Three things Steam can learn from Bridge

Brooke and Ridge want to be marriage role models for Steffy and Liam? Don't laugh. They're serious, and in this week's Two Scoops column, there just happen to be at least three things Steam can learn from Bridge.

Whether it's Steffy or Brooke, Ridge loves giving the women in his life what they need to be happy; however, happiness for Steffy isn't as easy as flying Donna to town or getting Hope to relocate. To make Steffy happy, Ridge tried to turn a mountain of an affair into a molehill of blame on Bill in hopes that Liam would reconcile with his wife.

To Brooke, making up is as easy as Steffy and Liam witnessing Bridge's wedding vows. Brooke soon learned that you can invite a Spencer to your wedding, but when it comes to his wife sleeping with his father, you can't make him change what he thinks.

Can Brooke and Ridge's wedding inspire Steffy and Liam to reconcile, or does the key for Liam and Steffy to stay together lie in learning from Bridge's past, not their future? Let's get two scoops deep into golden wisdom from Bridge this past week on the Bold and the Beautiful.

This week, Brooke felt sorry for Ridge, who agonized over what had gone on between Bill and Steffy. Brooke got the bright idea of using herself and Ridge to set an example for Liam and Steffy about marriage. Brooke's bright idea bulbs usually aren't so dim, but this time she caused this scooper to light up with the realization that following Ridge and Brooke's example might be what got Steffy and Liam into this situation in the first place!

Pregnant and don't know if the father is your husband or his father? That sounds like Brooke and Ridge. Kissing another woman while elsewhere committed? That also sounds like Brooke and Ridge. Running around after another woman (Brooke) in a personal/professional capacity while your wife (Taylor) sits at home, trying to figure out how to get your attention? This also sounds like the story of Bridge.

Are Ridge and Brooke seriously the shining pillars of marriage that Steffy and Liam want to model themselves after? One might make the case that Brooke and Ridge matured with age, and their love story can show Liam and Steffy that love conquers all. The Bridge romance will show Steffy and Liam the path to happily ever after, but if you're Brooke and Ridge, that path is littered with divorces, annulment papers, new triangles, and plenty of tears.

I could bring up the case that Ridge annulled his marriage to Brooke and refused to even reenter the country for two years over a text message exchange he didn't like, but why bother when I have fresh evidence against the Bridge role model in examples like Brooke abandoning a Bridge wedding less than a year ago over a kiss. Brooke promptly married her sister's ex-husband and then annulled it over a punch.

Is Brooke really the one to show Liam that he can readily forgive and recommit? I think all Brooke is good for is showing Liam that it's okay to go off with his second choice because, like Ridge gave Brooke, Steffy gave Liam a get-out-of-the-commitment free card with her indiscretion.

In 2012, Ridge returned for Brooke but took up with her sister when he found out about Brooke and her sister's husband. In case you forgot, the sister is Katie -- you know, the one who said this week that she always believed in Bridge, even though she was fainting at one of their weddings and trying to take Ridge for herself. Right, Katie. You always believed in Bridge, which is why you opted for a string engagement ring during Kridge rather than having a real ring.

So, is Ridge really the one to show Liam how quickly he can get beyond his disgust that Bill slept with his beloved? Ridge himself can't even deal with Steffy sleeping with Bill. Ridge wants to punch something every time he thinks about it, and the only way he can look at his daughter now is by insisting Bill took advantage of her. Before Liam can even take advice from Ridge, Liam and Ridge need to get on the same page about what even happened between Bill and Steffy.

With Brooke and Ridge's own personal shortcomings, can Bridge really be an example to the younger generation for anything to do with love, marriage, and relationships?

Ridge and Brooke believe they are getting married this time, but if it weren't for the writers making the wedding a plot point for Steffy and Liam, I'd be betting that Thorne will faint at the wedding or bust up the ceremony some other way. The wedding will happen, but with Ridge and Brooke's track record, I'd think the return policy on my wedding gift for them will outlast the marriage.

Maybe instead of learning anything from yet another Bridge wedding, Steffy and Liam can learn something from these three observations about the Bridge saga:

You can't have your man back just like that

Brooke and Ridge have turned their wedding into an emotional scavenger hunt, in which seeing them exchange vows is supposed to instantly make Liam find forgiveness for Steffy. They want the younger couple to think of all Bridge has overcome in order to get to that day, but what Liam and Steffy need to think about are how old Brooke and Ridge are and how many times they've rebuilt Bridge only for it to fall apart again.

