KerleyQ

I haven't watched today's show yet, but if that's what they're saying Eric has, then, yeah, while it's a scary time when it first occurs, it's definitely not a death sentence. My mom had her first attack (for lack of a better term) about 10 years ago. And that immediate time was a dangerous time, while she was getting diagnosed and then her meds were being figured out. But, now, she's fine. She's on blood thinners, and she still has tremors, but she's living a perfectly normal, healthy life. Of course, this is a soap, so I expect Eric's ride with this won't be nearly as smooth.

I thought Dickie told her that "they're willing to wait for you," meaning she could finish the musical.

I am fully expecting Scott Bakula to be a suspect at some point next season. Bonus points if he lives in the celebrity guest star apartment. When we first saw Donna and Cliff at the start of the season, I suspected one of them would be the killer. Then I got distracted by the theory that Ben was Loretta's son and a twin (or triplet). Once it was clear Dickie was Loretta's son, I went back to Donna and Cliff. And, by last week, I was pretty convinced Donna was the poisoner and Cliff the pusher. I was a little off on Cliff's part, though. I figured that Ben confronted him, since he was the one who brought him the cookie, thinking he poisoned him, but Cliff realized his mother did it, and he pushed Ben to protect her. Instead, he was just tired of the way Ben treated him. I knew Donna was going to use that reprieve they gave her to tell Cliff what was going on, so he'd have a chance to hide. One last attempt to protect him. the show really stuck to the whole maternal love theme for every storyline, including the musical. But, it still managed to be moving and not too cheesy. Credit to Meryl Streep for playing Loretta as kind of shady and "off" for most of the season, and then seamlessly switching to a light, happy turn once Loretta was cleared. And her reunion with Dickie was touching and well done. The show really nailed the casting this season. Meryl was flawless, and Paul Rudd, I think, made Ben way more than he could have been. Uma and Matthew Broderick being there to hate watch the show was a great comedic touch. My theory about what Sazz was there to tell Charles is that Jan is out of prison. That seems, to me, to be the most likely personal issue she'd be coming to him about, considering her relationship with Jan. (Although my son's immediate reaction, before the Bakula text from Joy came through, was "is she there to tell him she's dating Joy now?") So I'm guessing that they'll find out some time next season that Jan is out (or maybe Sazz did tell him before she went to find the Malbec), and she'll be their main suspect, but not the actual killer. I also had an initial fear that Charles will be a suspect, since Oliver and Mabel didn't know where he was for a short time, but it would seem unlikely that he had enough time to get mad at Sazz, leave the building, go across the street, get up high enough to take out someone in his apartment, and take her out. Oh, yeah, and get his hands on a sniper rifle. If he is a suspect at first, that won't last long. It's just too implausible. But Sazz having been there to give him potential bad news could give just a tiny bit of suspicion. Or maybe just Jan accuses Charles of killing Sazz out of jealousy.

Right, but that would have taken one, maybe two days of taping for him. Even if they carry on that storyline in the commercials, he's looking at, at most, a few days of work for each commercial that will probably have a life span of several months. It's not going to conflict with or replace his B&B job. He can do it on the weekend or during times he's on the backburner.

How can Taylor be right, but so completely wrong at the same time? Thomas is telling her that he is delusional. He acknowledged that Hope does not have the same feelings for him, but then he also tells her that he's confident they're going to become the real deal. I can see why, given his history, his insistence on it going the way he wants it to would be alarming to her. But, again, Taylor, that's not on Hope, and it's certainly not on Brooke. It's on Thomas. And it's on all of his family, including you, for insisting that he was all better because he spent 2 minutes in therapy. Also, she missed an opening when he said that line about being an adult who can handle making his own decisions about his romantic life. the beyond obvious response is "well, so am I, and what did you and your sister do for pretty much all of last year?" The less said about Deacon and Sheila, the better. Why does the show insist on selling this fucked up mess, which will ruin Deacon's life, as a grand, sweeping love story? Hard pass.

I'm betting it's more that TN has two kids and he was happy to take a little side job for some extra money. Filming a few (if it even gets to that many) commercials isn't going to pull his time away from the show.

I admit, this did occur to me when he proposed, because it was just so cheesy and unnecessary. Part of me also wondered if he thinks he's throwing himself on the grenade - with all her talk of just desperately wanting to be loved by someone, maybe he thinks he can keep her happy and distract her from Finn, Steffy, and Hayes?

