Aaahh, freak out!

This week, Los Angeles had its share of freakouts, but throw in a little money, and some pretenders became convinced that le freak just might be c'est chic on The Bold and the Beautiful. An opinionated gold-digger threatens to shake things up, but can he tangle with the citizens who slash and burn opinions of dissension?

Some people who aren't from around these parts dart that word "freak" at people like it's supposed to reach an intended target, but the word means nothing in Beverly Hills. In this land of pretenders, it's not about how freaky you are. It's about faking it until you get what you want.

For some, it's love; for some, it's money; but for one redhead, it's pure vengeance. Join me in shooting darts at the freaks and the pretenders, but don't you dare tell that psycho-freak Aly about this meeting!

Ever have your date pick a restaurant you can't afford, but you pretend it's okay and hope to God that the credit card doesn't decline on a twenty-dollar transaction? Julius Avant found himself in just that position until he laid eyes on his raven-locked daughter's new home in Beverly Hills.

The question is, will Papa Bear's pretentious hugs help him find a place at the mansion that fits him just right, or did Baby Sister Bear Nicole's great ability to shoot her mouth off land our raven-locked beauty in another pickle -- this time with her money-grubbing parents?

As much as Nicole and Maya are bonding as sisters, this latest snafu of Nicole's makes me wonder if Maya was better off before Nicole ever came to town. Maya was living stealthy and having the life she dreamed of by being accepted as a woman without question. Enter Nicole, and Maya has to start revealing that she exchanged Men's Line boxers for Brooke's Bedroom panties -- a point that PC Nick popped his head in to hammer home with Maya.

Luckily for Maya, the transgender acceptance crisis Nicole created was averted because no damns were given about what gender Maya chooses to be. Next thing you know, Mama Bear shows up to save the baby-sister cub from the transgender cub, and Nicole once again doesn't think before shooting her mouth off, this time to her parents about all the gold up in "them there hills."

At first, Papa Bear couldn't care less about Maya being on the covers of fashion magazines or that, like Daffy Duck, Maya ends each day by jumping into a pool filled with McScrooge Duck's gold, screaming, "I'm rich! Woo-hoo!" Upon snorting some of that Beverly Hills smog, it dawned upon him that accepting Maya might get him a pass to the gold pool.

Maybe some reparations for losing a son would help Papa Avant tolerate the snickering neighbors and church pew gossip. If anyone back home dares look down upon him about his transgender daughter, he can wave fistfuls of Rick's money and yell, "I'm rich, bitch!" like Dave Chappelle.

Am I jumping ahead of myself? Should I wait until Monday to see if I'm wrong about the Avants coordinating like velociraptors against the humans in Jurassic Park? Instinct just tells me that when Vivienne kept echoing Nicole about how well Maya had done for herself, she was sending a secret signal to her husband to get a clue and board the Maya genuflection train.

I'm not saying they're gold-diggers -- yet. But Maya and Nicole got the instinct from somewhere, and Nicole just made the mistake of suggesting that her parents pack up the truck and move to Beverly - Hills, that is...

Can we blame the Avants for wanting a piece of Maya's well-made pie? Well, we all know it isn't Maya's pie. Nicole pretended like Maya created this lifestyle for herself -- as if Maya had been there when Stephanie's father loaned Eric the money to build the empire and as if Maya had directed Stephanie and Eric to lay the cement foundation for that lovely, lovely mansion.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that, without Rick, Maya would probably be living above Dayzee's or with another robbing, stealing boyfriend. Let's face it -- Maya hasn't made the best choices in life.

First, Maya ran away from home. Granted, we don't know what precipitated it, but if the way she ran away from Rick at Big Bear is any indication of how she runs without giving chances, I can guess it was some misunderstanding that caused her to jet without bothering to clear it up. After running away, she returned home in a dress and took her sister out of school without her parents' permission.

I'm actually surprised the school let Maya do that without a word to the Avants. I don't blame the Avants for being angry and confused when their "son" showed up in said dress with their daughter, who they'd surely taught not to follow strangers. Maya had been gone from them for who knows how long, and they had no idea what kind of person she'd become -- yet there she was, giving ice cream to their child.

Before I hear that a parent should accept and love their child no matter what, we all know that runaways can get involved in all kinds of things, willingly or not. There are many horror stories about runaways, and we already know Maya is attracted to criminals because of Jesse and Rick. Everyone's lucky, including Maya, that she didn't get mixed up into worse than the robbery. So when Maya returned after a period of absence, holding hands with their youngest child, the Avants had a right to be upset and distrusting.

