Spring forward, fall forward

Bill thought he had maneuvered Sheila perfectly when he extracted two deadly confessions from her. But his inability to keep his gloating mouth shut led to Sheila falling over his balcony -- and walking away. At least until her arrest caused her a heart attack! Take a flying leap with Two Scoops' Mike.

Has your week been bold and beautiful? Did you let yourself get stung by your own sting? Did you make two great escapes while your third landed you in a hospital bed? Did you say, "Screw the Hippocratic Oath"? These and more situations faced the Forrester-Logan-Spencer-Finnegan clan this week!

Well, you'd swear it was May Sweeps around here instead of April showers, Scoopers! Bill's catatonic tale of wooing Sheila ramped into high gear -- and how! -- when Sheila catching Bill in his sting operation led to her taking a flying leap off his balcony, where others have gone before. Is Sheila's eventual post-arrest heart attack related to her having a great fall? And the bigger mystery: why is Quinn still in the credits seven months after her departure? Let's Scoop about it!

Bill has been providing much of the needed fresh air on the show lately. Not only is he back to being the bilious Dollar Bill we all know and love, but it also turns out his Sheila-laced stupor was all an act. And, of course, his bickering with Ridge is the stuff of legends, though Ridge can certainly hold his own. Despite the fact they're enemies, Bill and Ridge actually make a good team, and I spy with my little eye that they do respect each other on some level.

Now, as always, I am honor bound to Scoop about all things bold in the current week. But I need to backtrack a little, because there was a lot of information dropped last week that either nicely connected the dots in this storyline or made my eyebrow arch like Sheila's used to do. (Too bad she doesn't do that trademark move anymore, or the brushing of hair behind her ear that screamed "I'm in deep doo-doo!")

It didn't make sense to a lot of us that Bill would want Sheila in jail when she was already in jail. Well, apparently, the rationale is that, on Sheila's counts of "only" attempted murder (and, one would assume, her escape from jail), she would just end up being released in a few years. Bill and Ridge wanted to catch Sheila on actual murder, which would likely lead to a life sentence. Okay, yes. I can buy that.

Since this working with the FBI story launched, I kept thinking that if they really wanted some indictable ish on Sheila, all they had to do was call Lauren Fenmore in Genoa City. But then, going by the new parameters set, Lauren doesn't know of any actual murders that Sheila committed. Still, I'd have loved to see Lauren brought into this, even for one scene.

It was also amazing to hear, after all the hoopla over Taylor shooting Bill and being blackmailed for it, that Bill had arranged for Taylor to be exonerated of the crime. While Taylor doesn't know it yet, she will end up free and clear, and that's a cool little wrap-up. Plus, it ended up being a great use of history. But B&B's gotta B&B, so I was left with some rather glaring questions that haven't been answered yet.

Ridge asked why Sheila would believe that she was released simply because Steffy chose not to testify. Truly. Agent Chen was right; Sheila is being too gullible. Was Mike Guthrie, who helped Sheila escape but then was said to have kidnapped Sheila out of jail, in on this sting, and therefore given a reduced or commuted sentence?

And how did Bill think that proposing to Sheila would get her to open up about her past deeds? Dark confessions of the soul usually aren't the way honeymoons begin. The move was enough to get both me and Sheila to cast aspersions on it, and Bill found himself the target of Sheila's doubt. Which is a good way to end up in a body bag, or forced off the road into water, or stung by bees. But more on that later.

I won't bore you, like I was bored, with the peripheral arcs of the week. Katie, Brooke, Carter, Finn, and Steffy all had to put their two cents in about Bill and Sheila. And I don't even want to hear it from them. Katie threatened eons ago to keep Will from Bill but never did anything. Steffy swore eons ago to get Sheila out of everyone's lives but never did anything. Except do the nasty with Finn on Forrester's official lovemaking couch. Eww!

It wasn't all that romantic, anyway, first with Finn c*ckblocking himself by bringing up Sheila in the middle of l'amour, and then Steffy immediately jumped into afterplay, which included mention of her murderous mother-in-law. Guys, put up or shut up. Too many characters are all talk and no action anymore, which I've previously mentioned. It's frustrating.

The best non-Sheila moment of the week happened between Hope and Deacon. I loved the tangible warmth between Sean Kanan and Annika Noelle. Even though father and daughter did talk about Sheila, and Deacon looked pained as they did, Deacon correctly worried that Darth Thomas would turn to the Dark Side yet again. He impressed upon Hope that she could build Hope for the Future again without Thomas, and that's the damn truth. As is Deacon's reminder that Hope is half Sharpe!

I wouldn't mind Hope's Sharpe-ness bubbling up for a visit, would you? Now, Hope did insist to her father that if Thomas pulled anything, he would be so outta there. Deacon didn't want Thomas causing problems in Hope's marriage. Which means Thomas will. Dang, we had this all wrapped up, and now we've gotta go through it again? Isn't there anything better for Thomas, Hope and Liam to do?