Brooke and Ridge believe their union means that love can conquer all, but for me, Bridge has become the definition of insanity. I advise Steffy and Liam to ask themselves if they can really make it together for life or if they want to be like Brooke and Ridge, who are grandparents remarrying each other for the twentieth time. If Ridge and Brooke live into their nineties, we could have at least forty more annulments and weddings, folks.

Ridge and Brooke aim to convince Steffy and Liam that the magical wedding will reunite Steffy and Liam "just like that." No matter how many times Brooke snapped her fingers, though, she never, ever got Ridge back "just like that." Instead, she had to wait through his marriage to Caroline Senior, wait through his marriages to Taylor, watch him try to marry her sister, and wait through his round with Caroline Junior.

Not that Brooke was waiting alone, mind you. Ridge spent a lot of time in the Brooke Bedroom's waiting room while Brooke pursued other men like Eric, Grant, and Nick.

Shouldn't Bridge be honest with Liam and Steffy about how long it really took and how hard it really was to get to where they are? Shouldn't Bridge tell Steffy and Liam that Bridge has spent more time apart than together?

Instead of rushing the couple's reconciliation, Bridge is better off telling Steam not to worry about it because they'll probably be planning a new wedding for Steam by the summer -- as Bridge signs annulment papers. In fact, if the young couple follows Brooke and Ridge's example, they can plan yearly weddings instead of anniversary parties.

Draw two hearts in the sand and wake up with me in the morning

Maybe Steffy and Liam really can reunite "just like that." Maybe time is on Steffy's side, but her lack of grand gestures is the real problem. Whenever Ridge and Brooke reunited quickly, it was usually because Ridge planned some grand gesture to overwhelm Brooke into accepting, or because Taylor was dead, or Ridge's other woman left him.

What gesture has Steffy performed for Liam lately? Even Sally had sense enough to know that the way to Liam's heart is through tofu. She at least brought something to the hotel for him to eat. However, she never said what the dish was, and I wonder what a southern cook like Grams had made him. He picked at his food instead of eating it. He was probably too polite to tell Sally that you can't veganize pigs in a blanket. But it's the gesture that counts, right?

When Hope visited Liam, she at least offered to go to the bistro down the road for him. What did Steffy do? She showed up empty-handed, holding her gut, with that same unkempt outfit and hair. Didn't her pops teach her anything about taking a bath, brushing her teeth, and planning the epic pitch to get her beloved back?

Step one is to take a bath. Step two is to brush your teeth in case you score. Step three is to get a Steam logo for the romantic comeback of the ages. Steffy can hire sculptors to draw it in a heart in the sand. She can skywrite it in the clouds or project it on the Spencer building. Maybe not the Spencer building. There's only so much rejection Bill can take.

Steffy can flash the Steam love logo against the sky like the Bat signal. It will work because Liam loves playing the hero. A bit of his hero complex shined through on Friday when he asked Steffy about her taking her prenatal pills. It sounded like he was falling into the role of caregiver. Steffy sensed it, too. She was suddenly all like, "I wish you would just be there to help me."

If Steffy wants Liam back, that was a weaksauce attempt at tossing some needy bait his way. She would have been better off letting it slip that she almost fell in the tub or something. Maybe that would get him thinking he needs to be at home before Steffy or the baby gets hurt.

I know what you are about to say. It's lying. The last time I checked, all was fair in love and war, and little tricks like that always help when you need your lover to stop being mad at you and see you as the helpless little dove that needs his or her love to make it in life.

A little, "I just happened to run out of gas down the street from your house while I'm wearing this long coat with only a teddy beneath it," or "I'm so sick. Please bring me orange juice while I lie here helpless in this lacy teddy," can go a long way toward igniting some makeup sex.

Don't worry; they never check if you're really out of gas after you pop open your coat, and you never need a doctor's note when role-playing as the sexy sick patient. And if you're one of those honest types, you can always tell your lover what you did later -- after you've made up.

