The Bold & Beautiful Return That’d Turn Brooke and Taylor’s Feud Absolutely Brutal

It’s not just fall that is putting a chill in the air on The Bold and the Beautiful these days, it’s enemies-turned-BFFs-turned-enemies Brooke and Taylor. Now that the former has reclaimed Johnny Fickleton Ridge once again, she’s gloating to her rival every chance she gets. And Taylor? Uh, she might wanna invest in some shades, lest the daggers that she’s shooting bring her body count up to Sheila’s level.

But their cold war could heat all the way up with the return of a single character from the past, one that the show seems to have forgotten… but no way have Brooke and Taylor!

You Don’t Know Jack

Lil’ Jack Marone set sail with dad Nick more than a decade ago — and he’s ripe for a comeback as a twentysomething. Let us set the scene. One otherwise innocuous evening, Brooke gets a call… from prison. Jack has been arrested, and not for the first time, she learns. Her ex-husband has heretofore handled their son’s “issues.” But with him out of touch somewhere in the middle of the ocean, Jack had no one to turn to but his mother. No one with the money to bail him out, anyway.

Ridge suggests that Brooke leave Jack behind bars and teach him a lesson. “You mean like the way you did Thomas by freezing him out for about five minutes after he framed me for calling CPS on him?” she replies. “No, Ridge. He’s my son. I have to help him — or at least try to.”

Understandably, Brooke feels hella guilty for being absent from Jack’s life for so many years. She even wonders whether she kept him at arm’s length (and then some) because he was never supposed to be her son. He was Nick and Taylor’s. It was only through a crazy hospital mishap that Brooke wound up carrying and giving birth to Jack, a twist that so traumatized Taylor that she gave him up. Can Brooke make up for lost time?

Jack Attack

Once Brooke has sprung Jack from a Brooklyn jailhouse, he happily returns with her to L.A. Or so it seems. In fact, conniving Jack has played her, using her for a free ticket to the West Coast and a sweet set-up in the guest house of the Forrester mansion. He wants about as much to do with Brooke as she’s wanted to do with him for most of his life. But he needed a change of scenery — new highs, new girls… maybe even a surfboard. “You wanna get your butler on that for me?” he cracks. “I haven’t seen any servants, but I know you’ve gotta have loads of ’em.”

While Ridge starts a chorus of “I told ya so’s,” Brooke is forced to realize that she’s bitten off more than she can chew with Jack. He’s old enough to do whatever he pleases but misguided enough to ruin his own life. Desperate, she turns to… Taylor. “If you’d just talk to him, maybe you could get through,” Brooke pleads.

“Are you kidding?” Taylor asks. “If he doesn’t like you, how much must he hate me?”

“But you’re a world-renowned psychiatrist!” Brooke points out.

“Not to my own… ” Taylor starts to say before hearing herself. “I guess there is a part of me that does still think of Jack as mine. How sad is that?”

Scheme Weaver

While Taylor attempts to reach Jack, Brooke confides in Deacon, arguably the one guy in her life who could understand her troublemaking son’s mindset. Jack quickly deduces that he can manipulate Taylor even more easily than Brooke; all he has to do is point out her shortcomings. “I wish you had been my mother, not her,” he tells Taylor, making her putty in his hands.

After hiring Jack at Il Giardino, Deacon gets to know the young man and, as Brooke predicted, comes to see in him a younger version of himself. As such, he can tell when he’s been played — and when Taylor is being played. So he puts his head together with the shrink, offering her valuable insight into the angry young man. Ultimately, the tag team manages to get through to Jack, even convincing him that he shouldn’t toy with Luna’s affections just to stick it to “golden boy” RJ.

All’s Fair in Love and ‘Hey Now!’

Along the way, Deacon and Taylor commiserate about their missteps, their failings, their missed opportunities. One thing leads to another, and they decide that they have made a terrible mistake by never noticing who the other really is. As he contemplates a future that looks a lot saner than one with Sheila, the green-eyed monster comes out right on cue in Brooke.

“I just asked Taylor to help with Jack,” Brooke complains to Ridge. “Now it’s like she and Deacon are playing house with my son!”

“And… ?” Ridge asks. “Isn’t that helpful?”

Erm, yeah. But you know how much Brooke doesn’t like it when a man of hers isn’t focused on her — especially if it’s Taylor who’s caught his eye. Brooke might be moved to reawaken Deacon’s passion for her, in so doing upending all of the progress Jack has made by proving that she’s just as bad as he grew up thinking she was! (Plus, imagine an actor as talented as any of the above trio: American Crime’s Connor Jessup, Joshua Benard, who recurs as Adam on General Hospital, or William Lipton, who was Cameron on ABC’s soap.)