The Lope Story: Hurry up and wait for happily ever after

On B&B, Liam and Hope are back in the amazing race to the altar. Steffy threw up a cement-baby roadblock, but Hope and the wedding-planning Brooke plan to bulldoze the baby booties blocking Hope's path to happiness. Will Liam marry Hope, or will another Lope wedding bite the dust?

Once again, we are gathered here today to figure out if Liam and Hope are really going to get married for once in their lives. It's never a good sign when the viewers see the bride in the dress before the wedding. It's even worse when a cheesy wedding daydream narrated by the quickie-mama-express wedding planner gets interrupted by the groom's pregnant wife!

Umm, annulled wife, I mean, and Steffy declared that it's nothing but a disgrace. In Brooke's view, it takes one to know one, and Father-in-law-banging Steffy was the real disgrace in Brooke's eyes. Brooke ought to know because Taylor and Stephanie chiseled SFTV on Brooke's forehead during a failed slut exorcism. And just like that, scoopers, on a beautiful Mother's Day weekend, the war of the mothers and daughters over Liam begins again.

This week, Brooke volunteered to plan Liam and Hope's sixth wedding ceremony, and Brooke is determined that Steffy won't derail this one like she pretty much did to every other one Brooke tried to throw for Lope. No more Portofino weddings or imitation Portofino weddings in Liam's backyard. These events take time and money, and with Liam and Hope's long odds, no one can blame Brooke for throwing together something quick and economical that won't break the bank if Hurricane Steffy hits.

For this wedding, the theme is hand-me-down wedding gowns and recycled engagement rings for the refurbished couple known as Lope. Hope might even pull out the diamond wedding band she showed Liam before asking him to meet her in Paris in 2014, but for the something blue, I'm gonna have to advise against the cursed HFTF diamond. For Hope and Liam this go-round, what's old can become new again, but does the new Lope evoke the same emotions within fans as the Lope of the past?

Once upon a time, this couple was like a shooting star, poignant and wondrous to watch but completely unobtainable for viewers. Their romance was like a meteor burning down to a grain and disappearing before impacting land. When Kim Matula exited the role of Hope, fans of the love story felt robbed of a happy, drama-free time period for their favorite couple. Now that Hope's role has been recast, is enough meteoric dust there for Lope to rise from the ashes? Or like with Thorsten Kaye's Ridge reunion with Brooke -- do we need more time with the new Hope on her own before we can authentically experience Lope's chemistry?

We might get that one-on-one time with Hope if, like Bridge's first reunion with Kaye as Ridge Forrester, the Lope reunion falls apart only to be rebuilt after Annika Noelle has solidified her portrayal of Hope. If the past is a prologue, we know Steffy probably will foul up the upcoming Lope wedding. She did it once with an "I'm pregnant..." whisper. Maybe this time, Steffy and Taylor will interrupt the wedding with a "My water just broke..." whisper.

If Steffy and Taylor do plan to bust up the wedding, they are gonna have to act fast because Brooke's wedding express train is running early, and she won't break for babies like Steffy keeps begging Liam to do.

For once, Liam and Hope don't have to worry about Bill Spencer, who graduated from sabotaging weddings to sabotaging marriages. Our matchmaker from hell has been trying to match-make himself to his daughter-in-law, but if Justin can't stop all the lipstick and pillow talk at the office, somebody might just find out that Bill set Steffy up for Wyatt to conclude she was still sleeping with Bill. If that information gets to Steffy, Bill will be dead to her.

Will Wyatt be the one to learn the truth about the romantic setup he wandered into? If so, will he bust up Liam's wedding or use the information to his own advantage? Knowing The Bold and the Beautiful, there has to be a double-slip, twisty plot twist with secrets exploding on top for May sweeps. Might Sanchez and Deputy Chief Baker crash the wedding with handcuffs for Taylor? Maybe Justin's outbreak of a conscience will lead him to confess to Liam himself.

Let's get two scoops deep in whether Hope and Liam will finally have their first marriage or if Steffy will manage to shut down yet another Lope wedding on the Bold and the Beautiful.

In case you missed the last eight years

The Hope/Liam/Steffy triangle has been going on since 2011, but Hope and Liam met a year prior. Bill was opposed to the couple from the very day Hope and Katie helped Liam and Bill accept each other as father and son. Hope was too plain and pure for Bill's taste, and not even a raging Hope swinging a golf club through his window changed his mind about her. Bill sure as hell ain't getting an invitation, but Hope would be very shocked to learn that Bill is the engine behind her latest engagement to Liam.

