Lots of valentines - but no saints

Candy conversation hearts were flying all over Los Angeles this week. Liam got one from Steffy that said WANT U BACK. Quinn needed to make sure Deacon was ALL MINE. And Ridge channeled Charlie Brown by handing Brooke a heart that said FORGET IT KID! But was it more like April Fools' Day than Valentine's Day? Join Two Scoops' Mike as he ponders that very question!

Has your week been bold and beautiful? Did you paint someone happy? Did you have Beyonc's "Drunk in Love" on repeat? Did you only want to take your company back if you could take your man back, too? These and more situations faced the Forrester-Logan-Spencer clan this week!

It's Valentine's Day, Scoopers, and hopefully that means you're celebrating the love in your lives, in whatever form that takes. Every year, I think of those little conversation hearts I used to love as a kid; did you know they've been around since 1902? It feels like some of this week's stories have been around that long, too. And most of the B&B gang, Brooke and Steffy especially, seem to have particularly screwed-up priorities. For the next several paragraphs, BE MINE!

Ridge and Caroline decided to forgo candy hearts, which is just as well, because the treats would have melted. Holy paint-by-numbers, Batman! Even though we've never seen the now-stubbled designer dabbling in oils or watercolors before, he is an artist, so it makes sense. Ridge even has a cool new loft (and not Steffy/Maya's!), but those observations went out the window as Caroline sat for Ridge's portrait. Soon the sheet hit the fan, which I needed to cool myself off with watching these two go at it!

Fifty shades of what? The burner has been simmering with CaRidge for four months, and it was so worth waiting for this pot to boil over. Wow. Someone get me mah smellin' salts! This is how you do love in the afternoon. Caroline needs to add tutorials to her selfies, because every other couple should be taking lessons. Even Ridge, a consummate lover since his debut 28 years ago, has never gotten so freaky, literally painting Caroline at her sultry request. I nearly made a paint pit stop at Michael's. Or Home Depot!

But the haters gonna hate hate hate, which blunted the soapy afterglow, and it was hard to shake it off. First, we had Donna and Pam shipping Bridge to Caroline. All right, so Donna is Brooke's sister; I get that loyalty. But Pam? Miss Douglas has never been a fan of any Logan, so how can she stand there telling Caroline to watch out because Ridge always ends up back with Brooke? And Donna was strangely nasty about it.

Fortunately, Caroline is standing tall, which is good, because even cousin Liam went at her about how Ridge "is not the most reliable or committed guy." True, Ridge may hold the Guinness World Record for waffling -- but Liam is in second place, and only by a hair. Hypocrite much, Liam? But Miss Steffy Forrester, whose return was anticipated with great fanfare, may be taking this game of Hungry Hungry Hypocrites to its max. Of her father and Caroline, she said, "It's disgusting. She's my age!"

"Disgusting" wasn't the adjective Steffy used when she frenched old-enough-to-be-my-daddy Dollar Bill! Maybe if Steffy had added something like, "I've been in Caroline's shoes," or "May-December romances rarely work out; I should know," it would give more weight to her disapproval. Not acknowledging Still makes it look like Steffy is either in denial or pulling a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do. And her disgust does nothing to erase the father fixation we had almost forgotten about.

Steffy further marred her return by telling Liam she couldn't go along with his plan to take over Forrester unless they were running the company as a couple! Now, that's quite the valentine, but do you mean to tell me that Steffy has spent a year and a half in Paris, moping around about Liam, who was never totally hers to begin with? What a letdown. I wanted to see an empowered Steffy come roaring in, a legion of hunky French boys on speed-dial, ready to cut some business deals.

Instead, Steffy put herself before her father's company -- her namesake grandmother's company -- preferring to leave it in the hands of the tyrant Rick if it meant she couldn't be Liam's wife again. Where's Stephanie and her bitch slaps when you need 'em? At least Liam gently but firmly declared he's with Ivy and could only be Steffy's friend/co-worker; that's a new one. No constipated looks from Mr. Cooper Spencer this time! But Liam's plan to boot Rick has more holes in it than Forrester's walls did a few weeks ago.

First of all, Steffy can't be CEO; she's too young. Then, she's worried about betraying her family. That might be more legitimate, but if it's only a matter of amassing enough shares to force Rick out, then all Eric has to do is take his 37.5% and join it with Ridge's 20%. Problem solved! The elder Forresters have the majority with 57.5% -- Bill isn't needed, Steffy isn't needed, and Liam sure as hell isn't needed! For that matter, why doesn't Steffy just team up with Eric and Ridge on her own? Then they've got 82.5%.