I've given Steffy plenty of options to take in case the wedding magic doesn't work. If all else fails, an overhead boombox playing "Arms" outside Liam's hotel window won't hurt, either.

You, too, can overcome your woman sleeping with your father

Your siblings might not overcome it, even if one of them slept with your beloved, too, but you can learn from Bridge about getting beyond your lover sleeping with your father or your lover having an ambiguous romantic thingy with your daughter, who he thought was his child and then thought was his sister before he finally learned he wasn't blood-related to her at all.

Instead of Ridge being so angry at Bill and insisting that Bill forced Steffy or took advantage of her, maybe Ridge ought to explain to Steffy and Liam that Ridge knows what it's like when romantic ties between a lover and the lover's family get blurred. In one moment, Brooke was married to Ridge's father, and in the next, Ridge and Brooke were making a Bridget on the lab room floor -- only to learn later that Eric and Brooke had actually made a Bridget, not Brooke and Ridge.

Ridge should urge Liam to look at the bright side: at least the paternity test says Steffy's baby is Liam's for now. Ridge might advise Liam to get a second test just in case someone thought it was funny to spin the tube carousel down at the lab before labeling the DNA extractions.

Ridge is right about Liam needing to suck it up and be a family with Steffy, but Liam is right to question whether he's capable of it. Unless Ridge doesn't mind Liam and Steffy breaking up down the road, Ridge should share his experiences to try to help Liam deal with staying with his wife even though she "Pose-Pose-Posed" with her daughter's boyfriend by accident, or she got duped into thinking she berry-sexed his son, or whatever else could possibly come up in Liam and Steffy's future.

Instead of leading Steffy to believe that staring at Brooke in her wedding dress will heal all wounds, Brooke needs to talk to Steffy about how Brooke coped each time she was pregnant and Ridge wasn't around -- which was almost all the time. Even though Stephanie had taught Ridge to always be with the mother of his kids, it apparently only counted when Taylor was the mother.

Brooke should also share with Steffy how Brooke handled the contentious relationship she'd caused between Eric and Ridge due to her choices regarding relationships with the father and the son. That's because Steffy needs to take responsibility for what Steffy did, and Ridge is not helping Steffy at all in that area.

As I have said many times before, it isn't a good look for Ridge to falsely accuse Bill of sexual misconduct while the #metoo movement is going on. It's unfortunate that, like with Caroline and Thomas, we didn't see the copulation scene between Bill and Steffy; however, through the benefit of Bill's flashbacks, we do see what appears to be a consensual event. Steffy says it was a consensual event. Ridge really needs to stop lumping all the blame on Bill's plate.

Maybe that is how Ridge coped with Brooke sleeping with his brothers and his father. Maybe Ridge secretly believed that Eric, Nick, and Thorne had somehow taken advantage of Brooke at times when she was pining for Ridge, which in Ridge's mind was probably every second of every day he wasn't with her. However, Ridge needs to accept the truth about what happened between Bill and Steffy, or else Steffy's family will never heal.

Ridge knows how important his relationship with Eric is, and if Ridge wants Steam to reunite, then Ridge has to support Liam reconciling with Bill. I can't really take Ridge seriously about the hand he extended to Thorne this week unless Ridge can steer his son-in-law toward peace with his father. Ridge claims he has a grandchild to think of, and for the benefit of that child's future, Ridge should urge Liam to patch things up with Bill so that the child doesn't wind up like Hope, knowing it was born into the family's shameful chaos.

Most of this past week centered on Brooke's bright idea to shift into wedding planning gear because the thing that a couple dealing with a vows betrayal needs most is to see another couple happy, committed, and in love. Thorne seemed chafed by the accelerated plans, but in a writer-redirection miracle, Thorne agreed to reconcile with Ridge and be the best man at the wedding.

Weird, right? I guess Ridge believes in keeping his competition close. He also believes in shuffling his competition off on Katie, but Brooke reminded Ridge that she'd told him in secret that Katie is seeing Wyatt. Ridge said one never knew what would happen if Thorne and Katie sat together at the wedding. And one also never knows what will happen when Thorne and Katie share a sofa in the midafternoon, either.

