KerleyQ

They are ruining Bitch in a Box for me, with everyone outside that apartment singing Steffy's praises. And Finn is suddenly great at figuring people out? Since fucking when? The only person he's pegged correctly in the entire time he's been on the show is Liam, and that took Liam straight up telling him "I'm after your wife." No, wait, sorry, he also knows Thomas is a deranged asshole, but everyone knows that (even though his sister and parents won't acknowledge it until the immediate aftermath of him doing one of them, specifically, wrong). I'm thinking that the RetconLuna lied to RJ about being a virgin. And now we know that she set up the misunderstanding night with Zende. So, was she just being sad and stressed about that when nobody was around because she's deep in character and assumes someone is always watching? Luna, never go back to the apartment again! Don't do it! Stay away! Do not lead anyone to find Bitch in a Box. Dammit. It's just going to be over too soon, isn't it? I feel like I'm on the last day of a much too short vacation and have to start packing to go home now.

I'm with you, I love it. It's such an old school soapy storyline. As a kid, I started watching AMC when the Liza/Tad/Marian story was going on. I like Willow when she's not Michael's Stepford wife. Plus, I think she and Drew had some inappropriate chemistry going for a while before this all started. So this whole story works for me. (Not that I'm under any delusions that this will come close to old school AMC.)

I laughed when it became clear Adam was going to win. I knew that some of the others must have been seething, since they were all so focused on getting rid of him. And, to be fair, I absolutely get why he annoyed them, but, to his credit, other than seeing clues others got (which everyone does), he really did figure out both Mackenzie and Hud on his own. And I think he's known Hud since around mid season. We did have a scene after a Hud clue where Adam seemed like he knew, but I think they edited out him definitively knowing, because it was part of the role they had him slotted in to not know anything until he comes out as the surprise winner in the end. I do think he lucked out that he got to the finale with these two people. He knows some genres of music, and their relatives happened to fall into his general area of knowledge. Mackenzie and Hud definitely screwed themselves over by going after each other. I think that Mackenzie kind of got in her own head with the previous elimination, where she correctly guessed that Shane was setting her up, and she couldn't decide for sure if Hud had been in on it or not, so she couldn't just go along with him after that. For me, the most annoying person this season was Naomi. She whined in the first episode about Gracie being a good singer. And she decided she was the brains of the house at some point, to like an aggressive degree, which is always annoying. It seems like we get one cast member like that every season, and it delights me when they get sent home. I think my favorite part of this season was Hud telling the camera that he'd seen her clue before the person who had it was sent home, and he knew who she was, which led to him telling Adam. Second most annoying was Miguel. He's been holding a grudge because Adam didn't believe his Banderas fake out? Yeah, dude, you were lying, and not everyone bought it. That's kind of how this whole show works. Usually, in the finale when they bring back the booted cast members, the obnoxious ones seem pretty watered down since they no longer have a shot at the win. Even Carly who threw a big dramatic shit fit in season 2's first episode seemed fine when she came back to help in that finale. But Naomi and Miguel? Same as they were before being booted. Naomi was so obnoxious about her (completely wrong) guess about Hud, talking down to Mackenzie who, spoiler alert, Naomi, has been in the house longer and has had access to more clues than what you've seen. And Miguel fucking with Adam during the last challenge was a dick move. And Danny was someone who I was mostly fine with while he was in the house, but the second he was eliminated, he told everyone Mackenzie's clue, which was super shitty. And then he was, I think, the first one to say they should sabotage the final three after Kevin and Franklin explained their roles to them when they were brought back. Dude, you're out, you can't win anymore, and nobody screwed you over, you just guessed wrong. The biggest surprise of this season was that the winner was someone who guessed the last two people correctly. With how bad the guesses were all season, I was sure that whoever won would win by someone incorrectly guessing their relative.

I was assuming that it was something easy for her to guess, like Morgan's birthday.

