Stockholm syndrome

Even with her daddy dilemma and accidental sex with Zende, Luna's problems are comparatively normal right now. But could both Finn, who can't get his dead biomom off his mind, and Hope, who can't stop jonesing for former tormentor Thomas, be dealing with disorders stemming from unprocessed trauma? Make an appointment with Two Scoops' Mike!

Has your week been bold and beautiful? Did you come to the realization that dead Sheilas aren't much fun? Did you audition for a reboot of '80s sitcom My Two Dads? Did you attempt to win the Guinness world record for number of marriage proposals? These and more situations faced the Forrester-Logan-Spencer-Finnegan-Nozawa clan this week!

Hidey ho, Scoopers! Father's Day may be three months away, but B&B decided to celebrate early by again giving Luna a choice of papas. Meanwhile, Finn kept seeing the specter of Sheila, and Hope got Brooke to warm up to Thomas...making this columnist think that both Finn and Hope might be under the spell of a syndrome that's as Swedish as IKEA meatballs. Y'all ready? Let's Scoop about it!

Steffy and Finn attempted to comfort each other, given Steffy's guilt over taking a life and Finn having a hard time living in the murder house. Finn was actually more compassionate toward Steffy and the untenable position she'd been in when Sheila attacked, yet struggled to stand in the long shadow of the nightmares he'd been having, especially while being in the home where Sheila had died.

I liked that Steffy admitted to not feeling rage or relief when her knife went into Sheila, but anguish. If only that anguish had been tied into Steffy's also-in-self-defense killing of Aly back in 2015. I think it would be perfectly normal for Steffy to have her own flashback to that horrible night, especially because it was a parallel situation, with Steffy having to protect herself from her charging, murderous cousin.

So, Finn can't stomach being in that house. Why don't he and Steffy hole up in a Super 8 then? Maybe they can find the missing Julius and Vivienne Avant, who are probably still renting out a similar room. Or, at the very least, do a complete home reno and change the dcor! Steffy's only working off the same license-plate mural and other items that have adorned the place since Liam first made a home there in 2011.

Continuing her attempt to alleviate Finn's distress, Steffy insisted to Finn that Sheila was out of their lives for good. Yeah, that totally means Sheila is alive. I don't know how, but I'm still waiting on answers as to what was in Sheila's pocket, what blast-from-the-past person Sheila was secretly meeting with, and how Sheila could have died only having been stabbed in the shoulder. Plus, as others have said, no one bothered to count "Sheila's" toes.

Over the course of his "we can get through anything" evening with Steffy, Finn had not one, but two visions of Sheila in the throes of death, begging for his help. "What's happening to me?" Finn wailed. Well, a trip to Sweden may be necessary. Stockholm syndrome is a condition where the victim develops empathy, or other positive feelings, toward a captor and/or abuser.

In Finn's case with Sheila, she was both. One article goes on to say that the syndrome develops when the captor spares the victim, and the "removal of the death threat is transposed into feelings of gratitude for giving them life." Let's face it: Sheila not only nearly killed Finn but also held him hostage. With Sheila "gone" (wink wink), could Finn's softening toward her be why he suddenly considers her his mom?

Zende kept thinking about his sexy night with Luna. Eww. Removing the lack of consent from the equation, which is next to impossible to do, would you still be grooving over having made love to a person who thought you were someone else? This is even worse than when Zende got all butthurt about Nicole carrying Maya and Rick's child and jetted off to Hawaii to sex Sasha. When is this guy gonna grow up?

I think Kristen and Tony need to stop by to send Zende to bed without dinner. Or dessert. Carter interrupted Zende's reverie to yammer on about how "special" Luna was. I guess, now that Paris has probably been stashed in a Forrester storage space somewhere, we needed someone new to be the one everyone calls "special." Of course, Carter building Luna up didn't help Zende with his delusions about her one bit.

Over yonder in Malibu, R.J. took Luna to the shore for a little night surfing, constitutionally incapable of doing anything but talking about how beautiful and perfect Luna was. Oy. Luna responded with more thinly veiled declarations of how much she loved R.J. and how she didn't want to lose him. Which, naturally, was code for "R.J. will totally leave Luna when he finds out she shagged Zende, regardless of the circumstances."

I don't mind compliments triggering cryptic statements, but B&B does rather lay it on too thick. How about moving the story along instead of going back to the well of obliqueness so much? We know how R.J. feels about Luna and how Luna is afraid to lose R.J. We don't need the repetition. If a viewer missed it the first couple of times, that's their problem. I would sooner not sit through so much rehash.

