All I want for Christmas is my two front lobes

Quinn got Eric to change his mind about their estrangement status just in time for the holidays. But Thomas got a literal change of mind as he required surgery in his stocking! Examine whether that will make him naughty or nice with Two Scoops' Mike!

Has your week been bold and beautiful? Did you vote to make the most magical place on earth less magical? Did Santa give you a do-over on your lump of coal? Did your ice cream give you more than a brain freeze? These and more situations faced the Forrester-Logan-Spencer-Fulton-Buckingham clan this week!

Christmas is hurtling closer to us, Scoopers! And one present I'm enjoying is the contributions of B&B's new fashion consultant, Erica Pelosini Leeman. Quinn, Hope, Finn, Steffy, and Liam, all found themselves in snazzy, interesting, season-appropriate ensembles this week. But you don't want to know about that! You wanna know about Thomas' brain surgery and whether or not Hope is gonna brain Liam when she finds out he slipped down Steffy's chimney again! Let's Scoop about it!GO TELL IT ON SPACE MOUNTAIN

Paris the social worker, whom you never actually see doing social work (wouldn't it be great to see her work with Thomas?), was allowed free reign to check out the ever-growing Hope for the Future collection, right there in the CEO office, while Zende sketched. I'm sure Paris is cool, but hasn't Forrester been ripped off enough that even employees should require a retinal scan to see a design by now?

Somehow Paris and Zende decided this was the moment to once again go over Zoe's part in Beth's babynapping, which in a few weeks will have happened two years ago. I'm all for mining history, but not when we're using it for filler. I guess the two newish faces didn't have much else to talk about except an apparent birthday party Thomas had at Disneyland as a teenager, where Ridge rented out the whole place for him.

Paris thought it would be awesome to go to D-land at any time, and Zende didn't waste a second in offering to take her. Well, wiggle your ears! Things were going super smooth between this potential couple. And then, Paris lost her Mouseketeer status by blabbing that Zoe and Carter should join them. There was absolutely no need for Paris to interject her sister into this romantic rendezvous.

Zoe is engaged to Carter, and she didn't seem the least bit pulled by Zende the last time we saw her. For Zende's part, he was totally into Paris and didn't even flinch when she mentioned her sib. Soap logic would dictate these couples are good to go on their own. Why do we keep trying to shoehorn some kind of conflict between this foursome where there is none? Let the couples develop separately and give them their own problems.

I NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS, RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE

I don't know why, but somehow, Eric was still moping around the mansion, and Quinn was still making noise about wanting her man and home back, even though this is the exact same stuff they were on about when we last saw them four weeks ago. Had they just been frozen in time that long, or did they really have nothing better to do than to pace in these holding patterns all that time?

Wyatt was about as annoyed to see Quinn still harping on the sitch as I was to see Wyatt trying to bust a move on Flo, who could transform all the coal she deserves into diamonds with her bare hands and still would not make me think she has a place on the canvas anymore. Quinn actually did shake things up by taking some responsibility for what she did to Eric, Shauna, Ridge, and Brooke, which was pretty amazing.

Then, just to make the repetition complete, Shauna sauntered into Eric's pad and once again pleaded Quinn's case. All I could think was, "Why are we still on this?" Eric clearly hadn't changed his mind in a month. In fact, Eric wasn't answering Quinn's multiple attempts at communication, whether by phone, text, email, skywriting, telepathy, smoke signals, Morse code...you get the idea.

The only new information we got from Eric was that he didn't want to live in chaos, because he'd had enough of that (which is why he married Quinn after his years with Stephanie and Sheila, obvi), and he couldn't deal with the breach of trust caused by Quinn torpedoing Bridge's marriage. Papa F, that's small potatoes compared to when Quinn was slobbering all over Ridge, and you got over that faster than this.

At any rate, Quinn decided she was gonna get her man and marched over to the Forrester compound like she was on a mission to get the city's last Baby Yoda. She managed to sneak into her former home and heard all the sexy, salacious...no, actually, all Quinn heard was Shauna shipping Queric super hard. For a whole episode. I was sure Quinn was going to get caught behind that planter.

The whole thing was so dragged out, I kept quoting my mom in saying "s**t or get off the pot" (which is much funnier in her thick Dutch accent). Well, he finally did (I'll let you decide which one) when he expressed dismay that Quinn had gone to such extremes to sabotage Ridge and Brooke, but he took Quinn back, anyway. I knew Eric would cave. But why did he still look concerned during their reunion? Why?

Then Quinn summoned Shauna and acted like she was gonna rip her a new one...but they made up, too. Well, no Shauna/Quinn catfight, I guess. They were besties for life! Except I came away with the impression that Quinn only held Shauna in such regard as long as Shauna did what Quinn wanted. Had Quinn overheard Shauna expressing something different toward Eric, I'm sure Shauna would be floating in the L.A. River by now.

