The fall of the house of Spectra

Katie has a death wish, and Quinn's eager to grant it. Bill aims his wrecking ball at Ridge, but Spectra's house of cards is the one that falls this week on B&B.

You ever finally get exactly what you want, but some "well-meaning" goody-goody comes along to get you to do the right thing or face their disappointment in you for the rest of your life? Or maybe you just barely got away with doing the wrong thing, but in exchange for it, you have to put up with the most meddling agitator spawn from the depths of passive-aggressive hell.

Maybe you have a roach infestation, but your brothers won't stop dropping peanuts on the floor. You might have just found out that your multi-billion-dollar building project has been sacked because your father is back in the sack with his ex. If so, don't toss that skyscraper model in the trash yet. Your father's incessant rivalry with your ex-father-in-law just might bulldoze dear old dad's latest wedding plans and send him back to the drafting board.

Katie loves flirting with death, but so does Quinn

Ever since Katie had a heart transplant, she's been fearing death, looking for death, and flirting with death. She pushed her heart to the brink to give birth to Will. She let Bill stomp on it three times, and she nearly pickled it with alcohol. None of those things killed Katie as she'd thought they might, but a letter opener through the heart just might do the trick. A letter opener jab delivered by Quinn makes it all the sweeter for this scooper.

In case you missed it, Katie blackmailed her way into Forrester Creations to do a job she has no experience in because she wants to ensure that her dear friend stays married to a cheating wife and woman Katie swears is dangerous. Quinn must keep Katie happy at Forrester, or Katie will tell Eric why Brooke didn't marry Ridge. The old song goes, "it's cheaper to keep her," but for Quinn, it might be cheaper to kill her instead.

Katie must be bored in her new place. Will discovered all the old, moldy toys to be found on the property line. Eric is too busy for sparking water on the couch with her now that he's actually using those drawing pencils she gave him. Bill overlooked her when she'd worn her slinkiest bikini. And remember those country club friends of Katie's? Well, they must not remember her. She's out of "projects," but as long as Ridge has secrets, she's got options.

Katie showed up Monday morning, anxious to discover what new job Quinn had for her at Forrester. Quinn eyed the vacant half of Pam's desk, but Katie thinks her feet are too big to fill the shoes of her absent sister, Donna. Katie was mortified at the thought of a former CEO returning to Forrester as a receptionist.

Quinn should have made the title sound more inviting for Katie. Maybe something like the CEB of Forrester -- the chief executive bitch, that is. Or is that Steffy's other position? If so, Katie can be the Co-CEB because Steffy doesn't mind sharing titles.

Too bad Quinn wasn't thinking on her feet at all that day. If she had been, she would have found something to dissuade Eric from following through on his suggestion that Katie help Quinn, who had to design a whole new collection because Spectra has pirated the jewelry line, as well. If the jewelry Sally got arrested in is from Quinn's collection, I'd be ready to rip Sally's hair out if I was Quinn.

Ivy is out of town -- again -- and apparently, Spectra contracted a cheap labor company to make gold-plated pewter replicas of Quinn and Ivy's work. Rather than call Ivy back from Australia, have Ivy work out of her old office in Australia, or have Ivy and Quinn harken back to some older, unfinished designs they probably have, Eric got the bright idea that Katie can help Quinn produce a new line.

Sorry, Eric, but blowtorch experience is required for the job, and no, the hot air coming out of Katie's mouth doesn't count.

I'm going to pretend that Quinn shouldn't be insulted that Eric thinks he can just plug someone in to substitute for Ivy. It's not so easy that a caveman can do it, Eric. I'm insulted for Ivy and Quinn, and I wondered, if it was so easy, why Eric hadn't already told Katie to sit down in front of a sketchpad for couture before he even learned of the jewelry design theft.

Yes, Eric named other things Katie could do for Quinn like budgeting, marketing, etc., but Spectra pirated the designs, not Forrester's administrative and production departments. Katie doesn't have to work in the same room or side-by-side with Quinn do to those tasks, either, and if Quinn needs help with the areas Eric named, then so do the clothing lines. Eric should have put Katie to work for the whole business and called Ivy back home. Sorry, Ivy, but your vacay isn't more important than this company-wide crisis.

If Katie wants to work on the jewelry line so bad, fine, but whenever we see Ivy and Quinn working, they are handling precious gems and crimping metal by hand. What does Katie know about handcrafting jewelry or about precious gems? Nothing. Which is why the first thing Quinn ought to leave out where Katie can get her grimy, jewelry-trying hands on is an arsenic-enriched gem like the one poor Ricardo "mishandled." Rookie accidental death, and no letter opener required.

