On General Hospital, Sonny’s half-brother Ric Lansing is headed back to Port Charles, presumably to help his daughter Molly with her surrogate baby woes. The scheming schemer always has a devilish trick up his sleeve and an ulterior motive, so he may be back to do more than help Molly by causing trouble for Sonny, Carly, Jason, and everyone else in town.
A Storied Past
Rick Hearst has come a long way since his 1988 debut in Frank Henenlotter’s cult classic horror film, Brain Damage. In 2002, he originated the GH character Ric Lansing, who initially had something of a mysterious past and would play the character on and off since then. Ric had a long history of framing, drugging, kidnapping, and blackmailing people, yet every time, he managed to avoid taking responsibility for his horrible actions. Now that Hearst is returning to GH, let’s have a refresher on where Ric’s been and what he’s done.
Ric was a lawyer who came to Port Charles with a mysterious past. His goal was to get revenge on Sonny (Maurice Benard) because he had been led to believe that Sonny was the reason their mother abandoned him. Ric started off by helping Sonny’s then-wife, Carly (then Tamara Braun), with her club called the Speakeasy, and then tried to seduce her but eventually got involved with Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst).
Ric and Liz had a tumultuous relationship, and after he blamed his brother for her miscarriage, he kidnapped Carly, who was pregnant, and plotted to steal the baby. When his heinous deeds came to light, he and Liz split up, but his jealousy over the fact that Sonny had a brotherly relationship with Jason (Steve Burton) and not him continued to fuel his need for revenge.
During a kerfuffle where Sonny thought Ric had raped Carly, it was revealed that Sonny’s mother, Adela (Iris Almario), had married a man named Trevor (Stephen Macht). She got pregnant with Ric, but after the baby was born, he forced her to choose between her kids because he didn’t like Sonny, so she took him to Bensonhurst, leaving Trevor to raise Ric. Seeing how that had damaged his brother emotionally, Sonny took pity on Ric and spared his life.
Tries To Win Back Elizabeth
Ric and Liz tried a second go-round when she got pregnant by Zander (Chad Brannon), and he agreed to help take care of the baby. But his scheming ways prevented the two from having any kind of meaningful relationship, and they broke up yet again. It took Carly being kidnapped by Alcazar (Ted King) to get Sonny to agree to take Ric’s help in finding her, and the animosity between the two started to cool down.
Ric eventually got involved with Alexis (Nancy Lee Grahn), and they had a daughter named Molly (Kristen Vaganos). When her daughter Kristina was in danger of dying from a sickness, she had to let Sonny know that he was the girl’s father — a fact that she’d kept hidden for years.
Fearing that he would try to take Kristina away from her, Ric agreed to enter into a marriage of convenience to prevent that. However, as soaps tend to go, Ric ended up sleeping with his wife’s long-lost daughter, Sam (Kelly Monaco). After they were caught together, Alexis kicked him to the curb.
Later, he went with Skye (Robin Christopher) to the Black and White Ball, where he was skewered by a villain wielding a sword. Although he didn’t want to, Sonny ended up giving Ric a life-saving blood transfusion and their shaky relationship got a little better.
Ric then became a mob lawyer for the Zacchara crime family and even helped clear the criminal scion Johnny (Brandon Barash) from murder charges. Johnny’s sister Claudia (Sarah Brown) hopped into bed with Ric as a thank you, and even though her father, Anthony (Bruce Weitz), forced her to marry Sonny for business purposes, she and Ric continued to dance between the sheets until she got pregnant.
Although it was fun for Ric to mess with Sonny and make him think the baby could be his, he eventually got fed up with everyone in Port Charles and left in 2009. It turned out that Claudia’s baby was actually Sonny’s anyway, but it didn’t matter because, in the end, she suffered a miscarriage.
Ric eventually returned in 2014, and this time, Sonny accused him of being the financier for the Jerome crime family. Julian (William deVry) framed him for shooting someone, so Nathan (Ryan Paevey) and Anna (Finola Hughes) helped Ric fake his own death and put him into Witness Protection. Unfortunately, Johnny’s minion Carlos (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) found Ric and captured him, but Jordan (Vinessa Antoine) and Shawn (Sean Blakemore) pulled off a daring rescue, saving Ric’s life.
None of His Schemes Ever Worked
When Drew (then Billy Miller) didn’t know who he was and was going by the name Jake Doe, Elizabeth was totally into him, but that didn’t stop Ric from trying to woo her again. He even paid Hayden (Rebecca Budig) — who would later turn out to be Liz’s long-lost sister — to pretend that she and Jake were married. Liz believed the lie and started to gravitate back to Ric. But, Ric’s schemes always have a way of backfiring on him, and when that plot got revealed, Liz tossed him aside like yesterday’s trash.
He then turned to his next nefarious plan: to steal Nina’s (then Michelle Stafford) vast fortune and split it with her mother, Madeline (Donna Mills). He convinced Nina to marry him, but she eventually got wise to his scheme, and once again, his hair-brained plot went sideways. To save his own hide, he threw Madeline under the bus, and she went to prison for Silas’ (Michael Easton) murder.
He couldn’t even attempt to get back with Liz one more time in 2016 because she had moved on with Franco (Roger Howarth). Her big issue was the fact that despite having previously been a serial killer, Franco was nothing but honest with her, while Ric doesn’t have an honest bone in his body, so he once again left town.
Ric had previously tried to help the FBI take down Sonny and Jason to no avail, but now that he’s returning again, it’s possible he could work with Agent Cates (Adam J. Harrington) to send Sonny up the river. We also realized that Ric has never been involved with Ava (Maura West), so a pairing of these two schemers might be in order here, and perhaps he’ll have a nefarious plan succeed!
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