Bold and Beautiful: A (Not So) Guilty Pleasure?

The soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful" has been a staple of late-morning/early afternoon television for who-knows-how-many-years (o-k, 21 to be exact), and for at least 15 of those years the program continues to be a pretty solid hit in Italy. Of course, over on this side of the pond, Bold and Beautiful is just called "Beautiful" (www.beautiful-italia.com) and it airs weekdays around 2:00 in the afternoon. Because unlike America, 2:00 is the time when most women (and men) are home for Italy's famous 3 hour afternoon break-time better known as "intervalo (they don't really called it "siesta" anymore). Besides, the great gods of television know this is the best time to stick the soaps on Italian TV.

Anyway, because my wife likes the program, I tend to watch "Beautiful" for about a week at a time every 2-to-3 years. Why? Well, first of all I'd rather read a book. In the absence of that, 2-3 years seems just about right to me: not a whole lot changes on "Beautiful" from week to week. Not to mention that Italy is about 3 seasons behind the US (I believe over here they are on episode # 5150) so anything I'm even talking about now is long since yesterday's news to anyone who follows the soap back in the states. Unless of course you live over here.

Well, I watched an episode with my wife just the other day and what struck me most isn't so much that the cast has hardly aged, its how virtually the entire cast of characters on Bold and Beautiful has slept with each other. This is news only to me I'm sure, not to the millions of other viewers who watch the program. I'm really surprised that the Forrester-clan hasn't evolved into an in-bred bunch of banjo-playing, cross-eyed hillbillies or worse. Or maybe they already have, I just haven't seen enough of Bold and Beautiful to notice.