In My Daughter's Name

 

Greetings fellow soap fans! I know. I know. I disappeared again. I don’t really have a good excuse. I have been watching the soaps the entire time, I can assure you. Maybe that’s one of the reasons, I haven’t posted. I never want to be one to talk negatively about my soaps. I don’t want to bash the writing or the acting for that matter. So, I’ll just say I don’t personally care for where I see some of the storylines heading. And that’s not just on GH, that’s on all four daytime dramas. Well, maybe not so much Days but the rest of them you bet ya.

 

I could talk about the ridiculousness of B and B’s Zoe, or Vinny suddenly becoming an evil genius who can read a lab result, much less change one. I could speak on my opinion of the firing of Donny Boaz which has led to an absurd sperm donor/surrogacy story playing out on Y and R.  I could get really snotty about the current characterization of Sally Spectra as some gold-digging schemer when Summer was the one who went on the offensive or the creepy Hitchcock like vibe to Chelsea and Adam’s story line, but this post today will be about GH. Because even though I might not exactly dig everything that’s happening on GH right now, I still find it highly entertaining.

 

Watching GH these last few months has been like watching your friends or family make increasingly bad decisions and not being able to do anything about it. And we’ll start with my Carly.

 

Let me go ahead and say that I’m Team Carly all day. I loved Sarah Brown so much that when she left the show, I stopped watching GH. It’s my loss, I know because I missed out on a lot of Tamara Braun’s amazing work. I must thank all the anonymous people who post old clips of GH storylines on YouTube, otherwise I wouldn’t know how awesome she was in the role. I’ve loved Laura Wright since Guiding Light and when I heard she was taking over the role, I tuned back in and I’ve been watching pretty consistently ever since.

 

Although I’m normally team Carly, I can always admit when she’s wrong. That’s the mark of a true friendship and in my mind, I’m Carly’s ride or die. But kidnapping Florence Gray was wrong. Just so wrong. It seems to be working out so far, but it was still wrong. I’m going to guess that the shock and grief of losing Sonny put Carly in some kind of fog because that wasn’t the only bad choice she made. She should’ve replaced Avery’s necklace a long time ago. The minute she and Jax decided to keep the secret—also another bad choice—she should’ve covered her tracks long before Sonny went missing or Ava was able to take Avery out of the house. Additionally, when you’re sneaking around looking for said necklace to switch, in the words of Joe Clark in Lean on Me, “Don’t fuck around with it, do it expeditiously!” What in the world did Carly need to stand there and examine it for? I know it was for the sake of suspense but for good grief!

 

Let’s jump forward to Sasha’s interview with Jackie. The idea of the interview wasn’t entirely bad. Sasha choosing to share that she and Chase faked the affair so Michael and Willow could marry in order to secure custody of Wiley was. I don’t understand why that had to be revealed. All the public needed to know was that she’d done something she regretted for a good cause and was having trouble dealing with it. The focus of the interview was supposed to be Sasha’s overdose and how she was dealing with it. I’ll tell you why I think that will end up being a problem a little later in the post.

 

Who would’ve thought little Avery would be the gas in the car that moved the storyline to its climax? When she said she wanted Sasha to have her good luck charm, my heart sank for Carly. All that hard work for nothing. I had a feeling she would sit back and let Nina rip into Sasha about wearing the necklace and not say a word and I was right. Carly was wrong for that too. Poor Sasha has been on the receiving end of Nina’s wrath more than once now all by herself when other people were responsible. I still get chills about the way Nina read her for filth at the wedding when the truth came out about her not being Nina’s daughter. Valentin and Obrect stood and watched that bus roll right over that young woman and didn’t say a word. Carly did the same thing again here. Come on people! Be better!

