What Fans Really Hate About The Bold And The Beautiful

"The Bold and the Beautiful" may consistently be rated number two of the four remaining network daytime soap operas (via TV Series Finale), just behind sister soap, "The Young and the Restless," but that doesn't mean fans don't still have gripes with this nearly 35-year-old soap that has centered on the Los Angeles fashion industry since 1987.

While "B&B's" popularity also remains high abroad, being seen in such diverse countries like Italy, France, Austria, Serbia, Belgium, South Africa, and more (via Soaps.com), among many others, American fans are not happy with all of 2021's stories and story trends on the CBS soap — and even some trends in other recent years. Yes, there are many things about "B&B" that work and fans keep coming back for more year after year, but there are also other traits this soap could lose and keep fans perfectly happy for 30 minutes each weekday, 52 weeks a year.

Although the character of Liam Spencer (Scott Clifton) was conceived as one of the soap's romantic leads, he doesn't come across that way most of the time because he is just not written that way. Liam is a man who jumps to conclusions way too easily. For example, he saw Thomas Forreter (Matthew Atkinson) kissing a mannequin that looked just like his wife, Hope (Annika Noelle), but all he saw was the back of the mannequin's head and couldn't even tell it was a mannequin, according to Soaps.com. This caused him to run off to ex-wife Steffy Forrester's (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) house, get drunk, and sleep with her, cheating on Hope when Hope wasn't actually cheating on him.

Even actor Scott Clifton weighed in on his character's latest bonehead move and couldn't defend him. "For the record: OF COURSE I want to choke Liam as much as y'all do. He's become a terrible person," Clifton tweeted. "But my job is to find a way to motivate and humanize Liam's choices. I can't change the story our writers want to tell; I can only try my best to make it evocative and real."

In fact, whenever Liam gets into any kind of argument with Hope, he heads right over to Steffy's house to vent about it all. While this makes sense due to all the years Liam couldn't make up his mind between Steffy and Hope, it still portrays Liam as a waffling man who can't seem to make up his mind between two women.

If there are three soap opera women who can never seem to mind their business, it's Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang), Katie Logan (Heather Tom), and Donna Logan (Jennifer Gareis). As sisters, they love to spend bonding time together, but they also need to gossip about everyone in town and insert themselves into the lives of the Forrester men. Yes, Brooke is married to Ridge Forrester (Thorsten Kaye), so that part is okay, but the Logan sisters' obsession with Eric Forrester's (John McCook) marriage and love life, especially after learning he had erectile dysfunction, was very much uncalled for (via Soap Hub).

Yes, Donna still claims Eric is the love of her life, but fans point out that he is married to Quinn Fuller, and whatever goes on in Eric and Quinn's (Rena Sofer) bedroom should not be the business of the Logan sisters. They need to stay out of it and perhaps find their own lives to live.

Although half-hour soaps were de rigueur from the 1950s to the 1970s when the first soap to expand to one hour was NBC's "Another World" in 1974 (via The New York Times), "The Bold and the Beautiful" is the only half hour soap left. When all soaps were a half hour, they managed to pack a whole lot of story into very little time, but "B&B" seems to be unable to do that in recent years and can only seem to tell 1-2 major stories at a time. When those stories seem to wrap up, another set of stories and characters make it on screen for a few weeks or a few months.

For example, what happened to Bill Spencer (Don Diamont) after he learned that he wasn't really responsible for Vinny's (Joe LoCicero) death and his trusted friend and business associate, Justin Barber (Aaron D. Spears) knew the truth all along, according to Soap Hub. Both actors gave Emmy-worthy performances in their confrontation scene, but we have hardly seen either one of them since summer of 2021, as of this writing. Bill has also spent the better part of two years trying to win back Katie Logan, according to Soaps.com, but that story gets dropped and picked up every few months for a few days, never resulting in anything and leaving fans frustrated.