The Gnat Effect: Liam blows Bill's mirrored dreams up in smoke

On B&B, Liam's do-gooder butterfly effect fluttered over L.A. Will Bill make Liam rue the day he sent Bill's mirrored dreams up in smoke?

Two annoying things happened to viewers this week, and depending on how you feel about certain people and characters, one might be more annoying than the other -- or if you're like me, you eye-rolled yourself into a coma about both of them.

One eye-roller happened when Friday's show got preempted for "Spicey" time. The show won't air until Monday. I'm not tripping on Sean Spicer. He is just as riveting to watch as the soaps. He even has his own soap reel courtesy of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert's "The Bold and the Babbling." It contains clips of Hope, Brooke, and Quinn. Spicey has a career awaiting him in the soap biz if this press secretary thing doesn't pan out.

What I am tripping about is not getting my Friday show-opening exercise or my show-ending cliffhanger fix. It's Friday. It's one-thirty. This is what I do: I hop in my "Jagger" chair, turn on my show, and sit-dance to the opening music, going, "Da-na-na-na-na-na..." until either the pink bolt unfurls or I'm out of breath. The chair is the Jagger chair because it rocks with the moves like Jagger, but it was not rocking one bit to Spicer's stutters on Friday.

I sit-dance to the opening credits and the closing credits. It's the only way I'm gonna get that Ashleigh Brewer summer bod, and it's also the best way to blow off some steam about that other thing that irked me this week -- the Sub-Spencer Liam, who again proved he is not up to snuff to be a pure Spencer.

I'm so over the Rescue Ranger. I'm sorry I ever noticed he was hardly on-screen after the wedding. He's back and still trying to rescue women -- even if it means turning the butterfly effect into the gnat effect to do it. We believe in cause and effect, but Liam was stretching it when his gnat brain logic determined that Bill was the reason that Sally stole. Liam fluttered his tiny rescue ranger wings and set off an annoying ripple effect in the lives of several Los Angeles residents.

When I was younger, my parents taught me to make sure I minded two things -- my manners and my own business. These two things go hand in hand, so it should be easy. It's good manners to mind your own business; however, our justice warrior Liam is too rude and nosy to stay out of what does not concern him.

In my view, Liam hurt his own business and betrayed his dad in order to pass judgment where he wasn't even asked for an opinion. What kind of guy puts his wife up to ratting his father out to her brother instead of being brother-in-law enough to do it himself? Or son enough to talk to his father first? The kind of guy that deserves Bill to knock him in the head with a Tonka truck, that's what kind. You could tell Steffy was eye-flipping irked enough to whack him, too.

Snitches get stitches, and I hope Liam doesn't think putting Steffy up to it will make Bill see it as her betrayal and not Liam's. Liam guilted Steffy into it and forced his hypocritical standards upon her. Steffy has her own hypocritical standards, Liam. Let her be her own hypocritical self and not the hypocrite you think she should be.

Steffy wasn't the only one Liam annoyed with his ethical proclamations. He wanted to know why Wyatt didn't stop Bill. "It's not my job to improve anybody," Wyatt said. Liam needs a little humbleness to get that, so the words are lost on him as he blames Bill for a destiny that belongs only to Sally Spectra.

When all else fails, just blame everything on Bill

Does Bill always have to be a villain? Can't others have consequences for their actions? Up to now, we had an emotionally layered storyline in which Sally had to choose between reviving Spectra and betraying Thomas. She'd done something wrong, and for once, it seemed like somebody else in Los Angeles was the bad guy -- namely gangster Grams. But along comes tattletaling Liam, blaming the theft on Bill and ruining Bill's neigh-happy plans when Bill has only ever tried to make Liam's dreams come true -- even when Liam begged Bill not to.

Well, anything but support Liam once Wyatt got the girl, that is. Maybe Liam is just trying to get Bill back for all the times Bill told Liam to suck it up and accept Hope as his sister-in-law. Maybe this is Liam's revenge for Bill having a secret love lair with Brooke while telling Liam to respect Wyatt's marriage to Steffy. Could Liam still be ticked that Bill contemplated giving Wyatt the cliff house when Wyatt already had the beach house?

