Disrespecting Dante: How General Hospital Botched His Exit BIG Time

Learning Dominic Zamprogna would be leaving his General Hospital (GH) role was hard enough. Seeing him leave and HOW he left was much harder because it left us baffled.

Seriously, Dante was a long-beloved character on the soap for nearly a decade, part of a classic couple, part of a core family, and one of the town’s moral centers, and THIS was how GH wrote him off?

“Hi, Lulu, you’re home, good. Well, got a job with the WSB and leaving now for who knows how long. Tell the kids goodbye for me.”

Well, that was a jaw-dropping moment if there ever was one. While we love soaps giving us jaw-dropping moments, this wasn’t the type we were thinking about.

Like Dante is just GONE. Out of absolutely nowhere he decides he’s going to get the man who tried to kill Lulu more than two years ago so they dragged a flashback of that moment out of the vault.

A moment that was stupid then – and just as stupid now used as a plot device to write off a popular character.

It’s a good thing Maurice Benard used Twitter to alert us that his last scenes with his on-screen son just aired or we never would have known that was goodbye.

But, Zamprogna’s on-screen mom, Lisa LoCicero? Nope, we sure didn’t get that and we have NO idea why. Olivia and Dante’s mother-son relationship was different and special and deserved a final poignant scene.

Even Dante’s final scene with Lulu wasn’t poignant due to the absolutely ridiculous plot device GH used.

Yes, we know the show was dealt a blow when it learned a second actor playing a cop character was leaving and may have felt another police funeral so soon would be too much.

However, the show’s job is to come up with something better than this. Perhaps this out-of-nowhere exit story could have had a buildup if so much time hadn’t been devoted to Peter August tied to a bed for nearly a month.

But nope, we got some silly flashbacks, a rushed goodbye, and no true exit scenes with the character’s parents.

General Hospital (GH) airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes.