A Critic’s Review of The Bold and the Beautiful: Tough Love Time

When it comes to The Bold and the Beautiful, every fan has their own opinion – and Soap Hub is no different. For five days, we sat and watched the good, the bad, and everything in between, and now we offer you a handy review, and a cheeky critique, of B&B’s week that was.

The Bold and the Beautiful: A Critic’s Week In Review

Last week, we took The Bold and the Beautiful to task for one of its biggest flaws: allowing two characters to forget that they have a past…especially if that past is a particularly sordid one because B&B characters are not anything if not hypocritical.

This week, we shine a light on yet another bone of contention: the show’s over-reliance on plot-driven storylines to the detriment of anything resembling character-driven drama.

Steffy Forrester Finnegan (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) requests time alone from the husband who dared to allow Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) access to their baby, so Dr. John “Finn” Finnegan (Tanner Novlan) dutifully heads for the guest house – the guest house that never existed until it was necessary to give Finn and Paris Buckingham (Diamond White) a private meeting place in which their connection could grow…because we can all see that writers are laying the groundwork for an affair between the two somewhere down the line.

Now, digressing from our rant for just a moment, we must admit that such a storyline actually has a solid foundation. Where B&B has succeeded, is in its handling of Finn and Paris’s friendship. Both are the offspring of particularly foul people – his mother’s a gun and poison-loving psychotic, her daddy stole one woman’s baby and handed it over to another – and yet they yearn for a connection with that parent.

Where the whole story falls flat is Steffy’s actions. She practically kicks Finn to the curb and refuses to legalize their marriage, and she shrieks to Ridge Forrester (Thorsten Kaye) that’s she’s really doing it out of anger over who Finn’s biological mother is, rather than over Finn’s action. What does that say about Steffy – other than she’s a godawful person?

And just as quickly as Finn and Steffy were broken up, they were making up and (re)pledging themselves to one another. So, of course, Sheila must enter the fray and wreck her own particular brand of havoc…because there can’t be but about two seconds of peace when you have the next plot to get to.

Further B&B Critic’s Musings

* Oh, right! Wyatt Spencer (Darin Brooks) and Flo Fulton (Katrina Bowden) exist, they are a couple, and they’ve been engaged since March. Surely we’d be forgiven if any of those facts slipped our minds, right?

* Dear Steffy, STOP saying that it was Sheila who took your mother away from you. It. Was. PRINCE OMAR who spirited Taylor away after Sheila accidentally put a bullet in her.

* John McCook (Eric Forrester) continues to kill it, with his portrayal of a once viral man struggling to reckon with the fact that he may no longer be able to satisfy his beloved wife.

* B&B’s MVP of the Week: Shauna Fulton (Denise Richards), for delivering this line to Quinn Fuller Forrester (Rena Sofer) and Carter Walton (Lawrence Saint-Victor) – “It’s just, it’s really odd after everything that’s happened – what you almost lost – that the two you would be behind closed doors together, where anyone could easily misinterpret.”

* Best Rebuttal of the Week: Quinn’s “For crying out loud Shauna. What are you? The door police?”

The Bold and the Beautiful (BB) airs weekdays on CBS. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Los Angeles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on B&B spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.