Classic B&B ended when Phoebe died.

[joncharmed93]

I've been watching old episodes online and I noticed a tone shift after Phoebe died. The show starts resembling more modern B&B. Several characters left and new ones came on right after Phoebe died as well.

Do you agree or do you think classic B&B ended sooner?

[Kwaime]

Imo BB jumped the sharks with Massimo and Nick s arrival.

Rewriting Ridge being Massimo when his DNA was so closed to Eric s they needed Stephanie’s to settle Bridget s paternity

Nick who jumped from bed to bed

Ridget ...

this is being said Phoebe and Ally’s deaths were stupid moves ... nonsensical in the long term for cheap shock value.

Phoebs was sacrified for Bridge angst

Ally was driven into a corner bc they couldn’t write her with a personality..

[B-Hold]

At the time is was reported that Aly was killed off and WH ended contract and Oliver was written off to free up salaries to bring on The Avants.

[SharikaC]

Thought it ended when Queen Stephanie died.

[veryoldatwtfan]

Yep, I’d have to agree with you here.

[SheilaFan32]

I get that about Stephanie. But Susan Flannery wanted to retire. I wish her all the best. However, when it comes to Phoebe and Aly they were young girls. Writers should of never written Phoebe and Aly off the show. I feel like those characters still had so much to offer. Then next thing we know Hope Logan comes on as a teenager getting ready to graduate from high school. Bill Spencer makes his debut then his 2 sons Liam and Wyatt come on afterwards. The Spencer family was born. I thought the bold and the beautiful struck gold when they finally brought on a black family called the Avants. One of the members is a transgender woman. That's soap history right there.

[DepecheMode_Fan]

Classic B&B ended in 2003 after Taylor had died and around the time Ridge and Bridget were fooling around. Many of the years that followed (2003-2010) were still good, but I wouldn't call them classic. The show took a real turn after the passing of Darlene Comely and the phasing out of Sally Spectra. The real jump the shark moment was when Steffy hit her head and was inexplicably in love with Liam. The show took another sharp turn after the departures of Ronn Moss, Susan Flannery, and to a lesser extent Hunter Tylo (she'd left before but not when all these other actors were gone). As a result, the show had to recast, refocus strongly on newer characters and newer dynamics (Thorsten Kaye as Ridge, Maya and the Avants, the Fullers, Katie/Ridge/Brooke/Bill, etc.).

[Emerald Greens]

I don’t know if it ended right then but it was a big mistake killing off Phoebe and Ally. I don’t get the thinking on that at all.

[AnnMagda]

For me, I'd say the major shift came with the death of Darlene Conley. The Spectras had been phased out for a while, but with DC's passing that era was irrevocably over. The show has never been the same. She brought humor and heart to the show in a way no other character has. For me, there is still a huge Sally shaped hole in the fabric of the show.

[B-Hold]

I think B&B good days ended when Ridge did not return to Taylor the second. When Ridge ended up with Brooke he was pretty much neutered and became a lap dog for Brooke. Brooke Logan isn't a strong enough character to carry a show so took a deep nose dive after Stephanie's death

[viennagirl]

We had many actors/actresses coming and leaving over the years.

Often I didn't get why one had left and got recast.
I liked the first Beth (the one from the first 50 episodes) very much and while I liked the other one too, I didn't understand that recast after just 50 episodes. I liked the first Donna and the first Storm, the first Thorne...... .

I get that when MacKenzie Mauzy decided to leave, Bell wanted to write a dramatic SL he (got the idea after Hunter Tylo's son had just died the year before - and Bell then asked HT if she was okay with that SL featuring the death of a child).
In my mind he had made a mistake to make the TRIDGE twins identical ones for the first 14 years of their life (making it difficult to recast them) but at the time of Phoebe's death he had already rewritten them to be non-identical ones.
With Phoebe's death, Bell wasn't able to write any sister-competition or sister-betrayals as he did with the Logan sisters or the Forrester brothers.

But none of these leaves or recasts really changed the show that much.


I felt that in 2012 there was really a big change - RM and SF leaving - and even after so many years I still miss them.

No one has been able to replace Stephanie Forrester (and Brooke is missing her antagonist. The Quinn-Brooke, or Taylor-Brooke fights are just a weak copy).
TK is a great actor - but his Ridge is quite different to the one we had for decades. And while the former Ridge has been a waffler and has dragged the other woman along for decades while he got jealous when the other woman seemed to move on after he had made his choice, the current Ridge seems to be unable to love anyone deeply (gave up quickly on Caroline II., dropped Katie quickly for Caroline II, betrayed his fiance Brooke with his father's wife Quinn although he had claimed to hate Quinn and to want to get rid of her, states that he wants to save his marriage to Brooke but kisses again and again Shauna and shares a bed with her even when legally married to someone else.