I SAW TOMMY KISSING DUMMY CLAUS

Well, it was a new twist on the old standby, I'll give them that. Liam sees Thomas kissing mannequin, thinks it's his wife, runs to his ex-wife, and ends up boning her. Yeah! That makes sense. At least last time Steam steamed the sheets, Liam was high on whatever drug Thomas slipped him, which no one ever found out Thomas was guilty of. And Chanel was right: no freshly-clean addict should have tequila in the house.

Boy, didn't Liam feel dumb when Hope trotted out her look-alike mannequin and explained that's who Thomas had been making out with! "I wouldn't betray you like that!" Hope insisted. And here was ol' Liam, freaking that he'd let Steffy rub his candy cane again because he'd been sure Hope was sitting on a real Santa's lap and not a plastic one. I hope someone kept the receipt, because methinks Liam is going to be regifted again.

This is kind of up there with Ridge getting an email from "Taylor" saying it was okay for him to impregnate Morgan. Soap peeps doing idiotic things is what makes them entertaining. But Liam...for real? At least he admitted he should have confronted Thomas and "Hope," but too little, too late on that one. And all this just to give us a 37th go-round of Leffy/Lope, which I don't think was anyone's Christmas list.

DOES HE KNOW IT'S CHRISTMASTIME AT ALL?

I also have to say, I'm disappointed in the denouement with the dummy. I thought the definitely bizarre saga had some potential when it started. But when Thomas didn't even try once to carry out "Hope's" diabolical commands, things started losing steam, and having the, er, climax be Thomas just planting a kiss on "her" made my interest wane.

How much cooler would it have been for Liam to walk in and find Thomas in bed with "Hope"? If we were going to do a mannequin story, and if we can't have any actual love scenes because of COVID, we might as well have gone all the way. This also would have further illustrated Thomas' descent into...whatever, which we'll get to in a second. I think the mannequin should talk to her agent about getting a better finale.

Matthew Atkinson nailed his losing-his-grip-on-reality scenes, but I have so many thoughts. First, I'm really not interested in finding out all of Thomas' cray has had physical, not mental causes. I mean, we already did that with Aunt Pam back in 2008. Pam tries to kill Donna with a bear? Oh, no problem, it was just a brain tumor! She already had bipolar disorder, which would have been enough to go on.

Much was made this week of Thomas having suffered a subdural hematoma (bleeding in the brain) and subsequent seizures, which was why he thought the Hope mannequin was really Hope. Thomas did whack his head a couple of times, which would have caused it. But hold on! Thomas went over a cliff last year and fell into a vat. No head injuries from those? The recent traumas didn't exacerbate the old ones?

It's true, Thomas has only been a little wonky post-shutdown and nothing like his scheming, downright cruel pre-shutdown self, but that's exactly my point. If a brain bleed is the cause of Thomas' break from reality now, what caused the other breaks? Those previous falls, as I mentioned? Has Thomas been bleeding inside the brain for over a year?

And let's consider that Thomas was already lying about Beth being alive and drugging Liam and letting Emma die before he suffered any kind of head trauma. So, what was behind all that? The pressure of Thomas' brain does explain his more recent behavior, but it in no way explains Thomas' behavior since Matthew Atkinson stepped into his shoes in March 2019.

So, Thomas needed surgery, and pretty much got through that as fast as you might expect curbside pickup to be ready from McDonald's. I really kind of tuned out the hospital stuff; sorry. Ridge was super overbearing up until the time Thomas got out of surgery; then the whole staff was wonderful. And I'd heard all the cliched soap hospital talk so many times, it just didn't register.

Things did get interesting when Ridge wanted to know, "Who is [Thomas] gonna be when he wakes up?" Indeed. Are we supposed to forgive everything he did now because he wasn't in control, and, as I just asked, how many of Thomas' deeds does this brain pressure account for? Also, does this mean Thomas will become a stand-up guy again, and someone Hope might actually want to be with?

I fear the wind may be blowing in such a direction, because "Hope" was the first word that Thomas uttered upon coming to, and Ridge and Steffy certainly made enough noise about what might have happened to Thomas if Hope hadn't been there when Thomas collapsed. Thomas was even super grateful when Hope went into his room to check on him. Uh-oh. Just no. Please?

LATER ON, WE'LL CONSPIRE

Backing up a little, Thomas was wheeled into surgery, and Liam and Hope arrived to support Steffy and Ridge. Liam was amazingly compassionate, considering; of course, he knows from repeated head traumas, which it's a shame the show didn't take a moment to mention. However, Liam did ask if anyone had called Taylor, to which Ridge barked, "I'm gonna wait...if that's okay with you!"