And she was already doing it yesterday, with her "I guess she's more like her mother than we thought" crap. Or, WRP, Hope is her own person who is going to make her own mistakes and decisions, and your son is a full grown adult who is responsible for agreeing to less than what he wants. I know I said I was agreeing with her about their relationship, but I definitely did not agree with that part of their conversation. If her son is going to be this new, all better, man, then he needs to not be told he can just blame Brooke's influence on Hope if things don't go his way.

Deacon, what in the actual fuck? I just can't root for you anymore, dude. I hope Brooke and Hope both dropkick you to the curb, and I'll even allow for Ridge to do a little dance to celebrate when they do. It feels weird to be agreeing with Taylor, but she's right. And I don't know who I feel is more wrong in this Thomas/Hope thing - Thomas for repeatedly bringing up his feelings when he knows she's not there yet, or Hope for repeatedly reminding him that this is just sex. And they're both proving Taylor's point and justifying her fears when they do that. I still think we're headed for another Thomas flameout. All the emphasis on everyone believing he is all better, and now Taylor is going to be the Cassandra, but nobody is going to listen to her because they'll write her off as being overprotective and projecting her issues with Brooke onto Hope.

This got me thinking that, if Tobert is undercover, possibly Ben was working with him. Telling everyone Tobert was filming a documentary about him would have been a good reason to have him around. If he had a history of drug use, but was clean now, he would have been a good potential source for Tobert, because he knew some of the players. And maybe when Tobert called Mabel to go down to the club with him, he had actually been following the doctor, thanks to Ben's information.

Good Lord, is there anyone on this show who doesn't fall somewhere on the "annoying" to "what in the dumbfuck is wrong with you????" spectrum these days? All I could think during the scene of Finn staring at the pictures was that he should take this time to go find wherever Steffy stored that giant Steam picture that used to be hanging on that wall and use it to start a bonfire.

Plus, he served as the thing that the guys could be mad at Mabel about, when they were all mad at each other over various issues. If she hadn't been seeing him and involving him in the investigation, she pretty much would have been the innocent blameless one in their blow-up.

I noticed that the description of the episode included a line about the trio having "a plethora (yes, a plethora) of suspects." Didn't we know, last season, as the penultimate episode was wrapping up, that the cop was involved? I remember seeing someone suggest, back when Tobert told that story, that he was actually talking about seeing Ben fall down the elevator shaft and not saving him, but he used the elephant story as a cover. Kind of like he was dealing with his guilt and used a fake story to partially unburden himself. (I don't think it's Tobert, but at the same time, I could kind of see that being the story). I agree. It just seemed obvious, after we'd seen the whole bit about him needing to stay away from cookies because he has no self control, that he was ranting at the cookies for tempting him. My guess on the whole story is that Donna poisoned the cookie, but she didn't push him down the elevator shaft. I think Ben thought Cliff poisoned him, since he was the one who came around to his dressing room with the cookies. He then confronted him by the elevator, and Cliff, realizing his mother must have done it, shoved Ben to protect his mother. The only little hiccup in my feeling fully confident in that theory is Loretta's reaction when they showed up in the courtroom. Instead of being relieved that it wasn't Dickie, she said that she's already gone so far down this road. That just seemed like such an odd reaction to finding out that her son was innocent and, theoretically, she'd be able to stop pretending to be guilty, so neither of them would need to go down for this. That scene left me a little piece of doubt about my Cliff theory, that maybe instead of him pushing Ben, either Loretta did it or she saw (or thinks she saw) Dickie doing it.

It's like when Taylor was sleeping with Eric, and Steffy and Thomas stopped calling him grandfather.

Yeah, when Thomas was going on to Hope yesterday, all I could think was how, even if I didn't already know a guy was stalkery, some red flags would be waving for me. But, when you know that not only does he have a stalker past, but that you are also the person he stalked, how are you not seeing the parade of red flags? I don't care how good the sex is, she knows that, if she doesn't develop the same feelings for him, shit's going to get ugly. Again. And, Deacon, you just got yourself free. Why are you letting her reel you back in?

It's so they can hit us over the head with Hope, Douglas, and Thomas being a family, even though they never really have been. Other than, of course, a very brief period of time which Hope and Douglas shouldn't have any warm family feelings about Thomas from, given that he was gaslighting and abusing them the whole time. If this show last long enough, it would be kind of interesting to see what Douglas's feelings towards Thomas are as an adult (or even an older teen). Younger kids often tend to still cling to an abusive/manipulative parent, just wanting their love. I'd imagine that's even more of a thing when one parent has died. But, when they get older and realize how fucked up it all was, they can sometimes pull away and/or be angry with them. I'd also imagine he might have some thoughts about how fast his father tried to replace his mother after her death.