Yep. If she thought she had a hard time getting him to give up on his birth mother, wait until she tries to get him to give up on his biological child. He'll feel all guilty that her life went to hell because he wasn't raising her. No way he'd listen to Steffy's orders to stay away from Luna if she's his daughter.

There's a rumor going around on Twitter that Jennifer Landon is going to be the new Lulu (and that JMB was contacted but turned them down). Don't know how reliable any of that is, though, so...

Yes, Ridge, Steffy is such a big badass that she runs every time she gets a little upset. She's run away from her marriage to Finn how many times? And this time, over him being kissed by someone, she needed to flee to the same clinic she needed to go to when she had basically given up on living when Finn was "dead"? Someone else kissing your husband when you've been warning him they were up to something isn't something you should need to flee the country to a mental health clinic over. It's something you maybe go spend one night at a local hotel over, or spend the night on your friend's couch, eating junk food and binge watching a reality show. Also, it would have been hilarious if Liam had said to Finn "have you checked your father's bed? In my experience, her husband kissing another woman sends her to her father-in-law's bed." Of course, Liam would never say that, because he must worship her. And don't even get me started on that cheesy ass montage. There's no way that all she'd think about, if she thinks she's going to die, is her relationship with Finn. I agree with everyone that Luna being the killer could not have been the plan all along. I think they changed course between Tom's murder and Hollis's murder. So much about Tom's murder makes no sense if that plan was Luna all along. And, as @GHScorpiosRule pointed out, Luna was nowhere near that paternity test. Li stood over it and was the only one near it. That was the whole point, for her, in her doing it, to make sure nobody had a chance to fuck with it. And then there was that whole pregnancy scare with Luna. I think the plan, at one point, was for her to be sick and need some kind of donor, which would have led to the reveal of her paternity (Finn). Now I wonder if they decided against Finn being her father when they made the change to her being the killer.

I think that there can still be a shooting even if this one was a dream sequence. If it was a dream sequence, I think that Sonny and Jason had a plan. Jason is lurking, and Sonny will have an initial confrontation with Jagger. Jagger will pull a gun on Sonny, and Jason will be right there to pull a gun on him. Maybe Kristina even makes it there by that time. May as well fully ruin Jagger by having him turn the gun towards Kristina so that someone has to shoot him to protect her. And then all of what he was planning with Ava will come out, and everyone in town will just "eh, good riddance" the whole thing. Am I the only one who caught the Dante/BLQ anvils? Between her initially looking a little afraid when Violet asked when she and Chase were going to have a baby, and then Dante's comment about the two of them having a whole other lifetime that Carly knows nothing about, is there any chance at all that they don't have a kid together? Gio, maybe?

Yep. You can practically hear the "our daughter could have died!" coming from the two of them at Brooke already.

If Finn actually agrees to go over to the apartment to look for clues, I hope he's interrupted by an emergency phone call from the hospital. And he'll run into his mother again, who will tell him that it's stupid to go tamper with the apartment since the police may still need to go back for evidence. Steffy: "What about my husband? Your cousin?" Um, yeah, if she doesn't care about sending her own mother to prison for life, I'm guessing she doesn't give much of a fuck if the cousin she hadn't seen for years ends up losing his bitchy wife. The whole time Brooke was trying to soothe Ridge's fears over not hearing from Steffy (for, what, a day?), all I could think was "oh, so this is how Taylor is going to get her hooks into him." Once he finds out about Bitch in a Box, he's going to blame Brooke for pushing him to ignore his fears, putting his precious daughter in danger longer.

Are the two nannies Cody and Sasha?

There was not a paternity test to match her to Tom. You'd think that would potentially be something the police would want to do, to solidify him being Luna's father as the motive for Poppy to kill him. My theory is that she knew Tom from hanging out at various music festivals, and considered him a friend. She didn't want the truth about Luna's paternity to come out, so she asked him to say he's the father. And he had a thing for her, so he agreed. After she hooked up with Bill, though, she thought she was going to have a relationship with him, which pissed off Tom. I think she was being honest when she said that Tom became obsessed with her and acted like a stalker, so, once Bill didn't call her or come find her again, she just took off to get away from Tom. And Tom kept insisting he was the father, because, in his mind, he was once he agreed to claim Luna as his own.