Nothing like some father-son time, hanging out having dinner and fist-bumping in celebration of a psychopath's death. That's the Spencer way! Bill Jr. and Bill III scoffed over Finn's pro-Sheila attitude of late, with Liam announcing that if Finn couldn't be there for Steffy, Liam would be. Save it, Tofu Boy. You've been carrying this out-of-nowhere torch for Steffy for nine months. Nine months. In real time.

Thankfully, the topic shifted to how Liam was picking up the slack at Spencer Publications because Bill had other things on his mind -- namely, Poppy. Since when does Barracuda Bill slough off business for the sake of a woman? Any woman? I did think it was a neat touch to have Liam mention that Poppy was the only one who had met Bill as Bill, and not Dollar Bill Spencer. This would never have occurred to me.

Bill decided to pop in on Poppy, which is just as well, because for all his supposed preoccupation with her, he hasn't had a romantic moment with her in two months. But romance would have to wait. At Poppy's place (I guess Ms. Nozawa is renting two pads now: one in L.A. and her old one in San Fran), Luna was still ignoring Poppy and not forgiving her. Luna said she couldn't talk to Poppy about what had happened with Zende because it had all been Poppy's fault.

Is Luna still on that? You bettah slow dat roll, missy. No one shoved those mints down your throat, and it's not like Poppy switched containers with you on purpose. Take some responsibility, girl. I think Luna might still be high, because she then pivoted to the lament that she didn't have a father to talk to about the situation. I might not be reading it right, but fathers are usually not whom young women go to about having sexed the wrong guy.

This led once again to Luna demanding that Poppy tell her who her father is -- something that has been pretty much dropped ever since Luna zoomed with Zende. Luna felt she had been doing things that were out of character and thought that knowing her dad would help her know herself. No, Luna, you did one thing out of character, and only because you were hopped up on augmented Altoids. That has nothing to do with not having a father.

As you might have predicted, Poppy wasn't going to fink. And when Luna replied to Poppy's assertion that things just being the two of them had been enough by saying "maybe not anymore," Poppy bolted. Well, she simply had to. How else was Bill going to show up out of the blue and be able to bond with Luna? I guess Bill and Poppy don't call each other anymore. To avoid all those pesky roaming charges, right?

Luna couldn't hide her tears, and it brought out the softer side of Sears -- er, Bill. Intuiting that Luna had had a fight with her mom, Bill gave the girl a parent's perspective, admitting that he himself could go too far. (Ya think? Does Liam still have Spectra concrete dust in his lungs?) He drove his three sons crazy on a daily basis. Whoa! Tacit allusion to Wyatt -- is Mr. Solar Shower still in town, or does he check in every night for a dose of exasperation by Bill?

For some reason, Luna confided to Bill that she needed to know who her father was. That's something one always tells a virtual stranger. Bill revealed that he'd been under the impression that he might have sired Luna. Despite both having been given the runaround by Poppy, Luna and Bill both agreed that Luna's birth timed out with Bill's music festival festivities with Poppy. But hold the curtain -- could Luna be the progeny of someone completely different?

Surprisingly, Poppy went to visit Finn. Not surprisingly, Finn had his shirt off. Surprisingly, the traumatized Finn showed no sign of his heightened anxiety of late to his auntie. Not surprisingly...well, is that lack of detail really a surprise? Finn forgot about his desire to make handprints with Sheila's blood, and it all became about Poppy, who sighed that, for the first time in Luna's life, Poppy couldn't be her confidante. Luna wanted Daddy.

Finn was sympathetic, but also, "Like, what does this have to do with me?" Poppy said she very much needed to talk to him about Luna's father. Hoo boy! Though this was hinted at in early February when we learned Poppy had stayed with the Finnegans the year before Luna was born, I find it interesting that there are two candidates for Luna's father. Now we just need a third, and it's Mamma Mia. Hint for B&B, however: can we hurry up and settle Luna's paternity soon?

I won't bore you with me hating Thope because stepsiblings and because Thomas victimized Hope more than once (oops, did I just go there again?), but Scoopers, I will hold my nose and talk about The Week in Thope because I am honor-bound to Scoop for you guys. Owing to this column's title, I think I've found a way I can rationalize this bizarro relationship. At least a little.

