The Ride-or-Die Wife

This week on B&B, the executive tectonic plates clashed together at Forrester, causing dramatic quakes and mudslides in the professional and personal lives of our beloved ruling family of fashion. Who gets swamped in mud and who rises to the top of the rubble heap? Scoopers, hang on to your bowls, because the aftershocks of Rick's actions will reverberate all the through the next Sweeps.

Tremors reached as far as the Spencer cliff house where Caroline's suitcases landed like boulders after Rick successfully pulled off his coup. As relationships fumbled and the family bickered, Caroline's ride-or-die commitment to Rick stood as defiant as an oak amid Rick's devastation, and it challenged Maya's ride-or-die determination to become the next Forrester matriarch.

I can't believe Rick thought it would be so easy to get Eric to sign the papers or that Eric would just take the betrayal lying down. But you know what I can't believe even more? That Eric signed the papers and took the betrayal lying down! He did, and Rick successfully implemented his dictatorship.

Carter and Ridge poised to fight to nullify the agreement, but old softy Eric lamented his treatment of Rick, who Eric felt he shouldn't have forced to remain with Caroline. Oh, the horror of having to stay married to the loyal, beautiful, talented Caroline Spencer. Eric should have gotten enough of trying to dictate intimate partnerships when Ridge walked away from the CEO position after refusing to leave Katie for Brooke. You remember Katie, right? The one who dropped from Ridge's mind faster than his pencil dropped from his hand this week?

Though Eric was the idiot who wouldn't listen to sound legal counsel, he managed to shift some of the blame for Rick's Forrester quake onto Ridge's need to control the designing climate with Caroline and to the age-old rivalry between Ridge and Eric for Stephanie's attention. With that, Eric guilted himself into letting the paperwork stand, but Ridge put the blame squarely on Eric's need to coddle Rick.

Eric was befuddled, outraged, and hurt by Rick's betrayal. The last time I saw Eric look so constipated was when his ride-or-die wife Stephanie kneed him in the balls before taking the company away from him herself. I hope he feels her knee in his groin all the way from her grave for being stupid enough to give away the permanent CEO-ship she'd finagled for him in her will.

Upon her death, Stephanie gave Eric the power and the position permanently because she knew he'd find some asinine way to lose the company on his own. She apparently couldn't imagine that the old fool would give it away, but if she did have a contingency plan, then Carter might someday find a magic Douglas clause in her will to undo what Rick has done.

Until then, Rick might have tricked his father out of power, kicked Caroline out of her home, and unseated Stephanie from her place of honor, but he managed to hurt himself more than anyone else he'd set out to punish with his grab for power. He's limping around with a huge Achilles heel that has Caroline's name written all over it. Maybe that's the real reason he wanted to clean the broken glass off the floor so fast -- so it wouldn't cut up the wounded heart in his heel.

Rick refuses to admit that Caroline is the ride-or-die wife any wealthy public figure would love by his side. She's strong, committed, and steadfast in the face of scandal, just like Hillary Clinton or Camille Cosby. Caroline, I am not. In her shoes, I would have been out the door faster than you can say "Myrna." Though I'm not Caroline, maybe I'd be a better friend to her than Ivy, who could have prevented every single bit of this by spilling what she knew.

Did Ivy forget who's really in control of her job at Forrester? It's Hope, not Rick! Eric flew Ivy in, and Hope hired her. On top of that, Ivy's a Forrester. She should have told Cousin Rick to shove it with the threats. But No. Ivy had some blind belief Rick would correct his cataclysmic course and fly backward around the world like Superman to fix his marriage and prevent the quake at Forrester.

"I'm Caroline's friend! I'm Caroline's friend!" Ivy ran around, clucking like Chicken Little. If that was true, she should've told Caroline to take off the nightie, put on some Hello Kitty PJ's, and give up on sex and babies with Rick. She should have taken Caroline to get a Myrna cooties shot and marched her over to Carter for a piece of white paper, attached to a blue piece of paper that says "HALF."