When Quinn picked up the letter opener and glared at the back of Katie' s head, I wondered if that was the same one she'd made for Rick when he'd rehired her years back. Was it wrong of me to wish Quinn would stab Katie straight through the back of her head and out of her right eyeball? I know some people think Quinn wielding the letter opener means she's still the same, but Katie would make a nun want to stab her through the heart with a silver cross.

Katie swears she's doing this for Eric's benefit, but who believes that? What person tries to capitalize on her friend and sister's misery? Brooke asked Ridge if Eric didn't find it strange that Quinn would accept Katie into the department. Ridge should have asked Brooke if she didn't find it strange that her sister wanted to be in Quinn's department.

Ridge also ought to recall that the last time he had a secret that Katie knew, it was only a matter of time before Bill knew it, too. This secret is on the same track because, like Caroline, Quinn is ready to just tell the truth and get it over with.

If I had to put up with a harpy like Katie knowing my secret, I think I might take my chances with the truth, too. How will Eric react to Katie using the information to get a job rather than being a real friend to him? If Eric finds out the truth, he will cope with betrayal from not only Quinn and Ridge, but also from Brooke and Katie. Will he understand why either sister held her tongue, or would Eric say the sisters should have done the right thing, as R.J. convinced Coco to do about her sister?

I'll do anything for blood, but I won't do that

Coco Spectra has turned out to be a tough young woman with courage of her convictions -- even if it means getting her sister convicted. Coco doesn't want to be anything like Sally and Grams if it means Coco has to lie and steal and move from crevice to crevice so she won't get exterminated like the roaches Steffy seems to think the Spectras are. If they are roaches, they are everywhere, even in jewelry, which Maya still hasn't figured out, by the way.

Ridge, the king of dirty rats, put R.J. up to convincing Coco to sign a "confession" implicating Spectra in the design theft. Carter finally turned his brain on and figured out that the Spectras' theft was a prosecutable offense and an offense the Forresters could litigate for damages. Carter just needed a statement from someone on the inside to make the charges stick.

The Forresters have every right to see Sally prosecuted and to sue her for damages, but I call Ridge the king of dirty rats because only Ridge can be in the middle of convincing two Logan sisters to keep a secret while working to convince one Spectra sister to turn against the other.

I'm not saying that Coco telling the truth isn't the right thing to do, but Ridge might not be the best choice to convince R.J. to get Coco to do it. Or Steffy, who still hasn't told the whole truth about Aly's death. R.J. might call those two the ultimate hypocrites for trying to make Coco turn her sister in when they kept serious secrets of their own.

We can throw Nicole into that hypocritical camp, too. She made her sister's life a living hell and blackmailed her way into a position at Forrester by using Maya being transgender against her. Nicole claims she could never betray her sister to the police. Maybe not, but for a time, Nicole was willing to expose Maya to the world and possibly ruin Maya's whole life.

Coco came down pretty hard on Sally, and when Coco revealed that, to have the life she wanted, she needed to sign an affidavit that said Sally had stolen the designs, Sally decided to go to lieutenant Baker and confess to the whole thing. Did Sally do it for her sister's benefit? Was it for Thomas' sake or to avoid prison time for Grams? I don't know. Maybe it was just to redeem herself in Coco's eyes.

Coco claims she learned her honesty from Sally. It couldn't have been from Shirley, who is sure to be livid that Sally voluntarily turned herself in to the police at a time when they'd finally found success. Will Sally tell the entire truth, setting the rest of her gang free, or will she spread the blame to everyone involved, including Shirley, Saul, and Darlita?

The writers seem to have invested in the new Spectra family, and because Thomas and R.J. have feelings for Sally and Coco, it's hard to imagine a storyline that ends in a long prison term for Sally and her cohorts. We learned from experience with Quinn's storylines that most evil deeds go unpunished. The only question that remains is how Sally will wiggle herself out of it.

It could be something as simple as the Forresters somehow deciding that they would be satisfied if Spectra forked over all the profits from the line, or maybe Sally gives them stock in Spectra to make up for what she stole, just as the Forresters wound up doing when they couldn't afford to pay Brooke what BeLieF was worth.

It could even be that the court gives Sally probation or lets her be under house arrest. Would you be satisfied if the court let Sally off lightly? Would Steffy?

