B&B June 2024 Discussion Thread

[Maxim]

1000 percent YES. YES. YES. AND again - YES!

It's laughable. No, Bradley couldn't cast a proper older actress to play the domineering matriarch in counterpoint to all the sluttiness on the show... Noooo... he had to ignore all history and turn Hope of all people... into the whore... and Steffy of all people... into the moralizer that judges people and talks like a school teacher to both her husband, her brother, FATHER and anyone that comes up to her.

I have grown to love JMW and in some moments I am with Steffy 100 percent, BUT the way Bradley is constantly writing her... - is tiring to listen to all the same one-tone angry condescending controlling babble that is NEVER going to come close to the dimensions and ice Susan Flannery gave as Stephanie. And not because JMW is a bad actress... not at all, but because this is not fitting her (her age and her character's history) and looks completely absurd and annoying.

How is that the girl that 10-15 years ago was running around in lingerie singing... If you show them what you got, then you'll get what you want... from her signature lingerie modeling song..., this cool-girl spoiled boyfriend-stealing vamp is now the town's psycho-biddy sour-face matriarch?

Hope was the girl that had the battle inside her, rebelled against her mother's history and bad example... had problems with sex and was mocked by Steffy multiple times for not being able to satisfy her men. Well... I guess in 2024 Hope is a brand new AI generated slut from the valley edition. She has turned into a sex pistol, a copy-paste of her mother's trashiest version. How completely unrealistic and idiotic. At this point the only thing missing is her becoming the new face of Brooke's bedroom. And why not - Hope's boudoir. 

These recent brain-transplants that both Steffy and Hope have received with the downgraded copies of Brooke and Stephanie... are comical. Steffy will never be Stephanie. She lacks the history, the background of the character and the build up to be Stephanie... and Hope will NEVER be Brooke - she lacks the foundation of what made Brooke tick and do all these things.

And please don't come at me with this number that people change SO FAST that you can't even recognize them in a year or two. Even if you go through some brutal ordeal, battle cancer, or lose your whole family... you are still not going to be acting like a completely different person... Unless you have some really really extreme personality disorder and mental illness, for which we haven't seen symptoms in these characters. 

So yeah, the show in 2024 looks like a parody of a parody of it's golden years. And believe me, today, it's a fantasy of Hope and Finn, tomorrow it will be a reality - Brad is just testing the waters and the more negative the fan reaction will be, the more he will jump into it, thinking he is scandalous and unpredictable.

 

[YRfan23]

Pretty Much sums it up....Bradley clearly has sacrificed his personal fondness for JMW over the years,(as he does with a lot of the actors he likes)  to the point he's pushed Steffy in all  these directions. To quote what Steffy said to Finn last week: "Stay in your lane babe...." that sums up what I think of Steffy's character and the potential she could have brought.

The concept that Taylor's daughter turned into a "Brooke" and Brooke's daughter turned into a "Taylor" definitely should have and could have brought the right amount of sparks, yet where that failed IMO is , I feel like most of us (well Me) could never root for Steffy trying to steal Hope's men, because her behavior was unfairly justified by the likes of Taylor and Stephanie of all people. I'm sorry but I hated how Stephanie found Steffy's antics "amusing" just because she felt it was sticking it to the Logan's for exploiting that same behavior all these years....I feel like Stephanie should have given her granddaughter a good earful for her behavior as she saw her morph into "Brooke Jr"....yet it was ok, because she's a FORRESTER and not a LOGAN....I'm sorry, that just...never flies......Yet while all this is going on Hope was constantly bashed by Steffy and those women,  for sticking to her beliefs about her virginity, and in their opinion her trying to reclaim Liam after he proposed to Steffy just made her more of a "Logan" yet she never used her sexuality like Steffy did.

It's frustrating and while I do admit Steffy did sort of grow on me (mostly when Hope wasn't on the show and she was a lot more tolerable) It's clear they will never have her acknowledge or become self aware how unfairly she treated Hope and her mom all these years. Honestly if that was all said and done years ago and was still acknowledged to this day...I think I could stomach the idea more of now Hope all of a sudden being a "true Logan" for real and now going after Finn.....yet since we've never really seen Steffy owned up to her own whorish behavior in the past, it's sadly gonna just make Hope more of a target for her then she originally was.....ugh.

