B&B: Bold from the beginning

[Videnbas]

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.

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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.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Videnbas

[DramatistDreamer]

Some people claim they hate Stephanie because she ‘stole’ Eric from Beth but Stephanie even know about Beth when Eric got her pregnant? Wasn’t it Eric who actually cheated on Beth?

[Videnbas]

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.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Videnbas

[DramatistDreamer]

Eww, B&B is wrong for that. They just didn’t want to come up with new theme music. They’re cheap as hell.

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[Darn]

Speaking of the Forrester children, I find it odd that the show has zero investment in the one biological child of its signature couple. When's the last time we even heard about RJ much less seen him?

[DramatistDreamer]

Probably because RJ has been an afterthought since Brooke had kids with Eric and is the bio-mom of Nick Marone’s child, not to mention that crazy Deacon Sharpe. Not since Stephanie and her brood has anyone been in the running for populating practically half of L.A.’s upper crust enclave.

[Videnbas]

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. 

[DramatistDreamer]

Did this show ever write Stephanie and Sally as having loving relationships with men who genuinely had eyes for only them? Even for awhile?
 

Even as a child, something about B&B struck me as being “off” in the way certain characters were written. Looking at these episodes now, it’s obvious that there was a certain narrative being written about “women of a certain age”, that was not written for Eric or Bill Spencer.

[kalbir]

@DramatistDreamer There was the Stephanie/Sally/Jack triangle and James having feelings for Stephanie but that was really it as far as a viable non-Eric love interest for Stephanie. I think Sally loved Clarke but he used her for his own agenda.

Eric had three wives (Stephanie, Brooke, Sheila) and many love interests (Margo, Beth, Taylor, Lauren) but Bill only was ever paired with Margo and Darla. I don't think there was really any love between Bill and Margo, and the Bill/Darla pairing was more fun and games than actual love, at least from what I remember.

Edited May 21, 2022 by kalbir

[Soaplovers]

Only one I could think of was Taylor's dad Jack.   The show did have a triangle between all three for awhile in 1992 to 1994... but other then that, no.

[Videnbas]

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.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Videnbas

[DramatistDreamer]

I just compare Stephanie and Sally with women in that same age group on other soaps—someone like Lucinda Walsh (ATWT) and there’s just no comparison. Even Emma Snyder (ATWT) in her onscreen prime outpaces Beth, Stephanie and Sally. Lucinda had an active onscreen sex life, that rivaled any man half her age and for awhile, so did wholesome Emma Snyder. And Lucinda legit had a man who, hard as he may have tried, couldn’t escape his love and desire for her.

I can’t think of any comparable comparisons for women in that age group during that same period of time on B&B.

Bill Spencer also had Donna Logan, a young woman younger than his daughter, fawning all over him for a period of time. One gets the sense that if he had wanted her, he would have had her.

Edited May 21, 2022 by DramatistDreamer

[Videnbas]

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.

[DramatistDreamer]

I don’t really think you have to write an overtly sexual character to write a character who has a healthy sex life.

Emma Snyder on ATWT was certainly no sexpot, lol. She ran a farm where she worked her hands until calloused and had a gaggle of children. Still, the show didn’t shy away from showing her as a sexual being, especially in the first six years she was on the canvas. 

Lucinda Walsh was a businesswoman who ran what was described as a Fortune 500 company. She was hard charging in the boardroom and the bedroom. She had many aspects to her character but she had needs and desires and made this clear. A few times, she almost teetered on the verge of desperation but not to the point where she was offering men her company to marry her, she was never that desperate.

To me, Eric was far from sensual yet we still saw him with a harem’s worth of women in his life. Had Bill Spencer stayed longer, I have no doubt he would have caught up to Eric, or come close. I just don’t understand why we couldn’t have gotten more attention to those aspects of the lives of the women who were supposedly in Bill and Eric’s age range, especially in those years where the show was supposed to be at its best.

 

[Videnbas]

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.