Oh, to be clear, I don't think Carly does care that much. But she cares when it fits the show's needs to make her look good. And, it would have had the added "bonus" of showing (again) what lengths Brennan will go to for Carly.

There's a difference between getting a transplant off the transplant list and having a loved one directly offer to donate to you. If Lulu didn't have anyone close to her who was a match and willing to donate, you're right, she'd most likely either be off the list or near the bottom because of her condition. But, if a loved one says "I want to donate part of my liver to Lulu," she'll get that donation, even if there are other patients out there with better odds of a long healthy life.

I'm surprised we didn't have Carly giving an impassioned plea, leading to Brennan pulling out all the stops to find both Lucky and Charlotte. Alexis looked like she wanted to crawl out of her skin while Kristina was talking about the baby. Tracy being willing to do anything, even take in yet another kid at the Q mansion, for Lulu is sweet. For all the show's flaws, the way they keep Tracy active in storylines is one thing they've been getting right lately.

Luna could have just hung one of those hamster water bottles in the cage for Steffy. I'm wondering if Poppy is going to figure out that Luna did it and try to take responsibility for it to protect Luna.

I couldn't even tell you what Molly and Dex said in their scenes. I was busy living in sheer terror that it was a chem test. Molly, girl, I do want you to move on from TJ, but not like that! I was watching through my fingers like it was a horror movie. Oh, good, more Heather. Does the show not understand that, with some characters, a little goes a long way?

@CountryGirl, that was amazing! I'm still expecting the Finn is the father paternity swerve. I also have so many questions about Li now, if she wasn't even responsible for the paternity test mixup. What was her damage the night Tom was killed? Why did she sit there with resting bitch face and not get up to help a man in distress? I suspect that the way Finn is being over the top mad at Hope, we're going to find out soon that she has some kind of medical emergency (tumor, aneurysm). When that comes to light, Finn is going to feel guilty, because she's been telling him about the headaches, and all he's done is massage her. Didn't get her in for an MRI or CT scan. And since it will be used to explain her behavior, he'll feel guilty about dumping on her, and he'll be ready to defend his friendship with her again. Liam has about as much self-awareness as Taylor and Steffy. I so wish he would have seen his opening and let Finn know about the kisses he laid on Steffy after he saw Hope kiss Thomas. He has to know that Finn doesn't know about those, since he definitely would have come after him over that. So he could "innocently" let it slip. It would be easy to imagine that it might piss Finn off to know that Steffy kept two Liam kisses from him, but when he got kissed by Hope one time, Steffy needed to get away from him and tore into him about his poor judgement and lack of proper boundaries. Steffy trying to pretend she's this hardass bitch while she's locked in a cage is hilarious. And stupid. Start Stockholm Syndrome-ing it up, Steffy. Empathize. "Oh, it must have been so rough to grow up like that. I can understand why you resent your mother so much." Of course, that's only the advice I'd give if I wanted to see her survive. So, instead I'll say "keep antagonizing her, Steffy! You can do it!"

Maybe I'm just too used to Lois, but is her accent really that bad and over the top? I mean, she's hardly The Nanny or Janice from Friends.

I can kind of get that she didn't want to actually kill her while Poppy was locked up, because it would be convenient to frame her mother for Steffy, too. It's the one part of her plan that she kind of overthought, and, you're right, Steffy is a loose end because of it. It will be interesting to see if Luna does a full court press on Bill now to get mommy a lawyer and get her out on bail, before the demolition, so she can take the fall for Steffy, too. Sure, she locked her up before Poppy was out, but since Steffy was going out of town alone, there can be some doubt about when, exactly, she was tossed in the apartment.