[Planet Soap]

 

You took the words right out of my mouth.

As much as I like Steffy's charachter, Hope has remained consistent in being a genuine person while Steffy has bounced villain and anti hero and heroine.

As you said, Brooke has a daughter like Taylor used to be (kind and genuine) while Taylor has a daughter who is like Brooke (more sexually open, scheming).

[YRfan23]

I mean I love a good bad girl, but again it's all about the fact that Steffy has never owned up to the torment she did to Hope, or has even begun to apologize. Let's not even begin about how Steffy herself has committed a few violent acts (even MURDAH...) herself, and has been an accessory to Bill's lies,  yet that's all swept under the rug. 

Honestly I feel Brad Bell himself really believes in the whole "Rich and privileged" scenario where someone like Steffy is too much of a "force" to really get punished, yet it's easier to always punish Brooke and Hope because Brooke came from nothing and  literally slept her way into the Forrester family...

Edited June 11, 2024 by YRfan23

[Maxim]

Gosh Heather Tom looks so bored with the material they are giving her. And it is... so boring. 

[ranger1rg]

Bored, yes. Heather Tom should also be embarrassed. Pretty much none of this has any impact on Katie, who needs to mind her own business.

Katie should be so into her romance with Carter that she doesn't know what day of the week it is, let alone who Bill's latest Baby Mama is.

[Maxim]

I also don't understand how KKL bears all of this empty dialogue and scenes... she recently even said it herself in other words - she's sick of playing Ridge's sidekick and her daughter's cheerleader... she wants her character to have balls again. How sad... and how telling... that she has to utter these words publicly. 

Watching the last episode... I found myself thinking... these scenes, in which Brooke is "concerned" about what Hope is going through, are such a waste of time...Such a waste of time! I am done with Brooke asking Hope - How are you? And starting to cry even before Hope has uttered a word. Bit-h, your  daughter is in her mid 30s, it's time to step back and let her deal with her own issues for a change. At least for a day! I swear when Hope is doing Finn, Brooke should be watching behind the door and whispering to Hope while the act is happening - Hope, this is not good for you, hunny.

So yes, I am done with Brooke's boring talks with her daughter... Especially when Brooke has NEVER given one good advice to her daughter or even helped her in any way - the only thing Brooke does is CRY and turn Hope's problem into her own and center it around how this is going to trouble her relationship with RIIIIIIIIDGE.

It's sad what KKL has been downgraded to. Really sad. Even the glimmer of hope that is now Brooke coming into the spotlight at Forrester is... just that - a faint glimmer that I don't think will evolve into anything substantial. 

I don't believe Bradley knows what to do with Brooke. She has done every sex scandal imaginable under the sun, (maybe with the exception of real incest and I hope to God! Bradley doesn't go there...) and everyone has forgiven her, so it's... nothing left for Bradley to choose. She has also aged to a point that she still looks like a 45 year old, but we all know she isn't and she can't get pregnant... and she is at that age that it's expected for her to have some wisdom and character development - something that Brooke does not have and that Bradley has never managed to create in her. He can't write anything compelling or not-cheap-taboo, so it's either f-cking the son in law or being the boring crying mother or boring smiling wife. No in between.

Gone are the days of Bill Bell's conniving smart Brooke that was a skilled chemist and a businesswoman, gone are the days of Brooke actually having a goal in life and trying to achieve it. Gone are the days of complexity and beautiful dialogue.

We live in the era of cheap, cheaper and cheapest. The era where Brooke is scared of her daughter in law... The era of the pacifist, boring, vanilla no-storyline Barbie-Brooke. 

#onetearfrommylefteye 

#cancelation

#bringhollisback

Edited June 11, 2024 by Maxim

[Maxim]

2014 to 2019 is a period I have watched only sporadically and quite frankly I have completely forgotten most storylines, with the exception of Maya and Ridge and Caroline. And last night I was bored and watched 3-4 episodes from the period where Hope was giving birth in a storm and someone switched her baby - end of 2018-beginning of 2019. I don't remember watching these episodes and I was shocked how much BETTER and more interesting everything was written. Not some top-quality material, but compared to 2024 it's... a masterpiece.