From the Avants' view, it's reasonable that they'd gone along with referring to Myron as Maya and had abruptly sent Nicole upstairs to deal with Maya in private. I hope they lit into Maya for being so selfish as to take Nicole from the school without considering what Nicole knew or understood about transgender people or if Nicole would react badly to a stranger taking her from her school.

According to the story, Nicole had vaguely heard of a brother, Myron. At the point that Maya visited, it appears that Vivienne hadn't removed Myron's photos from the wall prior to Maya's visit. They'd been up when Maya had run away, so why hadn't Maya considered that Nicole might be confused if she happened to recognize Maya as Myron in a dress?

Would Maya have been able to handle it if Nicole had started asking questions? Would Maya have been able to handle it if little Nicole had freaked out from fear of being with a strange man in a dress? Would it have been Maya's right to start explaining it to Nicole without permission from the Avants?

And yes, Maya does need permission to teach it to Nicole. When I babysat as a teen, I was cautioned not to tell the children about Santa Claus. Though I didn't know how they could keep Santa a secret once the kids got to kindergarten, I abided by their rule. Since Maya could probably already guess that the Avants hadn't explained gender dysphoria to Nicole, Maya should have met them alone first. It was selfish of her to take Nicole out of school like that and expose someone else's child to something without permission.

Maya's next questionable decision was to hook up with an armed robber to fund her surgeries. After that came her need to pretend to be the mother of Jesse's child instead of giving the biological family a chance to have the child. She was also wrong not to want to let the child stay with the adoptive family instead of demanding that Dayzee get the girl back when Maya didn't have a pot to piss in.

Self-serving is a pattern for Maya, who also was wrong to dump Rick for not revealing that he was rich, to agree to marry Carter without full disclosure, to help Rick humiliate Aly, and to not disclose to Rick in a timely manner. Yes, other characters have done wrong, but this section is about Maya, and hopefully, it explains why I believe her modeling success was a coincidence ran than a goal-achieved success.

Maya hadn't even wanted to put herself out there as a model. Rick did that. Rick elevated her all the way to the space above the mantel. Rick created her life, and at any time, he can take it away. If he did, I'd be interested to see if she could hack it as a "supermodel" without him.

I hope Julius and Vivienne aren't trying to hitch themselves to the Maya money train because I instantly enjoyed the characters. They are complex, and Anna Maria Horsford and Obba Babatund have been flawless in their portrayals.

Horsford gave me what I needed in Maya's parents, which was a motherly protection and need to bond combined with a wifely duty. Vivienne struggles with her unconditional love for her child, her duty to stand united with her husband, and her own beliefs about gender.

I've said before that the transgender view of gender is not the only view, and Maya and Nicole need to respect their parents' views, even as the daughters expect their parents to respect the daughters' views. If Maya and Nicole want their parents to recognize and validate their struggles, they also need to respect and validate their parents' struggles. The mutual respect and validation can bring about healing even if the end result is that the differing beliefs causes them to lead separate lives.

Maya's father needs to acknowledge that Maya is a daughter, and Maya needs to acknowledge that her father lost a son. He'd planned for a son, and she'd been named after her grandfather. It was significant to her parents, and her parents suffered a loss. It's just as if their only son had died.

Obba Babatund has done an exceptional job conveying Julius' pain over his lost son. As a "man," Julius' pride cannot allow him to accept that the son of his sperm wants to be a woman. I don't even know what he needs to do to come to grips with it, but somehow, he's got to find that courage, even if he doesn't believe that Myron was always female, to accept Myron's decision to become Maya.

Julius doesn't have to agree with it, he doesn't have to believe it's natural, he doesn't even have to believe that Myron is a woman, but what he's gotta do is call Maya by her preferred name, call Maya by her preferred pronoun, and accept that his Myron is gone. If he can do it, he can then find it in his heart to learn who Maya is, and hopefully someday, he can accept that Maya is his daughter.

Myron is Maya's given name, but Myron was a little girl with a masculine name. Julius should probably spend time with Maya, talking about the past, just like he and Vivienne laughed about the family photo from the eighties, and maybe their combined perspectives can help Julius to see how he'd had a little girl all along. Maybe doing so will help Maya to accept and respect how much Julius had treasured having a son.

Maybe after all this time and distance, Julius and Maya can talk like this, and they can heal the family. Or maybe Bell will pull another PC trap door and make the Avants magically accept Maya without giving us a real human struggle -- just like when Rick immediately accepted it.

What's your take on it? Was that hug real, or was Julius just faking a hug with his transgender daughter to get a piece of her pie? If it was real, how do you think healing for this family will come about? Can they forge an understanding, or will the camps sacrifice the family upon refusal to accept each other's beliefs?