Whatever Liam's motives, Liam played fast and loose with cause and effect to conclude that it was Bill's fault Sally turned to a life of crime, lost her dreams, and broke up with Thomas. Liam's theory set into motion a chain of events that resulted in Thomas investing in Spectra, and Spencer losing out on prime real estate for Bill's coveted tower. For that, I wouldn't be surprised or sorry to see Liam hobbling on crutches after a confrontation with Bill.

In case you missed it, Carter conveyed to the judge in Sally's case that after hearing that Thomas had spoken on Sally's behalf, Eric wanted to drop the criminal case. Eric would be satisfied if they seized Spectra's assets and if Spectra would never impact Forrester again.

Sally planned to leave town because she couldn't pay C.J. the hundred thousand she owed in what I assume are back-lease payments. As a parting gift, she gave Thomas a design sketch that he felt proved her talent. Umm, if you ask me, it didn't. The ones on the wall behind Sally's desk are better, but what do I know? I'm no Jarrett Maxwell.

Saul and Darlita were out of work, and Darlita said she'd start living in her car. Shirley and Sally were headed back to the bakery in Florida -- and no, Saul, you can't go, even if you vow to be in the car if Sally just said the word. Sally refuses to be straight with you. She just keeps dropping Thomas hints that you don't get every time you say something endearing. Let me go ahead and give you an honest review, Saul. She's just not into you.

Meanwhile, Bill showed C.J. a check for two hundred times the amount Sally owed. Yes, when Wyatt said it was two hundred times the amount, he was not exaggerating. Twenty million dollars. That's an amount that draws your pinky to your bottom lip, isn't it?

C.J. was about to get rich, and his mom was about to get richer. I remarked before that Sally the First has to be rich already. She used to buy the young Macy's love with horses. And you can't tell me that Sally the First isn't wearing money lingerie and rolling around on cash with her cabana boys, just like Brooke did with Bill. Sally has been retired and travelling for way too long not to be loaded and thoroughly enjoying her money.

Bill was so happy about the deal and his upcoming wedding that he started neighing and stomping his hoof at Il Giardino -- much to Brooke's embarrassment. Bill needs to never do that again in public or in private. In fact, it's time to let the whole stallion thing go, kind of like when the writers finally let go of "cha, cha, cha" and Ridge's sudden affinity for poetry and Katie. While we're at it, Bill needs to save the playtime with Legos and toy trucks for Will.

A flutter of Liam's gnat wings set into motion a chain of events that left C.J. with two hundred times less money, Bill with no space for his sexy tower, Steffy pissed off that Sally was still in the picture, and Jarrett with fears that Bill might fire him. Who came out on top in the mission Liam guilted Steffy into completing? The thieves. The filthy little thieves.

Liam doesn't see it that way. When Liam got Jarrett to admit that Bill had substituted his bad review of Sally's preview line for Jarrett's "decent" review of it, Liam immediately jumped to the conclusion that Bill had pushed Sally into the knockoff business.

In Liam's mind, it's the Bill Spencer butterfly effect. Liam deduced that Bill flapped his jaws under Jarrett's byline, causing a woman way across town to go from an honest designer with a dream to a hoodwinking thief who stood proudly onstage, claiming designs belonging to her boyfriend and his family as her own. If only Bill hadn't written that review, then poor Sally wouldn't have needed to resort to crime.

I ain't buying it. Are you?

What Bill did was hurtful and mean. It might be unethical. I don't know if Jarrett's contract gives Spencer ghostwriting rights under his byline, but I'm guessing it doesn't. I'm also guessing this isn't the first time Bill has done it or has asked Jarrett to do something underhanded. If anyone recalls Jarrett going along with or refusing to go along with something underhanded before, leave it in the comments below. For now, I say it's a stretch that Jarrett remained top reporter for decades without being put up to something before now.

Bill is a jerk for what he did -- as usual -- but it's no excuse for Sally to put her sister up to stealing from Sally's boyfriend and her sister's love interest. Part of Sally's business plan should have been preparing for bad reviews, fixing what needs it, and forging ahead. What did Sally do instead? Set out to revamp a major fashion house without getting any professional opinions of her work and then immediately resorting to stealing when one reporter allegedly called her work a disaster -- which it was. Let's not even lie about it.

