Carly Spencer of General Hospital can often be called Soaps’ Queen Of No Self-Awareness. She rarely faces consequences for her actions and therefore doesn’t see that her actions and attitude really do have consequences. This past week she learned what her own actions have done to her two adult children, and she was horrified — and rightfully so.
Is Carly Spencer Having A Mea Culpa?
For the last 18 months, Nina (Cynthia Watros) and Sonny (Maurice Benard) have been public enemies numbers 1 and 2 in the eyes of Carly (Laura Wright) and her kids, Michael (Chad Duell) and Josslyn (Eden McCoy). While Carly has cut Sonny a bit more slack than she cut Nina for the whole Nixon Falls mess that was directly caused by Carly keeping Nelle’s (Chloe Lanier) identity a secret from Nina, Michael, and Josslyn have not. Sonny was the bad guy in their eyes, and that was that. How dare he not love Carly anymore? That’s blasphemous.
While all Josslyn did for a year was whine about the whole thing, Michael actually took action to put his father behind bars by hiring Dex (Evan Hofer) as a mole in Sonny’s organization. Carly had no idea about any of this and no idea that the two adults she raised felt this strongly about her divorce, even though she married and divorced Sonny several times as they were growing up. When she finally learned what Michael had been up to for a year, she could barely believe it — and was even more stunned that both Michael and Josslyn were willing to throw Sonny under the bus because they felt his crimes were worse than her crimes.
General Hospital: Carly Spencer Admits Her Mistake
One problem many fans have with Carly is that, in her mind, she can do no wrong. Everything she does is justified, and she can rarely utter the word “sorry.” But this week, that seemed to change. In a powerhouse performance by Laura Wright, Carly’s face told the story as the truth of what her own animosity toward Sonny had done to her kids — and she struggled to get through to them and do something about it.
Sure, she had the practical matter to deal with about the dangers of Sonny going to prison, something two adults who were brought up in the mob world should know, but she also had to beg her kids to stop. She chastised Josslyn’s “blood lust” hate towards Sonny and begged Michael to not turn against his father in such a horrible way.
Then, she admitted she did something wrong, which is something she needs to do more often. She did commit a crime. When she bought those Aurora shares, it was most certainly insider trading and she needed to deal with that mistake on her own. It wasn’t her kids’ job to clean up her mess because they felt some crimes count more than others. It was her job.
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Carly also refused to let anyone pay for the mistake she made in her get-rich-quick scheme last year. She wasn’t going to turn on Sonny, and she wasn’t going to turn on Drew (Cameron Mathison). She didn’t even focus on Drew’s cockamamie plan to blackmail Tracy (Jane Elliot) to get out of their mess. (And we see how well that went.) She focused on her revenge-minded kids and on facing the music for what she chose to do when she bought that stock.
That is the Carly we need to see more often. One who owns her mistakes, one who can take her children to task when they are wrong, and one who thinks of others more than she thinks of herself. If we see that Carly more often (and we are not sure we will), that will go a long way in fixing this longtime character who can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of writers who have placed her on a pedestal she doesn’t belong on.
And that’s not a bad thing. Carly is not a heroine and was never meant to be one. She is a shades-of-gray character who does bad things like so many others on soaps. But other characters can both see and own their mistakes, and this week Carly took a big step forward in that direction.
General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC. For an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.
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