In Psycho II, Eric, Stephanie, Thorne, and Aly are all checked into the dollhouse above the Bates Motel. Hope's there, too. Her pictures twinkle in the dollhouse galaxy like mythical constellations, and Darla's darkness-eclipsed head looms above like a dead sun. Steffy and Maya are the new arrivals to the motel, and Mother Darla has directed Aly that she's the only one who can fumigate the hotel of Steffy and Maya's ratchetness.

I'm the gardener arriving with the foggers because each freak associated with the Forresters had a hand in stirring the crazy pot, and they deserve what they get when it boils over. Mama and Papa Avant might want to reconsider being at the house on the hill before they start seeing eyeballs through holes in the walls and get an unexpected knife bath in the shower.

Last week, we'd pondered whether Aly was back in her poltergeist-infested room, and if it has had an adverse effect upon her. We were right. Rick had done a good thing by getting Aly out of the room and focused on foot-rubbing and shoe-sketching instead of sunshine bubbles in the sky. Darla hadn't liked it one bit that she couldn't manifest herself through Nicole, but with Aly back in the room and building hate-altars in the conduit closet, Darla's found her gate back to the land of the living.

Where we'd gone wrong last week was in believing that "King Ridge," as Rick dubbed him, actually had the sense to get Thorne to town as Eric had done the last time the house on the hill had a Darla poltergeist. We'd also thought Ridge had gained enough sense not to let Aly know about another meeting! But he didn't and let it slip -- again -- about meeting number three.Aly didn't disappoint. She went for the bikini and panty jugular again, but Steffy shut it down, asking Aly, "Why are you here? Do you think your opinion even matters?" Aly felt like a fool to believe things would be different under Ridge, who was promoting what she called "the Steffy and Maya Show." Aly believed that all the Forresters cared about was greed and money. She found it disgusting.

With tears, Aly recalled that she was going to be a shoe designer and part of the team, but Rick had treated her like a joke. She said that Rick and Maya had humiliated her, and Ridge would do the same. Ridge replied, "No." He probably said so because, to humiliate her, he had to care enough to pretend to like her glass slipper designs or pretend that she'd ever do more than inventory the mice and pumpkins.

The evil step-cousin Steffy warned Cinder-psycho-Aly that she'd be locked in the basement like her father was if she didn't fall in line. "Maya and Rick insulted me! She and Rick treated me like a servant!" Aly accused. Rick had the nerve to ask what that had to do with the collection.

But then -- a strange thing happened. Maya apologized, and it wasn't pretend. If you were blinking, you might have missed it. It was fast, like a comet through Aly's psycho galaxy. Maya claimed she was truly sorry, but it wasn't the time or place to bring up the past.

"Oh, big surprise. Maya doesn't want to talk about the past," Aly bitterly snapped. The full truthfulness of that statement should not be lost on any viewer. It wasn't lost on Rick, who growled an angry, "Hey...." Yeah, slow your horses, Aly. You're getting into Maya defecation territory, and we all know Maya's poo can't be exposed as stinking.

Steffy decided that if Aly kept preaching, she needed to go back to Paris. Whether it was the profits that made them do it, I don't know, but the rest of the team allowed Steffy to bully a family member into silence by saying that the rest of them wouldn't want her there if she kept speaking out.

Don't get me wrong. Aly can't behave the way she has been, but they used the same tactic on her as Rick used on them. They know that Aly is bipolar or plain bi-crazy, but instead of trying to accept her and get her the help she needs, they bullied her just like she was bullied at school. I cannot join the club of pretenders who thinks that's cool.

It is a waste of my time and yours for me to even broach with you guys the back and forth this company does on virtues or to explain how Aly might be right about how going from HFTF's principled line to body-worship might confuse their customers. And I don't have to tell you that Rick touting last quarter's earnings was just the writers pretending that the drastic shift in focus from an international market to a local California market won't shrink the next quarter's earnings. It's a waste of time because the characters don't do what makes sense. They just do what's in the script.

Aly decided to write her own script. In her script, she stuffed her rage and her prairie dresses in her closet and went to slashing up pictures with markers and scissors. After a hate speech from her mother about the others taking everything from her, Aly feigned humility to her perceived tormentors and led them to believe that she'd join their team.

You know what amazes me but shouldn't? How Maya can recognize Aly as a hurt and confused kid but not reach out to her. Wasn't Maya once a hurt and confused kid? Hadn't Maya felt like an outcast for not being like everyone else? Maya talked to Nicole about the loneliness, the dangers of isolating oneself, pushing people away, and of fixating on injustices. She told Nicole that kids made bad choices and did bad things because "we" weren't reaching out to them. Maya said a person would feel abandoned by their family and friends, and that was when the trouble began.