If Sally had planned wisely before throwing all her money and hopes down the money pit, she would have already gotten feedback about her work prior to scheduling to present it to a hundred fashion professionals. She is lucky only Jarrett showed up. I am hard-pressed to believe the rest of the guests she'd invited would have agreed with Jarrett, who didn't exactly hail Sally as the next Madame X, Caroline Forrester, Morgan DeWitt, or Ambrosia Moore.

Sally's designs were a tarred and feathered mess, and any number of journalists could have written a worse, but honest, review. Whether bad reviews are warranted or not, artists get them all the time. Good and bad reviews are sometimes contradicted by the market to the benefit or the detriment of an artist, which is why the more opinions, the better.

Sally didn't shop her work around for more critiques, and that's her fault. For all her social media stunts, she didn't even leak a gown online to get honest consumer feedback. That's her fault. She didn't ask Thomas for any advice, and that's her fault. Sally listened to Grams and not her own instincts, and that's Sally's fault, not Bill's.

Liam has a pretty thin case for Bill's review being the reason Sally lost confidence, stole from Forrester, and lost Thomas. Sally losing confidence is her own fault. She could have just taken the lead from the forty-fifth president of the United States. If there's one thing you can learn from him, it's that you don't let bad press affect you. You flip that blond bang and keep on tweeting. So the "bucko" stops at Sally, not Bill.

Other artists get shafted by purposely negative and unfair reviews from people with ulterior motives. It can happen in any business, and it sometimes backfires. It might have backfired on Bill just like his articles about Maya did. The negative review seemed to stir interest in Sally's showing. Spectra had a full house when it had only been able to get Jarrett at the preview. The sparked interest might be because Bill's negative publicity intrigued the press and buyers.

So maybe Bill did Sally a favor with the bad review. Or maybe Bill had no effect at all on the industry's decision to attend the actual show versus the preview. Bill obviously had no effect on them with the second review he instructed Jarrett to write because the buyers didn't care that Spectra was cranking out fakes.

If Sally had bothered to persevere and believe in herself, then her gowns, not the Forresters', could have been on the runway for the intrigued buyers and press. We'll never know if they would have raved about Sally's line or disagreed with Jarrett's opinion that she had talent at all. The reason we won't know is because of Sally's choices, not Bill's.

Sally made bad choices from the get-go. She rushed everything, spent beyond her means as a startup, and bit off way more than she could chew with the rent alone. Thomas swooped in and paid C.J. the one hundred thousand dollars that Sally was behind on, which kept her lease valid -- for now.

Bill asked what would happen with the next month's debts and then the ones for the month after that. I'm with him. Who pays next month's rent? How do they obtain more assets? Forrester took everything, including the hangers, in the lawsuit. Sally claimed they had no money to even buy boxed wine, but the crew went right out and bought bottled after the Thomas rescue, which proves they do not have the business acumen to succeed.

It's not clear how many payments behind Sally was on the lease, but she apparently wasn't a smart enough business woman to convince C.J. not to charge her rent or to only charge utilities for her startup period. He could apparently afford such an agreement. He said his businesses, whatever they might be, are doing well. Plus, the Spectra building hasn't made him a profit in years. What's six more months between family?

The Spectras own the building, even if it is unclear how C.J. and his mom got a perfectly dusty Spectra, signs and all, back from the Marones, who'd completely renovated the building. If C.J. and his mother didn't own the building, then Bill would be pressuring a bank to foreclose or let him buy the mortgage like he did when he bought Forrester's bank loan in the past.

If I'm right, and if Sally the First wants her niece to revive Spectra, then I don't understand why they made Sally pay a lease in the first place. C.J. had the luxury of turning down a twenty-million-dollar check from Bill, who would use it to pay off Sally's debt and assume her lease. It further proves that he and his mother aren't hurting for cash. It makes me wonder why neither of them invested in Spectra's revival. Oh, I forgot. It's because then there would be no urgency for Thomas to rush to the rescue and force Bill to walk away empty-handed.

The Spectra gang drank and danced the conga because they get to stay in business after what they did, and that doesn't sit well with me. They set Forrester back millions. They stole everything from the dresses to the earrings, which was overkill because they didn't even have to have a jewelry line. If they'd only stolen what they'd needed, maybe I'd give a lick of sympathy, but they raided Forrester like they were Captain Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean.

