Introduction

When I first started watching General Hospital some thirty years ago, Luke and Laura’s was the ultimate love story – the one that could never be torn apart.  They were the ‘it’ couple; destined to be together forever… right?  Wrong.  The writers have really ruined that storyline (dragging it through the mud again and again over the years).  Luke and Laura have gotten divorced, married and divorced each other again, I believe, and have both married others a time or two and since divorced them.  Luke is off on some other adventure, who-knows-where, finding himself, after his most recent reappearance on the show and ensuing battle with insanity.  Laura is back as a regular for now, helping Lulu through her separation from Dante – a more recent generation “true love” story that they are now ripping to shreds.  Can’t they let anyone stay together anymore?

On the flip side, Sonny and Carly are back together, remarried for the fifth time, in the hospital this time after his shooting which now has him paralyzed and in a wheelchair.  Those of us who know Sonny, know this won’t be the case for long – he is one determined son of a bitch; it’s amazing how he has barely even changed over the years.  Even when they show flashbacks, it’s almost impossible to see the thirty years of aging on his face.  What a gorgeous man.

Maxi and Nathan, newly united in the past year or so, seem to have good things going for them – although they temporarily experimented with a separation; more or less ‘wife-swapping’ with Elli and Spenelli for a month or two – they seem to be meant for each other.  The sexual chemistry is certainly there anyway.  This is more than I can say about she and Spenelli being together last year; I just had a hard time buying it.  Now when they first got together, and were ‘unmarried’… I thought that was cute; I was a little upset when they ended it.  For those of you not familiar with that era, I’m sorry, but I can’t help but reminisce. Anyway, you might not know that’s how she ended up with baby Georgie.  Not from the time they were together, unmarried, but from a brief encounter after that when Spenelli first met Elli and was conflicted about his unresolved feelings for Maxie.

Franco and Nina are an item now – Nina was married to Silas, who has recently been killed off the show (Kiki's father); Nina lost her mind a little bit after waking up from a twenty-year coma and has since fallen in love with Franco, the formerly-deranged-artist (now played by the same actor who used to play Todd on One Life to Live, which has been a little hard for me to get used to).  Anyway, they are pretty cute together; their stint in the mental hospital, when Franco shot himself up with LSD so he could be admitted with Nina, was amusingly touching.  They are both kind of child-like and go well together.

I know there are many other characters on the show, but I’m not going to review everyone’s history here.  Those of you who are not life-long viewers will just have to catch up in time; in soap operas, history is always recounted.  Every now and then, someone will have a conversation about past events and sometimes they have flashbacks.  This helps to fill-in-the-blanks for those who are lost.  I will try to help a little too along the way, if you keep reading my blog; like I said, I love to recall things when I can.

My purpose for writing this blog is truly to try to rekindle old interest, and spark new interest in this show; I’ve been watching General Hospital since I was 20 years old, having gotten ‘hooked’ while working in a law office in Las Vegas, Nevada after my first divorce.  Realizing what a soap opera my own life has been, I began watching with intent; it intrigued me, some of the things that the writers would do on this show…every now and then, catching me off-guard. They would throw some totally unexpected obstacle in the path of some poor unsuspecting individual (or couple) and then have them try to figure out how to overcome it.

It made me realize how much like life these soap operas really are… as God throws one obstacle after another in our path and we try to overcome it; some more than others.  Just like on this show, there seem to be those that trouble just follows – the ones that just end up in the most unlikely situations.  That’s me.  I’ve always said, if anything out of the ordinary can happen, it will happen, to me.  So, I guess, being a writer, I was taken in by the thoughts of other writers and enjoyed the challenge of ‘guessing’ where they were going with each storyline as the years rolled by. 

I have an alterior motive for writing this blog, though, I have to admit; the writing for this show has been going downhill in recent years… and I want to tell the writers that they ned to shape it up; so I will be bringing attention to the stupidity that is being written into the storylines whenever it happens (which it recently did).  I also used to watch One Life to Live and All My Children, which were both cancelled in the past few years, much to my dismay.  I enjoyed those stories as well and would hate for the same fate to befall General Hospital (or my newfound second soap, Days of Our Lives…) so my hope is to stir up curiosity among current generations, to get the writers to pay more attention to detail and realism in their scripts, avoiding stupidity wherever possible, and to build up the fan-base for GH, specifically, so that it can remain on the air for generations to come.

My daughter watched with me for many years when she was younger, and although she is a busy foster-mother these days, she loves to hear updates from me, and I’m sure she will be reading my blog, and would enjoy watching again in her old age, if it is still on the air.  Mind you, I am busy too, even now; in my tenth year of college, seventh year of graduate studies… working on a Doctoral degree in Pastoral Community Counseling.  Also, just published Part 1 of my book “A Letter to Heaven” now available in paperback – see links below (it’s only $11).  I’ve been told it’s a pretty good read… actually, I’ve heard “your book is amazing” from several people.  So, just thought I would throw that out there. 

Ok, on with my new GH blog!

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