Videnbas

So another thing I don't understand about this storyline: When Steffy had regained consciousness and Sheila was alone with her in the hospital room, Sheila was looking menacingly at all the medical equipment by Steffy's bedside and looked like she was about to do... what exactly? It seemed like Sheila was about to kill Steffy, but how could she possibly do that using those machines? Edit: I guess one of the machines controlled the pain medication?

B&B: Sheila and Taylor

You're not the only one! I only watched the rooftop scenes today and I half expected them to kiss when they were sitting curled up next to each other leaning against that white wall. I definitely saw chemistry there and the scene really did feel sort of romantic. Now, if the show had actually gone there, THAT would have been a twist that would have lived up to the hype. Taylor the psychiatrist getting romantically involved with Sheila the lunatic who tried to kill her and everyone else in her family would have been epic.

Exactly. Sometimes a lot of suspense can come from the viewers knowing something that the characters don't.

Yeah, I was going to say Ivana's murder too. That was a suspenseful storyline, even though the viewers always knew the identity of the murderer (or maybe because of it). And they played all the beats in that storyline - there was the scene leading up to the murder (although the killing took place off screen), there was an arrest, a morgue scene where the body was identified, a bond hearing, jail scenes, a prison escape, a dangerous plot to catch the killer, and the final scenes with Macy and Anthony having a romantic date while secretly planning to destroy each other were edge of your seat stuff.

Wasn't this whole major plot twist supposed to result in the show "never being the same"? And now we're back to status quo.

Well, going back to watch those classic B&B episodes from the 80s and early 90s their views on gender roles are often surprisingly old-fashioned. We have characters worrying about having a child out of wedlock. We have strong characters like Sally Spectra uttering lines like "like every real woman, I need a man in my life". We have a supposedly "nice" character like Thorne demanding that Macy quit her job and then suggesting that they have children to "keep her occupied". And later when he asks Karen to move in with him and she asks why he wants that, Thorne unironically replies "my plants are dying and I haven't had a home-cooked meal in months". We have wives cooking for their husband but never the other way around. We have mothers of young children deciding to simply leave town with the kid without anyone worrying about the child losing contact with their father. We have the Brooke/Ridge/Taylor triangle which I have a lot of trouble getting invested in because if Ridge could simply stop encouraging both women at the same time there would be no triangle. And I've just started watching the Macy/Thorne/Karen storyline where they both move in with Thorne and share him, and it is really painful to watch these accomplished young women choosing to demean themselves like that. So I guess the depiction of middle-aged women is just another symptom of the same disease.

Well, there was Jackie and Owen, but that was a bit later of course. As for Sally and Stephanie, they just seemed like character types that were mainly defined by other characteristics than their sex life. Stephanie was mainly a matriarch and although she always loved Eric and was fiercely protective (or controlling) of him and the rest of her family, she never really gave off any sexual vibes with anyone. She and Eric had a great "old married couple" dynamic, but a passionate bedroom scene between them would not really have worked. Sally, although primarily a businesswoman and a mother, was very much a sensual/sexual character but that side of her was always played for comedy (probably because the actress had a talent for playing hilarious over-the-top seduction scenes). Nevertheless, she did have one man - Saul - who spent many years loving her and only her, but she never felt the same way about him. And Adam also had very deep feelings for Sally but again Sally was the one who was hesitant to explore it (although she was obviously in love with him too). Interestingly, Sally and Stephanie were sometimes in triangles competing for a man, and both times (Jack Hamilton, Massimo Marone), the man preferred Stephanie although she was never openly seductive the way Sally could be.

Let me just say that I'm currently watching the Bill/Darla story and I think they are adorable together. Their mutual awkwardness when trying to navigate their vastly different personalities is very entertaining and endearing to watch, and I didn't realize that Darla's backstory (being an orphan moving from foster home to foster home) was first revealed during one of her dates with Bill. And Bill and Darla having a night out at the Bikini Bar, drinking tequila and dancing, is right up there with Sally cutting Stephanie's hair as a candidate for the funniest scene in the history of B&B. Sally did have Adam Alexander, I believe he was the love of her life. But of course he had to disappear several times because the mob was chasing him.

