General Hospital has a Carly problem that has been addressed on this website several times before. Carly in and unto herself is not the entire problem, but the idea that she is the show’s heroine who can practically do no wrong and will always be forgiven is. This week, Sam McCall got her turn to put Carly up on an undeserved pedestal.
Carly (Laura Wright) is the bad girl with shades of grey, the vixen, the manipulator. It is who she started as and who she still is. Nothing has changed about her except some maturity gained from age and being a parent, but she is still the same core character she has always been. She always has a scheme or two up her sleeve and was scheming until just a few weeks ago when she and Drew (Cameron Mathison) were conspiring to blackmail Tracy (Jane Elliot) in some misguided quest to get out of their insider trading mess.
She was scheming even more last year when she bribed a woman to lie to Drew’s face, telling him that Willow’s (Katelyn MacMullen) biological parents were dead so that Nina (Cynthia Watros) could never know she has a living daughter. When Carly kept the truth about Nina’s other daughter from her, that scheme was so Nina would never learn that she hesitated at the top of the cliff before trying to help Nelle (Chloe Lanier), who ultimately fell to her alleged death.
Carly also engaged in years of scheming to keep Jason and Sam apart and only barely accepted her in Jason’s (Steve Burton) life. To Carly, Sam was never anything but competition and Sam wasn’t very fond of Carly either. She knew that Jason always chose Carly and her problems in the end, which is exactly what helped break them up the last time. In fact, Sam was not at all surprised when she learned that Jason and Carly planned to marry. She probably always knew that was coming, even when she dreamed of Jason as her own endgame.
That is why Sam had the appropriate response when she learned that Jason’s brother Drew, the father of her daughter Scout, was also choosing Carly above everyone else. She was outraged. How dare he put Carly’s needs and the needs of her little girl above the needs of their child? Drew had already missed so much of Scout’s life but was now ready to go to jail to save Carly from a mess she made all on her own. We cheered Sam on as she railed at Drew. Too bad that anger lasted a whole hot minute as almost all anger toward Carly does — if anyone is allowed to be angry at all.
Carly’s instant friendships are becoming a thing on GH and we are not sure why. With all the bridges the character has burned through the years, she has made a whole host of enemies, but now they treat her like the queen bee who can never make a wrong move — or at least one who should be forgiven for every wrong move. When it came to Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst), Carly was even thanked for doing the wrong thing.
As Carly has zero ability to stay out of anyone’s business, she stole a photo of Elizabeth’s parents when Liz wanted to burn the pic. After she returned it to her a few months later and explained why she took it, Liz told her she had no right to do that, but thanked her anyway because she would have regretted throwing the photo into the fire. However, Liz was just as much a Carly enemy as Sam years ago, again due to Carly’s obsession with Jason.
Carly was also never friends with Epiphany Johnson (Sonya Eddy), but Epiphany tolerated her for Sonny’s sake. That was why it was so jarring when she gave a eulogy at Epiphany’s funeral as if she and the deceased were once thick as thieves.
After watching Willow, Michael (Chad Duell), and Drew forgive Carly for lying about Willow’s parentage, we were looking forward to someone putting Carly in her place and felt Sam was the perfect person to do it. Carly was taking her child’s father away because of her own greedy get-rich-quick scheme and she was angry about it. When Sam arrived in Carly’s kitchen the day Drew was to report to jail, we were ready for Carly to be read for filth, but that was the opposite of what we got.
Like with other former enemies who can now do nothing but sing Carly’s praises, that is exactly what Sam did. She told Carly that yes, Scout needed her dad, but Donna needed her mom and that was just as important. In fact, Sam was now proud of Drew for taking the fall for Carly and making sure that Carly’s family would still have her around. After all, Carly only committed her crime to boost Aurora’s stock. She wasn’t trying to make any money, she was just trying to help Michael and Drew’s business.
This now means that Sam is buying the BS Carly has even told herself about why she bought Aurora stock knowing a merger was supposed to take place. We all saw Carly sitting in the Metro Court Gardens telling Bobbie (Jacklyn Zeman) and Josslyn (Eden McCoy) all about the vacation they were going to take because an investment was about to make her filthy rich. We know Carly bought that stock out of greed, but apparently, if GH tells us that wasn’t the case enough, we will forget the scenes we saw with our own eyes.
It would have been enormously satisfying to watch Sam rip into Carly for never taking responsibility for her own actions, bringing up the years of animosity between them. But alas, all we got was Carly praise heaped upon us as usual because, for some bizarre reason, GH’s current writing team truly seems to believe Carly is Port Charles’s most beloved heroine. Longtime viewers like us are here to remind them that she most certainly is not.
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