B&B: Old/Classic Discussion & Articles

[Soapysoap]

Yes, even Ronn Moss himself said once it was very disgusting storyline to work with!

[Maxim]

2003 is horrible in comparison to 2001/2002. So many strange, wrong storylines...and such a vibe killer year after a somewhat great period. I've been watching the 24/7 live stream from time to time while I am recording... and I'm just shocked at how bizarre everything is. Bridget/Ridge went for soooo long... I didn't remember it being so long and so unbearable. 

Ugh. 

Compared to 2024 though... it's Chekhov! 

[Maxim]

Bridget/Ridge really make parts of this year unwatchable! I don't know how I will stomach through these scenes when we get to them soon. Just passing glances from time to time... is enough to make me nauseated. I can't imagine how awful Ron Moss must have felt when he had to act these moments out. He was Bridget's father for the longest of time... till Brooke found out about the switched paternity. He was her father for the first FORMING years of her life and she was already a girl and not a baby when it was found out that Eric was her father. Bridget had a hard time adjusting when she was told he was not her father. So this is disturbing. Nobody in their right mind will write a storyline like this. 

Bold should have been cancelled right then and there... it was a sign of horrible things to come. 

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[Soapysoap]

I have been actually thinking the same thing many times. 
 

And actually, Portofino would have served excellent and glorious backdrop for finale episode.
 

Macy came back, Ridge and Brooke got back together, Sheila was sent to prison… happy ending for all

[Maxim]

As I recall 2004 was slightly better than 2003... but in mid 2005 everything went downhill. Other than the Stephanie heart attack storyline, which was kinda fun... nothing worked. And Taylor's return really maxed out the ridiculous. The ship never recovered past that... It slowly sunk and now we are thousands of meters deep on the ocean floor.

 

[BoldKara]

Let alone that Ridge helped BIRTH Bridget.

So so gross that Bell ever considered them a romantic pairing.

[YRfan23]

Yeah that’s why I think the shows last good year was 2002. Everything 1987-2002 (flaws and all) is classic B&B and 2003-onwards, well..isn’t…lol 

I guess maybe in a way 2003-2005 wasn’t that bad, but a lot can be said for some of the more recent years where there’s a string of good episodes before everything falls apart again…

[Maxim]

Yeeey finally recorded season 16! Finally done.

[BoldKara]

You know what to do! 

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[Anooj]

 

So many things went wrong during 2003-2004:

1. Ridge and Bridget - does this really need an explanation?

2. The above romance also made Bell drop the much more promising Mark/Bridget/CJ love triangle before it even got started. That story also gave Clarke something to do in the show for a change, but when Bell had the bright idea to pursue Ridget, Mark suddenly got dropped, and CJ and Clarke backburnered.

3. Amber gets a lost twin sister! After briefly teasing us with a romance between her and Deacon, she disappears and is never heard of again.

4. Macy gets a welcome resurrection, but then proceeds to speed through 2 years worth of storylines in less than a year, only to get killed off for the second time. This coincided with CJ also getting dropped and the show shifting focus to the new Marones, all of which meant we’d see less and less of the Spectras from this point on. Spectra Fashions closing down in 2005 is obviously a further jump-the-shark.

5. The Little Eric custody plotline got dropped, perhaps the most disastrous creative misstep EVER on this show. The paternity/custody plot was THE major umbrella storyline that glued, directly or indirectly, the whole 1998-2003 cast of younger characters together. He may have been the most important character of this era, but nowadays we never hear of him. Said story seemed to be entering into an interesting new phase with the Deacon/Macy romance, but when the latter died, the kid suddenly dropped off the face of the earth, and Amber and Rick were thrown into crap romances with Oscar Marone (uninteresting) and the 16-year old Caitlin (inappropriate - though thankfully the lolita storyline with Eric got cancelled!). Things were not helped by Jennifer Finnigan’s Bridget leaving around the same time, but in any case the whole excellent cast of young characters circa early 00s got washed out from the show in a very short time. It was not until the Hope/Liam/Steffy crowd was fully assembled in 2010 that the show received another stable core group of young characters, but by that time the writing was too bad for it to matter (and they had nothing like the Little Eric storyline to hold the writing together).

6. Brooke losing her position as Forrester CEO, casting the character adrift in terms of her professional side. The show did briefly try to put her in charge of Spectra, which Ridge renamed as Logan Designs, but this soon got dropped, and who the hell even knows what Brooke’s job description has been after that?

7. The Ridge paternity retcon ended up being completely pointless, since Ridge simply returned to Forrester after Logan Designs failed (yay for the reset button!), and Eric learning about it ended up being a mere speedbump in his relationship to Stephanie. Ridge’s blood connection to Nick also failed to matter in the long run, as I don’t think the characters would even interact after 2007 or so. Joseph Mascolo was incredibly wasted between 2005-2006.