Bill Spencer dumped his skyscraper the moment he got Brooke back, but maybe he still has a role to play in the storyline. Could it be that Bill, who has become determined to find out Ridge's secret, forces Ridge to settle with Sally for the Spectra property or else Bill will go to Eric with what he knows about Ridge and Quinn -- information Bill undoubtedly learns from Katie?

Earlier in the storyline, I predicted that Katie wouldn't sully herself by telling Eric the truth about Quinn and Ridge. Instead, Katie could let Bill drop the bomb, as she did when Bill confronted Ridge about Douglas with information he'd gotten straight from Katie. Maybe lightning strikes Ridge twice in the form of Bill, but can Ridge get it through Steffy's mile-thick weave that it will be a good idea to let Sally off without jail time?

Maybe. When Steffy referred to the Spectras as roaches, she was responding to Thomas telling her that Spectra was selling the designs for peanuts. Steffy's retort was that if one took the peanuts away, the roaches would go away. Perhaps it means Steffy might be satisfied with a monetary settlement that would ensure Spectra couldn't rise from the ashes to steal again.

The questions on some viewers' minds this week were whether Sally had done the admirable thing in turning herself in and if we should feel sorry for the Spectras. The latter question is pretty easy. No. We shouldn't feel sorry for them. Shirley knew exactly what she was doing, Sally is old enough to remember how her parents' scams negatively affected them, and for the simpletons that Saul and Darlita are, they had no problem committing the crimes.

If Sally really wanted to do the admirable thing, she would have shut down the orders and the production. For right now, her cover is that she's just riding it long enough to pay bills and employees, but when I think of what it's doing to Thomas, I have to pirate and modify some lyrics from Michael Jackson: "How can you live, girl, if love for us was meant to be? You must be cheating. Whoo! Stealing all my work from me!"

As the song goes, Sally's got Thomas "working, working day and night," and all because she stole from him. It's not okay to fill the orders just long enough to get out of debt. If I was Thomas, I'd feel some type of way about her making even a penny off it, and the relationship would not be reconcilable.

As for the first question, there are a couple of ways to look at Sally's actions. On one hand, it was the mature and protective thing to do for Sally to turn herself in rather than make Coco go through the anguish of testifying against her sister. On the other hand, Sally is caught either way, and she might just be avoiding having to find a way to discredit her own sister in court. What is honorable about turning yourself in when you're pretty much caught redheaded and red-handed?

The way Sally is acting right now is how Quinn behaved when Liam wound up not pressing charges for the kidnapping. Sally is lovelorn and resigned to take responsibility for her crime in just the same way Quinn had been. The only difference is that it is up to Steffy, Ridge, and Eric on whether to proceed, not just one person, and it seems as if it's going to take a lot more than a bluffing lawyer to get them to back down.

What I'm having a problem with in this plot is R.J. I'm straining to believe that a senior in high school has this much to do with the executive level management and outcomes at Forrester. I laughed out loud when R.J. told Coco to consider their future. I know that there are first loves that last a lifetime out there in the world, but with Bridge as a role model for R.J., I wish I could tell Coco to run and never look back.

R.J. takes himself way too seriously for his age, and though Coco seems like a great pick so far, he's taking a future with her way too seriously, way too quickly. R.J. needs Zende to give him the lecture Carter gave Zende about having fun and savoring youth. Zende might need to hear that lecture again himself because he seems to be eyeing Nicole's incubator for his own devices. The next baby in the family will be his and Nicole's, he said.

Can these young folks please calm down a minute? I'm still trying to figure out if Zende and Nicole even have their own place or if they still live with Eric and Quinn. If the couple does, they'd better check with the great-grandparents before there's a crying baby down the hall.

From Nicole's silence at Zende's statement, Zende might want to check with her, too, before he starts spreading that desire around to have kids. What happened to Nicole wanting to pursue her career? What happened to Zende wanting to grow as a photographer? Didn't he used to have dreams of traveling with her? Didn't he run off with Sasha to Hawaii at the thought of going through another pregnancy with Nicole? Maybe he thinks he'll feel different if it's his baby, but I got news for Zende. Nicole will still get bigger just the same.

Instead of living it up in life, Nicole and Zende seem to just be living out the typical happily-ever-after curse of soap couples. Steffy and Liam are headed in the same direction. Have we even seen them together since the honeymoon? Perhaps Bill ought to count himself lucky that he and Brooke haven't been married yet. It might be what keeps his fire for her on the storyline front burner.

