Hope and Liam: Confessions of love and murderous hate

One has to be lovesick or psycho-sick for a shooting confession to spur within her declarations of love. Hope might be a little of both. She professed love for Liam amid his mental-breakdown shooting confession, but can Liam live happily ever after with Hope from a prison cell?

Detective Sanchez and Deputy Chief Baker are still pinning subjects to the murder board, but thanks to our super scooping sleuthing -- and a thick tree branch -- we can put away the markers and the boards. Our shooter is Liam Spencer, case closed.

Unfortunately, as we pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and look forward to our promotions to deputy chief scoopers, we realize Liam's confession just opened up a whole new can of what-the-hell-is-next for the attempted murder investigation and the Spencer family.

Ridge is in jail without bail -- as in there hasn't been a bail hearing yet -- and with all the attitude Carter and Ridge are giving the police, I wouldn't be surprised if Ridge's due process got lost somewhere in the system. Ridge had better play it cool, because people really can get lost in jail. I read of a story once in which a guy got "lost" in jail over a DUI. It took seven years for someone to realize he was just rotting away in there.

Seven years, Ridge. Think about it before you keep talking smack to Dep. Chief Baker. Brooke will be married and divorced fourteen times by the time you get out if you're not careful.

There probably isn't a chance of the police "losing" Ridge, even if they tried. There's no way people won't hear his big mouth and cell clanging every day and night. Plus, Brooke isn't having it. She declared that her hubby wasn't spending one more night in that place.

A golden gun put Bill in that position, but without a gold lasso, there isn't much else Brooke can do to get Bill to change his statement. She tried telling him that he'd do it if he'd ever loved her, but she learned the hard way that Bill just wasn't that into her.

Ridge's only hope, pun intended, is that Liam can convince Bill to retract his statement. Hope took Liam to Bill to confess to the shooting because she believes Bill will recant his statement without implicating Liam. It should be that simple, right? Well, let's not be hasty. Bill might not even believe Liam. Bill might think that, succumbing to pressure from Brooke and Steffy, Liam is confessing to help his father-in-law.

If Bill does believe Liam did it, will Bill still want his cowardly shooter in jail? It might not be up to Bill. Justice warrior Liam seems determined to come clean about his crime. Let's get two scoops deep into the fallout from Liam's confession. Is Liam going to insist upon doing the time, or will Hope need to give him another knock to the noggin to make him forget the night of the shooting all over again?

If you missed the week, let me inform you that it was another of those week-long nights that started sometime in the previous week when Steffy started wearing that ugly striped sweater. You can always catch up with our detailed recaps, penned by yours truly and Soap Central's lovely Pam.

In the meantime, in a mental nutshell of concussional proportions, here's what went down:

Steffy was all grovely on the phone with Liam. She wanted them to band together as a family. She needed him so much and invited him to a redo of their dinner. After she finally ran out of begging gas, Liam was all like, "Yeah, I feel you, but...umm...I gotta go..."

Liam has been treating Steffy worse than a one-night stand that won't go away while he's trying to make inroads with the next love interest. He asked Hope if he should go to the dinner, you know, "because I don't want to give her the wrong idea..." Hope urged him to go, and when he got outside the cliff house, he hit his head on a massive bicep-sized tree branch by the front door. Like a transistor radio, his mind buzzed and crackled, and he visually tuned in to the last time he'd been in that same spot.

No, we were not making too much about camera angles. Someone was standing outside the cliff house, watching Bill make a fool out of himself on bended knee. That someone backed away, tripped over a fallen branch, and fell on a large rock off to the side of the entrance. That someone was Liam.

During dinner with Steffy, Liam was overly curious about the proposal and where it happened. When Steffy suggested that he talk to his father about his accusation of her father, Liam rushed over to the hospital to confront Bill about the fact that Bill couldn't have seen the shooter because, the last time Liam checked, humans didn't have eyes in the backs of their heads.

In the car outside his hotel, Liam found sheepskin gloves, and he tuned in to the brain frequency that showed himself firing Bill's gun.

Hope showed up at the hotel and found Liam upset and cowering like Gollum, and she was all like, "Why does it cry, Smeagol?" Liam crawled around on the floor, sniffling and telling her that he'd seen it all, and he'd shot his father. Hope replied something like, "Did you take something? Because you're obviously on something. Snorting bath salts? Sniffing glue? Huffing hairspray?"

Liam explained that it had happened to him before. He'd gotten knocked out and lost weeks of his life at the time that Quinn had kidnapped him. This time, he assumed he'd knocked himself out with the tree branch and had gone to the house and shot Bill.

At the same time, ironically, Sanchez was questioning Quinn about Liam's abduction. Quinn didn't want to talk about it and only said Liam had been a completely different person. He'd forgotten everything, and he hadn't even known what year it had been.

Liam wanted to call the police to tell them, so they would set Ridge free, but Hope slapped the phone out of Liam's hand. She said she loved him, and she wasn't going to lose him. Liam didn't know what she expected him to do, but he felt he had to stop being the judgmental hypocrite of the world and acknowledge that he was the real danger.

