General Hospital’s Nina Reeves Is Her Own Worst Enemy

Nina Reeves has a good heart, but her habit of self-sabotage seems to ruin any good thing she ever has going on General Hospital. While this all might be in character, it is also getting a little old.

Nina Reeves Can’t Stop Screwing Up

There are few characters currently on soaps who screw up their lives as much as Nina (Cynthia Watros) does. Perhaps Days of our Lives‘ Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker) can come close, but Nina is often in a class by herself. She often means well, but she has this impulsive nature that seems to force her to do things that can only come back to bite her in the end.

While Nina is a more mature woman age-wise, in her 50s, her personality is not mature at all, and while this can often be endearing, it seems to ruin Nina’s life at every turn. She was only about 21 when her mother drugged her into a 20-year coma while she was pregnant. When she woke nearly a decade ago, she found her child was gone (now we know it was really children) and was still a 21-year-old deep down. While 21 is technically an adult, women (and men) that age still have a lot of maturing to do. Thanks to her trauma and those 20 lost years, Nina still has a lot of maturing to do, and some of her actions illustrate that every day.

The character has always been a gossip monger, which would make sense for a young New York socialite, which Nina still thought she was when she came out of her coma. That gossip habit has gotten her in minor trouble in the past and often lands her in the doghouse with Willow (Katelyn MacMullen). She couldn’t wait to loudly proclaim that the then third-grade teacher had given a child up for adoption. A few years later, she spread a little rumor that Willow and TJ (Tajh Bellow) were having an affair, but at least the rumor didn’t get too far.

Those moments didn’t hurt Nina too much when she didn’t realize Willow was her daughter, but they are things that are coming back to haunt her now. Do these actions mean that Nina tortured Willow for years, as some fans proclaim? Of course not, but they didn’t do her any favors in Willow’s eyes either.

Can Nina Reeves Live Down Her General Hospital Mistakes?

Still, there are some things Nina should know by now. The problem is that the writers want to throw her under the bus to make Carly (Laura Wright) look like a martyr. There is no arguing that Carly’s actions are what led to Nina’s Nixon Falls debacle. Carly decided that Nina didn’t have a right to know that Nelle was her long-lost child, and when Nina learned the truth, she left town to visit her old friend Phyllis (Joyce Guy) in Nixon Falls and ran smack dab into an amnesiac Sonny (Maurice Benard).

She called Carly and tried to tell her that her husband was alive, but Carly just berated her and wouldn’t let her talk. Nina hung up and immediately made the impulsive decision to keep Sonny’s alive status a secret and not tell “Mike” who he really was.

We cringed the second we knew what Nina was about to do, but we got the pairing of Sonny and Nina out of it. Nina still became the town pariah — especially to Carly and her kids, but at least Sonny forgave her, and others in Port Charles started coming around — just not Carly and her kids, and of course, Willow.

Flash forward two years, and once again, Nina has done something dumb that will only hurt her in the end. Carly actions led to this latest mistake once again, but unlike Carly, we know Nina won’t come out of this unscathed, and the people she loves won’t be able to forgive her. Sure, Carly decided to keep yet another one of Nina’s daughters from her and then doubled down when the truth came out, telling Nina that Willow didn’t want a mother like Nina anyway.

Carly didn’t need to say those things, but she is Carly, so that is what she did, and the emotional pain led Nina to make a second big mistake. She tipped off the SEC to the fact that Carly and Drew (Cameron Mathison) engaged in insider trading. Yes, they committed the crime, but Carly’s loved ones see the informant (whom they believe is Ned) as the real criminal here.

Doubling-Down Nina Reeves Makes No Sense

Within hours, Nina regretted her decision. She had no idea the SEC would work so fast and interrupt Michael and Willow’s wedding to haul Carly down to the PCPD for questioning. She never meant for Willow’s wedding day to be ruined. When Willow later asked her to make peace with Carly, the guilt Nina felt was palpable. She even tried to pay for Carly’s pie at Kelly’s when the government froze all of Carly’s assets.

Nina did her best to tell herself that Carly wouldn’t end up behind bars and nobody would learn what she did. She even apologized to Carly for any hurt she caused in the past. But Carly was still Carly and remained adamant in her decision not to help Nina build a bridge with Willow despite not telling either woman they were mother and daughter for nearly a year. Carly’s refusal to help couples with Ava’s warning that Sonny would leave her if he knew what she did has led Nina to do something dumb. Now, she is doubling down on her efforts to send Carly to jail so Nina can live a Carly-free life with Sonny.

How she went from guilt to a new plot to get Carly and Drew to turn on one another makes very little sense and it feels more like a plot point than an action that comes from anything we have seen in the last few weeks. The writers are beating us over the head with the fact that Nina can’t stop sabotaging her own happiness. She is definitely her own worst enemy, but in this case, her latest actions seem to only have one goal — to make Nina look bad while Carly looks good. Haven’t we had enough of that already?

General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC. For an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.

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