Has your week been bold and beautiful? Did you tell anyone who would listen that something was impossible while knowing full well it was possible? Did you pull from your own murky history to help someone in need in the present? Did you borrow a big scoop of Sugar from a visiting former neighbor? These and more situations faced the Forrester-Logan-Spencer-Walton-Nozawa clan this week!
Isn't it sweet, Scoopers? Brooke tried to help Luna by seemingly referencing a long-ago sexual assault. Meanwhile, Steffy is one of the few people who knows how unkillable Sheila is, yet she kept right on believing her foe was dead. But B&B finally brought Lauren up to date on Sheila -- and us by accurately relaying the dangers of Sugar! Y'all ready? Let's Scoop about it!
Sunny Brooke could tell that R.J. was a cloud threatening her skies, so she coaxed her son into telling her why his frown wasn't upside down. Ridge and Brooke's only child 'fessed up that Luna had shagged Zende, and darn it, it was all because Luna had been drugged by her own mother! I wish to soap gods far and wide that B&B characters would quit saying that. Poppy was guilty only of having the mints.
The way everyone makes it sound, Poppy purposely switched her chilled Chiclets with Luna's unassuming Altoids or tied Luna to a chair and poured the low-dose edibles down her throat. Poppy's only culpability in any of this was in leaving her "special mints" lying around, and not letting Luna know they weren't just breath mints.
R.J. still felt that Zende wouldn't have busted his move without Luna's consent, but Brooke very vehemently disagreed. So vehemently, it was surprising. "Think about what she went through!" Brooke implored her son regarding Luna's experience. Luna wasn't to blame! In fact, the spiked sex was a horrible betrayal on Zende's part. R.J. asked Brooke to spare Luna further embarrassment and keep Ridge out of the loop.
Indeed, later on, when Ridge apparently came home from a trip to Paris, the dressmaker combined his promises of romantic dinners and couples massages with questions about R.J. Brooke kept her word to R.J. and instead pivoted to Hope's problems around Deacon thinking Sheila was alive somehow. Hey, Bridge reunited ten months ago in real time. Has Brooke finally gotten tired of weddings somehow?
Zende kept thinking back to his night of boot-knocking, and when Carter interrupted Zende's train of thought, Zende erupted like an emotional volcano. The Z-boy couldn't work or think or anything because Luna Luna Luna. Carter told Zende that he was a good guy but then made the compliment backhanded by reminding Zende that he still boffed his cousin's boo.
Good one, Carter. And you're one to talk, considering how you repeatedly slept with Quinn behind her husband Eric's back. But you know this clan: do as I say, not as I do. Zende likewise blamed everything on the mints (!) and had one thing in common with R.J. besides laying pipe with Luna -- Zende also didn't want Ridge to find out. That point being reinforced makes me think Ridge is going to blow a gasket. Or two.
R.J. went to visit Luna, and they had a soap-typical chat about what happened, where do we go now, I miss you, I love you, I want our life back. Given R.J. could still be super pissed about the whole thing, that's pretty sweet. But what "our life"? You guys never even had a proper date before catching feelings and going in for some devirginizing. It's not like they were married eight times, like R.J.'s parents.
Speaking of whom, one of them, Brooke, went to Luna and revealed that she knew what had happened with Zende. Luna still felt awful, and that's when Brooke confided that she had been taken advantage of once, long ago. Wow! Was she referring to her rape at the hands of Andy back in 2007? On the other hand, she could have been talking about what happened while she was hopped up on antianxiety meds in 2006.
Soaps often oversimplify history for the sake of current story, so we may never know for sure, but it's a history-dip that makes sense; it explains why Brooke is so sympathetic to Luna's experience. Luna insisted to Brooke that Zende hadn't taken advantage, but Brooke, like me, wasn't having it. Luna was not at fault! And Brooke said she'd always be there for Luna, which was unexpectedly sweet.
I don't know how many desserts the seemingly always closed Il Giardino has on its menu, but I do know that Sugar was the only thing discussed as soap-hoppers Lauren and Deacon got down to brass tacks. I wasn't watching Y&R when Deacon was on; did he and Lauren ever cross paths? Big D slept with every other lady (Nikki, Diane, Victoria, Phyllis), so it's amazing Lauren didn't get a turn.
