, Steffy wants it both ways. She wants to, along with Thomas and Ridge (and even Taylor at times) be considered "real Forresters" and talk about how this company is in their blood. But, Brooke and Hope are part of the family, too. And they've both spent most of their adult lives working for the company, just like Steffy has. So, if Steffy wants to play that "real Forresters" card all the time, while insinuating that those who are in the Forrester family by marriage, not blood, are not "real Forresters," then she needs to look in the mirror. Brooke is the mother of two of Eric's children and one of Ridge's. She's Ridge's partner (I don't believe they've remarried yet). Ridge helped to raise Hope. Hope is the mother of one of Ridge's grandsons. Steffy likes to pat herself on the back for blending her family with Hope's, when it suits her (and because she wants access to Beth), but Hope and her mother are poisonous outsiders whenever it fits her mood. And if we hold them all to the "what have you done for the company lately" standard, what has Steffy done as co-CEO? Overseen one of the company's most successful lines faltering twice*? It seems like all of the company's recent successes (HFTF, and the fashion showdown) have been due to other people (Hope, Thomas, Ridge, Eric). None of them were even her idea. She has a history of making decisions based on personal feelings. She does things like complain about Ridge calling another meeting, because she is way too busy for that. But, at the same time, when Hope was going to go back to work until everyone was ready for the meeting to start, Steffy ordered her back so she could lecture her about a personal matter from her power position in the office, on company time, when Steffy is supposedly too busy for a meeting. (Not to mention her earlier meeting, again during work, where she ranted at Brooke to keep Hope away from her husband). Now, she has the co-CEO and the COO (and Eric would probably side with them if he was there) saying that they think Brooke stepping in is a good idea for the company, and Steffy wants to argue against it not for business reasons, but for personal reasons. She's made it very clear in the meeting about this that her reasons for opposing Brooke are part of her Forresters vs. Logans crap. *Both of those times have been because Steffy (and Ridge for one of the incidents) allowed personal issues regarding her psycho brother to seep into the company. I love that Ridge shut her bullshit down, and that Brooke accepted the job.