What the Spectras did was worse than what Bill did, and Bill's actions would have been ineffective if Sally hadn't had such low confidence to begin with. At least Bill did his dirt to a stranger (this time). Sally is such a snowflake when it comes to critiques of her talent but had plenty of gall to steal from her beloved via another person she claimed to love.

Forrester's stock probably dropped due to the theft, too, and Liam was an idiot for asking Wyatt when Bill started caring about the stock. Stock is money, and Bill always cares about money. Liam should care about the stock himself because his wife owns twenty-five percent of it. Liam should also care more about the company he works for than to make it vulnerable to a lawsuit and credibility issues by opening his big mouth about the review.

Let that sink in. Liam left his father and his own legacy open for whatever civil or legal implications that fake review could bring. He left Jarrett vulnerable to being fired, too. And why? Because Liam has sympathy for a criminal. At least he's consistent. He did the same with Quinn more than once, even when the effects of letting her walk free were bad for his loved ones.

One of these days, Liam will get bitten in the behind over his hypocritical grandstanding. Remember when it was okay with him about lying to Quinn and Wyatt about the power of attorney? Remember when it was okay with Liam to hide the details of how Aly really died from the police and her father? Remember when Liam didn't bother to tell Steffy about her father's vasectomy? But all of a sudden, Liam wonders if Steffy can live with not telling Thomas about the fake review?

Steffy has no problem hiding things from people when it benefits her. She had no problem accepting an unfair advantage from Bill, even when it caused Liam to lose Hope. She had no problem keeping it to herself that Bill tried to kill a pregnant Amber, either, so I have no idea how guilt about a fake review that Steffy had nothing to do with would overcome her. Growing a conscience with age? Liam's self-righteousness wearing off on her? No. She's always been self-righteous.

If Liam is so concerned about what's right and fair, he would have confronted Bill about the review, printed a retraction, and published the real review. Instead, he went behind his father's back, tattletaled to his wife, and left her with the burden of the decision.

Liam was in a tizzy about ethics, but is it ethical for Liam to be married to the largest Forrester stockholder while he edits Forrester's reviews and the reviews of Forrester's competitors? It would be bad ethics and a conflict of interest for Liam even if he didn't work at Spencer because he owns stock in Forrester and publishes the industry reviews.

Well, Thomas paid the money for Sally and created his own conflicts of interest. The Forresters made it clear that they wanted to be harsh on Spectra as a warning to others who might pirate their designs. Paying off Spectra's debts and dating the perpetrator aren't ways to be harsh. The Forresters have been gracious about what Spectra did to them, but isn't Thomas going just a little too far to expect his family to approve of him putting Spectra back in business?

Let us know what you think. Are the Spectras getting off too easy for what they did to the Forresters? Was Liam right to out Bill for Spencer's fake review, or should Liam have protected his Spencer Publications' reputation with silence? Was Liam just being gratuitous for his own self-righteous benefit, or was telling Steffy, knowing she'd tell Thomas, who'd probably tell Sally, the right thing to do? Was it Bill's fault that Sally resorted to stealing? And most importantly, don't you want Bill to rip Liam a new one for either way?

A look ahead

The Spectras took up most of the week, but we also saw Brooke tell Ridge again that her future was with Bill. Ridge told her again that he wouldn't give up. In the preview video out for next week, Ridge makes a last-minute effort to win Brooke back from Bill. Bill suffered a major loss at the hands of a son-of-a-poseur, so something tells me that he will not let the poseur ruin his fourth attempt to marry Brooke.

Zende is still walking around, flashing his sketchpad, but no one is buying what he is peddling. That could all change once Ridge finds out what Thomas did for Sally. Thomas invested in Spectra, but Ridge might make Thomas regret putting his money where his heart is. Spoilers indicate that Zende gets an opportunity at Forrester. There might suddenly be a new vacancy on the design team. Is it because Thomas leaves Forrester or because Forrester fires him?

Let us know your opinions and comments about this week's show and if you think Liam was right or wrong to snitch on Bill. I'm interested in hearing who thinks Liam should have looked out for the Forresters and Spencers instead of a Spectra he hardly knows.

Until we scoop again, may your Mother's Day be bold and beautiful, baby!

What are your thoughts on ? What did you think of this week's Two Scoops? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.