Well, the water was rising as Bill tried to paddle his way into getting the suspicious Sheila to accept his marriage offer. He went into his song and dance about how he had also done the "unimaginable" (sorry, dude, outside of pitching Ridge out of a helicopter and plotting Amber's murder, you're on the bike path while Sheila is on the Autobahn). But Bill nearly gave himself away as he started getting mad.

Maybe Bill popped his considerable pecs under his shirt while I wasn't looking, because something about his sales pitch got Sheila to buy. Yes! She would marry him! But then, Bill picked the wrong moment to start going in for the kill. He totally should have waited, taken Sheila out to dinner, maybe forced himself through one more roll in the hay with her to seal the deal.

Instead, Bill immediately declared that marriage was based on a foundation of complete honesty, and therefore, Sheila should pour him an industrial sized cup of tea about her worst violations. And Sheila didn't ping about that? He'd only been pushing her to share her secrets for weeks. Not the most subtle. Bill made the point that Sheila couldn't give all of herself to Bill if she didn't unburden herself.

That one wasn't bad. And it was enough for Sheila to tell the tale of how she had caused the death of therapist Jay Garvin. Laced with flashbacks, Sheila explained how Dr. Garvin had had dirt on Sheila and that they had argued on his balcony. He grabbed her, she jerked away, and he fell several floors to his death. "He just fell," Sheila remembered. "What?" Ridge exclaimed from his FBI hideout. "What the hell!"

That's right -- the death of Jay Garvin was an accident. I suppose that confession could be viewed as a tease, and in that sense, it was successful. "I've never told anybody this," Sheila sighed. Um, girl, you told Mike Guthrie after it happened in 1994! I also feel like she might have told psychiatrist-turned-husband James Warwick about Jay at some point, but my memory is fuzzy about it.

"But I know there's more," Bill coaxed. Again, why didn't he just rip his shirt open to show a T-shirt reading, "I'm trying to get dirt on you"? But I guess Sheila was in the zone, so she recalled how a young man named Lance Day (I didn't remember he had been given a last name?) also had threatened to expose Sheila, who was then in L.A. on the sly, trying to hook daughter Erica (her only proven child) up with Rick.

More flashbacks played as Sheila recounted learning of Lance's severe allergy to bee stings, and how she flooded his apartment with the honey makers to assure his permanent silence. "That's so hot!" Bill squealed when Sheila admitted being a murderer. "You naughty girl!" That was a fun moment. Sheila billed Lance's murder as the worst thing she'd ever done, but I'm actually not too sure that ranks as such.

Bill had Sheila's confession on tape (or at least digitized). All he had to do was wait for the FBI to show up. But he screwed himself so royally. Was it cockiness? Impatience? At any rate, Sheila noticed Bill's change to a quieter tone, and, instead of changing the subject, Bill asked Sheila for confirmation. Bill could have stalled Sheila by embarking on a slow, very slow so he didn't have to do much of anything, seduction.

Bill is slick. He knows the angles and how to play them. So why the hell did he run into the other room and giddily call Ridge like an '80s teen on her Princess phone, wanting to tell her best friend how the captain of the football team winked at her? I guess Bill is double jointed, because he totally bit himself in the ass right in front of us. Sheila being Sheila, she followed Bill and overheard him bragging how they'd snagged her!

Maybe Bill figured he couldn't explain it away, but he added fuel to his fumbling fire by letting his wall down and admitting to Sheila that he had spent months playing her like a fiddle. But this devil wasn't about to go down to Georgia. Sheila tried to run, but Bill stopped her and savagely burst her bubble about their fake relationship. "You had to overplay it, didn't you?" Ridge snarled to Bill's footage. I know, right?

Now knowing the level of Bill's deception, Sheila is only going to want revenge on him. But, indeed knowing it, I wonder if Bill trying to reunite with Brooke, then Katie, was part of the act? Like, he knew they'd reject him, so it would be the perfect setup for playing the dejected dude Sheila could be lured by? I hope so, because otherwise, that Katie/Brooke thing was purely a d*ck move.

"You can't prove anything!" Sheila screamed. Ah, now we get to the crux of it. B&B regularly brushes off its rich history, or even recent history, to make its stories work -- so it's particularly awesome and praiseworthy that they'd dive so deep to exhume Sheila's demons. But it was clearly established, via the flashback and in Sheila's retelling, that Jay Garvin's death was an accident.

Plus, there were no witnesses, and it happened 29 years ago in real time. Factor in SORAS, and we've got a case colder than the glaciers that used to be in the Arctic. Then there's Sheila's definite murder of Lance...in 2002. Is her confession enough? There were no witnesses to her bee attack, either. I just don't know that there's enough evidence for Sheila to be held, much less for deaths that happened so long ago.

