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.