Rick still understands one-syllable words on paper, right? He'll only respond to that word and the flushing sound of his money whirling down the toilet. A real, ride-or-die friend would hand Caroline scissors and a buzz saw, and the duo would saw up half Rick's desk, the couch, the bed, the Van Goghs, the Picassos, and half of Maya's weave off her head -- because we all know Rick paid for that, too.

Caroline should go after half of Rick's balls while she's at it. And what court would deny her after hearing that Rick's answer to Caroline kissing Ridge was to sleep with Maya and drag the whole family through an outrageous tantrum. "But it's Ridge! Anyone but Ridge!" Rick would whine. So what, Rick? Katie can tell you that Ridge isn't really all that.

If Caroline won't go after half of Rick's balls, Stephanie will for the crap he pulled with her portrait. Does Rick even know that the portrait is haunted? I hope he wakes up one morning with the thing sitting beside him in bed, glaring at him. When he goes to the bathroom, I hope it's on the wall, and he mysteriously feels a swift kick in the balls each time he takes a whizz. I want him to choke on a piece of meat at dinner and look up to see Stephanie's portrait watching as he gasps for air.

Ivy's been piss-poor in the friend department and the balls department. She can't even stand up to Rick's blow-up doll of a mistress, and for some reason, Maya is desperate to befriend Ivy and boss her at the same time. At least Ivy set Maya straight that friendships don't work like Rick's love life, and friends are not inherited from one of Rick's women to the other. "You were trying to be work besties with the boss's wife -- and Caroline's not going to be that for much longer -- so I could use a work bestie, too," Maya hinted to Ivy. Nuhh-uhh. Doesn't work like that, Maya.

But Maya wasn't finished there. While playing shuffleboard with Ivy's home, Ride-or-Die Mistress Maya made another bizarre play for Ivy's friendship. "I'm living my dream, Ivy, and you can be a part of it. Everyone can," Maya told Ivy with a psychotic-June-Clever/Bride of Chucky doll grin.

I was waiting for Ivy to tell Maya to roll up her dream and smoke it because she wasn't going to run Ivy and Aly out of the house, not even for one night. I wanted to smack Ivy on her jellyfish back when she revealed to Pam that she and Aly had actually let Rick and Maya put them out. Though Ivy managed to call Maya a wannabe, Ivy's not proving to be a Forrester with a backbone. Felicia Forrester, Ivy is not, but then again, Ivy comes from Eric's side of the family, not Stephanie's.

And maybe Douglas genes will save the day. Maybe Pam and Charlie can find a way to fumigate the mansion with a pure lemony scent and take out Maya and Rick the same way they took out Quinn.

Pam was hot under the pearls when she saw that her sister wasn't on the wall anymore. Rick was wrong to upset her like that, and he was wrong to upset Aly and Ivy's personal lives. He'd better watch out because everyone knows Pam and Aly's bakeries are not fully stocked. His beef is with Ridge, Eric, and Caroline, not those three ladies.

And Rick was wrong to upset me and you, too. I don't want to see that butt-ugly portrait every time I'm in the Forrester living room, do you?

Once, Eric told Stephanie that her spirit embodied the mansion and the entire family. He'd called her the very essence of the family, and he'd been right to do so. Even though she's been gone for two years, everything about that house, down to the perfectly placed furniture, feels like Stephanie. It's her domain. Taking the portrait down was like desecrating Stephanie's grave.

Queenie's portrait watches over the family, and to see an amateur like Maya replace her was like soap blasphemy. Even Maya was leery to tempt fate by displaying it. I might have taken it better if Brooke or Taylor's images were erected in its place -- who the heck am I kidding? That wouldn't have flown, either. In my view, Stephanie's portrait must stay right where Eric put it until the end of B&B time.

