Off the wagon and dragged through the mud: Sheila 1, Brooke 0

What's got Sheila Carter up and Brooke Logan down? Three things: a drunk fake plant, Deacon's musk on Ridge's pillow, and dozens of superfluous New Year's Eve flashbacks. Get the two scoops on how Brooke's booze mystery has stalled because Liam can't understand a rocket-scientist kid. Plus, Taylor and Steffy are gossiping about Ridge's wife when they need to be worrying about Hayes's evil, baby-blanket-knitting grandma on The Bold and the Beautiful.

Welcome back, Scoopers! I hope you had a safe New Year's celebration. If you followed my advice from last week's column, you had some clean fun without imbibing anything unintended. Hopefully, you didn't drink too much and wind up in the bed, on the bed, or even under the bed with your ex, your "biggest mistake," or naughty Santa.

If you're Brooke, you're checking "all the above" and vying to climb back on the wagon. Until now, Brooke has been the world champion of fighting the drinking urge -- which is especially challenging in a house brimming with booze. In fact, her bar seems to get restocked daily, even after the New Year's Eve incident. Tell me, how is that?

If Macy's ghost isn't playing revenge of the barback, what is it with the constantly refilled vodka bottles on Brooke's bar? And can the props department please pick a brand? One day, Brooke is pouring Beater's, and the next, she's dumping White Eagle into a fake plant. On the third day, full bottles of Beater's and White Eagle are right back on the bar along with the tequila and whatever else.

Why does a former alcoholic have more hooch on hand than ABC Liquors? And when will that fake plant of Brooke's attend its first A.A. meeting? While I'm at it, I hereby inform the production department that, unlike Brooke or the plastic plant, I'm not the drunk who can't remember New Year's Eve. I don't need a movie-load of flashbacks to recall it. If I see Sheila hair-twirling alone, flashing back on those labels one more time, I might send a champagne bottle through the television.

The week was rounded out with Hope blaming herself for Brooke's relapse while Liam ignored Douglas' remark about Santa and Grandma kissing. Liam had better listen up because honest Douglas is the one who cracked open the "Baby Beth is alive" case.

Let's scoop on an outrageous week of booze, gossip, and excessive flashbacks on The Bold and the Beautiful.

Speaking of flashbacks, we all know what a solar eclipse is, but do the Bold writers know what a plot eclipse is? It's when flashback upon flashback takes up precious time on a 20-minute show, bogging down a riveting plot in redundancy. At this point, I can't tell if I'm seeing a live flashback or a flashback of a flashback.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but what will a bushel of flashbacks do to a viewership? Glaze their eyes over. Stop it. We get it. Sheila is reveling in her crime against Brooke, like any glue-sniffing, label-switching terrorist of an alcoholic would, but the same advice goes for drinking as it does for using flashbacks -- know when to say when. Remember, less is more. Use fewer flashbacks and give us more plot.

For instance, Douglas opened the new year with a flashback, but I wish the writers had used the time instead to reveal what the boy did after he saw Brooke and Santa Deacon. Did Douglas give up his search, or did he find Peanut Butter? If he was smart, he and Peanut Butter would have left a Crayola-penned blackmail note stickied to Brooke's forehead, saying, "I know what you did on New Year's Eve." This secret has gotta be worth some mac and cheese, right?

Like Sheila, Brooke flashes back twice an episode, but frankly, the only person who should be flashing back but isn't is Taylor. She should flash back over her whole "I spy Sheila" plan and figure out how one observation session turned into daily visits from a psycho with no copay, no insurance, no appointment, and no treatment plan.

What's Taylor's solution to her Sheila problem? Taylor rolled the welcome mat back up and reminded Sheila not to go where she hasn't been invited -- like Taylor's office, for instance. Experience tells me that there's no backsies once you invite evil in.

In no vampire movie ever have I seen the protagonists defeat the vampire by simply uninviting her after already letting her inside to hold your baby. It's not going to work with Sheila, either, even though Sheila agreed to Taylor's terms. Taylor should have seen through all of Sheila's conciliatory acquiescence, but Taylor thinks she can civilly reason with the fiend who played "Candyman" with Lance.

Taylor is woefully unprepared for Sheila. Taylor didn't even think far enough ahead to have a referral handy when she refused to treat Sheila. There Taylor was, all touched and affected when Sheila handed over a blanket for Hayes, claiming she'd knitted it herself. Whatever. I bet Sheila stole it off a stroller on the way into the building. And that's why I think Taylor is way out of her league with this sociopath. If Dr. James Warrick, Taylor's mentor, wound up kidnapped by, in love with, and having a baby with Sheila, what does Taylor think she can do against Sheila with only a wig and a prayer?

And there Steffy is, worried about the wrong thing -- who Ridge is sleeping with and what's going on in Brooke and Hope's business -- while Taylor's over there doing the mongoose and snake dance with Sheila. Taylor better quit playing therapist and get a real doctor, animal tamer, snake charmer, vampire hunter, or exorcist involved, because it's just a matter of time before Sheila strikes someone else or targets Brooke again.

I should be glad that Taylor and Sheila finally addressed the elephant in the room -- that Sheila had shot her. Perhaps confronting that means Taylor is ready to be honest about her feelings for Brooke. If Taylor really has no beef with Brooke, and if Taylor would like to think she and Brooke can be friends, then Taylor should stop gossiping about Brooke, reveling, "Oh, the plot thickens," and she should warn Ridge and Brooke that Sheila is on the warpath against Brooke. No chance in hell? Probably not.

