BnB: I never thought I’d watch again… but I did

Hello, long lost friends and readers!  Other than life getting in the way, I have no other reason for not watching or posting about soaps other than two small problems: 1 – missing the daytime landscape as it was and 2 – not really being interested in what’s left on the air.  Oddly enough, I’ve found myself spending more time watching the glory days of daytime on youtube (which is not very much time to be honest) than I spend watching what’s still on.

Some have suggested that the shows left on daytime have made it this far because they are the best of what daytime has left to offer.  I’m pretty sure they’re still on the air because TPTB of daytime haven’t figured out how to replace them, yet, and since they are still mkaing some money they’ve earned a brief reprieve.  If what we’re currently watching is the best daytime has left to offer, I have a feeling this is going to be a year of more heartbreaking announcements of cancellations. 

The Bold and The Beautiful

I stopped watching the BnB around the time of the Brooke Oliver mixup.  By the time a woman is having public sex with a man other than her husband and she doesn’t know it’s not him, it’s clear that the writers are no longer writing for their primarily female audience.   The BnB may as well have been shifted over to “Horny Guy TV” or some other such outlet. There’s room for it on the playboy channel, but daytime?  I don’t think so. 

I, however, got caught up in fans’ comments about the beautiful lush scenery of the Italian countryside and the gorgeous sentimental love scenes – during the recent location shoot.  I was prepared to have the BnB tug my heart strings and give me at least one, if not a dozen, good reason(s) to tune in again this summer.   I was hoping that going back and watching those scenes would rekindle my love for this show and keep me invested until the bitter end of the genre, not just this bitter end for this show.  Instead?   There are shows you can’t watch in an episode and get your bearings because so much happens in such a short period of time that you can’t keep up with the changes.  Then there are shows that leave you feeling as if you can’t follow what’s going on because the stories are so disjointed that they don’t follow any form of logic or reason.  The BnB, as you might have guessed, is the latter.

Bill’s big issue with Hope is that he hates women who use sex to get what they want – which is how he characterizes Hope’s desire to save herself for marriage.  She’s “messed up”.  She’s “out of her mind”.  She’s “just  a prom queen”.  I hear that’s what’s wrong with virgins these days.  They’re just on the shy side of sanity, holding on by a thread, they say!  Bill’s sourceless anger at Hope is something, I guess, you could take in stride to make the storyline work it if weren’t for one tiny little thing.  He champions Steffy Forrester’s cause to lure Hope’s former and once again current fiancé back into her bed.  It’s not that it’s a incredible feat.  Liam is as morally loose at Bill has accused every woman he’s ever met of being. Liam thought things were over with Hope,so  he shortly after slept with pregnant Amber.  He thought things were over with Hope the first time, he bedded Steffy the same night.  Now it looks to be history repeating itself with these two.  Steffy, the human pincushion, crawls into bed with this sleaze bag, it appears, moments after he’s left believing he’s been stood up at the altar.  Bill doesn’t focous on the sexual behaviors of his son, however, so our focus is again Hope v. Steffy, with virginal Hope being an abomination to Hit-and-Run Bill Spencer. 

Virginal Hope (who, it seems, has only ever bedded the man she’s marrying) is the game player when it’s STEFFY who used the promise of sex to keep Bill distracted while he signed over lucrative FC back to her family. It’s STEFFY who kept trying to get Bill into bed and away from Katie. It’s STEFFY who used sex to go after Liam and taunt Hope that she was too child like to keep him.It’s  STEFFY who whisked Liam away on some “play” holiday thinking that enough sex would help him remember that she was the woman for him. It’s STEFFY who probably slept with Liam when he thought he was being left at the altar.  The only consistency in this show is the motherr-daughter dyad with Steffy lacking any measure of dignity, as her mother before her, being willing to be used as ”the substitute” love when the broken hearted object of her affection has lost someone he loves (for as much as Liam can love anything other than sex – the dillweed).

 

THIS is what Bill wants for his son?  THIS is what BnB writers think is entertaining?    Now Bill rubs salt in the wounds by using criminal minded Deacon Jones and sending him after an innocent young girl to tear her world upside down. Bill doesn’t have to worry about leaving Hope in tact, beyond the pain she’d feel if his plan worked???  Did he not care that Deacon wasn’t the sort of man to pick up the pieces of his daughter’s heart and protect her?  For pity’s sake, the man took money to break out of prison (in the dumbest storyline ever airing in daytime) to help destroy his daughter’s  life on behalf of a man he’d never met.  Bill Spencer may not think that Hope is the right person for his son, but his abject hatred of a 20 year old girl is unsettling to watch.  He is supposed to be a captain of industry, a ruthless billionaire, so his obsession with reigning down pain and punishment on this young woman is more than a little disturbing. So is the fact that no one seems smart enough or powerful enough to stop him.  Balance writers, balance…

 

Bill Spencer never suffers from the pain he causes others and I don’t have  more than 20 years to see him pay for his misdeeds that I, as a fan, had to wait for Stephanie Forrester and Taylor Hayes to meet with their comeuppance.  Daytime doesn’t have 20 years to give, either. 

 

 I’m out again!