Wednesday, September 30, 2015

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: V IS FOR VASECTOMY


Last week on The Bold & the Beautiful, what everyone who has ever watched a soap before expected to happen… happened. Newlywed Ridge learned that the vasectomy he’d neglected to mention to his much younger, baby-rabies infected wife, Caroline, was irreversible. While Caroline learned that she was pregnant.

She flashed back to the night she accidentally spent with Ridge’s son, Thomas. (Hey, Ridge and Caroline were on a break! And Caroline had taken some anxiety medication. And drunk alcohol on top of it.)

“Oops,” Caroline thought.

B&B does deserve kudos for flipping the script here somewhat. While the pregnancy was a done deal from the moment Caroline suddenly developed an all-encompassing interest in procreation, Ridge confessed his vasectomy to Brooke, and the virile (and very tall) Thomas (Caroline’s ex) returned to town, the traditional, soap-opera narrative would have had Caroline passing the baby off as Ridge’s, while Ridge secretly fumed and plotted revenge against his son and wife (and/or clung to her by accepting the baby as his own and never letting Thomas or Caroline know the truth. Though, of course, on soaps, never is usually about a year.)

Instead, on Monday, Ridge confessed about the vasectomy to Caroline, telling her that he knew how important having a child was to her and, if she wanted, under the circumstances, they could pretend that their marriage had never happened. (But we all had such a good time at the reception!)

Now the ball – and the lies – are in Caroline’s court. What will she do, what will she do?

It’s a fresh twist on an old story.

On the other hand, Caroline shouldn’t despair quite yet. The show did buy itself some paternity wiggle room by having Caroline say she’d gotten her period in between sleeping with Thomas and marrying Ridge. (Fun fact: Ridge’s mother, Stephanie, convinced Eric to marry her because she was pregnant with the baby who grew up to be Ridge. Stephanie was convinced Eric was Ridge’s father, and not Massimo, whom Stephanie had also slept with, because she’d gotten her period in between. But that turned out to have only been implantation bleeding, and Ridge was Massimo’s, after all. And now don’t you feel like you know way too much about the menstrual cycles of imaginary people?)

But the most important fact Ridge and Caroline have going for them is that, on soap-operas, vasectomies… don’t exactly… take.

Read all about it at: http://community.ew.com/2015/09/29/soap-opera-vasectomies/

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