Though Liam and Hope have been engaged about nine or ten times, we've only seen five actual wedding sets. Whereas Liam and Steffy have experienced married life together three times, Liam and Hope can't manage to get legally past the altar, and Steffy has always been the reason the Lope weddings failed.

For the couple's first wedding, Brooke set up a simple wedding at her house, but "fondue" to Steffy, the wedding never happened because Steffy refused to sign the annulment papers. The court probably wouldn't have accepted the chocolate-dipped documents, anyway.

For wedding number two, Brooke tried to put a continent between the event and Steffy, but in a bout of sheer stupidity, Hope invited Steffy to be her maid of honor. Bill unsuccessfully tried to thwart the wedding, but Hope made it back to the hotel right before Liam was about to take off for the States with Steffy. Liam and Hope got married, but Hope ripped up the certificate when she saw a little video Liam and Steffy accidentally made on a bed in Italy.

The third wedding was set to take place at the Forrester mansion, but Liam turned out not to be good enough to marry Hope after Steffy dropped the hungover, tattooed, and hair-dyed Liam off late for the event. If he smelled like he looked, Hope was probably about to pass out as he clung to her legs, begging in front of everyone for another chance.

Brooke got creative for wedding four and threw a surprise wedding in Liam's backyard, but Taylor rushed Steffy to the ambush so that she could tell Liam that she was pregnant. Hope basically told Liam to marry Steffy for the baby's sake, and Hope ran off to the breakup song of all breakups, "Tell Me What's Left to Say," by Jourdin Rystrom.

Like the song, Hope came to peace with the fact that it was over -- until Steffy miscarried and took off for Paris. Liam and Hope got engaged again, but at wedding number five, she spotted him in Brooke's cabin, hugging Steffy. It was too much to take on top of Liam making Steffy the same kind of keepsake video of their past relationship that he'd made for Hope of theirs. Hope hopped out of her wedding gown and onto a flight to Hawaii with Wyatt.

Though there might have been another engagement, there wasn't another actual wedding day for Hope and Liam. That brings us to 2018 and the impending wedding number six. Ridge wants Liam to slow down, Brooke wants Hope to hurry up, and Steffy thinks there is no way that Liam isn't on the rebound or that he knows what he wants less than a day after signing annulment papers. She even called Hope thirsty for hopping on him so fast.

Wait a minute. What? Thirsty? Does Steffy really want to go there, because I got the video receipts of who bought all the water but wound up dehydrated in Liam's rebound mirage. Literally. Do you guys remember when Liam was fantasizing about Hope walking up on him all sexy when he was on vacation with Steffy?

Hope might be a little parched right now, but at least she is wearing her own second-hand engagement ring and not one that Steffy just took off. Everybody knows Steffy was a dusty, crusty, thirsty bitch back when she begged Liam to kiss her the night before his wedding, accepted Hope's discarded engagement ring, and hopped all over Liam the same night Hope broke up with him over the kiss.

Instead of giving Liam and Hope a chance to talk about their wedding on what would have been their wedding day, Steffy got Bill to trap Hope in a gondola so Steffy could throw her own surprise hillbilly wedding to the confused, rebounding Liam Spencer.

"We were practically children!" Steffy said this week in defense of actions back then. Well, with all the sex and paychecks, they sure seemed grown to me -- except that time Taylor caught Steffy and Bill upstairs in Steffy's old room. I wonder how many "children" Steffy thinks screw around with married men. Steffy is paying the price for doing that right now, so maybe she also should pay the price for the shameless way she pursued Liam, too.

Even though I think Steffy is wrong and hypocritical for calling Hope thirsty after what Steffy did back in the day, I don't disagree with Steffy. She's completely right. It was too fast when Liam gave Hope's ring to Steffy, and it's too fast now that Hope's giving him old rings to slip back on her finger. Liam is missing cards from the deck and needs to be setting psychiatric appointments, not wedding dates. No man can be right in the head and think it's okay to live on his father-in-law's property while screwing the father-in-law's stepdaughter.

Brooke is no less crazy. Did you hear her tell Hope that Steffy's baby would be better off with them than with Steffy and Bill? I would have sworn that was Stephanie talking if I hadn't been staring Brooke in the face as she spoke. I don't know about all that, Brooke. After all, Hope did almost drown in a hot tub, and R.J. did almost burn down the house. Rick was a preteen shooter, and Bridget ran away from home. Maybe Brooke should stick to wedding planning and leave the childrearing to the wolves around the cabin.