It just occurred to me that it's possible Dickie has seen pictures of young Loretta at some point. Since, if I recall her story correctly, he was adopted by a family her family knew, it's entirely possible that he may have known some little bit about her or has seen pictures of her from around the time of his birth. So, she may seem familiar to him, even if he didn't place that familiarity (while she would still look similar, people's looks can change enough over that span of time that they aren't going to look enough like their younger self that it's obvious who they are). So, he may not absolutely know she's his birth mother, but she may feel/seem familiar to him without him realizing why.

Yeah, he'd basically be a combination of season 1 (love interest of one of the three) and season 2 (killing someone to do a story about it). That would be so lazy of the writers. I was wondering this, too. I still wouldn't rule him out as being responsible for at least one of the attempts. Maybe he knew who Loretta was and didn't like how Ben was treating his mother? On a related note, is it just me, or does Jeremy Shamos (Dickie) have some kind of vague resemblance to Meryl Streep?

Early in the season, I thought it had to be Donna and/or Cliff. Then I got distracted by the idea of Ben being a twin (or triplet) and Loretta's son. But, that's all been shot to hell over the past couple episodes, so I think I'm back to Donna/Cliff. If it's Donna doing it for Cliff (for some reason we'll find out), then it parallels Loretta/Dickie, in that Loretta confessed to protect Dickie, which fits into Donna talking about how you'll do anything for your child. And, even though they're connected to the play, nobody (on screen) has seemed to mention them as part of the cast and crew under suspicion. And that would fit with the lines in the song about being too focused on the nursery and needing to look outside of it for suspects. I think Tobert will turn out to have some other secret he's hiding, but I don't think he's the killer.

I don't understand how Deacon put the fix in for Sheila. If the judge did anything that wasn't legit in dismissing the charges against her, are they trying to tell us that the FBI and the prosecutor wouldn't know that his reasoning was bullshit? I mean, I do think that the whole "welp, Steffy and Finn declined to cooperate the first time (because they were being fake blackmailed as part of an FBI sting), so they can't cooperate now" part was a load of BS, but shouldn't the prosecutor know this? This is why I always wanted some Douglas/Bill scenes. I would have expected Bill to want to be present in Douglas's life, even if it was just some "gotta remind the kid he's a Spencer, too, and not just a Forrester" kind of thing.

That kid can actually act. It's a shame they're saddling him with this embarrassing crap.

Everyone on this show is way too invested in their relatives' sex lives, whether it's kids obsessing over their parents or parents obsessing over their kids. It's creepy.

Good God, now we've got two storylines of repetitive dialogue. Someone really only needs to tune in one time this month, and they'll be fully up to date - Hope is willing to bang Thomas, but she doesn't love him, and she needs him to acknowledge that he's OK with it. And Eric feels pushed aside and put out to pasture, so he and Ridge are going to fight it out on the runway, may the best man win. That's it. That's all that's happening all month. I can't decide if Hope repeatedly asking Thomas if he's OK with it only being sex right when sex is imminent, instead of waiting for a time when they're both fully clothed and not already out of the starting gate is solely their usual repetitive dialogue, or if it's supposed to be a hint to how things are going. Is it possible that she's subconsciously kind of enjoying driving that point home over and over to him? Is it setting us up for him to eventually be typical crazy Thomas when he can't stand that she's not reciprocating his feelings?

If the show is still going, those two will have pretty much exactly the same relationship that Hope and Steffy have, maybe with Beth being the Steffy and Kelly being the Hope. And Douglas will probably be a Rick type character, used and discarded in cycles. Because his only romantic options will be non-core characters (since he's related to everyone), and they don't have a ton of interest in writing for that long term.

Saw some spoilers earlier today that have Douglas being eager for Hope and Thomas to get together, and him planning some kind of romantic surprise for the two of them. Of course, this being B&B, everyone wants to scheme to get their parents together. Personally, I think it would be far more interesting if Douglas was wary of the whole concept, since he's experienced what it's like when Thomas becomes obsessed with Hope. Or even have hin have a normal reaction where he's happy, but not uber focused on it or planning ways to push them together. But, this is B&B. I'm sure that, once they age up these kids to teens, we'll start getting fights among Douglas, Kelly, Beth, and Hayes as to who Steffy, Finn, Hope, Liam, and Thomas should be with.