Carolyn Hinsey’s It’s Only My Opinion

Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged: The hypocrisy of B&B’s Steffy (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) is showing with Thomas (Matthew Atkinson).

If our soap faves made resolutions to be less hypocritical in 2024 they’ve already broken them. 

I’m looking at you, Steffy Forrester – and basically everyone else on B&B dogging Hope that she’s not “serious enough” about Thomas when Hope hasn’t even been divorced from Liam for six months. 

Steffy (to Thomas): “You and Hope? Has she given any indication she wants to marry you? Spend the rest of her life with you?” 

Says the woman who was married five times by age 30 and doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “the rest of your life.”

Thomas: “You don’t have to be supportive. Just don’t ruin my relationship.”

Who is Steffy to pass judgment on Hope when they each wed Liam multiple times and were also both married to Liam’s brother, Wyatt? Steffy’s marital history reads like a rap sheet of bad decisions so it’s beyond sanctimonious of her to call out Hope for trying to keep her own scandals to a minimum.

Steffy: “Either Hope is fully with him or she needs to end it.”

Cut to Hope refusing Thomas’s proposal.

Hope: “I can’t make that commitment to anyone right now. I’m not ready yet.” 

Considering she got divorced from Liam last Tuesday I’d agree. Team Hope!

Elsewhere in Forrester dysfunction, Zende finally got the message that his entire family is Team R.J.  

Zende (to Luna): “Sometimes I feel like I’m not fully a member of this family. In the fashion world, R.J. is like a little kid to me. But I’m not the chosen one. I’m not Ridge, Jr.”

Reminder: Ridge’s bio dad is actually Massimo Marone, so Ridge and R.J. have no more claim to Eric’s lineage than the adopted Zende. It’s Luna-cy (get it?). 

Lauren and Michael threw a pretty good vow renewal on Y&R, with one exception. 

Lauren: “We’ve raised two extraordinary sons…”

Who weren’t there. Yes Scotty “sent champagne” and Fen was name-checked, but when a marriage lasts almost 20 years (on a soap opera!) you’d think the kids would fly in to celebrate mom and dad’s achievement.  

Lauren: “Happily ever after starts every morning I get to wake up with you.”

Michael: “That’s a hard act to follow.”  

Agreed. Can we keep Gloria? The Baldwins are a value add, especially on a show when Phyllis needs to be reminded daily that cranking up her dusty 1990s rivalry with Christine is not in her best interest. She repeatedly insists she’s becoming a better person when she is obviously only one octopus away from a restraining order. 

Phyllis’s son Daniel is on the phony list too, insisting he misses Lily but kissing Heather on New Year’s Eve. Ditto Summer, crushing on her former stepmother’s boyfriend with no mention of the irony that it was her own birth that broke up Nick and Sharon’s marriage. (Sorry but this is a soap and that is a delicious story point.) 

One of the most hypocritical things soaps do is rewrite history. It rarely works, because they are asking viewers to accept something they didn’t see. Such is the case with Victoria and Cole’s resurrected daughter Claire, who “died” in 1998.

Cole: “I don’t think we ever got over losing baby Eve.”

Seriously? She hadn’t been mentioned in 25 years and has no headstone in Genoa City. A better approach would be:

Cole: “I regret accepting Eve’s death so readily and not investigating.” 

But kudos to Victor for finally clearing the booze from the Newman bar cart. 

Victor (after Nikki found only ice water): “I removed the temptation.”

They reminisced about her past battles with the bottle (flashbacks!) and this gem was brought up: 

Nikki: “Rehab worked for a while, then Meggie and Deacon happened.”

Victor: “Two psychos. They were trying to ruin your life but they didn’t, did they?” 

For clarification, that’s the same Deacon trying to make fetch happen with Sheila over on B&B. He’s not a psycho anymore, he just dates them.

Speaking of psychos, are we supposed to feel sorry for DAYS’s Ava Vitali? She drugged and blackmailed Patch, killed Shawn Brady, Sr. by sabotaging John’s plane, and shot Hope — among many other crimes including jumping bail. Now Holly overdoses and it’s all “Boohoo poor Ava got blackmailed into running a drug ring for Clyde”? Bad people have to pay for their crimes to have rooting value. Ava never did, and she’s still lying.  