Brooke is right about the quickie wedding. She knows from experience that babies come right when you are set to stroll down the aisle, like Thomas. But if you're quick enough, like Taylor was, you can already be headed off on your Saint Thomas honeymoon before your pregnant foe collapses, crying on the church floor because she missed stopping your wedding.

Speaking of Taylor, she is back in town -- if she ever even left. It seems like she pulled a Quinn and just disappeared for a while without actually going in for treatment. Taylor popped back in to see Steffy and was there when several bouquets arrived from Liam. Steffy had better put a tranquilizer in Taylor's tea before telling her that Liam went back to Hope -- again.

Back when Quinn had tried to kill Liam, Wyatt had felt guilty for a long time about it. Wyatt is also conflicted now about whether he did the right thing in outing Bill and Steffy to Liam. Steffy implored Wyatt to help her, insisting that she had not been with Bill again. Wyatt, who saw Steffy embracing Bill with his own eyes, doesn't understand how she can lie to him with such impunity.

The lies have got Justin as itchy as a bedbug rash, and he constantly laments his actions to Bill. Bill keeps making jokes about it, insisting that Justin had worn the lipstick before smearing it on the pillow Wyatt found. Justin didn't really do that, but I do want to know where he got the tube on such short notice.

Justin can't believe Bill is putting Steffy before family, and frankly, I don't get that part, either. I guess Bill is just attracted to what he can't have. In the past, he couldn't have Steffy, and the way she outwitted him in business turned him on. As twisted as it might be, Bill probably also gets off on the fact that he's sticking it Ridge by sticking it to Ridge's daughter. Challenges to obtain what Bill can't have often bring Bill to the brink of losing everything, as evidenced by his obsessions with Brooke and "Sky."

Hope wasn't the only person Steffy called out for being thirsty. Bill told Steffy that she deserves better than to have to beg Liam, but Steffy let Bill know that he was the one begging, even after she'd continuously turned him down. Maybe the key to Bill losing interest in Steffy is for her to become overly available and incredibly needy like Katie did. You know she did after the postpartum. Don't even pretend she didn't.

While all this is going on, Ridge is perplexed by Liam's sudden change of heart from sending Steffy a room full of roses to annulling their marriage to make a life with Hope. On any given day, Ridge admittedly would rather be slamming a filing cabinet drawer on Bill's head, but for Steffy's sake, Ridge appealed to Bill to help get through to Liam.

After taking a double dose of Bill's obnoxiousness about Bill's feelings for Ridge's daughter, the last thing Ridge needs to go home to is Hope playing Ms. Havisham by the fireplace while Mama-bear Brooke growls at his pregnant daughter to protect her fully grown bear cub. But that's exactly what's going on at his house as he heads home, and for someone who pretends to live to make Liam's meals, Hope has even warmed up the vegan leftovers for the family.

Hope realized that her situation was causing problems for Brooke and Ridge, but Brooke pretended all she had to do was talk to Ridge. Brooke even said Ridge would design Hope a dress if she asked. The least Hope and Brooke can do is grease him up with some food before ramming him with Hope and Liam's news.

Apparently, Brooke found her brain under the coffee table and offered to loan her old wedding dress to Hope before actually being crazy enough to ask Ridge, "Hey, you mind making Hope a wedding dress so she can break up your unborn grandchild's home? Don't worry -- we'll have the kid over all the time and sue Steffy for custody. You know, like your mother did to me...Where's R.J., you ask? How the hell do I know? Are you going to make this dress or not?"

That's the way the waffle flips

Liam Spencer has had the same problem for years: he is in love with two women, and he had to choose the best one to spend his life with for himself and his daughter. Liam choose Steffy until Wyatt told Liam that she was still fooling around with his father. Liam hasn't changed in all these years because he is still willing to propose first, have sex next, and ask questions never. He deserves what he gets because a few pointed questions could have solved the entire issue, but he instead chooses to upset every single person in his life by forcing them to accept him switching Steffy out for Hope.

Liam should have learned his lesson about waiting for Steffy to tell him something from all the way back when he saw her spooning in his bed with Wyatt. When Liam confronted her back then, he did it the same way as he did about his suspicion of her and Bill. Liam asked her to tell him whatever it was she needed to tell him, and just like the time with Wyatt, Steffy had no idea what Liam was talking about. The only difference this time is that she really didn't do anything.

If Liam had asked Steffy outright if she'd done what Wyatt said, then the matter could be solved already. Wyatt should have asked her, too, which makes me wonder how much the three of them care about each other if they can't come out and just say what the problem is.

