KerleyQ

Seriously. Luna has not had anyone talk to her about all of this who was almost entirely focused on what she's experienced before this conversation. Her mother was dealing with her guilt over her mints and wanting to fix that by advising her. Zende is basically just trying to figure out if there's a way he can turn this into a relationship with her. RJ is dealing with how it makes him feel and his anger with Zende. And Luna, herself, has been focused on the effect it has on RJ. It was nice to see Brooke, even though she's RJ's mother, putting most of the focus on Luna and helping her deal with what happened to her.

Yeesh, it took Deacon long enough to get to showing Finn a picture of Sugar. I was sitting here yelling at my TV "just show him the article about her that has her picture in it!" You know it's a insane, hard to believe story, show him the one solid piece of evidence you have to back up the insanity. Brooke: "Hmm, well, RJ asked me not to tell Ridge about Luna and Zende. Let me throw this Deacon "ten toes!" story at him to occupy his attention." I gagged at her and Ridge talking about how Ridge was such a great father to Hope. Well, you know, except for when his bitchass daughter has decided to ruin Hope's relationships. Then Ridge has got to kiss her princess ass and act like Hope is a villain for not wanting his bitchass daughter to ruin her relationships. I hope Finn gets fully on board with helping Deacon, solely because I want to see Steffy's face crack when he tells her he's going on a detective mission with Deacon to find Sheila. Oh, and of course Steffy was only being halfway decent to Hope because she wants her to shut down the Finn/Deacon conversations and keep Finn from being convinced Sheila could be alive.

I was laughing all through Carter lecturing Zende about betraying RJ by sleeping with Luna. Hey, Carter? Remember Quinn? (They were absolutely hot and all, but Carter is one of the worst people to be criticizing in this scenario). I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I thought that the guy who plays RJ did a pretty good job today. When he walked into the office and saw Luna, you could actually see him kind of instantly light up to see her. It's the first time I've thought RJ legitimately looked like he's in love with her. And he was better in his scenes with her today than he normally is. Maybe that kind of more quiet scene is what he's best at? All the loud, yell-y scenes he's done the past few days were cringeworthy, but these quiet scenes were kind of, dare I say, good. This legitimately may have been his best episode. Everything Steffy/Hope/Finn felt very anvil-like today. And not at all subtle. You had Steffy gloating in front of Finn (again) about Sheila being dead and gone. You had Finn not telling Steffy about Deacon's text. And then you had Hope telling Steffy how lucky she is to have such a great husband and father in Finn, especially with how loyal he is. It was like Steffy could sense the anvils, too, because she seemed to have a moment there where she was debating warning Hope off of her husband.

Well, there's one question (of many) answered about the logistics of the whole Sugar thing - Sugar isn't in prison anymore. Nice to see Brooke, even while still worrying about RJ, placing a premium on how Luna must feel in all of this. Not even Luna has centered herself in this whole thing.

I'm assuming Sugar didn't cut off a toe, since the corpse had "ten toes!" But you'd think it would be easy enough for Sheila to at least raise some doubt with the prison (if Sugar did manage to swap places with her and leave her locked up) by showing them her missing toe (that's obviously healed and not a fresh cut).

I just kept thinking "as far as you know" whenever Lauren mentioned her being locked up. Knowing soap writing, I'm going to assume that she escaped and, somehow, it didn't get publicized. But, it just occurred to me, and this might solve both my and your issues with this, maybe Sheila had been going to visit Sugar in prison when she told Deacon she was visiting someone from her past. And, somehow, on her last visit, the day that Steffy killed who she thought was Sheila, Sugar managed to swap places with Sheila. I know that's not something that happens, but it's a soap, so... My issue with that, though, is how did Sugar know to go after Steffy? And why? I'm pretty sure that was actually Sheila who Steffy confronted earlier at Deacon's apartment. If I recall correctly, she went out after that, and Deacon said she had been taking off regularly to go meet with this person from her past. So, if Sugar pulled off a switch, it would have been after Steffy confronted Sheila at Deacon's, but before Steffy killed her. If she was planning on just taking over Sheila's life, why go after Steffy and call attention to herself like that? If she'd killed Steffy, Sheila would have been the first, and only, suspect. So if she was living as Sheila, that would throw her right back into prison as Sheila for killing Steffy. Or, her switcheroo would be discovered, Sheila would be released, and Sugar would still end up being charged for killing Steffy. Why not just leave Sheila in prison in her place, go break up with Deacon, and then head off into the sunset to live free? And I've officially probably given this more thought than they have.