Harris: “You didn’t see any drugs?”

Ava: “No.” 

Stefan: “Nothing.” 

Except the ones they were selling to the entire town. 

Stefan: “We need to get our story straight. Neither of us saw anything. You got it?” 

Clyde is threatening them through their loved ones (with menacing phone calls from prison at 3 am?) so rather than go to the cops they agreed to run drugs — which is another reason Ava is a giant two-face. She dated the police commissioner Rafe! She had a direct line to the one guy who could help her but instead… 

Ava: “I got people I can call.”

Stefan: “You gonna make them an offer they can’t refuse?” 

Ava: “Once a Vitali, always a Vitali.”

She asked her mobbed-up family to get the drugs off the street, lied to her son Tripp that she had nothing to do with it, then suddenly felt guilty about it.

Ava: “Kids are dying because we couldn’t stand up to Clyde. I can’t have this on my conscience.” 

But Shawn Brady’s murder is no sweat? 

EJ’s another one acting all holier-than-thou when his rap sheet is as long as Ava’s. He went scorched earth on Tate for “attempted manslaughter” — aka supplying drugs to Holly, which he didn’t do — and Gwen, I mean Theresa, said they could all see Tate was hurting. 

EJ: “What I see is a criminal who needs to learn actions have consequences.”

Like EJ did when he raped Sami, shot John, blackmailed Will, and was himself a drug lord? Please. EJ was just made DA a few months ago despite his loooong criminal record. He reversed Tate’s bail, charged him an adult, and remanded him to the Salem jail.   

Rafe: “You’re trying to make his pain worse. Does that make you feel good?”

Excellent question. I nominate Rafe to hold EJ and his ex Ava accountable.  

Soaps are full of flawed characters, none more so than GH’s Nina. We waited months for the truth to come out about her turning Carly and Drew into the SEC and then it spilled out in a torrent of rage and regret on New Year’s Eve. What are the odds that Nina would go to confession and wind up with Cyrus posing as the priest? Pretty high, it turned out. 

Nina (after discovering the truth): “You’re more a man of the orange jumpsuit than of the cloth.”

Everyone in that story was self-serving. Michael didn’t let on that he knew because he used the info to blackmail Nina into staying away from Willow. Ned allowed everyone to think it was him so he could blackmail Michael into giving him ELQ stock. Mobster Sonny got in Ned’s face about turning Carly in and got it right back.

Ned: “You’re going to lecture me about damage? The man who’s left a swath of broken lives and destruction in his wake?” 

And then DUN DUN DUN!

Lois figured it out and spilled the truth to Sonny as fireworks exploded outside (nice metaphor).

Sonny (as Michael entered): “You knew?!” 

Michael ratted out Nina, Willow flipped that Michael kept it from her, and they all stormed out just as Carly was getting the news that Bobbie died. Nina picked that terrible moment to try and make it right with Carly.

Carly: “I’m not your friend and I’m not your therapist.” 

Drew: “You are the worst kind of hypocrite. Scout told me she saw you at the Halloween party. You were so nice to her and the whole time you knew you put her father in prison.” 

Um, Drew? You and Carly committed insider trading. You plead guilty to insider trading. You went to prison for it, like many other people in similar situations (paging Martha Stewart). 

Nina: “You did commit a crime, by the way. Let me remind you of that.”

Good for Nina for not backing down despite her entire life crumbling around her.

Nina: “I have no one to blame but myself.” 

Accountability, how refreshing! Sonny blames Nina for lying, Willow blames Michael for lying, Olivia blames Lois for blabbing, and Cyrus blames Sonny for putting him in the hospital because when he “turned the other cheek” Sonny hit that one, too. 

It’s a round-robin of punishment for a whole lot of hypocrites who wish they’d come clean before New Year’s Eve. Let the fallout begin…  

Hey. It’s only my opinion.