Peter And The Death Nelle, AKA, Why General Hospital Is In LAST Place!

It was a shock to the soap world and the soap fan system when General Hospital (GH) recently dropped to last place in the ratings.

There was so much hope for the soap last fall when Steve Burton returned, the story moved at a lightning pace, and we were promised an umbrella story that would engage us while explaining what happened to Jason (and how Drew [Billy Miller] became someone he wasn’t).

Well, we got an umbrella story all right, but the wind must have been blowing way too hard because that umbrella turned inside out and the story morphed into something with Drew and Jason on the periphery and a new character nobody cared about at its center–eating the show right along with him.

That umbrella helped cast a dark cloud on all of Port Charles by taking a beloved longtime character, changing her history, and in turn, altering a storyline that spanned decades.

Really? Anna Devane (Finola Hughes) voluntarily slept with the man who had terrorized her most of her adult life.

A man she reviled more than any human on soap earth. Anna Devane, the virgin who met Robert Scorpio (Tristan Rogers) several years later? That Anna Devane? Oh, please, GH, do better.

But, if you MUST do this, then could you have given us a more interesting character who we maybe, just maybe, wanted to care about to be her son?

Not a character who would become a visibly pregnant Maxie’s new love interest about two weeks after she buried her husband.

We still don’t know where Jason was his entire five years gone, Drew only now began caring about how he went from Navy SEAL to mob enforcer, and Sam …continue reading on the next page —>

Continue reading on the next page…

We still don’t know where Jason was his entire five years gone, Drew only now began caring about how he went from Navy SEAL to mob enforcer, and Sam even choose which Jason is the love of her life.

Wasn’t this umbrella story supposed to be about them? Instead, they’re just a scattered shower out there somewhere that comes and goes.

Nobody has bought Anna sleeping with Faison and having a retconned kid, yet that story has become everything. Despite fan backlash, despite falling ratings, there’s Peter.

Just like–there’s Nelle (Chloe Lanier). Yes, she’s been around a whole year or so longer than Peter, but we have yet to figure out why.

Wow, her big secret was that she’s the daughter of Carly’s adoptive father that abandoned Carly as a toddler and by some miracle, Nelle was a kidney match for Josslyn. Oh sure.

Sabrina (Teresa Castillo) was killed to bring this character on. A beloved nurse on a hospital show who had just returned to the canvas after the actress’ maternity leave. Michael and Sabrina were a popular pairing. Nelle and Michael? Yeah, not even close.

The actors, as good as they are, have zero chemistry together and we’re beyond the point of rooting for them. Nelle has no redeeming qualities at all and Michael (Chad Duell) looks like nothing but a stooge every time he’s near her. So much good was destroyed to not just bring this character on, but to also keep her on.

General Hospital is lost somewhere, swimming in a flood thanks to a broken umbrella–flood of characters we don’t know or care about while the ones we do know and love have been washed away somewhere.

This is a fixable problem if GH is just willing to fix it.

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