The best case scenario for the Sheila's not dead storyline is that Deacon, while he's talking to people and trying to put the pieces together also puts together the pieces of how awful she is. He seemed to have a bit of a moment there with Lauren, even admitting that he's not sure why he fell for her. I guess when she's not there to call him "daddy" and literally fuck him stupid, he has some sense and distance. I feel like it's a bit of an anvil that we've had two episodes' worth of them juxtaposing Liam/Steffy scenes with Hope/Finn scenes. I don't want any more Sheila, we had more than enough of her over the past couple years. But, at the same time, after listening to Steffy go on and on and on and on (and on and on and on) about how she knows she killed her, and bitching about Deacon, I am going to enjoy the eventual moment of her having to eat crow when Sheila's alive and well and in her face. I'm still confused about the idea that Sugar must have kidnapped Sheila. I can't imagine that Deacon and Sheila ever skipped a day of sex. And they were living together. He would have noticed if the woman he was with had ten toes ("ten toes!"). And we know Sheila was going off for meetings that she said were with someone from her past. So, was she meeting up with Sugar multiple times and Sugar just kept letting her go home, risking her turning the tables on her plan? And then one day she pulled the trigger, kidnapped Sheila and hustled over to Steffy's house? I said I want the reveal to see Steffy eat crow, but I don't want the reveal to lead to "poor victim Sheila" who Finn and Deacon are going to be falling all over themselves to pity. The only person I would have found it impossible to believe would write off the possibility of her still being alive is Lauren. She would have to be dumbed down to an insane degree to not consider the possibility that Sheila had faked her death, given all of their history. When it looked like she was ready to walk out and not hear Deacon out last week, I was ready to throw things. Thankfully, she shook that off and actually listened.

I hate to defend any aspect of this mess, but didn't RJ and Luna only have sex one time before this? Or maybe a couple? And she was a virgin before that. So, I can kind of see her not being fully knowledgeable about all of RJ's moves. Especially when you add in that she was impaired. RJ is the only person in this storyline who has the proper reaction. Yes, Zende took advantage. He knew Luna did not want him. They literally just talked about it yet again. He knew she was in love with RJ and not interested in being with anyone else. And if someone is drugged enough to have hallucinations, you can tell something is off with them. Zende just wanted to have sex with Luna, and he put that above making sure she was all in with him there. And Poppy. Ugh. She's so focused on her guilt over the "mints" that she isn't even focusing on what actually happened to her daughter. She's more worried about her potentially losing RJ than she is about the fact that her daughter was drugged and then had sex with someone who she wasn't in the right state to consent to. Then, of course, you have Zende who, upon finding out that Luna thought he was RJ, didn't launch into any concern for her well-being, but, instead, kept reiterating to her that "it was consensual." Luna, I can kind of partially understand. She doesn't want to see herself as a victim, and she's so focused on feeling guilty for "betraying" RJ that she can't delve any deeper into it. Then there's her misguided fear of damaging RJ and Zende's relationship as cousins. Focusing on making it all OK for everyone else isn't an uncommon reaction. I'm not really sure what the writers were going for with the Hope/Liam scenes. I don't know if the writers fully knew what they were doing. It's like they don't want to completely toss the Hope/Thomas relationship out, but MA is gone for some length of time, so they are treading water. All I got out of it was that Hope wonders if Finn was right, that she went after Thomas out of some reaction to something, because she spent all of her life not wanting to be like her mother, but finally tried to break free of that? She says she feels certain her feelings for him were real, though. But, she's also seemingly setting her love life aside to focus on work and being a mom. That part was a really refreshing turn for Hope, who has always been focused on love. Almost as refreshing as Liam deciding to back away from the waffle iron and focus on being a dad.