Cornered, Sheila pulled her "All I wanted was to be loved" page out of her playbook. That was effective and even heart rending when she first used it in 1995 during her attempted suicide, but now she always plays that card when she's about to be caught. She also reverted back to blaming Steffy and her lack of acceptance for everything that had happened! Wow.

"Stop blaming everyone else for what you've done!" Bill barked. Ain't that the truth? Maybe Sheila's refusal to take responsibility for herself stands out more acutely in today's climate. But I will say, it's been cool seeing Don Diamont and Kimberlin Brown work together. They only had shared one scene almost exactly 30 years ago, when Don's Brad Carlton popped in from Y&R to get Sheila to hand over incriminating photos of him and Lauren in bed.

Sheila rushed Bill, which somehow resulted in them pushing each other onto the balcony. And in seconds, Sheila went over the railing and plunged two stories! Karma for Jay Garvin? Hell, it's not even the first time Sheila took that much of a tumble; she threw herself off a building in 1998, and last year, she wanted to make a similar jump. But I think it's time Bill blew up that balcony like he did with Spectra Fashions.

First Caroline 2.0 slipped and fell over that same railing when confronted by Bill in 2013. Five years later, Bill himself plummeted those two stories during a fight with Ridge and Thorne. I guess the third time's the charm, because now Sheila has done it. I'm sorry, but that balcony has just taken first place in the Most Overused Plot Device category for this year's Best & Worst column. But if you think that's something, read on!

Much like when Caroline took a header on Bill's balcony (and apparently Sheila was wearing the same outfit Caroline had on!), Bill peered down at the damage. But when he ducked out and came back to peer a second time, Sheila was gone! Are you freaking kidding me? We weren't even in Sheila's old school Houdini basement where something like that might have actually been possible.

Not only that, but we next saw Sheila zipping down an L.A. freeway, making a run for it! (I think it was the 110. Hey, I used to be an Angeleno.) Not a cut, not a scratch, not a wince hinting at a broken bone or an internal injury. And I thought Lauren getting air from the jets in Sheila's hot tub when Sheila tried to drown her was watery. Unless Sheila injected her body with foam rubber first, there's no way someone could just walk away from a fall like that.

Then we wasted precious airtime having Sheila rerun pretty much the whole confrontation with Bill, except for the part where she fell. What, we were supposed to forget about it already? Meanwhile, Bill gave chase on a surprisingly traffic-free superhighway, himself thinking back to Sheila's confessions. Yeah, but Bill would not be able to have Sheila's flashbacks. I hate it when shows do that.

Bill knew that Sheila had to be headed to Deacon's, and that's precisely what her GPS was set for. Sheila, girl, you losin' your touch. That's the first place someone would look for you! Additionally, Bill presumably lives in Bel Air; Deacon's Il Giardino is in Beverly Hills, less than seven miles away, with no freeway between these locales. So, this high-speed chase was unnecessary.

Sheila interrupted Deacon's kibitz with Hope; when he excused himself, he allayed Hope's Sheila-related fears by telling Hope that everything had a way of working out. Sheila burst into Deacon's pad, not even limping! And then she went into the whole story of Garvin and Lance's deaths! For someone in such a hurry, she sure added time to her stop.

Funnily enough, it got dark in the time it took Sheila to ask Deacon to run away with her. They'd go north, get new identities, the works. Deacon was conflicted. He didn't want to lose Sheila, but he also couldn't leave his restaurant or his daughter. Then, no less than three times, Deacon suggested that Sheila turn herself in. What kind of sense did that make? Deacon knew Sheila didn't want to hear that, and how was it supposed to help her?

Reluctantly, Deacon agreed to go on the lam with Sheila, and she led him to the dining area of the closed restaurant. Sheila was moving like the Energizer Bunny -- until Deacon grabbed her hand. And just like that, Bill and Ridge showed up with the FBI. "I'm sorry," Deacon told Sheila, almost tearfully. "Nice work, Deacon!" Bill and Ridge told their adversary. Meaning Deacon was in on the sting the whole time.

Now that's a twist! Does this mean Deacon will be exonerated for harboring Sheila when she was a fugitive? Is making this deal with the Feds how he was able to afford Il Giardino? Deacon seemed genuinely regretful that he'd entrapped Sheila, and she was unexpectedly tender in telling him that she understood. Rather, she saved her vitriol for her captors. They were the animals.

While Ridge explained that Bill had come up with the plan and recruited him and Deacon, Sheila repeated her hooey about everything being Steffy's fault and how Finn would love Sheila. Maybe that flummoxed the 9-1-1, because Sheila very easily made a run for it. And in a bizarre move, she went into the same alley where she had shot Finn and Steffy...and no one followed her there.