Well, like Caroline said -- Rick got us. He proved that hell hath no fury like Ricky Boy scorned. His wife kisses Ridge, and he repays her by sleeping with her worst enemy, disingenuously reconciling with her, and humiliating her in front of God and the Internet by revealing that he'd been screwing her enemy behind her back the whole time. In his desire to scorch the Caroline earth, he charred his father like barbeque, broiled poor Pam with that blasphemous portrait, scrambled Ivy and Aly out of their own space, and worst of all, flayed his own broken heart. Yeah, I think I might be hungry...

But Rick has never known boundaries or respect. I don't know if he got that from Brooke or Eric, but Rick is the ruler of the inappropriate and vindictivene classes. Running through Phoebe, Steffy, and Taylor like a sex rodeo was proof of that. Twisting Steffy's mind around him just to get back at Ridge was the stuff sick puppies are made of.

We should have known something was wrong with Rick all the way back when he was listening to crazy music and shooting people as a kid. His babysitter taking advantage of him had to wiggle a few screws loose in his head, too. Maybe former stepmother Sheila laced his sippy cups with psycho-juice and fed him demented fruit rollups. It didn't help that he had a front-row seat to Stephanie taking Brooke's kids from her. His mother, the biggest female influence over him, taught him that the way to a lover's heart was to rip it from the chest with his bare hands.

Eric and Ridge might be to blame for what they created in Rick. After all, they were the father figures in his life -- along with Grant and Thorne -- but Ridge was the biggest male influence.

Rick can't seethe enough about how much Ridge hurt Brooke, and Rick's relationships with Ridge's daughters and Taylor directly correlate with Rick's venomous abhorrence for Ridge. Rick's inability to design like Ridge and Eric might also play a part in his feelings of inadequacy at Forrester. Ridge can do the one thing Rick can't, and that one thing is at the heart of Forrester Creations. The idea that Caroline can become so tuned in to Ridge, literally become his right hand, in an art that Rick can't master must grind Rick's guts. Caroline is Caroline Senior reborn, and she belonged only to Rick. The love of Ridge's life reborn was solely Rick's. Think about that. Caroline Senior is someone Ridge can never have again, and yet here she is back again, embodied in Caroline Junior -- Rick's wife.

If you recall, Ridge had felt a connection instantly when Caroline first arrived in town. Remember their talk out in the guesthouse when they cried together, and Caroline showed Ridge the tattoo on the back of her neck? We'd been repulsed at the idea of a hookup between the two back then, but time, a matured Caroline, and a younger Ridge has opened the door for it. Ridge has become forlorn over it, and Rick is terrified because he can't compete with the allure of creation with Ridge.

So is it the kiss Rick abhors? Is it the so-called marital betrayal he keeps whining about? Or is it the unbridled creative connection between Ridge and Caroline that Rick can never share with Caroline?

Rick tried to create a similar connection with Amber when she transformed his design ideas and stick-figure drawings into a secret collaboration, so he knows what working intimately with a designer is like. Caroline and Ridge were practically having sex on the sketchpad, and she admitted to Liam that she hadn't been thinking about her marriage as her moth-like wings of passion fluttered near Ridge's irresistible flames. As connected as Rick and Caroline once were, he must have felt her being drawn to Ridge, and a mental, emotional betrayal just might be as bad as, if not worse than, a physical one.

Rick, in true Rick fashion, grabbed a woman and used her as a weapon to punish his injurers. Maya in his bed punishes Caroline. Maya by Rick's side in business punishes Eric. Maya's picture on the wall punishes Ridge, whose mother's portrait had hung in the same place of honor. Rick's doling out his brand of justice, but he doesn't recognize the flaws in his plan.

For one thing, Rick doesn't really love Maya. The relationship is hollow inside. Second, Maya can't run a business. She has zero experience in anything but strutting the catwalk, banging out license plates, and stalking Rick. She's nothing but a devoted "Stan," a sidekick like Tonto, Chewbacca, or Pretty in Pink's Duckie. Third, Rick forgot that Maya was just as disloyal as he claims Caroline has been.

