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"General Hospital": A Thanksgiving Turkey

Published: November 20, 2007 at 01:42 AM GMT
Last Updated: December 12, 2007 at 01:42 AM GMT

By Ed Martin

Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was the occasion for happy celebration on General Hospital. But the holiday this year promises to be a real turkey.

It pains me to write this, because after years of mounting disgust with the soap opera that once set the gold standard for daytime drama, I thought General Hospital in 2007 seemed to be lightening up again, moving at least part of the time away from the tiresome tales of mob madness and brutal violence that had drained the life out of it. But after a year of palpable improvement, GH this month skidded right back into the whirlpool of utterly unpleasant storytelling that had compromised it for so long. In a bizarre move that suggests a lack of understanding about what makes daytime drama special, the powers that be at the show elected to kill off the character Emily Quartermaine, played by Natalia Livingston, an Emmy winner for her work in that role.

There are so many things wrong about this decision that it is challenging to keep them all clear. If it is true, as has been rumored, that ABC and the show's producers didn't care for Livingston (I have no first hand knowledge of this), the correct way to remove her from the show would have been for Emily to simply leave town and pursue her medical career elsewhere. Killing off a character as significant as Emily in a glorified sweeps stunt after urging viewers to follow her storyline for 13 years shows a distinct lack of respect for the audience.

Emily came to the show way back in 1994, during the tale of Dr. Monica Quartermaine's struggle with breast cancer, a landmark story that set new standards for realism in daytime drama. As Monica recovered from and ultimately conquered her cancer (after a truly harrowing, real-time battle), she befriended Emily's birth mother Paige, a cancer victim who just before her death asked that Monica and her husband Alan raise her daughter as their own. Thirteen years later, despite the character's deep roots in the show's history and her limitless future potential, and despite the fact that the Quartermaine family is still mourning the loss of Alan (who died during another silly sweeps stunt earlier this year), the current GH creative regime decided to kill Emily off.

And what a dull, dreary death it was, too. It occurred just off camera, making it appear that Emily's mentally ill lover Nikolas Cassadine killed her, when it is obvious that he did not. (As of this writing, the identity of the killer has not been made clear, but I hope to hell it isn't Iraq War veteran Cooper Barrett! What a horrid statement that would make!)

I wish ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, took as much care with the legacy characters on its daytime dramas as it does with its legacy cartoon franchises. (In fairness, ABC is currently doing something wonderful with veteran diva Victoria Lord on One Life to Live, as recently noted by MediaVillage blogger Marlena De Lacroix.) The Quartermaine family for most of the last thirty years has been a vibrant force of high-stakes drama and divine drawing room comedy on GH, but in recent years the network has been bizarrely determined to destroy them and throw away years of future storytelling.

Consider the following:

Alan and Monica's son A.J., who like Emily was rooted in one of the most memorable storylines in the history of the show (the combustible love affair of Monica and Rick, circa 1979), was murdered by a blink and you missed her, long-forgotten minor character.

Edward Quartermaine's illegitimate grandson Justus Ward was similarly disposed of in a no-big-deal manner, despite the fact that he (like A.J. and Emily) had been integral to yet another sublime story from the show's extraordinary past. (The lovely tale of Edward's long-ago mistress Mary Mae Ward.) Justus was also the only existing African American legacy character on GH, and yet he was murdered in a non-story last year.)

Then came the death earlier this year of Alan Quartermaine. That mammoth misstep incited such outrage among fans that the character was immediately returned to the canvas as a ghostly figment of his wicked sister Tracy's imagination.

Remember the time when Thanksgiving Day brought with it one of the best GH episodes of the year? Regardless of where the show's storylines were at the time, the Thanksgiving episodes always featured its core families together in dinner scenes that were dramatic or comedic or just heartwarming. It mattered not if Luke and Laura had just been on the run from the murderous Frank Smith, or if Port Charles had barely survived being frozen by the Cassadine family's weather-controlling machine, or if WSB agents were engaged in conflicts with international spies, or if members of the Jerome crime family were causing problems, or if Monica was confronting cancer. We saw the Hardys and the Webbers and the Quartermaines and the Spencers and the Joneses gathered around their tables giving thanks, while other characters would assemble at Kelly's Diner and feed the homeless.