If I'm remembering right, at that point, Ridge only knew that Hope had supposedly kissed Thomas. So, why was Ridge acting like he was blaming Liam for something? Taylor didn't need to be there, anyway, since Ridge was already taking her place shipping Steam to Steffy while Finn was in the other room! It felt like Ridge already knew Liam and Steffy had done the do, but I don't recall Ridge being hipped to that info.

Well, Steam got their moment alone, and I actually, veritably, and quite literally laughed out loud when Liam told Steffy he had really seen Thomas kissing the Hope mannequin. Oooh, and Steffy looked pissed! "He was professing his love to a doll," Steffy snarked. In one facial expression, Jacqueline Macinnes Wood conveyed how torqued Steffy was to not only have betrayed Finn, but to have fallen into the Steam vortex again.

Steffy tried to justify things by working to convince Liam he had actually seen two people kissing, but Liam was sure. "Stephen King couldn't make this up," Liam sighed. Nice touch! Of course, if it had been Stephen King, the doll would have made an attempt on Liam's life herself. "Man, I can't believe this," Steffy spat. "Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?"

More like, why does this keep being done to us. We finally had Finn in the mix, and now we're about to tank Sinn over a mannequin. Then Steffy asked the strangest question. "Just say it -- you're staying with Hope!" Well, what did Steffy think was gonna happen? She just got through saying she loved Finn, and surely she didn't think one boink was going to be enough for a reunion.

Liam did own up to most of his stuff -- and before destruction forced him to, for a change. He admitted to Steffy that he had overreacted and that their tequila-fueled night of passion was "100% on me." Liam couldn't believe what he had done. It hadn't been fair to Steffy. Well, you got that right, Mr. Drop-Trou-At-the-First-Sign-of-a-Real-or-Perceived-Relationship-Problem.

Liam wanted to make things right -- he wanted to tell Hope the truth! But Steffy was vehemently against it! I guess she forgot how well things went when she tried to keep sleeping with Bill a secret two winters ago. Both Liam and Steffy bolted the hospital, leaving Ridge and Hope a few moments to themselves, and I have to say, what weird moments they were.

Ridge kept going on about how Hope had been rebuilding her relationship with Thomas. I think that was before Ridge found out about the mannequin, but even after, Ridge seemed to be making a case for Hope and Thomas redux. Ridge, just shut up. You and Brooke finally got your ish sorted. Let's not go through the whole "arguing about the children and nearly breaking up over it" thing again.

As for Liam and Steffy, they both stopped back by the cliff house, and both had affected a complete change of clothes. (At least Hope had an excuse because Beth spit up on her; what was Steam's rationale?) But that was the only thing that had changed. Because Kelly's parents were still arguing over whether or not Hope (and I would assume Finn) should be told about Steffy getting Liam's Yule log. Steffy said no one could know. Liam said Hope had to know!

How about you, Scoopers? Santa does reward good little boys and girls (and non-binary kiddos) for telling the truth, but is this truth coming out worth yet another couples' reorganization? Would that leave Hope clear for Thomas, and should it? Where would Finn land in all this? Do you agree with Eric's decision to take Quinn back? And do we care yet about the Carter/Zoe/Zende/Paris non-quadrangle? Make your list and check it twice in the Comments section below or the Soap Central message boards, or simply click here to submit feedback. Your comments could wind up in a future column! Like these!

"So not only does Liam not confront Thomas for what he thinks he is doing with his wife. But, then he runs off and does the exact same thing he believes his wife is doing. I think the mannequin is smarter than Liam. Does he even serve any type of purpose?" -- "Lynxcat"

"I'm with you on a Pharlie wedding at last. I know Alley Mills has not been doing much since her husband, Orson Bean, passed early in this dumpster fire of a year. But if they can get her to come back even temporarily to have the wedding, it would make a lot of B&B fans very happy. Let Eric put Queen Stephanie back on the wall and do it. He can always put Quinn back up later should he decide to take her back. Maybe Katie and Justin could be paired up. They would look hot together, plus it would make Dollah Bill go ballistic, which would make for good soap. Maybe Justin and Katie could start their own company after Bill gives Justin the boot for messing with his woman (even though they have long since broken up). Would Donna decide she wants Justin back?" -- Christine

I do hope the new year brings us some fresh situations to watch our B&B faves tangle with. As for this year, when next I Scoop, I will be getting into my Best & Worst picks for 2020. Should be an unusual column, as this has been a very unusual year!

Whatever you celebrate, or whether or not you celebrate, may this be a peaceful and joyous time for all of you, despite the situation we're all in and how it is changing our lives and celebrations. Keep watching, be alert, and most of all, be bold. And, to paraphrase Frosty, "be safe for goodness' sake." We are all in this together!

What are your thoughts on ? What did you think of this week's Two Scoops? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.