Does Room Eight ring a bell?

If I recall correctly, Rick was dating Caroline, and he strayed when he got eyes for Maya. He was running around behind Caroline's back, playing dress-up with Maya at the boutique, and Maya was detesting all things aristocratic. Caroline chose to fight for her man by eventually placing moth Maya near flame Carter, and sparks flew. As usual, in Rick fashion, Rick slept with Caroline in response to Maya's supposed betrayal. Suddenly, Caroline was the loyal one and the one who'd save his career. Caroline became the perfect partner with whom to rule Forrester.

Rick goes on about how Caroline let this thing with Ridge blossom into some huge humiliation. What does he think he did to her -- twice -- with Maya? Does he not remember what Maya did to him with Carter? Right now, Maya's all about Rick's dream, but Caroline had been all about Rick's dream, too, back when Maya had fallen for Carter while pursuing her acting dream. Now we have Caroline burgeoning in her design career with Ridge, and the "betrayed" Rick falls into bed with Maya.

Rick is setting himself up for an even harder fall. Liam, the most experienced triangle-ologist in Los Angeles besides Ridge, has tried to warn Rick about ending a relationship and hooking up with another out of hurt and anger before the first relationship is really resolved.

Liam also tried to advise his cousin to skip on down the yellow brick road without Rick, who doesn't have the heart, the brain, or the courage to fight for the best thing that's ever happened to him. I suspect, and you Scoopers tell me what you think, that Caroline will take that advice, and if you think Rick's shedding tears now, he'll be destroyed when she finally succumbs to her passion for Ridge.Did you hear Caroline talking about Ridge this week? I thought she'd orgasm out of her chair while describing to Liam her connection to Ridge.

Ridge was just as revved up as he tried to platonically console Caroline. "And part of me wants to tell you to leave this guy. And we'll find a place, and we'll be happy," Ridge told her, his eyes scanning for any hint in hers that she'd actually go. "But I won't. I'm not gonna do that because your commitment to him is extraordinary, and you're extraordinary," he decided after she didn't take the bait.

Ridge is right. Caroline's ride-or-die commitment to Rick is phenomenal. The only time I ever recall a ride-or-die commitment like that was within Stephanie, who had no qualms about jacking Eric up by his dropped drawers and dragging him away from whatever mistress he'd been with at the time. In that marriage, Eric was the one to stray, while the stoic Stephanie kept the light on for him in her heart. And when he'd failed with whatever woman she couldn't pry him away from, she let him come home with his tail between his legs. The question is -- will Rick be so lucky with Caroline?

Various models, Beth, Brooke, Sheila, Lauren, Donna, and Jackie came and went from Eric's bed. It's no wonder Rick is the way he is. He's just copying his father, a father who's slinking off to Europe as John McCook exits the B&B scene for a while. I can hear Justin Timberlake giving Eric his outro now, "Oh, the damage is done, so I guess I'll be leaving...Cry me a river...cry me a river..."

What do you think? Maya says Rick needs a partner who listens and does what he asks, in other words, a robo-mistress. Is she right, or does he need a ride-or-die wife like Caroline, who stands by him even on his most cruel and nasty days? Does he really need a wife like Stephanie to kick him where it hurts but still pick up the pieces later? Better yet, should he just be alone until he grows up? If you ask me, Caroline has taken enough slop off Rick, and Maya needs to remove her gold-coated blinders.

With Eric out of the country, and Ridge saying that he's headed to Paris, what will become of Forrester Creations? Will the kiddies tear apart everything that Stephanie, Eric, Ridge, and Brooke built over the years? And while I'm at it, doesn't anyone think Eric should have consulted Brooke before signing away her co-vice presidency rights to Rick?

I, for one, can't wait to tune in next week, and my dream is for someone to burn the mansion down with Rick, Maya, and Maya's portrait in it. You can be a part of my dream, too. Everyone can. Until then, stay bold and beautiful, Scoopers!

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