Indeed, Sheila recognized her surroundings and recalled the double shooting; ironically, that was exactly a year ago, on April 1. Suddenly, Sheila seemed to be in pain, and her only obstacle ended up being Bill. No Ridge, no Deacon, no Lt. Baker, no cops. Weird! Bill gloated about his engagement ring being fake, and Sheila's breathing became labored. She slumped to the ground.

Bill thought she was faking, but could Sheila actually have sustained injuries from her fall? Because even Jack Bauer from 24 wouldn't have emerged from a tumble like that unscathed. And interestingly, Baker had mentioned that Lance's death was one of his first cases to be unsolved. Given that Sheila killed Lance in 2002 and Baker first showed up in 1998, that tracks. But again, we'll have to wait and see if Sheila can really be convicted for such ancient crimes.

Friday's first scene reran Sheila's entire escape and collapse except for her flashbacks of Finn's shooting. Then, Ridge and Deacon loped in, followed by the leisurely police. Paw Patrol would have been on this faster. After the po-po finally cuffed the unconscious Sheila, Bill, Ridge, and Deacon had a rare moment toasting each other at the bar. Did we ever think we'd see these three sharing a drink, let alone being civil to each other?

We got a fill-in-the-blank scene where Ridge and Bill let Deacon know they were aware of Deacon's relationship with Sheila. "You can keep making pizza or go to jail," Bill snarked to Deacon, telling the guy he once busted out of jail that Deacon would remain free if he cooperated with the authorities. So, I was right; this is how Deacon gets off the hook. The Dressmaker and the Dollah even promised to keep Deacon's involvement with Sheila a secret from everyone...including the cops.

Then Ridge pretty much used up his data plan, texting everyone to meet him at the Forrester compound. After Ridge left, Bill actually commiserated with Deacon about what he had given up to make his Sheila sting work, and Deacon offered some atypical praise for what Bill had done. I wouldn't count on this trio being friends after this, but if Brooke and Taylor can do it, who knows?

Over at Eric's, Stephen was among the group that had been summoned by Ridge. Stephen cordially greeted Eric, the man he spent decades being jealous of, but couldn't stop dissing Ridge for being absent while his family had to deal with Sheila. That landed funny because Stephen has never even been in a scene with Sheila. As everyone wondered what was going on, Ridge arrived for some reason without his mini bun. What, did he pull the hair tie out because he was afraid of what people would say?

Anyway, Ridge caught no end of s*it from essentially everybody, especially Stephen, who griped that Ridge treated his daughter's heart "like it was a chew toy." Well, we can't argue that, but no one would let Ridge get a word in edgewise. It's possible that Ridge was simply waiting for Bill, who was practically greeted with torches and pitchforks. Everybody wanted him out!

And Ridge, who has been dropping surprises at gatherings since the show's beginnings, tried to cut through all the pushback he and Bill were getting. He understood that everyone had been worried about Bill keeping Sheila out of jail and romancing her. But there was no more need to worry because of what Bill had just pulled off. I'm still amazed to see Ridge championing Bill, and I kind of like it.

Across town, Steffy had shown up at the hospital for a make-out session with Finn, because, you know, doctors always have time for that stuff. But now we know why that scene existed. Sheila was brought into the ER, having suffered a heart attack. Whaaaat? What about the two-story fall she took? Shouldn't she have broken bones or those internal injuries I mentioned? A first-year intern would detect signs of a tumble.

I couldn't believe it when Finn had Steffy tag along into triage. She doesn't belong there! Well, it turned out the doctor on call was Li! Does that mean Li lives in L.A. now? And where's Jack? Li did not take kindly to seeing Finn's biomom on the gurney and thought back to the moment when Sheila had discovered Li caring for the not-dead Finn. Not the moment Sheila ran Li off the road and left her to die?

As Steffy watched in horror, Sheila flatlined. Finn wondered why the mom who raised him wasn't lifting a finger. As the equipment let out its telltale beep, Li told Finn that after everything Sheila had done to them, they should let her die. A nurse rushed in and grabbed the defib paddles, awaiting Li's instruction. But the machine kept beeping. And Li just stood there.

I have to say, it was a much better week than usual, with a mostly satisfying mix of action, suspense, and frenemies coming together. Of course, Bill made everything worse by running his mouth prematurely, and if they were going to give Sheila a heart attack, then it wasn't necessary to throw her off a balcony, especially with no repercussions. What did you think of it all, Scoopers? Spend some time in the Comments section below or the Soap Central message boards, or simply click here to submit feedback. Your comments could end up in a future column!

Is Sheila really dead? Will the prehistoric charges against her stick if she does live? And will the Forrester-Logan bunch shut up long enough to let Ridge and Bill explain how they took Sheila down for their sake? It promises to be good soap, so keep watching, be alert, and most of all, be bold! See you in two weeks, my Scoopnesses!

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