HOLLYWOOD —This week’s Leading man gold standard goes to former “Dallas” star Patrick Duffy, who portrays Stephen Logan on CBS’s “The Bold and the Beautiful.” Stephen Logan may be a man who was once out of control of his own family, but with Patrick Duffy now playing the role, it adds a strong dimension to the Logan family that has been missing for a long time. Duffy’s eloquent and emotional scenes with his on-screen daughters Brooke, Donna and Katie were gut-wrenching to say the least. Stephen lost the love of his life, Beth, this week and he was the glue that held the Logans together, while Duffy was the glue that helped Susan Flannery hold the storyline intact.
Stephen’s long running feud with Eric and Stephanie Forrester restarted last week when he brought Beth to Eric’s home, which he now shares with the middle Logan daughter Donna, who Eric married after leaving Stephanie. Stephen was a bit hesitant to accept the offer from his daughter and her older husband Eric to stay at the Forrester estate in Bel Air. However, being so distraught and exhausted from being the primary care-giver for his wife Beth, he was grateful ultimately to have the help that he needed to care for his wife, who was suffering from final stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Stephen, however, immediately disagreed with Eric allowing his ex-wife Stephanie to stay in the family’s guest house. Stephanie has a way of taking over things and also of rubbing Beth in all the wrong places emotionally. Even before dementia set in, these two ladies vied for the attention of Stephanie’s husband Eric in the past, and Beth was solidly in her daughter Brooke’s corner these past two decades when Stephanie was trying to oust Brooke out of her son Ridge’s life.
Stephen warned Stephanie not once but twice to leave his daughter’s estate and to let him and Beth live in the home with Eric and Donna, since Donna wanted to spend the final lucid days her mother had left with both her parents around her. Stephanie refused to leave her perch and she also argued that they needed more adequate care for Beth and she didn’t belong in the mansion for Beth’s own sake When Beth drowned in the pool, her daughters immediately blamed Stephanie, but it was Stephen who asked the girls to just grieve and not blame anyone. Though you could sense and see the hatred Stephen had for Stephanie and you knew he had his doubts seething under the surface.
The scene when Katie went to the morgue with Stephen and Brooke to see Beth for the final time was so emotional. It’s hard to believe that the seasoned actresses Heather Tom and Katherine Kelly Lang could even do the emotionally charged scenes without breaking down themselves, but having a solid and superb veteran actor like Patrick Duffy with them, made the scene bearable and even more poignant for viewers and the actresses in the scene as well.
The lives of the Logans will never be the same again. However, with Patrick Duffy playing the family matriarch, it’s going to be even more exciting to see the dynamic between Stephen, Eric and Stephanie play out in the future. Patrick Duffy was the leading man this week who pounced at the opportunity to play every scene with high drama and great depth. The scripts Bradley Bell put together were sensational. Surely this is his Emmy reel for 2011.
“B&B” airs weekdays on CBS.
All Photographs Courtesy: Gilles Toucas Bell Phillip TV Productions