Well, B&B finally corrected a mistake it made back in 2017 when Sheila first turned up alive -- Lauren is fully caught up on Sheila's story. I don't know why it took seven years for Lauren to learn the fate of her greatest nemesis or why none of the Forresters gave her a heads-up, but here we are. And Lauren offered more than a spoonful of Sugar to make Deacon's medicine go down!
Yep, Lauren spilled so much tea, Lipton sent her an invoice. And it's really pretty amazing, when you think of it, that so much detail went into the tutorial of a story that happened on another soap 18 full years ago in real time; check out our Y&R recaps from that period. It was glorious. And now I don't have to reply to any more social media posts answering all the questions about who Sugar is. It is now officially B&B canon!
It's too bad, though, that there weren't any Y&R flashbacks to further emphasize Lauren's true but fantastic tale. For a show that consistently revisits scenes we just saw the previous day, or even the same day, B&B kinda dropped the ball on this one. But I'll forgive them this time because they did up a doozy of a soap tribute with two simple words!
I don't recall Sugar ever having any other name on either soap, not in 2003 (B&B), nor 2005-2006 (Y&R). So, imagine my giddy giggling when Lauren divulged to Deacon that Sugar's real name was Janet Webber! Okay, I know you newer soap viewers may not get it, but it's just perfect. Sugar, pre-surgery, was portrayed by Robin Mattson...famous for playing Janet ("from another planet") Green on All My Children and Heather Webber on General Hospital.
I rarely say this about B&B anymore, but that touch was freakin' brilliant. Deacon must have been as impressed, because he jumped on his now ever-present laptop (hey, I'm addicted to mine) and Googled the hell out of "Janet Webber." And by doing so, Deacon learned that Janet/Sugar had recently been released from prison. Deacon texted Finn toot-sweet. If it was Sugar who Steffy killed, then Sheila was alive.
I can basically recap Steffy's entire presence on the show this week by telling you that she didn't for a second believe Deacon's claims that Sheila wasn't dead, and Steffy told that to everyone she encountered. First Liam had to hear about it. Then, Steffy picked up the tangent during a little kissy-poo with Finn. Even Hope, who inexplicably dropped by the cliff house, got an earful.
Was Hope back sniffing around because she and Finn had shared another heart-to-heart chat earlier about Deacon's claim and Finn's unresolved feelings about Sheila? It didn't matter, because Hope and Steffy fell into a very unusual casualness as Steffy joked about there being no more guards and Hope remarked that everyone had already suffered enough because of Sheila, especially Steffy.
The kooky camaraderie continued after Finn left, with Steffy and Hope having a chinjaw about Hope for the Future's forecast with Thomas gone, and they practically sipped high tea together, talking about Deacon and Sheila! This wouldn't have struck me as so odd if, just weeks ago, Steffy hadn't been on an anti-Logan rant, calling Hope the new Brooke, and Hope hadn't vowed revenge to Steffy's face for coming between her and Thomas.
So, yeah, Liam's ex-wives sitting there all buddy-buddy (except Hope's one snark that Steffy didn't need to show her "fake sympathy" after wanting Thomas away from Hope), was more bizarre than Sugar having Sheila's face. The next person to hear about how nutso Deacon's hypothesis had to be was Ridge, another who should know that Sheila comes back from the dead more often than Taylor does.
I could go with it if this was the first time the Forresters et al all thought Sheila was dead, but this isn't their first rodeo, or is that Rodeo Drive. At least one of them should be wondering if maybe, just maybe, Steffy might have stabbed Sugar instead. That they're all in this "we'll never have to see Sheila again" denial only substantiates that these characters basically live in present-day bubbles, unable to demonstrate growth or learn anything from their histories.
I will say that, for his part, Finn finally started hearing the ringing of the Cluephone and almost picked it up. Summoned once again by Deacon, Finn scoffed that he was done with the whole Sheila business and yelled that Deacon needed help. But then Deacon passed on what Lauren had told him about Sugar, and Finn's reply was "Liberty biberty! Could it be true?"