My kingdom for a life with Brooke

"What are you doing, Brooke? You wearing that thing again?" was Ridge's sentiment when he saw that sword ring coiled around Brooke's finger. Ridge told Bill that it was the ugliest thing Ridge had ever seen, and that's saying something, because Brooke's Italy engagement ring from Ridge looked like one of those roaches Steffy likened the Spectras to.

If the ring turns Ridge off, I wonder what he'd think of Bill and Brooke rolling around, having sex on money. Ridge and Caroline had their paint, and Deacon and Quinn had their cake whisk, so each couple to their own, I guess. I just still can't stomach why Ridge and Bill still want Brooke when they know she's sleeping with the other one so soon after their breakups.

Love transcends sex partners, and it also leaps tall buildings in a single bound. When we saw Liam for the first and only time since the wedding, he and Wyatt were astounded to hear Bill say he no longer cared about his mirrored skyscraper. It'll get built someday, Bill said. For now, Bill must be enjoying the mirrors over his bed. You know he has them. A man so vain that he has a billboard of himself in his yacht's bedroom has got to have mirrors over his bed if for nothing other than to watch himself sleep.

Bill was biding his time with the skyscraper until he reunited with Brooke. Now that he's engaged again, does that mean he is no longer interested in the Spectra building and that he compromised Jarrett's column for no reason? Did Jarrett write a scathing review of Sally's knockoffs as directed? And if so, why did it fall on fashion-deaf ears this time?

One thing that Steffy said to Sally was dead on the money -- they have different clientele. So I wonder if Forrester's high-end clients or other high-end fashionistas respond to what Jarrett wrote about the knockoffs? Or has the Spectras ripping off Forrester become so commonplace that it's old news? It's hard to believe that Steffy's followers haven't reacted to it, Nicole doesn't have her hands full with social media PR because of it, and Liam and Wyatt are slowly sipping coffee instead of building a news campaign around the knockoff fallout.

Bill seems to have forgotten all about it, along with his skyscraper, and he doesn't express concern over how it will affect his stock in Forrester, either. Bill loves money. The knockoff scandal could generate plenty of it if Spencer seized upon the news. Instead of exploiting it to his advantage, all Bill wants to do is find out how to get leverage over Ridge by finding out what he did to get Brooke to call off the wedding.

Why does Bill need leverage over Ridge? What could it possibly get Bill that he doesn't already have? I'm seriously asking. I have no idea. Bill has everything he really wants in life. He has all his money, Brooke, his company, and his family. Notice the order I put those things in. Bill still wants one more thing, I guess, and it's to have something else over Ridge.

Does anyone know how Brooke got away with not telling Bill in Australia why she wasn't getting ready for her wedding? Did those two really hug but not talk about it? Bill's curiosity about it is understandable, but is Wyatt right to advise Bill to drop it before he loses Brooke yet again?

The only way Bill could lose Brooke over the information is if he hurts Eric with it. Once Bill figures it out or Katie tells him, Brooke will warn him not to betray her by letting it get out. Somehow, Bill will wind up saying it with Eric nearby -- probably standing in one of those perpetually cracked doorways at Forrester -- and it will lead to Eric's hospitalization. Brooke won't be able to forgive Bill for wanting to punish Ridge more than wanting to be loyal to her.

I wasn't sure whether Bridge was supposed to be an obstacle for Brill to overcome or if Bridge was supposed to be the endgame. I still don't know. Brooke is back with Bill, Ridge is back in Brooke's kitchen, and Brooke is affected, shedding tears even, when Ridge coaxes her to flash back on their romance. Bill claims to be "Spencerdini" because he predicted Bridge's demise, but Ridge also has a prediction. It's that Brooke will never marry Bill.

Why is it okay for Brooke to share intimate moments with her exes, like the one in the kitchen with Ridge, while she's engaged to another ex; however, Brooke can't forgive Ridge for kissing a woman he claims not to care about? It might be that she thinks Ridge won't stop with Quinn until he's disrupted Eric's marriage. She told Ridge as much, but what she's forgetting is that no other woman presents as tempting a challenge for Ridge as an unavailable Brooke. Or is that what Brooke is counting on to get Ridge's attention off Quinn and back on Brooke?

Let us know what you think. Will Sally face prison or negotiate a deal with the Forresters? Can Bill contain his hate for Ridge long enough to make Brooke his wife? Will Katie live long enough to blab Ridge's secret to Bill? Until we scoop again, don't compare your brother's love to a roach, and if you got to do the time, the crime had better be bold and beautiful, baby!

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