Hope said to hell with that. In her view, it was all Steffy and Bill's fault anyway, and she refused to let Liam be punished for their transgressions. Deciding that she knew how to solve it, Hope drove Liam to the hospital and waited outside Bill's hospital room as Liam told Bill that Liam, not Ridge, had shot Bill in the back.

Hope has taken a big gamble because Bill could decide to let Ridge take the rap for it to save Liam. If Liam went along with that, could Hope stand to watch in silence as her mother tries to move heaven and Bill to save Ridge?

Hope also appears to be blind to the shell of a man this incident has reduced Liam to. What kind of a future does she think they can possibly have if Liam suppresses his role in the shooting? If Liam doesn't confront this and deal with it, any day in the future, he could hit his head on a shelf and hear "Ki-Ki-Ki...Da-Da-Da..." all over again.

I am here to tell Hope right now that making Liam suppress things and pretending they didn't happen is partly what got us into this in the first place. Liam bumped his head about two years ago, and he ignored it. He saw Steffy in bed with his brother, and he ignored it. He wound up falling out in the parking lot to be taken care of by Quinn, who is not the medicine woman.

Liam didn't get the proper care after he was rescued from the cabin, either. Hope can't kiss his head boo-boo and magically make it better, but if she plays her cards right, she might be able to pin the blame for the shooting on Adam -- or maybe she can name the new shooting personality Ham after the son who saw Noah "naked."

Claiming that Liam has multiple personality disorder might be the ticket to getting him out of this, but he needs to check into a hospital, not another romance. Will this crime lead Liam to finally get the physiological and psychological help he needs?

In the last scoops, our detective skills whittled the list of potential suspects down to just a few adequately crazy suspects, and though we didn't think it was likely, we included Liam in the list because he just hasn't been acting right ever since the shooting. Now that Liam has finely tuned his memories, we can fine-tune our list to just one suspect. Liam perfectly fits the profile, sheepskin gloves and all.

"It was windy that night..." Bill said as he explained to Liam how the shooting had happened. As Bill spoke, flashes of the events struck like lightning through Liam's mind. We finally saw a portrait of a crime that made perfect sense and remained true to the storyline and characters.

Kudos to our writers for piecing together an intriguing puzzle that brought Liam full circle with his head injury, which might have been exacerbated during the explosion at Spectra Fashions. The writers also turned the police officers' heads with hints of old crimes bubbling to the surface, like the mysterious electrical fire at Spectra. Ridge even brought up his helicopter misadventure, but when Baker and Sanchez stared quizzically, Ridge was like, "It wasn't your jurisdiction, so don't worry about it."

The jewel in the writer's crown was the retelling of Quinn's kidnapping of Liam, which reminded us of how off-balance Liam can get, literally and figuratively. When Liam began seeing haunting flashbacks of watching Steffy with Bill, the first thing I thought of was Liam sitting in the chair by the window in his own bedroom, watching Steffy sleep in Wyatt's arms.

It's a major issue that, to this day, Steffy and Liam have never dealt with, and it reminds us that Liam can fly straight over the cuckoo's nest after he sees Steffy with another man. In each incident, Liam doesn't confront the traitors. He internalizes it and lashes out in some other way. Back then, he threw Steffy out without explanation, and this time, he put a bullet in his father without explanation.

Liam told Steffy that he'd hit his head on the tree branch, and she said the branch had fallen the night of the shooting. I recalled her hearing something outside the night of the shooting and thinking that it was Bill returning to the house. It was probably Liam getting up and finding his bearings after hitting his head.

The last time this happened to Liam, he forgot who he was. But Liam couldn't have forgotten this time. Upon staggering away from the cliff house with the concussion, he had to still know who he was, who his father was, and what his father had just done with his wife, or else he would not have gone to Bill's house.

At that time, Liam wasn't interested in confronting Steffy or finding out if she'd accepted the proposal. Instead, he either walked or followed Bill to Bill's house. Why? Liam didn't have a gun at the time, so what was he originally planning on doing at Bill's house?

Apparently, Bill didn't see Liam's car at the cliff house when Bill drove off -- or maybe Bill will recall it next week. Brooke didn't say she'd seen it when she arrived at the cliff house, so I'm assuming Liam took his car to Bill's house and parked farther down the driveway than normal, because in the flashbacks, Liam seemed to have walked a driveway to get to the house.

The power was flickering in the house already, and the security cameras had gone down by then. Bill was playing music and hadn't heard the front door creak open or Liam loading and cocking the gun. The power in the house died completely, and Liam fired the round into Bill's back. Again, I wonder why. What made Liam decide to silently murder his father?

Do the writers want us to believe it was a crime of passion and murderous hatred? It's kind of hard to think so when Liam marched to the house with the deathly calm "Ki-Ki-Ki...Da-Da-Da..." of Jason Voorhees. Liam quietly entered the mansion and deliberately chose to use the gun instead of his voice to confront Bill about the marriage proposal.

If the gun had not been there, what would Liam have done instead? Sneaked into the house and just stood there until Bill noticed him? Was he planning to beat Bill to death with a blunt object? Stab Bill in his sleep? Inquiring minds what to know.