Now, as the holidays approach, GH is all about darkness and misery. As viewers nibble on turkey wondering where it all went wrong they can contemplate the countless lost storylines that could have played out in the years ahead had Emily or, for that matter, Justus and A.J. and Monica's other dead daughter Dawn, who was thoughtlessly disposed of almost 17 years ago, been allowed to leave town and return at a future time with exciting new stories of their own. (Poor Monica. Her husband and three of her four children are dead. The surviving kid is a brain damaged killer. Even the other great love of her life, Rick Webber, was needlessly killed. How the writers must hate her!)

In the spirit of this holiday week, let me brighten the mood by giving thanks for a few things that have worked quite well on GH this year. Kate Howard, a fashion magazine editrix in love with Sonny, has brought maturity and sophistication to the mobster's latest love story, the most satisfying since his fantastically screwed up romance with Brenda Barrett. Also, Sonny's haughty new attorney, Diane Miller, is a hoot. The rocky romance of Lulu Spencer, daughter of legendary super-couple Luke and Laura, and Logan Hayes, the recently introduced illegitimate son of Laura's ex-husband Scott Baldwin, has simultaneously honored the show's past while setting the stage for its future. Utilizing characters introduced in the dreadful spin-off Night Shift, which ran on SOAPnet this summer, GH has managed to repopulate its long-waning roster of doctors and nurses, recalling the decades during which this was a show about medical professionals -- some of them young and sexy. Recurring veteran characters Anna Devane and Dr. Noah Drake have been used to sparse but satisfying effect. (At least ABC hasn't killed them off!) It's great to see Dr. Robin Scorpio, a young woman who was infected with HIV as a teenager back in 1995, still portrayed as living a very complete life. (Thank goodness no previous GH writing regime decided to have Robin succumb to the disease in a heart-wrenching sweeps saga.)

Finally, even the hugely upsetting and seemingly pointless death of pivotal veteran character Dr. Alan Quartermaine has ultimately worked in the show's favor, with the deceased doctor playfully haunting Tracy. Stuart Damon (above), as Alan, and Jane Elliot (above), as Tracy, this year have brought us some of the best comedic timing between any two actors currently working on television, in daytime or primetime, on broadcast or cable. Damon and Elliot in the past have both been honored with Emmys for their portrayals of these characters, and they deserve to be recognized again next year. What a pity the GH writers couldn't give the two of them such fiery scenes when Alan was still alive. Damon and Elliot are priceless daytime treasures.

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Reader Comments(3)

It's a sad state for daytime dramas when history is ignored and not just the history of the characters but how soaps were written. GH lost its way when they forgot about the rich history that the characters possessed. Writers now rewrite characters rather than try to maintain continuity. 30 years of Alan and Monica go out the window for a cheap stab at ratings glory. As for forgetting how to write soaps, it used to be if you were going to kill an important character off, you'd do it off camera so there's always a possibility the character isn't dead. Killing off Alan Quartermaine and vanquishing Stuart Damon to ghostdom was final and unnecessary. While we've all enjoyed ghost Alan and Tracy, we also know that it can't last and the talent of Damon will eventually be lost on this once great show. In this year of death, destruction and mayhem, it's hard to remember the glory days of GH when most of the stories were about families and relationships and the mob was just a byproduct of the plot...they weren't the driving force.

Posted at 04:24 PM on Dec 2, 2007 by Chris

I wish GH would quit meudering people during sweeps. The killing of Alan Quartermaine was atrocious. Stuart Damon, has pleased his fans for 30 years in that role. I have been watching for 28 years, and I am proud to say that I love Stuart Damon, and I always will! They need to bring back Alan! What was the sense of killing him off, only to have him be a ghost, and only to Tracy? He should have never gotten killed off. It was totally unfair of tptb to to that. Now they did the same thing with Emily. Killed her off, and Nikolas can only see her. It's totaly B.S in my opinion. Get a life, GH! Stop this childish storytelling!

Posted at 05:33 PM on Dec 2, 2007 by Maggie

we should have had a classic Q thanksgiving but us fans were robbed once again of seeing our core family on our screens this holiday. I want the Q's back on my screen FULLTIME!!!!!

Posted at 04:04 PM on Dec 16, 2007 by Rach

It is tragic that Stuart Damon was let go. He has been an icon on GH. He has fascinated us for 30 years. I have watched GH since 1978. He was wonderful then and is only better now. What are TPTB thinking. The genre of soaps revolve around characters and the lives together, personalities and HISTORY. I feel cheated. Bring Stuart back. Beam him down from another planet if you have to. He and Leslie Charleson can still set the screen on fire. We love stuart and Leslie.

Posted at 08:58 PM on Feb 6, 2008 by melanie

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