[lexyluvsny]

I agree with ViennaGirl - things had gotten bad but I think SF & RM. I think it was because they were a bit more vocal about the show. I agree, I like TK and I like that "new" Ridge is a bit more pro-my own children.

Steffy has enough on her plate now that her mother & brother have gone off the rails (total re-writes that have added nothing to the show). But I don't know why they didn't recast or why we can't bring Felicia back for Ridge. Both of them could use some family support. Eric has no loyalty to anyone.

[islezeus]

You are so right, OP, it definitely went downhill, IMO, around this time after her death

[Boldfan4ever]

We had many actors/actresses coming and leaving over the years.

Often I didn't get why one had left and got recast.
I liked the first Beth (the one from the first 50 episodes) very much and while I liked the other one too, I didn't understand that recast after just 50 episodes. I liked the first Donna and the first Storm, the first Thorne...... .

I get that when MacKenzie Mauzy decided to leave, Bell wanted to write a dramatic SL he (got the idea after Hunter Tylo's son had just died the year before - and Bell then asked HT if she was okay with that SL featuring the death of a child).
In my mind he had made a mistake to make the TRIDGE twins identical ones for the first 14 years of their life (making it difficult to recast them) but at the time of Phoebe's death he had already rewritten them to be non-identical ones.
With Phoebe's death, Bell wasn't able to write any sister-competition or sister-betrayals as he did with the Logan sisters or the Forrester brothers.

But none of these leaves or recasts really changed the show that much.


I felt that in 2012 there was really a big change - RM and SF leaving - and even after so many years I still miss them.

No one has been able to replace Stephanie Forrester (and Brooke is missing her antagonist. The Quinn-Brooke, or Taylor-Brooke fights are just a weak copy).
TK is a great actor - but his Ridge is quite different to the one we had for decades. And while the former Ridge has been a waffler and has dragged the other woman along for decades while he got jealous when the other woman seemed to move on after he had made his choice, the current Ridge seems to be unable to love anyone deeply (gave up quickly on Caroline II., dropped Katie quickly for Caroline II, betrayed his fiance Brooke with his father's wife Quinn although he had claimed to hate Quinn and to want to get rid of her, states that he wants to save his marriage to Brooke but kisses again and again Shauna and shares a bed with her even when legally married to someone else.

agree - when RM left it was the start of a different era

[SteamForever]

For me, the show started going downhill when they killed Taylor in 2002,made Ridge a Marone to allow more semi-incestuous pairings and ultimately it died somewhere around the time Bell brought back Logan's and the retcon Spencers,sidelining the Forrester's (by then all Spectras had been written out and the final nail in their coffin was Aly's death in 2015).
Not only the original family has been sidelined, but many of its characters' personalities have been changed to suit Bell's agenda. The current BB is hard to connect with, it has nothing of what made me start watching it back in 2000/1.

[SteamForever]

I don’t know if it ended right then but it was a big mistake killing off Phoebe and Ally. I don’t get the thinking on that at all.

Yep. I get wanting to invest in the younger generation, but we could've easily had much more intriguing dynamics btw the Tridge twins and the Forrester cousins instead of the idiotic H/S mess. Bell should've recasted Phoebe and he still could undo both of those unnecessary deaths.
Killing Aly and not giving the actor playing Thorne a chance to show his talent was a choice only an idiot would make: plenty of SL could've come from Thorne's desire to avenge his daughter's death, blaming his niece and then finding out that that his own cousin could've prevented the worst of it, his father could've stayed home and payed attention to his granddaughter and his brother Rick could've avoided bullying an innocent and mentally fragile young girl and Aly would still likely be alive.
Anyway, I don't think there's a specific time when the show died... it was a slow and long process, but it definitely started with Taylor's last presumed death and it got worse every time an important character was killed, got silly personality transplants, and useless characters were brought in and shoved down viewers' throats for no good reason other than the fact that Bell felt like doing it.
For yrs, Bell has been doing everything a soap writer shouldn't do.

[Emerald Greens]

It’s been a steady decline. I don’t think killing off two of Stephanie’s granddaughters makes any sense either.

[River]

The killing of Phoebe was incredibly short-sighted, but I think it was the exit of RM and SF on the heels of each other which decimated B&B. They could have continued without one or the other but not both. TK is just not Ridge to me - the character has been completely rewritten to suit the actor and it's simply not the Ridge we knew for the better part of 25 years. I think they should have killed Ridge off, it never made any sense that he wouldn't return for Stephanie's funeral - she loved him more than anyone else. Or they could have had him presumed dead, lose his memory or brainwashed by Morgan/Sheila or something to explain why he had this personality transplant when he returned.