Why Bold and Beautiful’s Taylor Should Never, Ever Get Back Together With Ridge
On Bold and Beautiful, Ridge Forrester (Thorsten Kaye) has spent decades torn between Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang) and Taylor Hayes (Rebecca Budig). As his latest engagement to one of those women (Taylor) goes kaput because he’s realized his heart truly belongs to the other woman (Brooke), I can’t help but feel like it’s time for the show to close the book on this triangle, and not just this chapter. See if you agree!
The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants
I became a regular watcher of B&B back in 1990 at what was an interesting juncture for the soap. The show had premiered in 1987 and its Brooke/Ridge/Caroline triangle had emerged as one of its storytelling cornerstones. The year I began watching every day, Ridge chose Caroline, marrying her and sending a heartbroken Brooke into another man’s arms. And not just any man — it was Ridge’s own father, Eric, who was formerly her mother’s lover! Eric sought a divorce from Stephanie and popped the question to a pregnant Brooke. Oh, the drama! I loved every second of it.
Opposite this, Ridge and Caroline’s honeymoon period would prove to be devastatingly brief, as Caroline was diagnosed with cancer and died in Ridge’s arms. That storyline introduced Taylor Hayes, a beautiful and intelligent doctor who consoled Ridge after Caroline’s passing and, at first, dated Brooke’s brother, Storm.
The next year, Brooke and Eric wed, but the new Mrs. Forrester couldn’t entirely shake her feelings for her ex/stepson. Ridge’s attraction to Brooke was still very much active as well. Before long, they gave in to passion, caught up in the excitement of her creation of the formula that came to be known as BeLieF, which made fabric wrinkle-free. She decided to divorce Eric, but pregnancy No. 2 made that a little tricky. (And, of course, in true soap fashion, she wasn’t quite sure who the daddy was.) While that drama roiled, Ridge’s closeness with Taylor led to them becoming lovers.
Somehow, as a fan, it all seemed to work, with soapy goodness abounding with each shift in the dynamics among the players. I loved Brooke and Taylor, and I bought the connection that Ridge felt with each of them. His back and forth between them didn’t really bother me, at least not that I can recall. I was excited when Ridge and Taylor wed in 1992, and equally delighted when Ridge and Brooke made it official in 1994 (while Taylor was presumed dead, natch).
Why, then, does the very triangle that I once found so compelling not hit me the same today? Certainly, part of it is the “Been There, Don’t That” factor — it’s just a reality that a story that kicked off in the 1990s doesn’t have quite the same freshness 30-plus years later. The 1992 Ridge/Taylor nuptials and the 1994 Ridge/Brooke “I do’s” would, after all, prove to be just the first of many, many trips to the altar the fickle fashion designer would take with both spirited and accomplished women.
On soaps, it’s comforting when things don’t change. As fans, we get upset when new faces eat up screen time we feel our veteran faves deserve instead, when sets are “refreshed” to the point of unrecognizability, when we feel like a storyline doesn’t respect and/or tampers with a character’s history. And Ridge bouncing back and forth between Brooke and Taylor is for sure B&B’s version of death and taxes (the two things Benjamin Franklin observed centuries ago to be inevitabilities). But a love triangle that drags on this long isn’t quite the same thing as, say, a decades-long rivalry like Jack and Victor’s on Young and Restless, or, perhaps more to the point, a decades-long romance like Steve and Kayla on Days of Our Lives.
That’s because a love triangle depends on a central figure, a man in this case, being torn between two potential partners, women in this case. It depends on that figure essentially being too immature to figure out what he wants and to make a lasting commitment — and in 2025, we have a phrase for that: Red flag! In 2025, Ridge’s wishy-washiness — one day Brooke is his destiny, and the next Taylor is his future — isn’t giving Prince Charming. It’s giving toxic.
But worse than that, in my opinion, is what their willingness to take Ridge back again and again (and again!) has done to the characters of Brooke and Taylor. Their tolerance for and indulgence of his behavior, their inability to kick their Ridge habit … It’s not a good look for either of them. I know I’m not alone when I say I feel that we’re many decades too late for me to see either pairing — Ridge/Brooke or Ridge/Taylor — as aspirational! Within the world of the show, all three characters’ behavior has been normalized. But I still find it head-scratching!
I’ll focus on Taylor here, because she’s the most recent one to be left to pick up the pieces after Ridge realized his heart truly lay with someone other than the woman he was engaged to. Points to her for keeping her head up when Ridge confessed for the umpteenth time that, oops, sorry, we’re through because I’m going back to Brooke. Now is the time for B&B to build on that and do something truly revolutionary: commit to allowing Taylor to move past Ridge — for real and for good.
To root for a soap opera character often means to want them to get what they want, and in the past, when Taylor wanted Ridge, I wanted that for her. Now, I want more for her. Correction: I want her to want more for herself! I would love for this to be the last time Taylor deludes herself into believing that she doesn’t deserve better than a man who uses her as a placeholder, and the first time she runs out of second chances (and I use the word “second” lightly!) to give a man who spouts empty promises and has frequently been straight-up careless with her heart. Let this be her time to shine, gosh darn it!!!
I’d love to know if you agree, and what storyline hopes you have for Taylor’s future. Sound off in the comments below!
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