Equally puzzling is why Liam went back to the cliff house afterwards. Recall how mentally disheveled he'd been when Steffy let him inside. He acted like he wasn't really there for dinner. He didn't seem to remember the plans and told her that he couldn't even stay long. If that was the case, why did he show up at the cliff house either time that night?

Had Liam arrived originally to try to put his marriage back on track as Steffy had asked? Had he blacked out somewhere after leaving Bill's house and awakened with the thought of going home, but not necessarily to see Steffy?

Personally, I'm always fascinated by the off-kilter Liam, and I hope the writers do not skimp out on the psychological issues plaguing him as they did the last time his life went off the rails due to Quinn. Back then, we didn't know if Liam would throw Quinn against the wall to have sex with her or to strangle her, but the show quickly glossed over Liam's anger about the kidnapping and sex by fraud to turn the plot back into a predictable love triangle.

We're in danger of it happening again. The writers seem poised to either dive into the deep end of Liam's bruised and twisted psyche or into the shallow end of finding a way to get him out of an attempted murder charge so they can pursue the reignited Hope/Liam/Steffy triangle. Would it hurt the writers to multitask and give us both?

According to the video preview of next week, Hope and Liam kiss, so we're definitely getting the triangle. Hope and Liam always seem to drift back to each other at in tragic times, and it's those same tragic times that wind up ripping them apart. When Steffy miscarried and left town, Liam and Hope reunited, but his inability to have closure with Steffy caused Hope to pursue a relationship with Wyatt. Later, Hope and Liam seemed to be finding their way back each other again when her own miscarriage caused her to run away from home.

Liam and Hope didn't get closure then, and now she has landed right back in his path just in time for another life-altering tragedy. When Hope said she loves Liam and won't let him go to prison, it came off as nave ignorance because Liam is far from being ready to jump into any kind of relationship. Liam is in an estranged marriage and on the way to some hard time in prison or a mental institution for his crime. It's not exactly the time to plan a romantic future.

Hope believes that the shooting is Steffy and Bill's fault for sleeping together. I tend to agree that their behavior is a major factor, but so is Liam's tendency to passive-aggressively deal with his issues. He internalizes his anger and pain with deadly consequences. Bill was at fault for proposing to Steffy, but one always has an option to deal with things without violence.

Liam also claims not to want to give women the wrong impressions while steadily giving them the wrong impressions. Take saving Sally for example. Accepting the dinner from Steffy is another example. At least he tried to tell Hope that she'd professed love at the wrong time. Liam told Hope that he couldn't expect anyone to love him when he couldn't love himself.

Liam needs to get himself straight before he continues a marriage with Steffy or takes up with Hope. Fixing Liam is a job for psychiatric healing, not sexual healing. Before we can even consider Liam's recovery, Liam has to resolve his criminal predicament first.

The best way to solve the crime at this point is to let it go unsolved. Bill would have to retract his statement but lie that he doesn't know who shot him. The police would have to release Ridge in that case, but can Hope, Bill, or Steffy talk Liam out of moving into Ridge's cell? Perhaps the trio will have to use Liam's mental issues against him and convince the police that he doesn't know what he's talking about any more than Bill did when he accused Ridge.

If Hope disposes of Liam's gloves, the police have no proof other than a confession given by a man who hit his head twice since the shooting. Clumsy and concussed. Doesn't sound like a person who can hit a target in the dark.

Quinn got away with abducting Liam. Steffy got away with killing Aly and firing a gun off in Eric's hotel room. Sally got away with stealing. Liam will somehow get out of this, and his renewed feelings for Hope might give Bill an opening with the vulnerable Steffy. Would Bill be courting disaster to go after Steffy yet again? Bill told Liam that Bill was sorry for it, and he'd never do it again; however; Bill also said that he loved Steffy, and he'd be there for her if Liam left her.

You can get detailed spoilers in our scoops section if you need to, but here are some highlights of what's to come on the Bold and the Beautiful:

Say goodbye to the Spectra clan. It looks like they are packing up and moving across the country with Thomas. I haven't seen any word about Coco, but if you're wondering where R.J. is whenever Brooke says she told him to stay put, his location is called "off contract." The actors for Saul and Darlita have vacated their roles, and that probably means Shirley is also out.

Look for the Spectra storyline to wrap up next week. Check out the Soap Central feature on Courtney Hope's exit as Sally Spectra 2.0.

Some of the questions in this week's column might get answered, according to spoiler hints. Bill has to make a tough decision after Liam divulges some information. Bill is released from the hospital, and after Brooke convinces Sanchez to question Bill again, the police release Ridge from jail. It's not a moment too soon, either, because Ridge's supportive brother has been hinting to Eric about how well Forrester gets along without Ridge.

Really, Thorne? I'll bet Thorne's bags were packed, and he was ready to move into Brooke's house, too. Anything to help out a big brother in need, right?

Speaking of Big Brother, next month, the show's most recent winner, Marissa Jaret Winokur, guest stars as Katie and Wyatt's wacky wedding planner. With a Steam baby on the way, and the show heading into May sweeps, we can expect Wyatt and Katie's wedding to 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.