I think the show would be smart to leave her offscreen for a while, at least six months or so. Have Hope and Finn convince Deacon that he was imagining things. Have him believe that it happened so fast, and he's become so used to her nine toes, that her feet just looked normal to him. (Obviously, we all saw the ten toes, too, but since him being confused about what he saw is way more logical than that not being Sheila, I could see him eventually becoming convinced of that, as time passes and there's no sign of Sheila). Or, if not that, spend the next few months with Deacon looking into various leads, and then he takes off for a few months, telling Hope he's just going on a trip to clear his head and deal with his grief. Eventually, he comes back with Sheila. Whatever it is, I just really hope they don't make her into some kind of victim, complete with some people feeling like they need to cut her a break after whatever ordeal she's been through. We know Ridge and Steffy never will, but Finn, Hope, maybe even Eric?

Where does Steffy get off making any demands of Deacon? There's a reason other than the one she's repeated over and over to everyone?

But she still was regularly meeting up with her. Which is where I can't get my mind around the idea of Sheila being a victim. Yes, she definitely did not want anything to do with her at first (unless those are fake texts she planted on her account), but she came around at some point, enough to keep meeting with her. I still think they were both outside Steffy's house that night, and Sheila is the one who said that Steffy was going to die that night. Maybe Sugar went in as the distraction so Sheila could sneak in and finish Steffy off. But that plan went to hell when Steffy killed Sugar, and Sheila took off. Now she's hiding somewhere regrouping and trying to figure out how to make this all work for her.

If Sugar kidnapped Sheila, why would she have gone to attack Steffy? I still think that's the person from her past Sheila was regularly meeting with, and she conned her into helping her. If Sugar did kidnap her and switch places, it would have had to have been really, really recent, because I doubt Deacon and Sheila went more than a half day at a time without sex. He'd have noticed it wasn't her if she was there for more than a day. So, Sugar would have been taking a huge risk to be meeting with Sheila multiple times without kidnapping her. My theory is that Sheila was initially upset to hear from her and wanted her to stay away, but they still met up at some point (maybe Sugar showed up somewhere and surprised her), and whatever her concerns were about Sugar vanished. I like the theory that she had some kind of fatal illness and Sheila talked her into some insane plan. RJ certainly didn't make it easy for Luna to tell him what's going on. Dude, stop interrupting and trying to guess what she's going to tell you.

The only explanation is grief clouding his judgement. I know he's reformed and all, but he still knows how to scheme. If that wasn't Sheila, he should know it's because she is pulling something off. Why alert her enemies to that fact? (Not that I'm rooting for Sheila, because I'm not, but it's a serious mistake on his part.)

I can't remember where now, but I read something recently about how the helicopter parents are being replaced these days by snowplow parents who, instead of hovering over them, are out in front moving every obstacle out of their child's way, so that they don't have to deal with overcoming them on their own. So, basically, instead of micromanaging the kid, like helicopter parents do, they're micromanaging everything and everybody around the kid.

"That girl's tough as nails." Oh, really? Steffy's super strong? OK, then, Ridge, riddle me this - if Steffy is, indeed, tough as nails, why does she need her snowplow parents to come riding to the rescue to paper over any loss or disappointment? Steffy cheats on her husband and ends up losing him? Mommy and daddy accuse her affair partner of raping her, mommy shoots him, and mommy goes out and buys her a black market baby to make her feel better. Steffy's husband is believed dead? Mommy tries to secure her another woman's husband to fill in so that she doesn't have to go without attention or a penis. Steffy kills her husband's birth mother in self defense? Everyone who had an iota of care for her, or for the people who cared for her, should just shut it down, because everyone must rally around Princess Steffy at all costs. It gives her the sads to know that anyone is mourning Sheila. That's not exactly how "tough as nails" works, Ridge. And going over to Deacon to rip him for mourning someone he loved, and to take joy in rubbing her death ("she had to be put down") in his face? Such a dick move. Hey, Ridge, Deacon saved your bitchass daughter's life once. So back the fuck off on how his grief is a problem for her. He gets to mourn for Sheila, even if the knowledge that anyone in the universe is mourning her bothers your little princess. "Zende has learned so much from Thomas." Yeah, and not just about designing. Creeper. I cackled when Finn told Steffy that Deacon thinks Sheila is still alive. Steffy has no chill when it comes to her paranoia about Sheila. She's going to go right off that deep end with Deacon. I'm guessing that, once Liam gets a load of this, he's going to give up on his whole "I'm backing off on love and just focusing on being a good dad" thing in about 0.10 seconds.