So far, Sheila is winning. Brooke fell off the wagon and dragged out the obligatory emo wardrobe to prove it. Caroline Jr., Steffy, and Hope all wore the sulking uniforms, too. It's a wonder Thomas hasn't come up with a "No Hope for the Future" depression line yet, dedicated to his miserable female relatives. Brooke looks the part and acts the part, and if Bell doesn't flub it up, maybe this plot could be Katherine Kelly Lang's (Brooke Logan) shot at an Emmy for 2022.

Brooke confessed her sobriety problem to Ridge and Hope, but Brooke needs to come clean about Deacon's role in it before Ridge catches a whiff of "Eau de Con Man" on his pillow. The last thing Brooke needs is for someone to take Douglas seriously and deduce which of his four Grandmas was tonguing Santa. Ridge asked four times already about Deacon and won't likely believe the "on" the bed story the longer it takes for Brooke to confess.

At the A.A. meeting, it was a nice touch to see some of the same actors from Brooke and Deacon's last A.A. group, but some viewers doubt that the show is taking alcoholism as a disease seriously. Instead, they are using it as a plot point and making a mockery of the struggle to overcome addiction. For example, my friend pointed out that Ridge deprived Brooke of her anonymity and freedom to tell her story by attending her A.A. meeting.

I don't know much about alcoholism, so I can't gauge how realistically Bold is handling it, but I think it would be remiss of Bold not to address Deacon's role in the drinking or his failures as a functional alcoholic. Brooke drinks water. Katie drinks water. Deacon sits in bars and drinks. I've always heard that there's no such thing as a "recovered" alcoholic, so what message is Bold sending about Deacon?

My fianc asked me why Brooke even has a bar in her house. Ridge came to mind, and I questioned how supportive he really is if he keeps this much liquor stocked at the house. Plus, get a load of all the booze Brooke set up for the New Year's Eve party. It was a kids' party. Who was supposed to drink all that? The plants? Peanut Butter? No wonder Douglas couldn't find that rabbit. He was probably drunk by the pool, hugging his inebriated philodendron buddy.

And lastly, what about Douglas? Henry Joseph Samiri has handled mature and disturbing storylines in his role as Douglas. In this plot, I'm relieved that he only got to see Grandma kissing Santa and not tickling Santa. At least, that's what I hope, anyway, but how realistic is it that a child with Douglas' intelligence can't figure how to convey what he saw other than to repeat the lyric of a Christmas song?

Likewise, how realistic is it that child whisperer Liam, who figured out that Douglas was saying "Phoebe" was Beth, is not giving any attention or credence to the words coming out of Douglas' mouth? Liam constantly talks about how intelligent Douglas is, and to me, it's unbelievable that Liam is brushing it off so easily. I guess no one will listen until Douglas looks at Brooke and says, "I saw you kissing Santa."

As I mentioned in the last Two Scoops, the scripts play fast and loose with the historical truths of the show. From time to time, we need to separate fake fiction from real fiction. This time, we take a look at the truth behind Deacon's relationship with Liam.

"The thing is, man, we used to talk..." Deacon said to Liam, January 3, 2022

Deacon was upset this week because he and Liam hadn't talked since Deacon had gotten out of prison, and the thing is, they used to talk -- according to Deacon. Does any Scooper know when that was? I'm at a complete loss as to when Liam and Deacon used to sit around, kick back beers, and shoot the crap together.

It's hard to prove a negative, but as far as I can tell, Deacon and Liam didn't share a scene together until 2014 when Quinn had tried to kill Liam with the custom sword. After that, Liam and Deacon had three conversations alone together that I know of, including the one that happened last week. The first one occurred when Liam visited Deacon and Quinn's loft before Hope's 2014 baby shower, and the second one transpired between "Jim" and "Adam," the fake names Quinn gave to Deacon and Liam, respectively, when she held the amnesiac Liam captive.

If anyone knows of when Deacon and Liam did all this bonding -- or knows why Liam doesn't remember Deacon as Jim -- let me know in the comments section below.

The upcoming spoilers reveal that Zende has a surprise for Paris. He flies her mother, Dr. Grace Buckingham, to town for a visit, a role played by Cassandra Creech. Is the doctor a psychiatrist? Because Taylor and Sheila both need one. Visiting Paris should just be one stop among many for Grace, who I advise to make the rounds to prison to see Reese and to the beach house and the cliff house to see his former lovers Flo and Taylor, respectively. Does Grace's appearance mean Zoe might be on her way back?

Zende surprises Paris with her mother, but he will definitely be surprised if he learns that Paris and Carter exchanged kisses and will do so again in the near future. After what happened between Zende and Zoe, should we feel bad for Zende?

Hope and Steffy bicker with each other about their parents, causing Steffy to push Taylor to go after Ridge. No surprise there. Just eye rolls from me.

Deacon makes a stunning revelation to Brooke. I wonder what that would be? That he lied when he said you can fall off the wagon one night and get back on the next day?

Well, that's it, Scoopers. Thanks for putting up with me two weeks in a row. The next two weeks belong to Mike, and after that, we'll return to our regularly scheduled columns. I love reading your comments below, and sometimes, I even respond! So please, post away, and stay bold and beautiful, baby!Chanel

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