What's your opinion? Is Maya only pretending to know what Aly feels like? Why won't Maya acknowledge that if she was self-isolating and causing herself to feel abandoned, then maybe she played a role in starting the rift between her and her family? And it's a rift she expected her parents to hunt her down to solve, at that.

"Have you seen you?" Katie asked Ivy this week, and it was the most profound question anyone had asked any woman involved with Liam. Why is Ivy pretending that she can't find a man fifty times better than Liam? Why has she not taken a good look at her assets and decided to invest them in someone who could actually give her a return on the love she gives?

Wyatt also made a profound statement this week. Ivy told Wyatt that he could still see, as in date, Steffy. Wyatt replied that Steffy couldn't "see" him through Liam. At least Wyatt stopped pretending that he can make any woman see the value in him while she's filing bankruptcy in Liam's court of love. Now Wyatt needs to open his eyes and see the gold in them there Ivy hills.

This week, Ivy pretended in front of Steffy and Liam to be perfectly fine with all the time Liam and Steffy were kissing away together, but behind closed doors with Katie, Ivy admitted that it infuriated her. Katie knows from experience that once Steffy focuses on your man, you have to be willing to fight to the death -- literally -- or you ought to just hang it up before you wind up in your hospital robe, confronting Steffy in her love nest loft given to her by your husband.

Liam was offended when Wyatt, the "flannel-wearing Aly," dared question Liam's California-freedom to lead Ivy on. Liam claimed not to be leading Ivy on. I guess it's too much to expect Liam to understand that kissing Ivy and making friend-dates while telling Steffy that they are meant to be is the epitome of leading someone on.

Wyatt's so busy pointing out to his brother that Ivy deserves better treatment that it doesn't dawn on Wyatt that he could give Ivy better treatment. It would be a great match. They both have a passion for jewelry, and Quinn and Ivy are besties. The pair can ride off into the sunset while Steffy is left pretending to be a supercouple with Liam, whose commitment thus far amounts to him saying that he isn't quite ready to lose her forever yet.

I miss the love triangles of the past with Brooke and Taylor. All this friendly take-your-turn BS isn't working for me. I need some Brooke and Taylor catfights, some Stephanie Forrester shenanigans, and a party where someone gets shoved into the pool. Give me something! For goodness' sake, take Katie out of there and send in our player Brooke to show Ivy how to defend her territory.

What do you guys think? Do you have any thoughts about how things are going for the love square, or have you stopped pretending to care about Liam's love life?

Did anyone catch flannel Aly's talk with Nicole? I'm glad Wyatt and Nicole cleaned the air and acknowledged that they didn't speak at the party. It was better than Ivy pretending that she hadn't seen Liam since Steffy had dragged him off for a "surprise."

Here's something I can't pretend that I like. It's the fashion nonsense going on this week. Aly shed her prairie dresses, but for what? A K-mart, Jacqueline Smith outfit? Ivy needs to get that Peppermint Patty barrette out of her hair then maybe she can see the sexiness Katie sees within her. And while we're at it, I agree with Liam's snark about Wyatt's flannel. Dude, it's summer. Back away from the flannel.

This is freakishly random, but didn't that pricey coffeehouse look like Il Gardino?

As for predictions -- SPOILER ALERT AHEAD! -- rumor has it that there's a fashion show featuring transgender models coming up, and something grim leads Thorne and Thomas to return to town. I'm gonna guess that Aly sees Steffy's face taped to the models' heads, and with a marker in one hand and scissors in the other, Aly slashes away at the Steffy goblins on the runway.

If Aly doesn't murder the fashion show, could it be the key to Maya's parents finally seeing who their daughter is. This is what I imagine. Visualize Maya, flanked by a transgender-model army in bikinis, and we hear the song lyric "Aaah, freak out!" As the funkified music plays, the models kick all kinds of ass on the runway, not giving a damn if you think they are freaks or if you think they're chic. Julius' head will explode, or he'll stop "freaking" out about who Maya really is.

I swear to God, if this happened, I'd strip down to my undies and parade around the house right along with them -- and no, my freedom movement will not be Instagram-ized.

Wow. With my own pretending, I did something Bell has been unable to do. I made myself like Maya for a minute. A-freaking-mazing!

Tell us what you think about the week and what's to come. Until next time, all my beloved pretenders and freaks, stay Bold and Beautiful, baby!

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