Lately, when we watch General Hospital, we have had to wonder what this soap has against women and their right to make their own decisions and choose their own destinies while not being dominated by supposedly well-meaning men who may or may not realize they are handling some situations all wrong.
General Hospital: Elizabeth Baldwin’s Been Trying To Speak Up
When GH first let us know in not very subtle ways that recently-widowed Elizabeth Baldwin (Rebecca Herbst) was set to be paired with Hamilton Finn (Michael Easton), we were willing to give them a try despite the fact that she was just in a popular pairing with Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth), a character who was inexplicably killed off.
However, the chemistry just wasn’t there, and we hoped that the show would realize it soon enough and drop it. Instead, what we have now is such a misogynistic mess we’re not even sure how the show plans to get out of it. Worse yet, we’re not sure the writers care or notice.
The first clue that something was off with this pairing was when Finn chewed out Elizabeth’s middle son, Jake Webber (Hudson West), and accused him of things that were just not true when he was not his parent and did this behind his mother’s back. That’s definitely not the role of a potential boyfriend who you haven’t even had a first date with.
We watched the subtle red flags about this relationship for months, as Finn berated Elizabeth for wanting to believe Franco’s ghost was contacting her and then practically ordered her not to check herself into Shadybrook when she knew she needed psychiatric help.
He disregarded her wishes not to visit, and he has gone behind her back more than once to dig into her past when she’s asked him not to. While we do believe GH thinks Finn is being written as the hero who is going to rescue Elizabeth, he instead looks like a controlling stalker, and that just doesn’t fly in 2022.
GH: Sasha Gilmore Corbin Needs Legitimate Help
Then we have Sasha Gilmore Corbin (Sofia Mattsson), a woman who has been tortured over and over again in what is seemingly a never-ending plot to make a woman hit rock bottom, but the goalposts for rock bottom keep getting moved. Yes, Sasha has been on a downward spiral all year, and for a very good reason. Her child died at just a few days old thanks to a birth accident that deprived him of oxygen during his last moments in the womb. What woman can handle that without proper help?
Yes, Sasha turned to pills, and yes, Sasha chose to remain in denial, and then finally cracked when caricature reporter Grant Smoltz (David Lautman) taunted her over the loss of her child. Should she have smashed his windshield? No. Did it show that she needs to spend time in Shadybrook and get the help she needs? Yep.
But instead, General Hospital is giving us a conservatorship story about a man, Sasha’s husband, Brando Corbin (Johnny Wactor), taking over all aspects of a woman’s life after a psychiatric breakdown, not even one year after pop star Britney Spears finally escaped the one her father placed her under in 2008 after Spears’s own very public mental breakdown. Again, 2022 is not the time for this.
General Hospital: No And Slow Down Mean No And Slow Down
Carly Corinthos (Laura Wright) came right out and said it to her mother the other day. Since she was 22 years old, her life has been dominated by two men — Jason Morgan (Steve Burton) and Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) — either separately or at the same time, and for the first time, she doesn’t have either one of them. She doesn’t even have her hotel anymore, but she still has herself, and if she wants to take things slow with Drew Cain (Cameron Mathison), she has that right.
Well, don’t tell Curtis Ashford (Donnell Turner) that. The man legitimately sat there in a small throwaway scene recently and told his buddy to ignore what Carly told him about not being ready for a serious relationship just yet, and go for it if he truly wants her.
Say what? Just ignore her wishes because why? A woman doesn’t know her own self, and a man has to show her the way? Really? Once again, this writing is just so off in an era where MeToo was a battle cry.
Let us also not forget Britt Westbourne (Kelly Thiebaud), who told newcomer Cody Bell (Josh Kelly) over and over again that she just wasn’t interested — and for good reason. He spent weeks insulting her, making misogynistic comments about her attitude, and showing up wherever she didn’t want him.
Now, GH is writing that as opposites attract, and it just leaves an extremely bad taste in our mouths.
GH: Why Is Willow Now A Martyr?
Perhaps the most egregious writing choice with a female character the show is making right now is with Willow Tate (Katelyn MacMullen). Since June 24, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, there has been headline after headline of women who wanted the children they were carrying but who could no longer make the choice not to carry that child due to their own health reasons or due to fetal anomalies not compatible with life.
So, this is the year General Hospital, which has tackled abortion before when teenage Lulu Spencer (then played by Julie Marie Berman) decided she wasn’t ready to be a mother, decided a woman is going to choose to die to save her fetus. Willow got the horrific news that she has leukemia while in her first trimester of pregnancy and is choosing to delay treatment so that her baby has a better chance at survival while not thinking of her own life or the child she already has who needs the only mother he has ever known.
Willow lives in New York, a state where she still has options so many women across the United States do not have, and GH had a chance to tell a pro-choice story where a mother chooses to prioritize her own life no matter how agonizing it might be to know she could lose a much-wanted child.
Instead, it’s choosing the complete opposite as Willow tells us that a man’s feelings are more important than her own because she doesn’t want to upset Michael Corinthos (Chad Duell), the father of her children, with her cancer news, so she’s just not telling him.
Is it possible for the GH writers to be more tone-deaf about what is going on in the world around them when it comes to the gender that makes up the majority of the show’s audience? These are not the stories that should be told in 2022, and we hope the show realizes that soon and chooses to course correct before any more female characters fall victim to this misogynistic writing.
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.
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