Tomorrow’s the Day: Bold & Beautiful Rolls Out a Plot Twist That Has the Potential to Altogether Save a Grievously Mishandled Character

Wednesday, July 23, has the potential to be a script-flipping day for The Bold and the Beautiful. Today’s the day that the soap returns Daphne Rose to L.A. And I’d understand if you said, “Big whoop.” I was all in on Daphne from day one, but the show quickly turned the mischievous and independent Frenchwoman into a typical Bold & Beautiful character who is about one thing and one thing only: the man that she wants. In her case, Carter.

I had hoped that the soap was giving us a much-needed antithesis to Brooke and Taylor, who have been futilely calling dibs on Ridge for decades even though it’s obvious who his true love really is. But nah. The show dulled Daphne’s edges, transforming her from the self-assured minx that no one man can resist into a fool for love who couldn’t even seduce the one guy she was supposed to!

A Golden Opportunity to Reset Daphne

But Bold & Beautiful has a second chance to get it right with Daphne. If she returns, as we all expect, pregnant with Carter’s baby, she can fib that no, the father is actually a Frenchman with whom she trysted once she was back home. They aren’t in a relationship and she has no desire to be in one with him. But she’s happy to be having a bébé and perfectly capable of doing it on her own, merci.

Carter, reflecting the show’s provincial mindset, would attempt to be there for Daphne whether she wants him to be or not. (Cue Hope’s upset.) But the Frenchwoman would rebuff him at every turn, saying that oui, she lost herself for a minute in her feelings for him. But that desperate, grasping woman that she became… that isn’t her and never will be again. “So run along, go be with Hope,” she tells Carter. “The spell is broken. I have no use for you.”

As days turn into weeks, Daphne strikes up a flirtation with Bill, who is in desperate need of a reset himself. He’s never met anyone like this version of Daphne. She’s as arrogant as he is, more sexually adventurous than any of his exes (even Quinn!) and altogether uninterested in commitment. “Why would I tie myself down only to change my mind later?” she muses.

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“Who says you have to change your mind?” he asks, smitten.

“No one,” she replies. “I want to change my mind — a lot. It’s fun. You remember fun, don’t you, Grandpa?”

In one fell swoop, Daphne would be remixed back into the character we initially met (and about whom I was so stoked) and Bill would have as his focus a new mission: impossible — to satisfy his ego by making her love him as much as he does himself. Needless to say, all hell would break loose when the truth is revealed that je suis désolé, yeah, yeah, Carter is the father.