What You Need To Know Before You Start Watching The Bold And The Beautiful

Of the four remaining daytime dramas still on the air, "The Bold and the Beautiful" might be the easiest one to begin watching as a new viewer in 2022. As it's only 30-minutes long, including commercial breaks, the soap chooses to focus on just 2-3 stories at a time, often for months on end. Typically, different characters get rotated in for new storyline arcs, while other characters seem like they fell off the face of the soap opera earth until it's their turn for a story again.

Inevitably, each story will involve some sort of love triangle, often between the same trio of characters year after year, but there are usually different plot twists that keep people tuning in each weekday. If you want to give "B&B" a whirl and see if it's the soap for you, here's a simple primer on the most prominent stories as of this writing.

If you turned on "The Bold and the Beautiful" for the first time in March 2020, just days before production shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, you would have seen Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang) kissing a man who was not her husband, Ridge Forrester (Thorsten Kaye). As Brooke, a character who has been on the show since the day it premiered in 1987, rarely changes, she's at it again. In 2020, Brooke kissed her ex, Bill Spencer (Don Diamont), who was said to be the man Ridge hated most in the world (via Soaps.com). As 2022 began, she kissed her ex, Deacon Sharpe (Sean Kanan), who is now said to be the man Ridge hates most in the world (via Soaps.com).

In 2020, Brooke's kiss with Bill took place in a family cabin, and Quinn Fuller (Rena Sofer) spotted them through the window, revealing the truth to Ridge with a photo (via Michael Fairman TV). In 2022, Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) made sure alcoholic Brooke drank champagne on New Year's Eve. The drink made Brooke tipsy enough to kiss Deacon, who was wearing a Santa hat. Her step grandson, Douglas Forrester saw Grandma kissing Santa through the window and told anyone who would listen. He finally remembered who Santa really was and Ridge's ex-wife, Taylor Hayes (Krista Allen), was thrilled to tell him all about Brooke's big mistake, meaning Brooke and Ridge will likely spend spring and summer on the outs.

Steffy Forrester (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) may be a grown woman, but that doesn't mean she doesn't hate her step-mother, Brooke, and want to see her parents, Ridge and Taylor reunite (via Soap Hub). In fact, this is her greatest wish and she spends most days telling her brother, Thomas Forrester, that they have to make this happen. As soon as she learned Brooke kissed Deacon on New Year's Eve, she made sure to tell her mother so that Taylor could tell Ridge.

Meanwhile, Sheila Carter, a woman who at one time shot both Brooke and Taylor, is very proud of switching Brooke's non-alcoholic drink with champagne. At the end of 2021, Brooke told her that she wants her to leave her family alone, so Sheila decided to destroy Brooke's marriage (via Soaps.com). If getting her drunk hadn't worked, she had other tricks up her sleeve. Sheila also wants to get to know her long-lost son and Steffy's new husband, John Finnegan (Tanner Novlan), and feels Brooke will get in the way of that.

Paris Buckingham (Diamond White) has only been in "The Bold and the Beautiful's" fictional version of Los Angeles for about a year, and she's already gone through several men like water (via Soaps In Depth). She was first attracted to Zende Forrester (Delon De Metz), but so was her sister, Zoe Buckingham (Kiara Barnes). By the time Zoe left town, Paris had moved in with Steffy, Finn, and their new baby, Hayes, so she could help out and have a free place to live, so she started fantasizing about Finn.

Paris knew that was wrong, so she found another free place to live with Thomas Forrester (Matthew Atkinson), Steffy's brother. Thomas fell for her, but she let him down easy and told him she was now in love with Zende when fans barely even saw their romance. Thomas took the news like a champ, but when she learned Zende wanted to marry her, she freaked out and decided she now had feelings for Carter Walton (Lawrence Saint-Victor), who was once engaged to her sister, Zoe.

It's been a heck of a year for Carter Walton (via Soaps in Depth). He thought he was going to marry Zoe, but he learned she was flirting with Zende and broke things off. Soon, he began an illicit affair with Quinn Fuller, wife of his boss Eric Forrester, who Carter admitted was like a father to him. When Eric confessed he was suffering from erectile dysfunction, he sanctioned the affair, but then changed his mind so Quinn and Carter broke things off.

Carter then started developing feelings for Katie Logan (Heather Tom), but they eventually decided to keep things in the friend zone. He tried to also friend zone Zoe as he doesn't want to hurt his good friend, Zende, but Paris is relentless and insists that she and Carter have something between them. Paris' mother, Grace Buckingham (Cassandra Creech) would rather see her daughter with Zende, but she definitely finds Carter to be attractive (via Soaps.com). That's all in a day's work on "The Bold and the Beautiful," a show you are now ready to watch.