When Ivy showed up to munch on Liam

during a lunch layover, she was a welcome

distraction from the same-old, same-old

characters of her age set. I hope I’m wrong,

but when she said her life in Sydney was too much to leave, I figured her presence was just another character stunt like the returns of Xander, Bridget, and Thorne. Ivy gave a much-needed boost to ratings and Liam’s self-esteem, but her appearance might only be an evaporated drop in the Steam fog.

It’s probably best that Ivy is just passing through because she is as obsessed with Liam as she was when she donned Steffy’s Ajax Mountain wedding dress while competing with Steffy for his affections, and Liam is just as purse-whipped by Steffy as when she tore up his house after he married Ivy. If Liam desires to find himself again, he can’t do it by revisiting the ghost of cling-ons past, nor by allowing Steffy to disrupt his dates and rearrange his life on a whim.

I don’t know who died and made Steffy the manager of all relationships and Confronter in Chief, but — oh, wait. That would be Stephanie. Steffy filled Stephanie’s shoes recently by meddling in Hope’s affairs with Liam and then deciding to confront Deacon yet again about his theories involving Sheila. When Steffy saw Ivy smooch Liam at Il Giardino, Steffy forgot her sinking feeling about Finn and her anger toward Deacon, because, after all, there was an overgrown Ivy that needed abrupt pruning.

Steffy horned in on Liam’s date and smirked and mocked Ivy right on out the door, announcing that Liam had a playdate with Kelly. I thought Steffy figured she was lying to save Liam from having to tell Ivy that he just wasn’t that into her, but no. Steffy abandoned her mission to berate Deacon, took Liam to the cliff house, and called Kelly off her playdate to be with her dad.