During a wedding planning session at the mansion, Maya teased Katie about how refreshed she seemed. Maya believed it was due to a man, but Katie denied it. Thorne gazed at Katie the whole time with intrigue in his eyes, and once he and Katie were alone on the sofa, he agreed with Maya that Katie's mystery man had unleashed the freer side of Katie. It was attractive to Thorne. Katie chuckled, saying that she'd never had a strings-free relationship before the current one. Thorne uttered that she made him want to unleash his free side, too.

Eeeeerk! Say what, Thorne? Just what are you proposing? It sounds indecent, whatever it is, and if it has anything to do with those mini pizzas you proposed delivering to the wedding, you can forget about it because Wyatt delivers extra-large pizzas, piping hot every time. Katie already has a delivery man, and one delivery man is enough.

Wyatt thinks he has as many exes at Forrester as Ridge does. Ridge is about to have one less, and Wyatt might be about to get one more if Thorne has his way. For somebody who changed his whole life and moved back to Los Angeles to pursue Brooke, Thorne rebounds fast.

I know Katie and Wyatt are supposed to be free agents, but is Katie really going to do Wyatt like that? Maybe now that Wyatt has seen Hope again, he will be too busy reliving the "leap of faith" to notice.

Wyatt encountered Hope at Forrester, and seeing her without warning left him stammering in the awkwardness. He asked if she and his mother shared an office, and Hope said Quinn was there when Hope wasn't. Except we just saw Hope in the family meeting with Quinn, and neither one of them acted like it was the slightest bit awkward to be around each other.

Is anyone else disappointed that Hope is more interested in tofu Liam's marital problems than tying up loose ends with Quinn and her most recent ex-husband, Wyatt? Maybe I'm making too much of it. Maybe it's really not that big of a deal that Hope left town after having a miscarriage precipitated by her tumbling down stairs when she was trying to get away from Quinn, yet when Hope returns to town, she has no reaction to seeing Quinn again.

Maybe it's too much for me to ask Quinn, Hope, and Wyatt to address the past. Can someone at least tell Hope that her father is in jail for shooting up the mansion, though? It might be good for her to know, wouldn't you think? So she can put a few bucks in his commissary account, maybe?

Hope and Ivy had talked about going to lunch after the family meeting. I would have liked to see them at Il Giardino, munching on salad and talking about how Ivy married Liam to stay in the country, was about to marry Wyatt, and ultimately wound up at the bottom of the Forrester stairs. Maybe Ivy could fill Hope in on how Liam got kidnapped and wound up sexing up Quinn due to his bout of amnesia.

Would any scooper besides me get a kick out of Hope's reactions to what everyone else was up to while she was gone? It would be much more titillating than watching Hope cheer for Steam from the sidelines. I'm not buying Hope's admiration for the couple, but after Brooke confronted Hope about her feelings for Liam, I started looking forward to seeing what side Brooke would wind up on if Hope did want to go after Liam again.

Ridge will firmly plant himself in Steffy's corner. With Brooke as Steffy's only mother figure right now, Brooke has been in Steffy's corner, too. For Ridge and Steffy's sake, would Brooke steer her own daughter away from following her heart and meeting her destiny?

Spoilers indicate that Thorne makes Katie an interesting proposition, and Wyatt feels let down when Katie doesn't ask him to be her date for the wedding. Instead, Katie winds up spending wedding time with Thorne, and guess who else will be spending time with a different man than usual? Maya. Apparently, she finds time for Brooke and Ridge's wedding officiant, Carter. Why can't Maya and Katie just keep the good things they got going instead of letting other men sniff around them?

We've seen a little bit of Ivy sprinkled in here and there, but according to a soapcentral.com news update, Ashleigh Brewer will exit the show soon.

Family arrives for the Bridge wedding in early February. Expect to see Donna, Vivienne, and Julius at the big event. Maybe Julius can talk some sense into Maya about jeopardizing all the Avants have gained just for a chance to flirt with Carter!

Let us know what you think about Brooke and Ridge's plan to be a role model couple for Steffy and Liam. Do you like Thorne coming on to Katie, or should Wyatt be able to have a romance without someone else horning in on it for once?

Until we scoop again, here's to hoping the Bridge wedding actually takes place, because Ridge and Brooke will look like complete fools in front of Steffy and Liam if it doesn't. Either way, whether you win or fail, going after your destiny will always be bold and beautiful, baby!

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