Um, Finn? I bet that, if any of the people you're protesting too much to saw your conversations with Hope over the past few months ("your smile lights up the world"), those massages, and the fact that you did not stop the kiss right away, but, instead, put your hand on Hope's hips, they'd doubt the "I didn't send Hope any mixed signals" claims. Also, Finn totally sounded like abused spouses who make excuses for their abusive spouse and blame themselves for setting them off. I straight up cackled at Luna assembling the cage around Steffy. Bitch in a Box is the best thing this show has done in I don't know how long. I hope we get at least a few weeks of this. (If we weren't in the middle of a brain melting heat wave, I'd probably already have my alternate lyrics to Dick in a Box ready to go, but it's hard to focus on anything right now). If Finn is Luna's father, that should be a wrap on his marriage. If she thinks he had an unreasonable connection to his biological mother, wait until he finds out he has a daughter. Her crimes won't keep him from her side. Katie could not wait to run over to Bill's to take her victory lap, could she? Hey, Luna? Got another cage handy? If not, you can just cram her in there with Steffy. Luna should be careful. Steffy is definitely a shit thrower. Maybe get a little shield in place so it just rebounds back at her.

I can't help it, every time I see the picture of her in the cage, I'm singing "Bitch in a Box" (to the tune of "Dick in a Box.")

The being held captive thing has definitely been done to death, but at least Lucky wasn't just talking to rocks all this time, I guess? I hope he's back in PC soon and the prisoner saga doesn't drag on. All of the scenes around Lulu were great. Maxie giving Lulu a manicure every week is sweet and such a Maxie thing to do. Are they trying to walk back a lot of the damage that's been done to Ava over the past several months? They seem to be moving her back towards a friendship with Nina, and it seems like they're trying to reset her relationship with Sonny back to that wary cooperation thing. Molly is blaming Kristina for the baby's death, so all of her anger and vengeance will be focused on her sister instead of Ava. And Natalia apparently isn't going to be the only one who gets the favor of the show forgetting the homophobic rant storyline. That's probably going to go away for Ava, too. They're going to flip it from her being the root of all evil to Jagger being the root of all evil. Sonny warning her that Jagger wants to kill her felt like an anvil. She's going to end up killing Jagger in self-defense, isn't she? (Or someone else will have to kill him to save Ava from him.) Kristina has definitely not been above reproach with this whole story, but I'm more on her side than Molly and TJ. It was like TJ's asshole switch was flipped the second two lines showed up on Kristina's pregnancy test. And, as others have mentioned, we never saw them talk about the pregnancy in any terms other than being pissy about Kristina daring to live her life while carrying their property baby. Also, ever since the whole TJ was kidnapped but Molly thought he was ghosting her story, I've felt like Molly just got back with him because she thought it was what she was supposed to do. She's the good girl who, of course took her boyfriend back when she found out where he'd been. But I have had the impression ever since that she just has not been as into him as she used to be. (Also, HP's Molly had way more chemistry with Brando during the ONS than she or current Molly has ever had with TJ). It's like Molly has just been going along with what she's supposed to do and be. When she thought she might be pregnant, she decided that she needed to have a baby ASAP. So, when she found out she couldn't have one the natural way, she never took time to grieve that. She just went right to "well, we need to have one now, so let's get a surrogate." And then that process had to get started ASAP. And when she miscarried, they needed to get going on a new surrogacy immediately. She never took a breath. TJ back then, at least, seemed to want to take a little time to mourn and regroup. But Molly was full steam ahead and practically ready to go at Kristina with a turkey baster. FF to the funeral. I swear, after she told everyone off, she looked happy, almost excited. I half expected her to drag TJ off to some corner of the house to bang out that excited energy. It was the first time in months that Molly had any kind of spark to her. It was kind of weird. Credit to Ric Hearst. I thought he did a good job at the cemetery without saying a word. His instinct was to go to Kristina when she collapsed, but he stopped himself and let Alexis and Sam handle that. And then his lingering moment when he looked back at her as they were leaving the cemetery. I can't help but wondering how much of that was RH remembering that Ric helped raise Kristina for a little while and she's his niece. And, hell, as much as TJ has been a dick for months, as a doctor, he checked on Kristina when she went down, so credit to him for that. (Also, I expected Molly to lose it on him for going to her, but she was too turned on by going off on everyone to get mad at him, I guess?) Everyone who loves Molly should be talking about getting her into therapy. She needs to deal with a lot of shit before she should even think about considering starting the surrogate process again. Mostly, though, I'm team Alexis. She tried to be the voice of reason and get the three of them to slow down, really consider what they were doing, and put some safeguards in place. But they all ignored her. Now she's stuck in the middle between two of her daughters, precisely because they didn't listen to her about the contract at the start, and Kristina didn't listen to her about filing for custody. And Molly just went right to shitting on her instead of asking some questions and giving her a chance to explain. The person whose team I'm definitely not on? Jordan. Jesus, slow the fuck down, Jordan. "Alex is and Kristina were trying to steal MY grandchild." That's going to get tiresome really quickly. I'm almost afraid to say this, but I kind of wish they'd keep LH around as Sam. KeMo has seemed kind of over the role for a while now, imo.

