General Hospital spent 2021 doing a couple shakeup and 2022 trying to get new pairings to catch on. Sadly, very few of them did and it has spent the end of the year undoing the ones who failed. However, it struck gold with one new romance — that of Anna Devane and Valentin Cassadine.
General Hospital Took Its Time With Vanna
Perhaps Anna (Finola Hughes) and Valentin (James Patrick Stuart) were the one new couple to truly work in 2022 because they weren’t forced, they weren’t sudden, and no character had to inexplicably be killed off for them to happen, a la Franco Baldwin’s (Roger Howarth) death so that Elizabeth Webber Baldwin (Rebecca Herbst) could be paired with Hamilton Finn (Michael Easton).
In fact, Anna and Finn were one of the couples GH chose to blow up in 2021, but by then, Anna was already working with Valentin to bring Peter August (Wes Ramsey) down and keeping it all a secret from Finn.
The chemistry between Hughes and Stuart was apparent the first time they ever shared scenes back in 2016, but at that time Valentin was a villain with no shades of grey and a man Anna thought of as her enemy. In 2018, scenes aired during a dark and stormy night in which Valentin told Anna that he remembered her having a baby and what happened to that baby. Although it turned out it was Anna’s twin sister, Alex, who had that baby, we were hooked on these performers as scene partners and were disappointed thinking it would never go anywhere.
Thankfully, GH chose that 2021 shuffle couple and decided to finally take advantage of what it had for years in Hughes and Stuart and finally go for it with Anna and Valentin.
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GH: A ‘Grown Grown’ Couple That Oozes Sexy
The year 2022 started out with that New Year’s kiss that seemed to go on forever at The Savoy, but fans felt Vanna-deprived when Stuart was off-screen for months while he shot the Disney series, The Villains of Valley View. It felt like this pairing was put on hold, but things finally picked up when he returned and unlike other couples who seemed to be thrown together with no thought this year, Anna and Valentin actually went on a traditional date to a drive-in movie.
Finally, October arrived and six years of pent-up chemistry exploded in one steamy love scene that set social media aflame and led Hughes to describe it as “grown grown” people (meaning people over 50) having sex in an ABC interview, something we don’t often see on soaps despite it being quite common in real life.
While Anna has yet to tell Valentin she loves him, he has had no trouble saying it since he’s waited most of his life to get this lucky with a woman he first met decades ago when they were both in spy school. When the moment finally does happen, we expect love in the afternoon at its finest as Vanna can be described as a throwback to the love stories of soap’s heyday. They’re even the stars in their own love-on-the-run story as the year closes, something that used to be reserved for the younger set, proving “gown grown” people still got it.
General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC. For an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.
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