There's some disconnect for the writers since the elements are all there! Someone on the Official BnB board just asked why Pheebs had to die! There was little follow up to her death other than to have Rick sleep with her twin, using her as a weapon against her father (his brother) after already having slept with her mother. That storyline should have been transformational for Rick. It wasn't. It should have been transformational for taylor, it wasn't. It should have lead to a civil war in the Forrester-Logan clan, it didn't.

BnB romances are FILLED with the 'it might happen' part. It might happen, this time, that writers don't break up a beloved couple. It never does. BnB couples break up for the silliest of reasons and in the craziest of ways.

Amen.

The gods of daytime also underestimate the fans' loyalty to actors/characters. It's not the dazzling brilliance of their oft retread plots that keeps us coming back. I guess if there is true enjoyment, it's in watching how actors take some of the worst dialogue and plots known to entertainment and breath life into them.

I think you overestimate actor loyalty. Most people could not even tell you who plays who. And historically we see that it often doesn't matter because that man has been coming on soaps for decades saying "the role of XXXXX is now being played by YYYYY" and the audience doesn't miss a beat. Take Y&R and a couple of their main characters, Jack and Jill. The audience does not seem to care the current versions are not the originals or have any notion these aren't the "real" ones. We are going to see this again this week on GH, where Greg Vaughan has vanished and Jonathan Jackson is now magically Lucky Spencer. The audience will blink, and by the end of one scene will adjust. I doubt GH will lose even 0.01 worth of ratings by Vaughan's absence.