So I am a bit late to all this, but I FINALLY caught up and watched the supposed twist. And the biggest plot hole is Sheila's gun. She wasn't planning to have a confrontation that fateful day, so what was she doing with a loaded gun in her purse? Does she always carry a gun to Il Giardino for "protection"? And if so, WHY the silencer? It would have made 100% more sense if it had been Steffy bringing a gun when she went to confront Sheila, than Sheila going out for a drink, with no intention of meeting anyone, and randomly bringing a gun.

Thank you!

The odd thing is, it actually works. It sort of gives an "innocence" to Eric and Sheila's relationship that just emphasizes how taken in he is by her, and how Sheila dreams of starting over with a clean slate and finding love. The music doesn't portrayal the relationship as it is but how Sheila and Eric want to see it. It's brilliant in a way. I think the main problem with RJ is that he's related to too many people. It limits him as a character. Also, it is convenient to forget him now that Steffy and Thomas have been saying Ridge should be with "his family, the Forresters" because it wouldn't be a good look for them to root for the destruction of their little brother's family. The writers were on to something when they paired RJ up with Coco Spectra. They could have played the Romeo/Juliet angle for years and made them true star-crossed lovers, but sadly they lost interest after a couple of months and resolved the conflict too soon and too easily, basically killing that potential.

Stephanie did not know (or didn't know much) about Beth at the time. What happened between Beth and Eric was ALL on Eric. He cheated on Beth and left her without so much as an explanation when he learned of Stephanie's pregnancy. Speaking of Beth and Eric - I just noticed a VERY interesting choice of background music. Beth and Eric had their own music theme in the early days - a beautiful, nostalgic piano theme. And I just realized that Beth and Eric's theme comes back again when Eric starts falling for Sheila. I can hardly imagine two women more different than Beth and Sheila. Yet they evoke the same feelings in Eric.

I have always wondered how much of Aly's characterization was really Ashlyn Pearce's idea rather than Bradley Bell's. Her quirky character was so totally different from his usual way of writing, and I got the impression the actress was a very intelligent young girl. ----- So the classic episodes have already reached 1990 and we have Caroline and Ridge getting married, the start of Eric and Brooke, the start of Thorne and Macy, the start of Sally and Clarke, Felicia being introduced, and so on. I like the 1990 episodes - it was a good year for the show. In a way, it was the last of the "early" years since it marks the end of the Caroline era.

I think making Ridge not Eric's biological son was one of the worst, possibly THE worst, decisions the show has made. Aside from short term drama, the only function it served was opening the door to a whole lot of quasi-incestuous pairings between people named Forrester.

So I know we've been speculating a bit about when Brad Bell took over as head writer and when he started influencing the writing. I was just watching episode 1301 (from 1992) and it seems to me like there's a HUGE shift in the writing in that episode. Not entirely out of character writing, but massive shifts towards the extreme and villainous in characters like Stephanie and Blake. Did anyone else notice it? Could this be Brad's influence?

Thank you so much! You are amazing for taking the time to upload all these episodes! I feel the same - getting to watch my favorite period of B&B again after 25+ years is a dream come true!

Thank you so much! This is wonderful news! I have been looking for these 1993 episodes for as long as I can remember. By the way, is there any way you could upload the last few minutes or so of 1554? They seem to be missing.

