KerleyQ

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.

I agree. This is very reminiscent, to me, of her time with Wyatt, where she seemed like she was having some kind of sexual awakening. Between the writing and the way SC plays him, Liam is just not a very sexual kind of guy. And I'm not even talking sex scenes, but just that kind of aura. Like you look at Finn and Steffy, and Finn can't keep his hands to himself around her. Hope/Wyatt was the same, and I think Wyatt has generally been like that in the relationships he's been in. Even though this version of Ridge sucks, TK at least still plays Ridge that way, too. Deacon, Bill, hell, even Eric, are all men who you can tell how into their women they are when they're with someone. Liam is just kind of there. SC is a good actor, and, for a while, I was kind of wondering if I was just not seeing him that way because I was still used to him being a teenager on GH, but that's not it. He's just not that kind of actor.

Why is this going to be some kind of weird fight to the death on the runway? Eric has clearly said this is his grand finale. He's not competing with Ridge to be the top designer going forward. I get that Eric has been kind of cranky and secretive about all of this, but does Ridge really want to have his father's send-off as a designer potentially be him being embarrassed by not measuring up to his son? That's a pretty shitty thing to do to the man. Why not just have them both contribute to this season's line and put out the word that some of the designs will be Eric Forrester's last designs, to pump up interest and sales? That seems far more like what is best for the company than a competition.

I've been watching GH and wondering, with Ned thinking he's Eddie Maine, if they were going to grab Rena to play Lois again. I'm glad to see they did. I feared them having Lesli Kay playing her again instead.

They didn't mess around with getting right to the new girl's mystery, did they? I feel like, back in the day, a soap would have spent a little time building the pairing up, so that viewers might be invested in them, before she started getting those mysterious calls warning her to stay away from the Forresters. God bless entire episodes that don't have a single scene of Liam repeating the same dialogue he's been spouting for a couple months. Also, for some reason I can't pinpoint, I'm finding myself liking R.J. Maybe it's the focus on his relationship with Eric now instead of him just wandering around town trying to save his sisters' marriages? I really wish someone would do something about his hair, but it wouldn't be B&B if there weren't multiple characters whose hair makes me wonder what the fuck their hair department is thinking. Most days, RJ looks like he's been filming that old Seinfeld low flow shower head episode.

I was thinking, during the Spencer scenes, that if Bill was to get involved with Li, then we might get some scenes of Wyatt and Li, the only two people in town with any sense.

I was definitely getting the vibe that they're foreshadowing a Forrester family feud coming up. Shifting directly from Thomas saying "Forresters always stick together" to Ridge saying that RJ is going to be the most talented designer in the family, and all while the Eric/RJ secret is going on, and then ending the episode with Eric obviously still angry with Ridge... Yeah, we're getting a family/company feud in the near future. It will be potentially interesting to see where the battle lines are drawn and which side everyone is on.

And, Steffy is taking Hayes, AKA "my grandson" with her. Married to Finn or not, being Hayes's mother is always going to have her on Sheila's radar, because, even if Steffy leaving him has Finn deciding to form a relationship with Sheila, she's not going to be happy with just Finn in her grasp. She's going to want the complete set.

"My mother isn't a murdering psychopath." And, yet Steffy still chose Finn over you, Liam. "We have a great love story." I could not stop laughing at that line. Dude, she was your backup whenever you were having problems with Hope. She banged your father while you were married. And you only decided you had a great love for the ages when you got your pride hurt by Hope kissing Thomas. I fear that, somehow, Deacon is going to be the one who ends up killing Sheila. Taylor is going to go with Steffy? When she was nearly suicidal with depression and grief, she sent her overseas with two small children on her own to get therapy, because she wanted to stay behind and try to get into her married ex's pants. But, now that she has no current path to Ridge's dick, she can go overseas with her and the kids?

Sheila is just so whiny and delusional. She's way overstayed her welcome this time around. I love Wyatt. They really need to use him more and give him his own story instead of just being Liam's sounding board.