No, somehow Liam is the lynchpin to this whole takeover, and, because it doesn't track, I can't enjoy his newfound swagger. What also doesn't track is that Liam needs Wyatt in at Forrester so there's an insider to report back to him. I actually love watching Liam and Wyatt work together -- their brotherly relationship is awesome without Hope there dividing them -- but there's already Pam, Donna, Ivy, Oliver, and Aly, who would all be happy to spy for Liam. Wyatt's only going near the place because he needs a story.

Meanwhile, Rick decided he and Maya should cool off their hot, hot luvin' (tepid by CaRidge standards) by delivering a nastygram -- I mean, valentine -- to Aly. Rick promised to look at the ingnue's shoe designs as a ruse to get her to deliver ice cream to the bedroom. Was that really necessary? This whole Raging Rick thing is getting old. And the Forresters' trusty domestic, Maria, may be long gone, but surely there are other servants in the mansion. Hey, Aly, watch Octavia Spencer in The Help; study her "Terrible Awful" pie, then offer one to Rick the next time he wants you to play Merry Maid.

In the middle of all this, Eric called! "The gun?" Rick backpedaled. "No, that was dumb. There's no reason to rush back!" And that was the end of it! This is what I mean by skewed priorities. Eric and Brooke should be getting their kid some help instead of letting him run amok. And there's all this hand-wringing about how to boot Rick out of the CEO chair, when all they have to do is call the freakin' cops! I've heard of eliminating the middleman, but B&B just keeps adding more and more of them to this plot.

Steffy finally delivered some of what fans were expecting when she sauntered into Rick's office to deliver a valentine to her ex. She was sassy and confrontational, and it felt like Rick might finally have a worthy adversary. Except she never once reminded him that she has a 25% stake in the company. And don't her taunts about swiping the CEO seat essentially alert Rick to Liam's plan? If not, surely talking about it with Ivy in Rick's office when he could walk in any second would get that accomplished.

Ivy, who discovered that Steffy was still in love with Liam (which at least Liam was honest about), tried to convince her American cousin to go for his takeover bid. But Steffy again put her personal feelings ahead of her family's legacy. "I will not work here and watch you go home with Liam," Steffy spat. And Liam wants this woman to be CEO? To say nothing of Ivy saying she trusted Liam and his feelings. Steffy could give lectures about how transitory Liam's feelings are; instead, she merely warned Ivy that "if I come back, I come back for all of it." First Leffy/Lope, now Livy/Leffy. Oh, no.

Meanwhile, Bill was drooling over the idea of Steffy and Liam reuniting and running Forrester together. Why doesn't Bill just admit that he's always wanted Steffy for himself? The only reasonable thing out of his mouth was that Rick needed to pay for shooting at Caroline. Bill reminded Liam that all Spencers benefit from a Forrester takeover. How? Spencer Publications prints magazines; Forrester Creations is a fashion house. Unless Bill is still hoping to honor his father's dying wish of destroying Eric, which Bill hasn't mentioned in years.

Then there's Brooke, who was there when a young Rick nearly made her a widow by shooting Grant. Today, she's so concerned with her love life, or lack of one, that Rick might as well have popped a balloon instead of a couple of rounds. Brooke defiantly told Donna that she was going to have Ridge back -- all the more reason to be upset about Rick nearly putting a bullet in Ridge's head! Again, where are these people's priorities?

Both Donna and Ridge quickly figured out that besting Caroline was the only reason Brooke wanted to rebuild that Bridge. Brooke came back from Milan for this? To try to take Ridge away from another woman by putting on sexy clothes and dangling one of her children like a carrot? Brooke rolled like that ten, even 20 years ago, only then the competition was Taylor. If this is supposed to be the revolutionary story we were promised for Brooke, I don't see it.

Thankfully, Ridge burst Brooke's bubble by admitting he was in love with Caroline. And it's just as well; for all Donna and Pam's going on about the inevitability of Bridge, that coupling could never work without Ronn Moss as Ridge. It wouldn't with any other actor, no matter how much Thorsten Kaye is making Ridge his own. You can't revisit a 25-year pairing with a new actor; of course, B&B must know that, which is why they're acknowledging Bridge's history without actually rebooting it.

Nope, the magic is gone, as Ridge told Brooke, and, after he left, ominous music swelled while Brooke, who has swilled a lot of Champagne over the years without incident, reached for some vodka and gulped it frenziedly. That, Scoopers, is what you call a telegraph. So Brooke's big, revolutionary story is her becoming a drunk. Maybe that's new for Brooke, but it's not for B&B -- Taylor hit the bottle over Ridge 18 years ago! Will Brooke drop a lantern and set herself on fire, too?