But that was just her final three weeks (and btw I thought Ashlyn Pearce did a wonderful job rising above the mediocre writing). I'm talking about Aly's entire run. We learned more about Aly as a person in a short time than they ever bothered showing us about any other character in her generation. And her storylines were based around her personality, not her love life. Little things like her hobbies and quirks (dressing up in Medieval clothing, writing in her diary, declining a date because of her goldfish's feeding schedule), and her special bond with Pam (who was usually not taken seriously by the rest of her family). Her grief and the trauma of what happened to her mother, and the initially sweet relationship between her and the imaginary Darla. Her naiveté and obsessive idealism. Her anger issues that went back to when she was four years old. Her sweet awkwardness in her first romance with Oliver, and how he helped build up her confidence and mental stability. Her combination of academic precociousness and emotional immaturity. Her inability to understand metaphors, subtext and nuances, instead interpreting everything literally and in black or white (I wondered at the time if the actress tried to portray Aly with high-functioning autism). Her touching bond with Thorne. Her dream of becoming a shoe designer. That is a lot more fleshed out and complex characterization than we've had for most other new young characters. And it was done without getting Aly caught up in some silly triangle - the character itself was the driving force in her storylines.

I think the mistake in trying to build a soap on pairing characters up, or putting them in triangles, is that no relationship is more interesting than the characters involved. If you don't first care about the characters individually, how can you be made to care about what happens to them and who they are with? B&B makes this mistake a lot these days. Instead of exploring a character in depth - what motivates them, what are their strengths and weaknesses, their wants and fears - they just throw them into different relationships and then break the relationships up and move on to the next with no emotional impact. Everyone seems interchangeable to everyone else. The only example of character-based writing I can think of in (fairly) recent years was Aly. She had an actual inner life. An actual personality. If I look at the current set of characters on B&B and try to describe their personalities, in most cases I simply can't (or only in very generic terms like "Sheila is crazy" or "Deacon is a bad boy trying to be good"). Looking at the classic episodes I could write pages and pages about each and every character.

Do you have examples of successful and/or unsuccessful writing for "supercouples" on B&B? Or examples of when fan influence worked well or not so well on the show? For me, one major problem seems to be the over-reliance on triangles as plot device. Nothing kills a character, or a romantic pairing, faster than a poorly constructed triangle. And by that I mean a triangle that follows the rules of sports (teams fighting to win a prize) rather than drama (characters developing and experiencing conflict).

Thank you! I really find that what I enjoy the most is plot and character analysis (or analysis of just about anything related to the show). It's usually more enjoyable to me when the whole "taking sides" aspect is taken out of the equation, even though I do have a handful of favorites that I will defend no matter what (the characters that is, not necessarily their actions). What I enjoy about the writing in the early years is that it was so nuanced that there were very few clear-cut heroes or villains. Instead, the characters become a sort of Rorschach test that viewers can project their own lives and relationships on. It has been very clear to me in the case of Brooke and Stephanie, for example. The first time I watched the show as a young girl, I saw Brooke as the heroine and Stephanie as the evil villain. Rewatching the same episodes now as a mother, I am entirely on Stephanie's side and find Brooke totally unrelatable.

Of course, it's all just an interesting discussion and I think it's amazing how we all bring our own perspectives to the characters based on our own life experiences. What I was trying to say was that I found Caroline psychologically interesting, without really feeling the need to side with or against the character. To me the part of her that intrigued me (although in a kind of uncomfortable way) was the cognitive dissonance between her self image and her repressed feelings. We all like to see ourselves as good people, and yet we are all capable of thoughts and actions that are not so good and that we'd be ashamed to admit even to ourselves. And then there's this effort of rationalization which was portrayed so well with Caroline (her trying to justify herself, to herself). I'm not saying she did the right thing (she didn't) but it was interesting to me to see her trying to sort herself out. There was just this gap between her true self and how she was used to seeing herself.

Maybe it would be possible to save 1549 in a few shorter sections? Or whatever part plays before Videoland breaks the episode? The Sally/Stephanie scene from 1549 is already in the clips section, and I have found a clip with what I believe is another 5 minutes of the 1549 ep (the Thorne/Macy scene outside the Bikini bar) that I could upload, so we'd at least have about half the episode until it can be solved.

YOU.ARE.AMAZING! Thank you, thank you, thank you - I am so excited to hear this wonderful news that I'd be jumping up and down if my 4 year old wasn't trying to sleep in the next room! Being able to rewatch this "long lost" part of B&B is something I've hoped for for so many years!