Even though Steffy is innocent of fooling around with Bill, Liam has expressed that he didn't appreciate her keeping the information about the real shooter from him. To Ridge, Liam said he'd rather sleep at a bus stop than for her to have secretly gone to Bill for anything or been in a room alone with him. Liam was angry that she'd even hugged Bill, so how can Liam really go back to Steffy when the issues are still raw between them?

On the other hand, how can Liam use Hope as a wedding rebound after all the engagements, annulments, and divorces they've suffered through with each other and others while chasing the illusion of a perfect relationship? Once upon a time, Hope had refused to settle for Liam's divided heart. Now, she's not only okay with it, but she's also willing to break up the baby's family, something she'd been unwilling to do before.

I'm not feeling as Lopey as I used to. Maybe it's because Hope is so different. It's more than the physical. I invested in watching Hope mature from an overly principled virgin into a perfectly flawed, grown woman. Upon her return to town, the writers de-SORASed her emotionally. Not only does she act like nothing after the Italy wedding ever happened, but she doesn't show the scars and wisdom she gained from those struggles. When she and Liam had sex this week, I almost expected her to wig out like she'd done back when she was a virgin.

Hope also cowers a lot and is too eager to please. That is not the same tiger that could go rounds with Bill or Quinn. It's not the same Hope that had to learn to handle her emotions and her addictions and to embrace her imperfection, all on a world stage sponsored by HFTF. Hope was doing huge things when she left for Milan, and a huge emptiness was left behind because Hope Logan's life propelled the show, in the very same way Brooke's life had for decades.

Just as there was more in life for Brooke than Ridge, it's time for the writers to find more in life for Hope than Liam. Brooke married Eric, became the CEO of Forrester, and created a legacy for her children. Maybe it's time for Hope to have a relationship with a mature man. Maybe Bill could be the perfect stallion to break in the filly.

Yes, I did say Bill. Everything Bill said Steffy needed and couldn't get from Liam, Hope needs, too, and she can't get them from Liam, either. Maybe in thirty years, like it took for Ridge to be mature enough for Brooke, but right now, Liam is definitely not mature enough to be anyone's husband.

If not Bill for Hope, then Justin or Thorne. But first, Hope needs to get back that mojo she had when she decided to open herself up to dating Wyatt. As for Steffy, she's going to struggle with Liam for decades until he's too old to waffle or until she opens her heart to a mature man who won't waver, especially when she's in the middle of a delicate pregnancy.

In a look ahead

It's getting harder to predict outcomes from the spoilers because of the insane plot twists. Some of us are still reeling from Taylor's surprise return, but let's try to sort the rumors from the previews to make some predictions in the ongoing storylines.

Loose lips make Wyatt trip next week when he overhears the truth about what really went on in Bill's office. Wyatt wants to go straight to Liam, but Katie has other ideas. Would Katie, after all Liam has done to help her in her times of need, really be contemplating keeping quiet to get something out of Bill in exchange for her and Wyatt's silence?

If so, it's a big change from the Katie who demanded that Ridge and Quinn come clean to Eric or that Ridge and Caroline and Thomas tell the truth about the baby. Or maybe not. Maybe Katie just screws with people when she's lonely and miserable, but when she's happily in a relationship, she's willing to let the liars lie on.

As Wyatt and Katie decide what their next move will be, Ridge begins to suspect that Bill is behind Liam's suspicions about Steffy. Even though Brooke wants Ridge to be happy for Hope, Ridge works on opening Liam's eyes to what is really going on.

It's a clash of the mothers as Taylor reacts to Brooke's tongue-lashing of Steffy. Steffy knows better than to tell her murderous mama that anyone hurt her feelings because mama will not hesitate to put a hole up in them.

Hope and Liam's wedding day arrives. Will the couple exchange vows, or will another Lope wedding fall apart? I have a prediction for each scenario. In the first prediction, Hope discovers what Bill did to Steffy and selflessly decides to let Steffy take her place as the bride. In my second prediction, Lope actually gets married for a change. Steffy interrupts the wedding by going into labor, but Hope and Liam get married in the hospital lobby. That's pretty twisty, huh?

Let us know your twisty wedding twist predictions in the comments below. Tell us how you feel about Lope in light of the recast Hope. Until we scoop again, take good care of your mommies this weekend, and if you own a shiny golden gun, be sure to lock it up and store it up high, so mommy dearest can't play with it. May your Mother's Day be bold and beautiful, baby!

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