 

That brings me to Nina. First of all, I wanna say Cynthia Watros is doing some amazing work. When I found out Michelle Stafford was leaving the role of Nina, I was heartbroken. I mean, she’s a powerhouse, we all know it. I knew whoever they got to replace her would never be that kind of Nina. Who else would be able to play that vulnerable, fragile woman who seemed to be getting stronger with each test she passed? Cynthia won an Emmy playing a totally unhinged woman. Google Annie Dutton. If you’re a true soap fan, promise you won’t be disappointed. I was excited about what she would do with Nina and she’s done some great things. The scenes when she was going through Nelle’s stuff and realized she was probably her daughter were just great. When she sobbed, “You were here the whole time…” I got a little choked up.

 

But that’s where my sympathy for Nina ended. Her behavior at Sonny’s burial was inexcusable. But let me back up a few steps. I need to understand why Nina felt the need to track Jax down at All Saints to tell him she forgave him. It was incredibly selfish of her to want to have that conversation right then. His daughter was mourning the loss of her stepfather for crying out loud! Her talk with Jax could have definitely waited. If she hadn’t been so self-absorbed, she never would have been present to overhear his and Carly’s conversation. A conversation where she distinctly heard Carly say she hesitated but that she did try to pull Nelle up so running around screaming that Nelle was murdered and demanding justice for her daughter is beyond ridiculous.

 

Although Nina had no business crashing Sonny’s burial, the scenes were epic. I watched them several times. Laura Wright and Cynthia Watros gave it! All kinds of ugliness was spewed. Poor Jax looked caught in the middle and he and Jason both had the looks of men who know there’s nothing they can do to stop the madness of two strong willed women. The men in my family have worn similar expressions over the years.

 

I would like to take a moment to say that while recently I think Michael and Willow are being complete idiots—more Willow than Michael— they are just good people. I thought Nina was going to have to beg to spend time with Wiley but not only was that not the case, they actually made the first move and brought Wiley to her. They offered her an opportunity to have a relationship with her grandson and how did she repay them? By confusing the young lad.

 

Fellow soap fans, I’ll divulge a little personal information. I have two step kids and two step grandchildren. My grandson is the same age as Wiley. And he has never once asked me how we’re “connected”. You know why? Because he’s the same age as Wiley! He can barely say “connected”, let alone understand what it means.  Two-and-a-half-year-olds don’t think like that. All my grandson knows is I’m one of the people on his team. He knows if his parents aren’t around, I’m somebody he can feel comfortable with. I’m somebody he can trust and that’s good enough for him. There’s no way Wiley asked Nina how she was his grandmother if she wasn’t Willow’s mom. There’s just no way. Either Nina was lying or that was a bit of poor writing. It pains me to say it was probably the latter. Even if he were the most advanced toddler and did ask that question, Nina had no place explaining it without talking to his parents first. And don’t get mad but if Wiley is the most advanced toddler, we need to hear him say more than “hi” and “yeah”. The Olson twins are adorable but if we’re to believe he’s having actual full fledged conversations and telling Willow she isn’t his real mom, it may be time to SORA the tyke just a bit.

 

Which brings me to an argument that I’ve seen on social media lately. I’ve read a couple of comments that suggest that Willow isn’t Wiley’s real mommy and that she’s using Wiley to replace her dead son. While it is true that Willow is not Wiley’s biological mother, she thought she was for over a year. Nelle did that. See, no one ever really touches on the fact that Willow was a completely innocent victim in Nelle’s schemes. She didn’t know Nelle, Michael or Carly. She was just a young woman who made a huge sacrifice to protect her child from one chaotic circumstance and was literally dragged into another. Nelle is the one who started the lie with the baby switch and Brad is the one who perpetrated it. Remember Willow went to jail to protect Wiley when she thought he was hers. To suggest that all that maternal instinct she felt for him should have just shut off like a main water valve when she found out the truth is ludicrous. She would have had to have been a sociopath like Nelle.

