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B&B Needs To Be Fixed! By Suzanne

The show has had a long history of wonderful romantic couples and triangles. They’re at their best when they do sweeping romantic stories, location shoots and fashion shows, or when they do highly unusual, surprising stories that work well, such as Maya’s transgender story or the feud between Bill and Ridge.

Lately, the show has been in a real rut, and everything they write that’s new seems to be either horrible or boring. The actress who played Maya was on maternity leave, but she and Jacob Young (who played her husband, Rick) hadn’t been seen a long while before that. Once they married them off and they had a kid, the writers lost interest (which happens far too damn much – married couples don’t have to be boring!). They made such awesome choices to bring in her sister, Nicole, and her parents, but now Nicole, Zende, and Sasha are gone, and her parents are rarely seen. We never hear about anything having to do with the transgender story, and Jacob Young is gone. This is a huge mistake on their part. Young was an Emmy winner and has a huge fan following. He has great chemistry with everyone. I really miss his interaction with Ridge and Brooke. I would have loved to have seen his reactions to some of the stories that have transpired. I was hugely disappointed when we never got to see him yell at Ridge for his short romance with Quinn, or his machinations with the judge in Katie’s custody hearing.

B&B takes place in Los Angeles, in the fashion business, yet it’s rarely had any non-white characters, or any LGBTQ characters. They had addressed both issues with Maya and her family. Now they’re back to having no other LGBTQ characters (and since Maya is played by a woman, her transgender identity doesn’t even come up), and few African American characters.

One way that the show is very clumsy is when they bring in a bunch of teen or other young characters in the summer, which hardly ever work and are quickly written out again. They did that again this year with Emma, Xander and Zoe. First, the story focused on Emma, who was brought in as Justin’s niece. The character was very boring. They tried to force a romance with her and Xander, which also fell flat. They rarely used Justin with her at all, so having that connection made little sense. Bringing in Zoe gave the story a little more life, and eventually, they wrote out Emma. However, the Zoe-Xander romance, and their previous breakup, makes little sense. She was bad, but now she’s good….what??? And having her cat die seemed like it could lead to something interesting (maybe Emma was really a stalker and killed her cat?), but it didn’t. It was pointless.

Then they brought in Reese as Zoe’s father. Now, he has more charisma than all of those kids combined. He is funny and also can handle the drama. He had great chemistry with Taylor and seemed poised to maybe be too-good-to-be-true crazy town guy with her. However, they completely ruined his character by having him switch the babies and tell Hope that hers was dead. No soap fan is going to pull for him after that. Again, they quickly wrote him out. Perhaps he’ll return someday, but I doubt they will ever be able to redeem him after that. It was nice to see Taylor with a new man. They should revisit that soon. Say, how about pairing her with Justin? It would have been great to see her with the new Thorne (Ingo Rademacher), but now he’s gone, too.

Now we’re left with the big secret of Hope’s baby being alive, and more people know it every day. They brought in Flo, who is beautiful but really, really boring. She seems to have zero personality. She even makes Hope seem a little less vanilla. I don’t see any chemistry between her and anyone else. She’s a fine actress, but the writing is not supporting her.

The show seems stuck. Will they put Katie and Bill back together (and does anyone really care)? Will Hope leave Liam for Thomas? (I kind of hope so) It’s a shame they killed off Caroline because I loved her. She really was great, and her exit made no sense. We’ve seen a lot of Thomases over the years, but the new one seems the most bland. He’s an OK actor, but he’s not nearly as handsome as the last two. This is a soap, OK? Mostly women watch it. We want to see handsome men, and women we can relate to (or that can act really well). We don’t really care if the men can act, as long as they look pretty. They seem to forget this. Flo better not get in the way of Wyatt and Sally (bringing Sally back was one of the few things they got right lately). They should show Eric and Quinn a whole lot more. More Donna and Katie, more Pam and Charlie. If they bring in any more new characters, they should make sure they’re interesting, and introduce them very slowly. I want to see more LGBTQ characters, and more actors of color. It’s L.A., a very multi-cultural town… Bring in some Asians and Latinos. Get with the 21st century!

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