When Sheila keeps going on and on about her great bond with Finn, and how all she wants in the whole wide world is to have a relationship with him, I'm surprised Steffy doesn't go with the rather obvious response to that. If he was so important, why didn't she ever make a move to meet him before he married Steffy? She knew who he was and where he was. But she never made a single move to meet him until he was a part of the family she's been obsessed with for decades. It would have been easier to meet him and form some kind of relationship with him when her baggage with the Forresters wasn't a part of it all, but she didn't even try then. If he'd married some random woman with no ties to the Forresters, who knows if she ever would have made a move to meet him. And she did it in such an underhanded way. Instead of contacting him at the hospital, she snuck into Eric's home during the wedding and hid until she could get Finn alone. Because it wasn't about meeting him, it was about staging a power play against his new in-laws. It seems like such an obvious "this isn't really about you, Finn" way to try to snap him out of his confusing feelings, and she hasn't used it.

This is where winning that last challenge is an advantage. You can try to get rid of the person you don't know in that first guess off (either by setting them up to guess the third person wrong, or hoping the third person will guess them accurately). If that fails, and you still end up with them in the final guess off, and you feel pretty confident they don't know who you are, you make them guess you.

This is the kind of shit Finn should have been doing while Steffy was staying at Eric's - installing as much security as possible all around the interior and exterior of the house. Extra sturdy locks and alarms on every door and window, cameras that cover every angle of their yard, so that there's nowhere for anyone to lurk without being seen, etc. It's practical, and it would show Steffy he was taking the threat seriously. Also, I would love to see Deacon go to Finn and warn him. Say, "hey, if you actually do want her in your life, that's your call, but I think you need to know that she is just as obsessive and delusional about being in your life now as she ever was, and she blames and resents Steffy for that not already being the case." Throw in an "I don't want to end up in her crosshairs, so, you didn't hear this from me."

The better (more understandable) story might have been if, while she was locked up, he was placating her with a visit here and there, pretending he was still in to her and just oh so sorry about what she's facing. He wouldn't want to make her an enemy because he figures at some point she'll either escape or have someone on the outside to do her bidding, so why piss her off? But then she gets off free and clear, and how he's stuck with her thinking he's still that into her, and he's afraid to just shove her out because, like you said, she goes scorched earth when someone she counted on rejects her. Have him afraid that, if he sends her packing, he's endangering Hope, Beth, Douglas, and Brooke, so he's driving himself crazy trying to keep her happy while also keeping his family in the dark about his involvement with her. Any time he's out too late, or not where she expects/needs him to be, she's menacingly asking "were you with Brooke?"

When we saw Sheila's silhouette outside the patio doors, I was hoping we'd next see Deacon's silhouette, as he either dragged her away or tackled her. Are we going to get a storyline where Steffy keeps seeing Sheila, but she ducks out of sight before anyone else sees her, so people start thinking she's losing it due to the stress and trauma of it all? Maybe Finn and Taylor think she's having a breakdown, and Ridge and Liam insist Sheila must be around?

It just makes no sense. Especially when you factor in that he already got his combination wakeup call/get out of jail free card when Ridge and Bill told him they knew and gave him the chance to cooperate and keep it quiet. From that point on, he should have realized two things. 1) He and Sheila weren't doing as well at keeping it hidden as he'd hoped. 2) Since Ridge knew, he could virtually guarantee that Ridge would be keeping an eye on him and/or come right to him whenever Sheila inevitably did something to piss Ridge off. He's a charming, attractive man who owns a successful restaurant. Sheila can't be anywhere close to being his only romantic option.

