After filling in on this week’s Soapbox column, I noticed that a lot of the comments were about

me being a Logan lover. That was interesting, I thought, because I’d never considered myself

Team Logan or Team Forrester. But am I?

I had to really ponder it for a bit, and when I did, here’s what I figured out. I am definitely not a Logan lover. Though Brooke eventually invented wrinkle-free fabric, her initial stronghold in the Forrester family business came from stealing Stephanie’s husband and then cheating on him with his son. Brooke may rock a nightie and be able to cry out of either eye on cue, but her entrance into the fashion world was anything but admirable. And her behavior never really improved. Whether Ridge was with the OG Caroline or Taylor, Brooke still pursued him with the relentlessness that I do that last French fry that’s stuck in the bottom of the container.

Donna is no better, heaven knows. Her “pickle-ball sessions” with Eric may have cured his erectile dysfunction, but they also ended his marriage to Quinn. Over the years, Brooke, Donna and Katie further lost me with their judgmental attitudes. I groaned every time the sisters tore down Quinn and literally saw red over the way that Katie got all territorial with Bill to the point that she got new squeeze Poppy arrested for murder. And then Katie didn’t even want Bill back!

Hope, I’ll admit, I generally like. But the way that she’s been written for the last few years has been confusing, to say the least. I didn’t get her insta-fixation on Finn any more than I get her insta-infatuation with Carter. And her relationship with Thomas just made me sad in the end.

The Gray Area

Here’s where things get tricky, because people often accuse me of hating Thomas. I don’t. I just occasionally bring up his keeping Hope from her “dead” baby and hastening Emma’s demise the same way that I often mention that Sheila has shot nearly every character on the show or that Young & Restless’ Adam stole Sharon’s daughter and planned to blow up his entire family. Is it still biased if it’s stuff that actually, you know, happened? So far as I can recall, Hope never let anybody believe that their kid was deceased or chased them toward an early grave. But I digress.

I understand that on our soaps, we just have to let go of things that in real life are unforgivable. But Thomas still irked me by not understanding that Hope didn’t want to tie the knot with him immediately after her divorce from Liam. I know, I know, that’s the Bold & Beautiful way; why does Eric even have a living room if not to stage wedding after wedding after wedding? But I appreciated Hope’s sense there and disliked Thomas’ lack of it. The fact that he then ran off and got engaged to the first woman who crossed his path tells me he was less interested in getting married to Hope than he was in getting married, period.

But put that aside for a second: Since, despite the unlikelihood of Hope and Thomas’ pairing, I enjoyed them together, does that make me a Forrester fan?

Exhibit B: The Forrester Family

Eh, no, definitely not. The Forresters are kinda patently awful, too. Just last week, Ridge stood in silence and let Steffy call Hope “just another slut from the Valley,” insulting her and her mother in one fell swoop. And he raped Brooke. And he lied to Krista Allen’s Taylor about his commitment to her. A stand-up guy, he ain’t.

Eric’s no prize, either. I rolled my eyes when he told Carter about the risk he’d taken in founding Forrester. Dude, you did it with your father-in-law’s money; take all the seats. Eric’s also a two-timer who ignored the “ick” factor of marrying his son’s ex. (Then again, if people on Bold & Beautiful didn’t marry their relatives’ exes, they’d have no one to marry at all!)

As for Steffy, even when she’s right about something, she doesn’t just seem right, she seems mean. (I suspect she gets that from her namesake grandmother.) That can be a lotta fun to watch, sure, but IRL, I wouldn’t want anything to do with someone like that. She’d level me with an icy glare over the first mimosa, and that would be the end of me! And if we’re lumping Taylor in with the Forresters, welp, I can’t say I like her, either. When she returned as Rebecca Budig and kept insisting she was gonna croak when she wasn’t, I got so exhausted by the repetitiveness of her apparent death wish, I was like, “Ugh, OK, fine, just do it already!”

Also, for a therapist, Taylor has a startling lack of empathy and surplus of viciousness. If, as she has said she does, she really believes that Hope is sick, wouldn’t she have some obligation to try to get her help? Taylor can’t think that name-calling and such is an optimal treatment method, right? Or is that a verse of the Hippocratic Oath that I’m unfamiliar with? Speaking in a calm, measured tone doesn’t make what is being said automatically more compassionate.

The Verdict

So what did I learn from all this musing? I’m not a Logan lover… and I’m also not a Forrester fan. They’re all jerks. Wait, does that make me Team Deacon? Hey, if it makes you feel any better, it isn’t like the show has ever listened to me, anyway. If it did, it would’ve played a “Who killed Sheila?” murder mystery ages ago and hooked up Bill with a certain pot-stirrer from Young & Restless.

What about you? Are you a Logan lover or a Forrester fan? It’ll be interesting to see how many of you identify as being in one camp or the other, so hit the comments with your answers. On your way, you can review our Logan family gallery here or our Forrester family gallery below.