Some may say that the age of the soap opera supercouple is over, but General Hospital looks to be defying that rule with Spencer Cassadine and Trina Robinson. Although their romance started off painfully slow, it’s in full swing now as they bring back young love on the run, something Luke and Laura perfected back in 1981. Does that make Spencer and Trina the next Luke and Laura? Thankfully, no.
Trina Robinson And Spencer Have Humble Beginnings
Current GH fans have watched Spencer (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Trina (Tabyana Ali) grow from tentative friends with Trina not even knowing this boy’s real name to a pair with a painfully slow build that Luke (Tony Geary) and Laura (Genie Francis) did not have. One-half of that long-ago supercouple also wasn’t recast not even a year into their story, forcing the writers to put the brakes on their romance until viewers could get used to Ali’s take on Trina after watching Sydney Mikayla play the part for several years.
It might have seemed like torture waiting for Spencer and Trina to finally kiss and admit their feelings for each other, but it was the right move. Now that they are an official couple, their appeal is much more apparent — and the chemistry that some viewers didn’t see before has become palpable.
General Hospital: Why Sprina Can’t Be Luke And Laura
While Spencer and Trina are the star-crossed pair trying to bring down the Cassadines and save the world in 2023, Luke and Laura were that couple in 1981, sneaking around The Haunted Star in an effort to find out just what this insane family was up to. They captured the imagination of fans everywhere, appearing on countless magazine covers with audience members of all generations cheering them on.
GH looks like it wants to pass the L&L torch to Sprina, even having Laura talk Trina through navigating The Haunted Star’s communication room as she did more than four decades ago. Heck, Trina is even wearing a pink gown similar to the one Laura wore during the original ice princess plot. However, with Spencer and Trina, there is nothing to mar their love with fans more than 40 years into the future. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Luke and Laura.
Luke raped Laura. That is how their ‘romance’ began. While the show tried to re-write that rape as a ‘seduction’ after fans fell in love with the chemistry between Geary and Francis, there is still no way to escape the reality of what happened. First, through the magic of the Internet, fans can watch Luke rape Laura as Herb Alpert’s Rise played in the background whenever they want, right on YouTube. You can even see the scenes right after where Laura reported what happened to her as just that — a rape.
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Then, GH tried to erase it all as Luke and Laura became a pop culture phenomenon, with their 1981 wedding becoming the most-watched soap opera episode in history. Fans who watched then and who still watch now can acknowledge that Luke and Laura’s story was magical after the whitewashing of their beginning while still admitting that Luke’s actions were absolutely horrid.
In 1998, the show finally addressed that elephant in the room when Luke and Laura’s teenage son, Lucky (Jonathan Jackson), learned that his father raped his mother. That knowledge changed Lucky forever, as well as Luke and Laura’s marriage. Reality had come back to bite them, but that is never a reality that will ever bite Spencer and Trina.
Trina Robinson and Spencer Have Their Own Story
Yes, Trina is in love with Laura’s very own grandson, a young man who has Luke’s last name as his first name, and like Luke and Laura, they are trying to save humanity from Victor Cassadine (then played by Thaao Penghlis, now Charles Shaughnessy), minus his big brother, Mikkos. But this is their love story, not Luke and Laura’s. They are unique in their own right for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with an older disco manager falling for a younger, married college student who worked at said disco.
While the comparisons between Spencer Cassadine and Trina Robinson and Luke and Laura are understandable, they are not entirely valid because Spencer and Trina will never have such auspicious beginnings — and that is something we can all be thankful for.
General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC. For an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.
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