If you've been watching B&B the past five years (by the way, happy fifth anniversary, Matthew Atkinson!), you know that Hope has been stalked, obsessed over, schemed against, lied to, nearly kidnapped, gaslit, and manipulated seven ways to Sunday by one Thomas Forrester. Maybe it's Sheila's fault for snipping his hair to threaten Stephanie when he was a baby.

Now, I will concede that Tom-Tom hasn't pulled anything funky since November 2022. Maybe he really has been working on himself, as Ridge attested this week. But if Thomas truly is healing psychologically, the first thing he should have done when Hope came on to him in Rome is say, "Thanks, but no thanks." Thomas can't still be in therapy, because any mental health professional would advise him, "Any woman but Hope."

And has Hope not been the aggressor since she busted a move on Thomas in Italy? Much like Finn, Hope has never really dealt with the trauma caused her by Thomas. I know, it's a soap; it's not in the genre to watch people in therapy. But could it just be, because Hope just moved on from Thomas' torture as if nothing happened, that something in her broke and has prompted her to harbor unnatural feelings for him?

Remember the definition of Stockholm syndrome above: "removal of the death threat is transposed into feelings of gratitude for giving them life." It's true Hope's life was never in danger from Thomas' tomfoolery (unlike Emma!), but maybe once Thomas stopped being abusive, she felt free to acknowledge irrational feelings. I so wish the show would explore this, because it explains everything, and I find what makes characters tick so interesting.

But we know the show won't, and so instead we got Hope reminiscing fondly about Rome, only the place she betrayed her husband without a second thought. Plus, gotta get more mileage outta that Rome footage, so flashbacks ahoy! This went on for two episodes, and Hope lapped it up like her abandoned cat Bu used to do with his milk. I dunno if Stockholm syndrome is contagious, but Ridge sure came down with a strain.

Indeed, Ridge was back trying to convince Brooke that Thomas and Hope were all that, even suggesting that Thope could be "the next great Forrester-Logan couple." Dude, Imma lose my lunch. Endgame as they may be, Ridge and Brooke have always been toxic as hell, but at least they were never related by marriage, they didn't grow up together, and one didn't pull deranged tricks on the other (crazy, maybe, but not deranged.)

As Ridge buttered up Thope to Thomas, the younger designer said he couldn't imagine a life without Hope. Danger, Will Robinson! That still sounds obsessive to me. Hope, on the other hand, insisted to Brooke that Thomas' love wasn't obsessive (anymore) and asked La Logan to pleeeeeeease give her and Thomas a chance. Brooke wondered if Hope really wanted to spend the rest of her life with Thomas.

"But Mommmmm!" Hope pleaded. "Thomas' D is amazing and you should know since you probably had berry sex with him on that island but like fer shur it's so nice to be the only woman in a man's life for a change." Well, okay, Hope only said that last part. But as I've said before, Wyatt showed her that level of devotion long before Thomas. I wish the scripts would quit having Hope dismiss Wyatt that way.

Because Hope kept going on about how happy she was, Brooke had to admit that Thomas seemed to be in a better place, and even implied to Ridge that she was warming up to her sometime stepson. Noooooo! I needed Brooke to keep being the voice of reason. But I guess the Thope Kool-Aid is now in every water cooler at Forrester Creations. Am I the only one who can't stand this couple? Testify, y'all.

Finally, Thomas served up his second candlelight dinner in two soap nights. But the overkill didn't stop there. Appealing to Hope with a dress he designed especially for her (and for real, it was gorgeous), Thomas asked Hope to marry him -- for the third time this year. How many proposals is this guy gonna make? One "will you marry me?" is love in the afternoon. More than one...is desperation.

Dude, it's like Madonna oozed in her 1992 song "Waiting": "If you have to ask for something more than once or twice, it wasn't yours in the first place." Hope is not gonna say yes, you're badgering her, and how healthy is it that you keep asking her over and over? Someone please put this "romance" out of its misery. I realize a lot of you guys love it, but...well...at least I can use it as an appetite suppressant.

What say ye, Scoopers? Are both Finn and Hope in the psychological throes of damage done by Sheila and Thomas, respectively? Should B&B reveal who Luna's father is already? And do you honestly, truly, and sincerely believe Sheila is dead? Hold us captive in the Soap Central message boards, or simply click here to submit feedback!

Like I've been saying for over 14 years, keep watching, be alert, and most of all, be bold!

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