I can't believe I called this one so early. The night Hollis was killed, we were supposed to all be wondering why Poppy had some late night errand to run, but Luna went out, too. And Hollis seemed happy to see whoever killed him. Since they'd just told us that they were friends, it all made sense to me. I got a little thrown off with the backpack, but that was clearly to frame her mother. Now if Finn is her father, I'll have called two surprises early on. (As soon as he talked about how Poppy lived with his family shortly before she had Luna, I suspected that was where they were going.) Steffy, why was this your business, to the point that you had to chase Luna down and go in guns blazing? I got giddy when she took that glass from her and started drinking. I cannot wait for Steffy in a cage. My guess is that either Luna finds her phone and gets rid of it, or Liam finds it. If Liam finds it, he'll probably see multiple missed calls from Finn on it, so he'll keep the phone until she gets home, figuring it'll save her from Finn bothering her when she said she needs some time. If this leads to Steffy getting her karma, when Finn eventually gives up on her ever coming back and hooks up with Hope, just like Steffy started banging Wyatt while Liam was at amnesia cabin with Quinn, so much the better. If I had to speculate, on that score, all the "something is so wrong with Hope, why is she acting like this," combined with the headaches, will come to a head (no pun intended) while Steffy is gone, and Hope will have a brain tumor or something similar. Finn will discover it and treat her, and they'll grow close. I'd laugh for days if the first time they hook up, Steffy has finally managed to figure out how to escape from a cage, she goes running back home and sees Finn and Hope going at it on the couch through the window. As soon as Taylor started fixing her bitch mouth to lecture Hope about all the crimes she's supposedly committed against Steffy, Hope should have pulled up a Power Point presentation of all Steffy has done to her, going back to when she first imprinted on Liam like a baby duck and started interfering in their engagement. Bonus points if she then turns to Taylor and says "and, by the way, are you in town to go after my mom's partner, just like you went after him during your last stay in town, despite him being married to my mom?" And Ridge needs to have the same conversation with Taylor that he had with Steffy a while ago - he was a grown ass man who made his own decisions about his love life, so if she has issues, she needs to direct them to him, not Brooke. Katie sitting down to chat with Deacon and Sheila about the murders next week...ugh. Are we going to get everyone suddenly accepting Sheila because there's one murder mystery she wasn't responsible for?

Unless Beth ends up with Hayes. Then Kelly can stick her nose in that relationship and manipulate things just like her Steffy stuck her nose in her brother's relationship with Hope. I think the only way they don't rehash the feud in that generation is if both Beth and Kelly turn out to be lesbians who fall madly in love with each other. Then they'll just be contending with Steffy constantly interfering and trying to break them up.