Fans Lash Out at Brad Bell for Ruining Bold & Beautiful After Hope & Thomas Twist
Hope's arc exposed some serious issues fans have with B&B.
The most recent episode of The Bold and the Beautiful left fans feeling all kinds of frustration and outrage. The way Hope effectively ruined her relationship with Liam and her character by jumping into Thomas' bed sent many dedicated viewers into a frenzy.
There seems to be no rational explanation for Hope and Thomas' affair other than the woman going through a mentally unstable phase or being manipulated. Otherwise, why would she fall for someone she basically grew up with, who caused her terrible pain in the past, and who tried to make her believe that her daughter died in childbirth?
But the show's showrunner and head writer, Brad Bell, didn't offer even that slim of a motivation for Hope. And that infuriated fans.
'I will never be into this pairing but at least make me understand why this is happening,' a longtime viewer wrote on Reddit. 'But [the writers] don't even bother giving [Hope] a true reasoning because they don't have one. They're just doing it because they can.'
And what's worse, this dubious storyline also exposed an issue that's been bothering fans for years — the Brad Bell problem.
'I've said numerous times on the B&B FB groups that Brad Bell has ruined B&B & his father would roll over in his grave & be so ashamed of what Brad has done to his show!' a viewer commented on the episode.
The long-running soap opera was created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS in 1987. Brad Bell, the creators' son, took over as head writer in the 1990s and has ruined the show in recent years, according to viewers.
'Brad Bell has been making one bad decision after another regarding B&B, as far as cast members and storylines are concerned,' a fan who stopped watching because of the poor writing choices wrote. 'I find that Brad Bell keeps giving me more and more reasons not to watch the show ever again.'
In addition to poor character development, fans feel that arcs like Hope's show that B&B is misogynistic and can't portray its female characters fairly, which is probably due to the fact that the soap hasn't changed since the 1990s.
All in all, according to fans, B&B needs a new head writer and more current and believable storylines if it wants to continue for another 36 years.