 

Nina is just playing into Carly’s hands. Part of me wanted Carly to be wrong. I had hoped Nina would be able to accept things as they were and focus on building a relationship with her grandson. But apparently Nina’s going to spiral further into this abyss of instability. She’s not listening to a word anybody is telling her. And I’m not talking about Carly and Jax. On their first visit, Michael had gently explained that Willow as Wiley’s mother. Over coffee, Ava had gently reminded that while Nelle was Wiley’s birth mom, Willow was his mother now. She claimed she wasn’t trying to undermine Willow’s relationship with Wiley, but I have my doubts. Willow and Nina have had a tenuous relationship at best. When Willow said she got the opportunity to be a mother even though she lost her own child, it affected Nina deeply. It’s clear she is determined keep Nelle’s memory alive and is willing to re-write history to do it.   

I’d like to touch on that just a bit. Nina is under the impression that if she’d raised Nelle that she wouldn’t have turned out like she did. Her rationale is that Nelle was raised poor by a “bastard father” who left her with one kidney and that is why Nelle lashed out and hurt people. I don’t know about this. We’ve seen Nina’s parenting skills with Charlotte. Sweet Charlotte Cassadine who bullied her own cousin, disrespected adults, and put a snake in Ava’s handbag. Nina defended Charlotte so hard, she had poor Willow fired. I feel strongly Nelle would have been a privileged, spoiled brat who would have had money at her disposal and a mother willing to coddle her and cover up whatever she did. In short, she would’ve been a rich sociopath instead of a poor one. Furthermore, how do we not know Nelle was just born that way? Let’s face it. Her DNA is questionable at best. Her grandmother tried to kill her in utero and then killed her father. And as Carly pointed out, Nina ripped baby Avery from her mother’s womb. Nelle’s issues may very well be nature instead of nurture.

 

We all know this isn’t the end of it. Michael has put the brakes on Nina’s visits with Wiley but the look on her face at the end of Friday’s episode tells me it’s far from over. Nina is becoming increasingly erratic and delusional. When she told Ava that she tried to talk to Jax privately, but he blew her off, I got the look on my face I only get when Nelle is talking on my screen. I wouldn’t say Jax asking her to wait until the burial service was over qualifies as blowing her off. Did anyone else notice how she went on and on at Carly at the cemetery? She sounded just like Nelle. It’s not taking long for her to pick up the mantle or obsession as it were.

 

There are two ways Nina could approach this. She could take Michael and Willow to court for visitation or custody. I’m not really in the mood for another custody battle but they do make for high drama. And that’s where Sasha’s interview may come back to bite them as well as this asinine annulment. Nina will try to argue that Michael and Willow’s marriage was a fraud meant to secure custody. And damn it, it’s hard to argue against that with Willow moving to the gate house and going out on dates with Chase. I’m not going to get into that right now. Chase is on my list at the moment, but I’ll explain why in another post.

 

The other option is for Nina to go full on crazy and kidnap Wiley and go on the run. Unlike Nelle, Nina has the power and resources to disappear. Poor Wiley. I don’t know who has had more upheaval in his life, him or his father. I have vivid memories of the fights over Michael. Jason and Carly against the Quartermaines. Carly against Jason. Sonny against the Quartermaines. If I’m not mistaken there was a custody battle between Sonny and Carly at some point. And all of that was before the gunshot to the head and the prison rape. If anybody should be throat slashing baby switching maniac, it should be he. But Michael is a surprisingly well-adjusted young man who’s been through enough, and he should be left alone to raise his son in peace.

But the soap fan in me knows that is not to be. It’s just not what keeps us tuning in every day, is it? So, I’ll grit my teeth and bear it for the sake of this genre I love so much. And if it gets Michael and Willow together for good, I’ll accept it all with no complaints.

 

Well, in the words of Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that. At least for now. I hope to be back in a few days with my thoughts on the double wedding that never was.

 

Until then, let me know your thoughts not only on GH but the other soaps as well.

 

Sincerely Yours,

The Last Soap Fan