Credit: Howard Wise/JPI (3)

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Soaps.com may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

Thank goodness for Bold & Beautiful‘s Steffy Forrester. Whether you love or hate the character, you have to admit that she was the only one doing anything interesting this week. Let’s discuss the highs and lows, and see if we can answer the million-dollar question: What the heck is wrong with the men on this show?

Steffy Pleads Her Case

I absolutely loved Steffy throwing herself back into things at Forrester Creations. While Ridge and Eric sat around complaining, she was like, “Step aside, guys, let me handle this.” Better still, she had not one but two different plans of attack: getting herself rehired at the company and having her gal pal Daphne set out to seduce Carter. (More on that in a moment… )

More: Did Bill just put [Spoiler] in danger? 

I’ve long been a fan of Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, and the scenes in which Steffy asked Carter and Hope for her job back perfectly illustrated why. Too often on soaps, those sorts of scenes are played in such a way that the audience is clued in on the character’s true intentions. We’re left thinking, “How do the others not see what’s really going on?”

But here, the writing, directing and acting here all combined to make Steffy’s actions feel totally genuine… despite our awareness that they weren’t. On a show not known for its subtlety, these scenes were perfectly played.

Wait, That’s What Friends Are For?!?

On the other hand, I’m less enthusiastic about Steffy roping Daphne into her scheme. I love Daphne — although perhaps not quite as much as our Deputy Editor, Charlie, who spent much of last week’s column composing sonnets to the “best nose in all of Paris.” But doesn’t it feel a little like Steffy is basically pimping out her friend?

Granted, Daphne seems totally on board with the idea, but it still feels a little skeezy. Also, I wish they’d held off a while before revealing her connection to Steffy. It would have packed more of a wallop. Also, it’s a tad hypocritical of Steffy to unleash the Parisian beauty on Carter and Hope, given that the entire takeover was set in motion because of Hope’s supposed disrespect of the brunette’s marriage. (I say “supposed” because while Hope had kissed Finn in the past, the incident which led to her firing was a misunderstanding.)

Steffy may have made her own situation worse by throwing Daphne into the mix… especially if the lovely lady finds herself falling for Carter and siding with #TeamCope!

Dumb and Dumber

Where to begin with the lunacy that is the Bill/Luna storyline? It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the show is going to either rewrite history in order to clear Luna’s name or find some other way — perhaps a legal technicality? — to free her. No matter how this plays out, however, the damage has been done where Bill Spencer is concerned.

More: Look how grown up Don Diamont’s twins are!

Nothing about his actions make any sense, and quite honestly, I see no way of changing that. Here’s why: Even if it turns out that Luna didn’t kill Tom and Hollis — despite our having seen her do so and her having confessed — there is literally no way that Bill could have known that when he pulled the strings to have her released.

And are we to think that he was going to keep playing this ridiculous game of hide-and-seek every time anyone swings by… for the next couple of decades? Are we to believe that Poppy will never visit her imprisoned daughter during that time? It just makes no sense on any level, even if you use the words I hate: “It’s just a soap opera.” (I want and expect better from my shows… don’t you?)

The men on this show should be very grateful to the women in their lives, who are clearly the ones with all the brains. Although I’m still not clear as to why Brooke or Taylor would want Ridge at this point. And heaven knows it’s insane of Taylor to be moving in with him literally days after he broke things off with her rival.

Doctor, Doctor

As the Bill/Luna stuff was playing out, we got the ridiculousness of Li using Tom’s still-on-ice liver and a convenient vial of Luna’s blood to do a paternity test. There is no reason on earth why Tom’s organs would be sitting around in the lab so long after his demise.

More: The return that’ll shake things up next week! 

And it’s not as if Amy the lab tech had to go searching for them and said, “Whew, you’re lucky, I found them buried way in the back of this forgotten freezer!” No, she just looked in the cabinet and was like, “Yup, got ’em.” Why? Because they were being readied to ship somewhere. I mean, who wants the liver of a homeless, former alcoholic who was poisoned? (I did love Amy’s complete and total boredom with her job, which slayed me.)

Li whipped out what looked like the kind of DNA test you’d be able to buy on Amazon and, after hurling more insults and accusations at her sister, proclaimed she’d lied about Tom being Luna’s dad. The whole week built up to Li demanding to know if her ex, Jack, was Luna’s dad… a scene which wasn’t exactly surprising, given that it had been shown in the previous week’s preview.

I’ve always liked Li, but I’m starting to think she doesn’t take her medical license very seriously. Between hiding the supposedly dead Finn in a hotel room and doing homespun DNA testing in her office…

Random Thoughts

• I love that when Poppy stormed out of Li’s office, she took the box of donuts she’d brought as a gift. That was so wonderfully petty, it cracked me up.

• Thanks to an observation Charlie made in last week’s column, I’ve become obsessed with how often scenes on this show are staged with everyone standing around talking. So much comfy furniture going to waste! In the real world, people sit down for conversations!

• How much more interesting would the Luna story be if they’d played the budding connection between Li and Bill? Or even Poppy and Bill?