It was 25 years ago when General Hospital introduced us to a teenage girl smoking a cigarette on Audrey Hardy’s porch, looking as if she’d already seen enough of life, but life had much more in store for Liz Webber as fans spent that entire quarter of a century waiting to learn what came before.
Liz Webber: A Shadow Of Her Former Self
Throughout those 25 years, fans also wondered why Elizabeth Webber (Rebecca Herbst) never had contact with her parents, but watching at least she thoroughly entertained us along the way. Through marriages, births, lies, dirty schemes, and heartbreak, Liz was a character with a backbone, never cowering in a corner and never actually needing a man to take care of her.
In fact, she raised three sons almost entirely on her own, with her oldest telling Hamilton Finn (Michael Easton) that Liz is the hero in her own story, so he doesn’t need to keep rescuing her. That right there has been the problem with the last year or so of Liz’s life. She became a widow when General Hospital inexplicably decided that killing off Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth) was a good idea despite Liz and Franco being an extremely popular pairing.
A General Hospital Rush Job
Rather than allowing her to properly grieve her husband, she was thrown right into a chemistry-less pairing with Hamilton Finn (Michael Easton) in which Finn’s feelings seemed to come before hers. Then, a convoluted plot that went from a stalker story to a ghost story to a sleepwalking story made Elizabeth the poor damsel begging for Finn’s help, afraid of turning any corner. Who was this character, and what did GH do with Elizabeth? Well, it took learning why her parents really abandoned her to bring the real Liz back to life.
‘No Cares Left’ Elizabeth Is The Liz We’ve Wanted To See
Watching Elizabeth confront her parents, Jeff Webber (William Moses) and Carolyn Webber (Denise Crosby), about how they abandoned her and finally learning why they did it showed both Liz and the audience that she was certainly better off without these narcissistic people for part of her teenage years and all of her adult life.
The Elizabeth who returned from California and that shocking reunion with her parents is the Liz we have been missing since Franco died. She is fierce, her attitude is back intact, and that manipulative streak is still there. There’s a reason Esme Prince (Avery Kristen Pohl) never believed Elizabeth had it in her to be just as conniving (without the sociopathic streak) as she is — she never knew the real Elizabeth and now might realize she met her match.
Taking Liz out of the confines of her little island with Finn, perhaps her most unsuccessful pairing in the 25 years she’s been in Port Charles, and allowing her to come to life in another story with her high school best friend is exactly what she needed and we needed. Now, if GH can just abandon the Elizabeth and Finn pairing altogether, all will be right with her world. Well, not all. We’d still love to see Franco brought back to life, but we know we can’t have everything.
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