My husband came into the room and wanted to stay and watch a bit, which he rarely does. Annika was giving a great performance. So... between 2019 and 2024 something definitely went awry. Post-pandemic Bold is unrecognizable to me to even the bearable trashy era. The dialogue has deteriorated to levels of amateurish high school short-films. The plotting is deranged and chaotic. I really didn't believe 2019 will feel so much different and more tolerable. 

[1974mdp]

IMO, too, KKL is TOTALLY being wasted. She's capable of so much more. I think ONE of things that's missing is that she needs a true antagonist which in my mind is a "younger Brooke" who sets her sights on RJ, sort of the relationship that Brooke had with Stephanie. RJ and Luna are on a one-way ticket to Snoozetown. We need a younger, scheming social climber trying to make her way the top and trying to get Luna out of the way. Brooke would recognize "herself" in the young woman and work to keep this upstart out of her son's life. And, IMO, Brooke is so much more interesting without Ridge. I think she even worked better with Bill back in the day. I'd LOVE to see her in a real relationship with a much younger man. They had the potential there with her and Hollis...but as we know, B&B loves to kill any potential!

I'm still pissed that the show killed what could have been an interesting triangle between RJ/Luna/Zende and creating a true rivalry between RJ and Zende. Now, they've basically ruined the Zende character.

 

[Maxim]

Steffy to Finn - Hope's lost... and when she is lost... she is reckless.

This is copy-paste of what Stephanie told Eric in 2002, when Brooke was having the Deacon affair. Word for word. My memory is goood.

Yikes, Bradley really wants to erase all history and pretend Hope is this reckless whore with this massive whoring history. Yikes. If the fans tolerate that... who knows what absurdity we'll have to watch soon.

 

P.S Who should I sleep with to get Brooke to incidentally f-ck Finn instead of Hope. 

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P.S 2 - One of the major problems I think Bradley will have to face is that Annika does not have this femme fatale-slut-vamp vibe that he is pretending she does. That girl looks aristocratic and has this intelligence oozing form her. She was perfectly cast for the original Hope. So she will never work in the position Bradley is putting her now. Brooke and Steffy on the other hand do possess the vamp energy, mostly Brooke and that's what has kept the character going for so long. Steffy too has this sexy, out of control thing when she wants... and that's what's funny to me that all of a sudden now she is the prude expecting the worst from Hope. Not organic. Fake. A writer should never change arche-types 10-20 years into the characters. At least not that sudden and that caricaturish. 

[BoldRestless]

I truly wonder if we're supposed to see this subtext, or if we're meant to believe what the characters are saying is true. How can Steffy walk into an office where a man and a woman are simply talking, and shout "Get away from my husband!!!" when she, in fact, is the one who slept with that other woman's husband, when she is the one who cheated on Finn, and he never cheated on her. Does Bradley Bell want us to agree with Steffy?!

 

If Steffy were a man her behavior would be considered abusive, the same way Ridge and Liam are.

Edited June 13, 2024 by BoldRestless

[ranger1rg]

This is SUCH a great description and analysis of Annika/Hope and of who Brooke and Steffy are. Perfect.

[Boldsoaps]

Could you see Kim matula pulling this off?

[1974mdp]

All the Steffy/Hope/Finn stuff was FF for me.  I watched the Katie/Poppy scenes. Poor Heather Thom. She deserves better. First, of all, Poppy is right. Katie, this ain't your home anymore!

This show skips so many story beats that things always fall flat. MAYBE...this would have worked if we saw Katie was unhappy in her "relationship" with Carter that we never see. MAYBE if she also had some sort of reason to distrust Poppy. MAYBE if she had somewhat reconnected with Bill lately. But, NOPE.

[Maxim]

I knew I was not the only one in thinking this. 

 

This is actually an important point, something I forgot to mention. Thank you for adding this. It makes it even more clear to me that Bradley denies the past history and will mention it only if it serves him in some way.

Couldn't agree more!

I don't see Kim in the sex-vamp role, no. It won't be as cringe as making Annika do it, but still No.