8. Since Ridge is sort of the romantic leading man of the show, the triple-whammy of killing off his wife AND giving him an identity crisis over his parentage AND putting him in an off-putting incest romance, all of these simultaneously, caused the show’s tone to drift into somewhat darker territory, perhaps too much. Macy’s 2nd death didn’t help matters. This development culminated in the rather mean-spirited 2006,  after which, around 2008, Bell would start to lighten the tone again. The problem is that he overcorrected, and since 2010 the show has had that comedic jokey tone, previously applied ONLY to the Spectra crowd, present across the whole show (I noticed the shift when Brooke and Taylor had that catfight in the pool after FC had been retaken from Bill, with the music emphasizing comedy rather than depicting it as earnest drama; that over-the-top-drama-played-straight type of camp is what made 1999-2002 work so well, whereas now things felt too meta or self-aware)

9. The show replacing Tridge with Bridge as the designated supercouple. Now, Bridge most certainly had their moments as a pairing in the 80s and 90s, and the screen chemistry of RM and KKL has always been fantastic. Yet, Breacon and Ridget ruined these characters so terribly that the pair became inherently unrootable as the supposed emotional center of the show, and the biggest failure is perhaps the schizophrenic manner by which Bell wrote Brooke from this point on, as if one part of him was seeking to redeem her from Breacon, while also taking the easy way out by throwing her in more sex scandal storylines since that’s always so entertaining. As a result, a lot of 2003-2012, certainly since 2006, feels like the show is gaslighting us into liking Brooke, which would culminate in Taylor’s character assassination after her return, Stephanie increasingly being written as a Sheila-like opponent to Brooke (rather than the Cassandra archetype she was originally written as), and eventually bizzare compromise stories (Berryboink & Necklacegate) where we’d get the drama of a Brooke sex scandal while ALSO absolving her as a misunderstood victim.
Ridge, in turn, would also get worse and worse with his waffling (2005, 2009, 2011), not to mention the stupid sleeping pill rape storyline (2006), none of which endeared the pairing for me. I hated the 2003/2006-2012 era Bridge so much that I felt dropping them in 2012 (when RM left) actually gave the show a brief quality bump (a few other things also helped, but the regained quality - none of it a match on 87-02 though - would crash again in late 2015).
 

While many of the following years are certainly worse, no year other than 2003 made as many terrible creative decisions.

Edited November 7, 2024 by Anooj

[Videnbas]

This is such a great summary Joona (it is you, right?

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 I'm AnnieO in the YT comment section)! I completely agree with all of this. I like your observation about the show being "too meta" in recent years, and I think that aspect also began in that disastrous year of 2003 with the introduction of Nick Marone (and to some extent Jackie) who always had this meta feel, as if they didn't quite take the fictional universe they live in seriously.

[Maxim]

Amazing analysis. Some of the best I've read in the forum. So on point. What are your favorite seasons of the show, my friend?

[Anooj]

I think the very highest peaks are:

- mid-1988 thru entire 1989

- The 1st half of 1992

- Most of 1993

- Mid-1999 thru mid-2001

- Most of 2002 (maybe - it sure was explosively entertaining, even if some things about the writing are questionable in retrospect)

But I’d probably consider 87-93 and 99-02 to be overall very strong. My favorite calendar year would be a tie between 1989 and 2000, with 1993 possibly as a third alternative, but if we go by seasons, the Sept. ’99 to Sept. ’00 season could well be the best.

Though I should mention I’m not familiar with every single bit of 95-98, as my first memory of intermittently watching the show (as a kid under 10) involved the 1995 episodes with Sheila kidnapping James, and Ridge being blinded by the lab explosion (my big brother - who was the regular watcher of the show in my family at the time - explained it to me as a microwave explosion that plastered ketchup on his face

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). I’d catch various other bits every now and then (e.g. I have some vague memories of the Ridge/Brooke/Grant triangle), but started regularly watching around the time of Sheila’s 1998 exit storyline. I quit in 2017.

With the newly uploaded old episodes (and previously the Amy Silence channel for 88-89, years I’ve thus seen twice), I’ve been able to watch 87-95 all the way through, finishing it like a month ago. I’ve not jumped over to watching the ’96 or ’99 episodes out of a desire to watch everything in order (but since episodes 2120+ don’t seem to be forthcoming, I feel like I might change my mind), but I’ve nonetheless skimmed through parts of 99-02 out of nostalgia, and indeed made the comment Videnbas refers to above.

Edited November 7, 2024 by Anooj

[Maxim]

I agree about 100 percent of this... SPOT ON! Thank you so much for sharing. And welcome to the Bold Classic Club. 

[Maxim]

I miss messy Brooke. Why did they declaw her these past few years? 

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