Over at Quinn Artisan Jewelers, its proprietor drowned her lackluster sales in games of solitaire. Apparently, since "Ivy Forrester stole my job," there's no work for QAJ. Makes you wonder how she and Wyatt got by before. Did Quinn work her hustle to drum up new business? No -- she worried that Brooke would hustle Deacon away from her. Geez, Quinn and her insecurities again? We then went in circles: Quinn worried, Deacon reassured her, Quinn accepted it -- until she worried again, Deacon reassured her, Quinn accepted it -- until...you get the idea. DeQuinn played to us as if they're the "quinn"-tessential dysfunctional couple, but, as I told you two weeks ago, they don't work as long as her gun-pointing at Deacon and potential murder of Ricardo hang in the air. Maybe if they addressed it? Deacon's "You don't scare me" and Quinn's "Yes I do" response isn't quite enough.

So, after Deacon smoothed Quinn's ruffled feathers and declared he'd stay in with her for Valentine's Day, he suddenly decided he needed to rush to Brooke's to talk about Hope. Huh? No wonder Quinn ran to Wyatt's with chocolate between her legs instead of her tail. Hell, Wyatt's really the only one with a valid excuse to be boo-hoo about V-Day.

Brooke begged to differ, slurring how alone and miserable she was. I'll give her points for admitting "I don't want to need" a man, but please -- she broke up with Bill four months ago, and by her own admission, was doing just fine being manless in Milan. So what's the problem? Did she secretly think she had Ridge on standby? Even so, she told Ridge that his love for Caroline was dependency, but Brooke holds the title of poster child for that, perhaps now more than ever.

No, Brooke needed to come home strong and solo; she was supposed to have taken stock of her life, not her bar. And one night of self-pitying drinking does not an alcoholic make. If that were true, Brooke could have been a lush last year after she passed out calling herself "the slut from the Valley" in front of Stephanie's picture. Like Hope becoming an addict after one pill, her mama seems poised to become an instant boozer. Couldn't we have built up to this for a couple of months first?

Which character would you give a valentine to -- and who would you forgo buying chocolates for? Send us a love note in the Comments section below, on the Soap Central message boards, or by simply clicking here to submit feedback. Your comments could wind up in a future column -- like these!

• "Love Steffy being back but absolutely hate that she isn't over Liam. Also loved Bill calling Ivy 'that plant.'" -- "Insincerely Yours"

• "Love Steffy being back but despise that Brooke is more upset over being manless than being there for her kids." -- "Soap-A-Holic"

• "Love #CaRidge. [The] missed opportunity with Steffy's return [is that she] should be working with Ridge to take on Rick." -- Doreen

And here are some last Valentine's candies in the form of Points to Ponder:

So, Brooke keeps framed photos of all her men on the shelf. Where was Nick's? He certainly wasn't included in this parade of men Brooke feels abandoned by... "I'm avoiding him at all costs," Ivy admitted regarding Rick. The way Rick's acting, not coming into the office would result in immediate termination, yet Ivy wasn't worried...

Brooke and Deacon talked on Thursday; as their chat picked up in the next episode, suddenly it was Valentine's Day. Then Brooke slurred that Deacon was her drinking buddy, to which he responded "the kind who knows to tell you when you've had enough" and "you can't drink the loneliness away." He acted like Brooke's A.A. sponsor; is that a holdover from his time in the program, even though he hasn't been near a meeting for years and chugged far more beer than Brooke did vodka?

"I am damn good at PR," Wyatt declared as he tried to convince Rick to rehire him. Maybe, but he was brought to Forrester as a jewelry expert. And, though it's nice to see Wyatt using his powers of sneakiness for good, he very stupidly balked when Rick told him to get on his knees and beg. Wyatt should have just done it instead of potentially giving himself away...

"Steffy's a great designer," Ivy told Liam. Ivy must not have gotten the memo that Steffy herself was only ever in PR; Steffy's only claim to designing fame is one blink-and-you-missed-it ski line... "I'm hoping I can bring in some of Ridge's 20%," Liam reported. How is that going to work, Liam? The second Ridge finds out about this plan, he's going to want to use his 20% to take over Forrester himself!

Let me take this moment to send the most healingest of vibes to Linsey Godfrey, who is recovering from having been hit by a car. Maybe we can turn this into a positive; Caroline off her feet for weeks could mean that many more hot bed scenes with Ridge! Chanel's back again next week, and I will next Scoop for you on March 2. Keep watching, be alert, and most of all, be bold!

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