The Bold and the Beautiful is made up of characters who do absolutely awful things and then just move on. Things are swept under the rug, forgotten about, and forgiven — except when it comes to Thomas.
The Bold and the Beautiful’s Thomas Did A Bad, Bad Thing
Nobody is excusing the things Thomas did in 2019 when he returned to LA now played by The Young and the Restless alum Matthew Atkinson. Thomas was a changed and grieving man and his quick obsession with Hope sent up red flags throughout the fandom.
In his tunnel vision determination to make Hope (Annika Noelle) his wife and give Douglas (Henry Joseph Samiri) a new mom, Thomas emotionally manipulated his son and became verbally abusive. But he didn’t stop there.
Yes, when he learned that Hope’s baby was really alive his first instinct was to tell her and be her hero, but after realizing how much it would hurt Steffy (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) to lose the baby she adopted and that Hope would return to Liam (Scott Clifton) if she got Beth back, he made the horrific decision to keep his knowledge a secret.
When Emma Barber (Nia Sioux) got wind of the secret quite a few people had been keeping for months on end (Thomas knew for only a few short weeks), Thomas followed her with his car to get her to pull over and stop her from telling Hope. When she crashed and her car careened into a ravine, he did nothing to help her and left her for dead.
These were not the actions of a sane man or good man, but they were no worse than anything other characters on this show have done, both before this time in Thomas’s life and after.
B&B’s Terrible People Double Standard
Let’s look at the things done specifically to Thomas during this era, but post-Bethgate. Remember the time Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang) tossed Thomas off a cliff because she thought he was attacking Hope? Sure, she thought she was defending her daughter, but it still wasn’t one of her best moves. What did Thomas do after that? He refused to name Brooke as the person who pushed him and the incident was forgotten about.
Not long after, Hope and Thomas were arguing over custody of young Douglas when they ended up in the industrial Forrester Creations laundry complex. During their fight, Hope pushed Thomas into what she believed was a vat of acid and ran from the scene of the crime thinking she killed him.
When she told her mother what happened, Brooke thought about it for a hot minute and convinced Hope not to tell anyone. After all, if Thomas’s body disintegrated, who would ever know what Hope did? No harm, no foul, right? So what if her destiny Ridge (Thorsten Kaye) was worried sick about his son and searching for him?
Flash forward to 2021 and we have Liam and Bill (Don Diamont) crashing into Thomas’s best friend Vinny (Joe LoCicero) and leaving him on the side of the road to die. While we later learned Vinny threw himself in front of Liam’s car so Liam would go to jail and Thomas could win Hope, it was still a hit and run, but somehow Liam and Bill were forgiven and released from prison.
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Even More B&B Awful Acts
The Bold and the Beautiful is a soap in which Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown), a woman who has been terrorizing the characters of CBS daytime since the 1990s, gets a love story and partial redemption arcs. It’s also a soap that has seen Bill Spencer having Ridge tossed from a helicopter, Taylor Hayes (Hunter Tylo) shooting Bill in the back and never paying for it, Ridge raping Brooke when she was married to Nick (Jack Wagner), and Steffy killing her cousin with a tire iron (albeit in self-defense).
Even Quinn (Rena Sofer), who did some pretty shady things before falling in love with Eric, was eventually accepted and forgiven for heinous actions from the past. So, why are Thomas’s past transgressions the only ones constantly called out?
Unlike other characters, Thomas actually sought therapy (and not with his psychiatrist mother) and worked to become a better person. Perhaps, his friends, frenemies, and family members living in glass houses should stop throwing their stones.
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