Soap Hub Performer of the Week for GH: Maurice Benard

You’d never know Maurice Benard hadn’t been playing Sonny for several months on General Hospital given how easily he got back into the mobster’s skin. The amnesiac named Mike is no more courtesy of recent events and now, Sonny’s back as if he’d never left. Soap Hub bestows Performer of the Week honors for GH upon Benard for so easily sliding back into Sonny’s sharp suits.

Maurice Benard – Performer of the Week

It’s almost as if GH star Maurice Benard had teleported from the bridge where he had his final showdown with Julian Jerome (William deVry) last December back to Port Charles in time for fall. Even though Sonny remembers much of his time as Mike, it’s as if that man never existed.

Sonny’s back and he is letting anyone and everyone know that he’s in charge. No one got the better of Mike when he was tending bar in Nixon Falls but Benard’s Sonny takes his true alter-ego a bit further. He’s re-staking his claim as the mobster who makes no apologies for living the life he wants and watch out to anyone who gets in his way!

Sonny encountered Nina Reeves (Cynthia Watros, a previous Soap Hub Performer of the Week for GH recipient), at the cemetery where they argued over her decision to keep quiet about letting Sonny live as Mike for as long as she did.

Rather than throw herself at Sonny’s feet and beg for mercy, Nina tried to get Sonny to see that he was happy as Mike. “The real me was still in there,” Sonny (Maurice Benard) sharply countered, not wanting to think that Mike was the real persona or even part of who he truly is. Nina calmly tried to point out to Sonny that Mike had some positive qualities. “You’ve gotta listen to me, okay?” Sonny said as he got in Nina’s face in almost a threatening tone. “I’m sorry that you fell in love with Mike.”

“And he fell in love with me,” Nina pointedly added. Sonny maintained that that was an illusion. He wondered how Nina felt his life in Nixon Falls could have continued. Nina admitted she was in denial but she also didn’t want to take Mike away from the life he was living, a life in which he seemed happy and safe and free from the worries of the mob world.

Sonny acknowledged to Nina that she was great and even that they were great – “but it wasn’t real,” he said as if he was trying to convince himself. Nina made an impassioned plea to Sonny, telling him that she really did care about him and the man she grew to love. Her words didn’t fall upon deaf ears. Sonny absorbed them, but alas, they didn’t have the same impact as they might have if they’d been spoken to the man known as Mike.

Sonny is back — much to the joy of Maurice Benard’s many fans. He and Jason Morgan (Steve Burton) are back to discussing strategies on how to stay out of prison and ordering him to get rid of Sonny’s headstone. Sonny’s threatening Nikolas Cassidine (Marcus Coloma) because he thinks that he wants to leave town with Ava Jerome-Cassidine (Maura West) and their daughter Avery (Ava and Grace Scarola). (Watch out Nikolas – you might be headed for a meat hook!)

The intense mobster, who takes no prisoners and has more walls up around him than there are at Pentonville, has returned. But is he truly the same man he was before? Sonny told Jason he has sympathy for Nina — is that him talking or Mike?

General Hospital (GH) airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Port Charles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on GH spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.