A Critic’s Review Of The Bold and the Beautiful: 21st Century Is Knocking

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

While watching Monday’s airshow, I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been penned by a neophyte scriptwriter who had only a cursory grasp of The Bold and the Beautiful canon – just enough to know that Brooke Logan Forrester (Katherine Kelly Lang) hates Taylor Hayes (Krista Allen), that Taylor hates Brooke, and both women are goo-goo gaga for Ggggggridge Forrester (Thorsten Kaye).

I wondered because there was Taylor pitying Brooke for turning the issue of Douglas Forrester’s (Django Ferri) custody into a “Logan versus Forrester tug of war,” and sighing that her rival is telling Hope that Douglas belongs only with their family and not with Thomas’s (Matthew Atkinson) as if Taylor herself hadn’t recently drawn a line in the sand and declared that it was once again war between the two families…and she was downright giddy about it too!

And then there was Steffy Forrester Finnegan (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) draping herself all over John “Finn” Finnegan (Tanner Novlan) and asking him how he felt about recent events, his biological mother’s death in particular, as if she ever actually cared about what her husband felt and/or wanted.

When Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) first showed up on the scene, Steffy told Finn that he wouldn’t be forging a relationship with her, no ifs, ands, buts, or even coconuts; he’d just have to deal with; the decree was handed down and written into stone.

As it turns out, there was no real cause for alarm. Come Tuesday, and for the rest of the week, The Bold and the Beautiful was back to ridiculous, repetitive form.

Further B&B Musings

* Brooke: “My issue isn’t with Ridge. It’s with Taylor.” Never before has one line of dialogue so succinctly summed up one soap opera’s major deficit

Taylor didn’t so much slink into town and reignite her rivalry with Brooke as she did take her cue from Ridge and run with it. There’s really no one to blame here but, man, who constantly pits these two foolish, lovestruck women against one another.

Wouldn’t it be nice, preferable even, for Brooke and Taylor to suddenly say, “Hey, you know what? We’re being played for mugs. Ridge? Who really needs him?!” At least that would be a step in bringing The Bold and the Beautiful into the 21st Century.

* Hello anvil that was Douglas’s voice modifier app!

* While the point was beautifully made by Amber Sinclair, I too must voice my utter contempt for the scene in which the Forrester family set around and championed Douglas staying put with his biological parent rather than his adoptive parent, in the family home rather than the one he was welcomed into, in front of adoptee Zende Forrester. At least actor Delon de Metz had the good sense to act as uncomfortable as that scene made me feel.

And what can I even say about Ridge, who helped raised Hope, purposefully making her feel so damn inferior/less than others because she doesn’t have the Forrester name? As I’ve asked in several columns, what message does this all send?

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.