I have four different theories (of various levels of "out there") on this now. Most of them are based on the theory that Loretta gave up some number of babies for adoption because she wanted to focus on being an actor, and she didn't feel she could focus on her career if she was a single mother. Her talking about being cursed to not succeed in acting is her thinking that it's her punishment for the adoption - that she won't get the thing she gave her child(ren) up for. 1) My most outlandish. She had triplets, two identical, and one not, and gave them all up. Ben is one of the identicals, and he and his twin switched places regularly (which is why him getting a mark on his face or gaining weight from eating cookies would be such a big deal, because they need to look identical). Dickie is the third triplet. 2) She gave up twins, and they've been doing the switching places thing for years. 3) She had twins and gave them up to two different families. The non-Ben twin figured it out, after years of seeing Ben as a famous actor. He killed Ben that night on the stage, and then showed up in his place claiming to be a recovered Ben. Then he got killed, too. (Either by someone who thought he was Ben, or by someone who figured out what he did and confronted him). Or it was just Ben who died, and the non-Ben twin just took two times to kill him. 4) She gave up Dickie. If Ben is one of her kids, I think that she wasn't interested in his career in a motherly way, like she regretted giving him up and wanted to be back in his life. I think that she was envious that one of the kids she gave up so she could pursue acting became a famous actor while her career stalled out. She probably got this role to try to get to know him and eventually reveal she's his mother, hoping to ride his coattails. If Dickie was her kid, she probably still wanted to make and exploit that connection to help her career. As for the tooth in this episode, I have a small theory there. Possibly, she gave the kids up to her parents to raise as their own. If so, they would have done the same traditions with them that she grew up with. And, if Dickie is one of those kids (or the only one), he may see Oliver with his missing tooth and mention his family's tooth ferry tradition. Or, if Dickie isn't one of her kids, that story could still come to light from Ben having told someone, like Dickie at some point, or an old childhood story he told Tobert during filming of his documentary.

If you had told me at the start of this year that, in the summer, both Lope and Sinn would be in turmoil, and that Sinn was the couple I'd be rooting for, I wouldn't have believed you. But, here we are. I'm going to be legitimately upset if they break them up. So, after not even bothering to be at Beth's birthday party, Ridge is going to try to run around town playing the "my daughter" card over Hope? Hey, Ridge, do you know who was at Beth's birthday party? Hope's father and Beth's grandfather. Having said that, Deacon, dude. Where do you even see this going with Sheila? Do you think you're just going to permanently keep her living with you and having a relationship with her, and nobody will ever find out? Hope will never drop over and encounter her? Oh, wait, that already happened the last time you were harboring her, she was just wearing a disguise then, so Hope didn't know it was her. And, spoiler alert, if Hope had figured that out, your little bedmate would have, at minimum, harmed her, most likely killed her. She wasn't going to spare your daughter out of some affection for you when her own freedom was on the line. Seriously, what is your long term plan, Deacon? And why does Sheila need to stay there anyway? Wasn't she bragging about how rich she was when she hit town and was staying at the hotel long term? She can't get her own place? Even if Deacon doesn't want to completely end things with her, her having her own place for him to go to would be a safer option for him than her living with him, when it comes to the risk of anyone discovering their relationship.

It is, thanks. I had a bad asthma flare, and it took a few days to get everything close to normal, but I'm feeling good (but exhausted) now. Just finished Monday's episode, and I feel like, between it and what I've read here about the next two shows, we're going to get Thomas losing it again. Ridge keeps talking about it. And next we're going to have Thomas agreeing to be in the moment, or whatever, but he very clearly is more into her than she's into him, and that's eventually going to be a problem when Hope is done getting her groove back, and she still doesn't have any feelings beyond "you give good orgasms" for him. If I had to guess, I'd say that Deacon's relationship with Sheila gets exposed, and it rattles Hope that, worse than making her mother's Waffle mistakes, she's making her father's Psycho mistakes. Hopefully, that doesn't lead back to Lope, but I do kind of wonder if we're going to get Thomas going nutty and Liam riding in on his white horse to save the day and win back his (sometime, when he's not all in his feelings) love. Then he'll have a million and one "told ya' so" points stored away in his mental bank. And he'll have to "bravely" forgive her for fucking the psycho. I feel sick again. Not over the Thope ending part of things, because I hate that psycho, but the idea of Hope ending back up with the waffle, laboring under the idea that she owes him gratitude for forgiving and saving her, and Liam will just cram the genie that is her awakening right back into the bottle.