That's what I think every time he pulls the "Kelly forgot this" routine. He's pulling shit out of her bag before she leaves.

Luna For Last Night? That special fashion statement for when you still want to feel kind of virginal, but you've also slept with your boyfriend and, accidentally, with his cousin. A message all the young women will relate to. Did they direct the guy who plays Zende to go with that serial killer thousand yard stare when Hope said Luna would be working with him? Or was that just his choice? I let out a loud snort laugh when Finn thanked Steffi for being so patient and understanding. Yeah, she's super patient and understanding. I want the writers to fake us all out and have it turn out that Deacon is just having some kind of grief breakdown. That the body that went into the crematorium did only have 9 toes, and what we saw was his hallucination. Better than Sheila being right back on screen soon. And definitely better than subjecting us to more of that "love story." Just let it be that Deacon has been under a lot of stress between working with Ridge, Bill, and the FBI to turn Sheila in, helping her get off, having to justify his relationship with her to everyone, etc, and it's affecting him now. On a related note, I missed what the morgue guy answered when Deacon was grilling him about the toes. Did he say the body had 10 toes when he got to it?

I kind of want Hope to say something to Steffy like "I'm trying not to focus on my anger with you over all of this. Finn and I had a long talk about it, and I told him I'd try." Because you know that would get way under her skin.

And then how long after that will it take him to mentally handwave it and still insist that she's a different woman now?

I feel like Liam and Steffy having to sit together and watch Finn and Hope have a happy life is exactly what they deserve. Because I don't think either one of them will be fully happy. They'll both be jealous, and it will be in their faces all the time, because, between the four of them, there are three kids with ties across both couples (four if Douglas comes home). So they're going to have to see each other a lot. (Oh, and I'd put solid money on Finn wanting to maintain a relationship with his former stepdaughter than Liam puts into maintaining any kind of bond with his former stepson.) That's what's kind of been wiggling around in my mind, too. Sheila found out she was dying, or maybe Sugar even reached out to her to get some closure or something when she found out she was dying. Then Sheila sold her a sob story about her son, probably portraying it like Jack and Li all but stole him from her womb, and then, wouldn't you know it, her son ended up married to someone who hates her ('and for no good reason! She's stuck on ancient history. I'm different now!") and his wife won't let him spend any time with him or her beloved grandson. So, if Sugar could just help her get Steffy out of the way, Sheila's happy family can be reunited.

Wouldn't Deacon have noticed if he was with a Sheila with 10 toes?

Steffy also has a dash of her grandmother in her. Particularly a dash of that borderline incestuous overinvolvement in her family's love lives.

Least surprising "surprise" ever. I've been waiting for a shot of that dead woman's 10 toes ever since Steffy stabbed her. SK was really great today, but I could have done without the "call me daddy" reference. It was probably the most cringeworthy element of their "love story." They're definitely going to do Finn/Hope. I oddly look forward to finding out exactly how bad the actor who plays RJ is going to be in the scenes where Luna finally tells him what happened. The preview was already kind of funny. And the writing is so hokey. "We'd like you to work closely with Zende. We're sure he's got some secrets he can pass along."

But how are we going to know that Hope is a character who enjoys hot sex now if we don't see side boob?

I'm not spoiling this, since it has no actual information, but one of the writers (I think that's who it was, anyway) tweeted out last night to make sure you stay tuned for the last ten seconds of today's show. Just about every reply to the tweet was some variation of "we all know Sheila's alive. This isn't going to be a shock." My favorite was "ten seconds? So one second per toe?"