Not My Holly: Why General Hospital Keeps Getting It Wrong

General Hospital has brought Holly Sutton back onto the canvas once again. And while it is always a pleasure to see Emma Samms, once again, the show seems to have no clue who this character is…or what she was.

Pros and Cons

This time around, Holly wants diamonds. She wants them so much that she is willing to let Luke’s (Anthony Geary) son, Lucky (Jonathan Jackson), remain a handcuffed prisoner.

Because, well, diamonds! And everyone knows that diamonds…or gold…or cold hard cash…matters more to Holly than anything else in the world. After all, she’s a con artist. Once a villain, always a villain, right? Holly will never, ever change. Except that, you know, she has….

Back to Before

True, when Holly first popped up in the scenic location somewhere outside Port Charles, she deliberately slept with Luke so that she could con his friends out of their life savings through a phony oil strike deal. (We’re not going to dive too deeply into the question of how much choice Holly actually had in the matter, considering that she’d been raised by her criminal family to be pimped out for them basically, and she was maybe all of 20 years old at the time, and completely under their thumb.)

But then Holly’s love for Luke and her affection for his friends changed her tune within a few months. She worked to bring down her family and turn them into the law — even when that led to her kidnapping by them.

MORE: See what’s coming up this fall on GH.

Later On

And, when Holly was married to Robert (Tristan Rogers), she gleefully played Mrs. Hart to his Mr. Hart, as they solved crimes together. Holly was never interested in money or breaking the law again. In fact, during the Aztec treasure caper, which brought Felicia (Kristina Wagner), Sean (John Reilly), and Anna (Finola Hughes) into the picture, Holly had no interest in the fortune to be made — only in helping her husband solve the crime.

Return Trip

This is why it’s hard to reconcile the Holly we watched day in and day out from 1982 to 1985 with the one who keeps popping back in every few years. The Holly we watched on the daily would NOT have put money ahead of an antidote to save her beloved Robert’s daughter, Robin (Kimbely McCullough), or ahead of Lucky (Jonathan Jackson), son of Luke, who we are also supposed to believe meant more to her than Robert ever did.

Emma Samms may be back. But she is not playing Holly. When do we get a return visit from her?