Alan’s Soap Box: General Hospital’s Carly Overload

There’s been a common refrain amongst fans of General Hospital lately: There’s too much Carly. Even people who like the character or love to hate the character think it is a problem. The problem isn’t just that she’s on damn near every day. It is how the show is utilizing the character. How did we get here? You have to start with the guarantees.

Get Money, Honey

Think of soap stars as you would the Bennet sisters in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Like the Bennet sisters, they face an uncertain future in the face of an inevitable problem. The problem for the Bennet sisters was that they would be destitute after their father dies, so marriage was paramount to not having to be the poor relation living on charity. Soap stars face a shifting television landscape in which the shows that employ them might not survive five years from now.

It is in a soap star’s best financial interest to get as many guarantees in their contract as possible. The more episodes guaranteed to them means more money. I’m not mad at Laura Wright for having a high amount of guarantees. She is taking care of herself. This could be the last period of her life where she makes this much money. She has to think about the future like Mrs. Bennet and her daughters did.

Laura Wright isn’t the one who gave herself those guarantees. Frank Valentini and ABC did that. Laura doesn’t write the show. Chris Van Etten and Dan O’Connor are the ones doing that and figuring out how Carly is used. Laura is doing her job. The problem isn’t Laura. It is the other people.

An Intrusive Presence

Carly being shoved into stories she doesn’t belong in has been a problem for a while now. Notably, fans had a problem with Carly being involved in the climax of the “Harmony sure likes killing people with needles!” story. I understand it from a plot standpoint. They needed Carly to learn that Harmony wasn’t Willow’s mother and Nina was Willow’s biological mother. The execution was just clunky and Carly’s presence did feel intrusive.

GH needs to work on making Carly’s presence in a story feel natural and not like she just Kool-Aid Man’d her way through a wall into the story. People watching should be engrossed in a story and not wondering why Carly is there, and not in a pleasant way like when you find an onion ring in your order of fries. Fans notice when someone is being unnaturally shoehorned into a story and they resent it, which is why fans called bullshit when Carly was in the ELQ/Aurora merger story.

Carly has a terrible history with the Quartermaines. She ruined AJ’s life and made sure Michael was raised by a mobster because the Quartermaines were so awful according to her. This set of facts caused fans to explode in anger when Carly declared herself an honorary Quartermaine and started insider trading to get the Quartermaine family company ELQ merged with Aurora. Fortunately, GH had a plan that made Carly’s intrusive presence worth it.

A team-up of Ned and Valentin made the merger fail and caused the price of all that stock Carly bought to tumble. This means Carly loses her half of the Metro Court for her hubris in meddling in the Quartermaines’ business. Carly rarely faces consequences for her actions in this era of the show, so this is a positive development. Maybe the show can utilize Carly in ways that make sense and don’t feel like she’s Lil Mama crashing the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys VMAs performance. Only time will tell.

Mommy Dearest

GH views Carly’s children as extensions of herself. Michael being mommy’s little bitch has been the stuff of Soap Twitter jokes for years. He is even bent on revenge against Sonny for cheating on her which is absurd given the number of times Sonny’s penis has crashed into another woman like the unstoppable force it is. Sonny showing Nina where he’s not short is spilled milk compared to murdering AJ in cold blood.

Josslyn is written as Mini Carly without the internalized misogyny and propensity to have sex with inappropriate men. I do like that they’ve made her a bit different from Carly because Joss had a very different upbringing than Carly did. Joss grew up with money and had the most stable childhood out of all Carly’s children considering she only got kidnapped once and didn’t get shot. The problem is Carly can take moments that should be Josslyn’s, like confrontations with Esme. Esme videotaped Josslyn having sex with Cameron and leaked it online. Joss should be the Beyonce of that rivalry and Carly should be singing the harmonies like Michelle Williams.

It is tricky getting the balance right between veteran characters and their legacy children. Ideally, they should trade off supporting each other. When the story is more about the legacy child, the narrative sun should shine on them with the veteran parent enhancing it in a supporting role. When the story is more about the veteran parent, the children should be supporting them to give the story a sense of family and make it multigenerational. GH struggles with this with the most notable example being the episode of Wiley’s paternity reveal becoming Carly’s episode when he’s Michael’s son. It should have been his moment, but Carly’s narrative light overshadowed him.

You need to have legacy children be established in their own right so the show can have young leads and in case the veteran parent leaves the show. I don’t think Laura Wright is going to pull a Robin Christopher and leave acting to live on a farm cuddling pigs and wearing overalls like she’s Meryl Steep in Mamma Mia! Though you never know what’s going to happen with soap actors. Soaps need to remember what Whitney Houston said about children being the future.

Same Great Taste?

Dr. Pepper is a very popular soda. In Texas, it is up there with Jesus and guns in popularity. Though if you are being cheap or Dr. Pepper isn’t available, people have the option of drinking Dr. Thunder. It is fine. It tastes like Dr. Pepper adjacent. To Carly, Jason is Dr. Pepper and his twin brother Drew is Dr. Thunder. Why should I root for a pairing when it is about a woman filling the hole in her heart and vagina with a man she’s using as a replacement?

Laura Wright and Cameron Mathison have chemistry. Maybe if they wrote this differently I’d be able to ship Carly and Drew. I know Drew’s whole purpose for existence is being a Jason replacement, but I can’t support a pairing when it is really about another man. Carly would just be thinking about Jason during sex. She’d have to close her eyes for the fantasy otherwise she’d look up and see a man with more than one facial expression.

Maybe it could work if they used Jason as the obstacle. Drew could catch on that he’s obviously a placebo penis for Carly and then dump her. Then they could rebuild them as an authentic pairing without the weirdness of filling a dead man’s void. Being a placeholder is not romantic.

Your Boos Equal Applause

In an interview with Soap Opera News, Marcus Coloma revealed that a social media manager named Jason told him, “We don’t care what people are saying. We just care that they are saying it.” This explains a lot. I’ve called GH the stubborn soap before since they are slow to change something that isn’t working. Any attention is good attention to them.

I think this is an extremely flawed view. If a lot of fans have a problem with a story or how a character is written, they should listen. They don’t have to agree with the complaints. Soap fans can be whiny bitches and there are times soaps should just ignore us, like when people throw hissy fits when a recast happens. This “Oh, they are talking!” attitude led to over four years of Peter, and that was damaging to the show.

Feeling like a show ignores criticism can lead to people just quitting watching. There’s a lot of content out there from true crime to KDramas that people could watch if they get frustrated watching Carly roam around Port Charles yelling at people pointlessly. You can go from yelling about something on social media to just complete ambivalence about it if you get tired enough of it. Boos are not the same thing as applause.

Dispatches From Soap Land

*Y&R needs more sex and drama and less of people talking about podcasts. I’m on a podcast and I don’t want to hear people discuss the contents of a podcast on a soap opera. This should be a fireable offense for Josh Griffith.

*Poor Bridget on B&B. She had to walk in on her father balls deep in her aunt. Remember when Bridget was an actual important character on this show and not a day player?

*Kudos to Frank Valentini, Chris Van Etten, and Dan O’Connor for giving us a great 15,000th episode that honored Genie Francis’ contributions to GH.

*Days needs to get Cameron Johnson on contract now. Abe needs a kid on the canvas and Theo should be a young leading man. Characters who only visit for weddings should be reserved for people who were popular 30 years ago and not hot young people.