Bold & Beautiful Just Did a Major Rewrite That is Equal Parts Brilliant and Nonsensical: Here’s Why
Generally speaking, we’re not big fans of soaps rewriting their own history… especially when it’s so recent that we all remember exactly what went down. But what Bold & Beautiful just did with regards to Luna and Zende’s problematic hook-up from earlier this year is… well, borderline brilliant.
For those who need a reminder — and we don’t blame you for having tried to forget — Luna mixed alcohol and drugs at a Forrester party and wound up sleeping with Zende, who in her incapacitated state she mistook for her boyfriend, R.J.
Or so we were led to believe.
Make no mistake about it: The Luna/Zende hook-up was wrong on every level, and it ticked off a whole lot of fans. We were happy that the show didn’t opt for the “Who’s the daddy?” storyline we pretty much all assumed was coming, and we put the writers on blast when out of nowhere, they began writing Zende as if he’d been in love with Luna all along. That particular rewrite didn’t work, because we’d all watched him hatch a plan to seduce Luna in order to hurt his cousin. Love had nothing to do with it.
Eventually, that entire storyline just faded away, and we were all the better for it. And then, Luna was revealed to be a serial killer with a DIY cage at her disposal and things got a little bit nuts. But it turned out the real shocker had nothing to do with the murders of Tom and Hollis who, as Luna herself pointed out, weren’t really all that important to anyone. Instead, the jaw-dropping bombshell came when Luna admitted that she hadn’t actually been drugged the night she slept with Zende. She’d slipped between his sheets intentionally and had, as she told a disgusted Steffy, the best sex of her life!
Now, looking back this plot twist doesn’t entirely hold up. We saw a horrified Luna flashing back to the night in question. We saw her torment herself for weeks, both in private and with others. And why, exactly, would she have done this in the first place?
The impression we were left with by what she said in the episode which aired on September 2 was that this was all part of her master plan. Presumably, she used the events of that night to expose her mom’s addiction to “special mints” so that later, she could use them to frame Poppy for murder. Except… Tom hadn’t even come into the picture at that point. In fact, we were still months away from his introduction into the story.
Yes, because of his letter-writing campaign, Luna knew about his existence and his claim. But she had no reason to think he’d show up, let alone that she’d find herself needing a way to frame her mom for his murder!
At the end of the day, Luna’s latest confession did what soaps so rarely do today: It provided a shocking twist that we didn’t see coming and which had fans talking. That it also helps erase a particularly icky past storyline — although Zende still shouldn’t have been sleeping with his cousin’s girlfriend! — doesn’t hurt. Best of all, it reminds us that when soaps are at their best, they give us a reason to tune in tomorrow to find out what could possibly happen next!