All right, Finn didn't say that, but he did start to think there might be validity to the whole insane saga. I would have liked for Finn, who showed investigative skills before, when Sheila was presumed dead from bear mauling, to call Lauren himself for verification. Oh, well. Deacon declared that he and Finn had to go find Sheila right now! But it couldn't have been that urgent, because suddenly, it was the next day.
That's right, Deacon had to text Finn again. But this time, Finn, who had made a habit of gleefully telling Steffy everything he and Deacon had talked about, kept the new Sugar info to himself. When he arrived at Deacon's, Finn admitted that the latest revelations had gotten him thinking (Finn thinking? I know, right?). But Finn had no idea where to even begin looking for Sheila, assuming she actually was alive.
Detective Freaky Deak to the rescue! Deacon knew that Sheila had kept her credit card password on her tablet, and by logging into it, the account showed that Sheila had dropped a big chunk of change at a convenience store in a crappy neighborhood. This showed some imagination, but doesn't one usually need a device password to access account passwords? Didn't Sheila have more than one credit card?
And just because Sheila spent money in a crime-infested area doesn't mean she couldn't have been up to something shady; after all, she was purportedly meeting with someone in secret before she was "killed." Isn't this all a little convenient? But Deacon went on that hunch and followed it to the store. An on-break worker didn't recognize Sheila from his photo, but the homeless guy by the Dumpsters did, at least after a crispy handshake from Deacon.
Dude might have wanted money for his info, but his info was accurate -- he had seen Sheila at the store plus watched her walk into an adjacent building, where there had been screaming, lots of screaming. By the way, Mr. Homeless is played by Clint Howard, who, as a seven-year-old, played a child alien in an infamous episode of the original Star Trek series. The more you know.
In the aforementioned building, as Deacon hoped he and Finn weren't too late to save Sheila, we saw the dilapidated interior, dark and filled with junk and grime...and a blanket...apparently covering a body. A filthy hand stuck out from beneath it. Oh, no! Could Sheila really be dead, after all? As the revenge Lauren was sure Sugar wanted, did Sugar kill Sheila before accidentally getting offed herself by Steffy?
Nah, that doesn't make sense. I do think Sugar was perhaps blackmailing Sheila, which is why they were meeting, and I also contend that Sugar kidnapped Sheila and planned to kill Steffy in order to make people think Sheila did it. But Sugar's been dead for two months now. If she was holding Sheila, how has Sheila survived until now? Because you all know Sheila ain't dead, my dudes and dudettes.
Assuming it's not Sheila's real body under that dirt-encrusted blanket, where has Sheila been since Sugar took her place? Did Sheila get amnesia from one of Sugar's attacks, and has she been left to wander the streets with no identity (which would be very Stephanie 1991)? Regardless, we're working off of Sheila-as-victim right now, which is a rare reversal and, I have to say, pretty interesting.
What is and isn't hitting your sweet spot, Scoopers? What do you think happened between Sheila and Sugar, and where do you figure Sheila is now? Is it implausible that Steffy doesn't even consider it possible that Sheila might be alive? Does Zende need to get over himself and stop mooning over Luna? Does it seem to you like Brooke is mining her own history of sexual assault to bond with Luna? And whose body do you think is under the blanket? Get your sugar fix in the Soap Central message boards, or simply click here to submit feedback!
I still want to know what was in "Sheila's" pocket and how she was presumably going to use it against Steffy before she saw the business end of Steffy's Ginsu. "Cuts through a doppelgänger and can still slice a tomato!"
Hopefully Steffy will leave the sharp objects at home, because Ivy returns on Tuesday (I hope Ivy goes back to using her natural Australian accent; her suddenly repressing it before was so stupid!), and apparently the first thing Ivy does is kiss Liam, which Steffy will see. Look out, Ivy! It could be murdah!
We're heading into May (are May Sweeps still technically a thing?), so keep watching, be alert, and most of all, be bold!
AMJ
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