D’oh! Bold & Beautiful Unmade One Big Mistake… by Making Yet Another One: C’mon Already!
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Luna’s saga has officially come to an end on The Bold and the Beautiful — at least for now. She could always return someday, arrest or not. Heck, Sheila could tell us a thing or two about how effective prison is at keeping villains away!
But one thing that also finally ended was the Zende/Luna drama after he supposedly slept with her when she was too high to consent. Because on Tuesday’s episode, Zende got the very welcome news that he did not commit sexual assault, knowingly or unknowingly.
As the Forresters gathered to take stock of all Luna had done, Steffy explained Zende had been the one taken advantage of, Brooke and RJ both apologized and all was well with the world. Except… it kind of isn’t
As longtime viewers know, this isn’t the first time Bold & Beautiful has told a story about a lack of consent while under the influence. Douglas was conceived when Thomas slept with Caroline, not realizing she was too drunk and high to know what was going on. And Ridge slept with Brooke when she was too hopped up on anti anxiety medication to know what she was doing.
It is, to be fair, an uncomfortably gray area, as Zende wasn’t aware that Luna was under the influence (for good reason, apparently, because she really wasn’t). But he still slept with someone who wasn’t able to consent. Luna, we thought, felt violated, thinking she was sleeping with RJ. Worse, writing the story with a Black man as the perpetrator got uncomfortably close to the harmful stereotype of Black men as predators.
That clearly was not the intent, but it’s still exactly what the show ended up doing. There are no barriers to bad behavior. Everyone can be or play a villain (though Zende is most definitely not a villain), but on a show that’s overwhelmingly white, the choice of putting Zende in this position was noticeable. Yes, he was horrified to learn what had supposedly happened, even as Luna insisted that he wasn’t at fault. But that also didn’t stop him from pursuing Luna even after finding out and insisting they should be happy with what happened that night. To be clear, that’s not what you say to someone who’s been and who feels violated.
In other words, virtually everything about the story just got under our skin in all the wrong ways. So we are thrilled that the show fixed that problem and made it clear that Zende was being manipulated and used by Luna. But Bold & Beautiful did that by making another huge mistake that’s again made us uncomfortable!
Because now, the explanation of what actually happened leans into the idea of women as conniving temptresses who can’t be believed about their sexual assault claims. And we’re not comfortable with that, either. Again, that’s clearly not the intent, but it’s literally what just happened on the show. Couldn’t there have been any other way out of one problematic explanation without creating another?
The whole point of the #MeToo movement was to finally listen to women when they speak up about sexual assault and harassment, and stop assuming they’re lying or exaggerating for some ulterior motive. And that is exactly what Luna did.
So in one way or another, this entire part of the Luna saga has made us cringe from start to finish. That’s why sexual assault — intentional or unintentional — as a plot point is a daytime trope that we should probably move beyond. And that’s especially true when it feeds into harmful stereotypes.
For now, though, we’re just glad we can finally put this whole sordid mess behind us — and we’re sure Zende feels the same! What are your thoughts about the whole thing? Do you feel like Bold & Beautiful should have just scrapped the whole story, or are you content with how they resolved it?
