By 
It’s May Sweeps and fans of The Bold and the Beautiful can look no further than the LA based sudser for confirmation. Maya’s secret has been the subject of much talk through the offices of Forester Creations and Spencer Publications. This week the preverbal cat was let out of the bag!
Ignorance Is Bliss…
This week opened on the heels of the previous weeks “start the presses” cliffhanger. Wyatt struggled with his guilt over betraying Nicole’s trust for all of 7 seconds before spilling the beans to Liam about Maya gender identification. Liam naturally didn’t believe him at first then began to doubt everything about the plan to use this as leverage against Rick. He even began to back pedal a bit. And that was going well, until Daddy was let in on the badly kept secret.
Watching this all unfold, I have said to myself that people’s reactions are a lot more subdued than I expected. Also unrealistic. The one person who I knew would change that… the one person I was banking on staying true to form… the one person whose reaction I was anticipating just as much as Rick’s was $Bill Spencer’s. And boy did he deliver. He was every bit as crass and as terrible and as in character as I was hoping he would be. Bill was unapologetic in his stance on the subject without going too far overboard. The writers seem to know just how fine that line is that they are walking with this story.
To counter Bill’s focus on the bottom line, Katie acted as the moral compass trying to steer him in the opposite direction. Part of me was proud of her for taking such a strong stance against Bill’s “it’s just business” line. The other part of me was wondering if she had amnesia to the person Bill was before marrying him again. Every time Katie has tried to talk some common decency into Bill, he does the exact opposite. This time was no different when after promising he wouldn’t, Bill told Justin to run the story anyway.
Bracing for impact, Ridge, Brooke and Eric pretty much spent all 5 days having the exact same conversation. “Maya must tell him.” “Ricky boy will explode.” Blah blah blah. Across the hall though, Nicole confided in Carter that she slipped up and told the absolute wrong person. When she asked Wyatt about whether or not he blabbed, ever the spin artist he just kind of eluded the question and turned the conversation back around on her. That strategy didn’t work on Ridge who confronted him head on and got the answer he already knew.
…Even If It Makes A Man A Miss
During all of the commotion back in LA, Rick and Maya fled for a night of romance in Big Bear. Another badly kept secret was that Rick fully intended on proposing to his lady love in the mountains. And propose he did. Such a beautiful and tender moment between the two was cut short by Maya’s refusal to give an answer without first divulging a deep dark secret. As if he knew whatever it was was about to destroy his perfect image of her, Rick stalled. Constantly interrupting as she talked, saying whatever it was didn’t matter, whisking her into the bedroom to make love in an effort to shut it up. Yeah, from my perspective, Rick knew whatever she was going tell him was huge and wanted no parts of it.
Before we get into the actual spilling of the tea, I want to rewind and address two rather big anvils that were dropped earlier in the week. The first by Maya’s friend and counselor Nick, a transgendered man. When telling him that she was going to tell Rick about her past while alone and isolated from the rest of the world, Nick showed great concern over her safety. Stating that when a mutual friend did the same, her partner responded by beating her mercilessly. Rage reaction is very real in the trans community and I’m glad the writers were conscious enough to address that.
The second was dropped by Liam when he tried to explain to Bill that outing Maya could result in backlash like nothing he had even considered. “Transgendered people are murdered all the time for no other reason than existing.” Again, something I applaud the writers for daring to say on national TV since it seems as though the rest of world would rather turn a blind eye to it.
With those two points being made, do I think either will actually happen? Probably not, but it felt like they were setting at least the latter up as something that could be a potential storyline down the road. Maya will be facing a whole new reality in the aftermath of this news. Neither scenario was on Maya’s mind as she began telling Rick the story of her. Rick in turn looked confused, concerned and downright terrified at times. Maya may have been nervous but she held her own and explained it in a calm way that seemed to ease Rick into it. I was surprised that she actually got to do it to be honest. I was half expecting him to get a Google alert on his phone via Spencer Publications.
So how will Rick react? Will he do what everyone is expecting of him and flip out?? Will he be understanding, even accepting? Tune in to find out! Also this week Brooke makes a move and Caroline comes home.
Photos courtesy of CBS.
Comments