GH and PC in Review: October by Amy McWilliams

View a section by clicking on the links below, or read the entire review by scrolling down. The review takes up 5 separate pages, but the navigation at the top and bottom of each remains consistent.

General Hospital

The Cassadines

Katherine

Nikolas and Laura

Alexis

Helena

Stefan and Laura

The Quartermaines

Katherine

Alan

Ned

AJ

Carly/Jason/Robin

The Jacks

Mac and Felicia

Taggert/Dara/Justus

The Spencers

Lucky and Elizabeth

Bobbie

General Hospital

• Stefan, back from his business trip, visits Katherine at the Quartermaines' and tells her that he hopes they can still be friends. He questioned her about her alliance to Helena and warned her to stay away from his mother for her own sake. She denied any such alliance, past what she had already described to him. He then warned her that he would deal harshly with anybody who harmed Nikolas. (10/1)
• When he calls out of the blue, Laura accepts Nikolas's invitation to have lunch at Wyndemere. He arranges a beautiful lunch for her and as they talk, she realizes that her son has forgiven her and loves her. She starts to cry and he comforts her. When he leaves to check on the next course soon after Stefan arrives to see them embracing, Stefan tells Laura of his visit with Katherine. They agree that they cannot trust her. (10/1)
• Nikolas asks Stefan about his father, and Stefan tells him the story of when he and Laura met, letting Nikolas think, again, that he is speaking of Stavros. (10/8)
• Stefan and Alexis discuss Katherine's fall and her subsequent actions, and Stefan asks her to track down Luke. She hedges, but says she'll find him. (10/9)
• Laura arrives and Alexis leaves. Stefan asks Laura to confirm that she told Nikolas that he was conceived in love, and she does. Stefan starts remembering the night they met and tells her that he will never forget it. They kiss. (10/9)
• Nikolas, meanwhile, visits Katherine. She tells him about the stock but says that the Qs all hate her (except Edward). He hugs her and tries to comfort her. (10/9)
• Stefan tells Laura that he loves her. She says that her love for him belonged in the past, as did that kiss. She declares her love for Luke, but he says he will wait for her to come to him. On the way home, she runs into Nikolas, who asks her for lunch on Friday. He notices that she's upset, and tells her that he only wants to think about the future. When he gets to the house, he asks his uncle not to upset her again. Stefan is pleased to hear that she's coming again. (10/12)
• At the same time, Katherine tells Nikolas that Helena loves him and suggests that Stefan and Laura have been lying to him his whole life. (10/12)
• Hearing that Laura is on the island, Stefan calls her answering machine and leaves a message saying that Nikolas has to cancel. He convinces her to stay until the storm dies down, and then begins to recount old times again. She says that she has to leave, but he lies again and says it's unsafe. She finally runs away to the garden to get away, but he follows and he proclaims his love again. They kiss. (10/16)
• Laura pulls away and moves to leave again, but Stefan convinces her to stay inside where it is dry. He offers her some old clothes from the island, and she goes upstairs to change. When he sees her, he tells her again that he loves her and that Luke may never return. She knows better. He says that he knows she will return to him and Nikolas one day. (10/19)
• Laura naps upstairs, and dreams of the past. When she wakes and comes downstairs, Nik and Lucky are there to see her. Lucky leaves immediately, and when they are alone, Laura accuses Stefan of setting the whole thing up. Nikolas walks her to the launch, and then confronts his uncle, who tells him that he shouldn't ask Laura to come back again. At home, Laura is very upset. (10/21)
• Nikolas tell Stefan about the conversation on the docks with Helena and Alexis, and Stefan assures him that Laura will be safe. Nikolas asks him what he feels for Laura, and Stefan says that it is not romantic love. Later, however, Nikolas tells Katherine that Stefan loves Laura, and then comforts her. He kisses her. (10/23)
• Stefan, meanwhile, fills Alexis in on the Helena situation. Then, when she's gone, he asks Jerry Jacks to embezzle money from Nikolas's trust fund and find proof that Luke and Alexis tried to kill Helena. (10/23)
• Stefan goes over the plan with Jerry, insisting that it remain secret. (10/26)
• Katherine pulls away and says the kiss should never have happened. Nikolas told her he would always be there for her. (10/26)
• Nikolas goes home and tells Stefan that he has told Katherine that Stefan's in love with Laura. Soon after, Katherine arrives to return Laura's engagement ring, saying she's severing all ties with Stefan. (10/26)
• Katherine meets with Nikolas again. (10/28)
• Jerry asks Alexis to get him off of his charges on claims of forgery; he's actually fishing for information. Meanwhile, Stefan gives Helena the figures on Nikolas's trust fund. Stefan and Jerry fight in public to avoid suspicion from Alexis and Helena. (10/29)
• Laura and Stefan spoke about Nikolas's upcoming birthday at the Grill, but she didn't trust him. He told her that he would answer any question she had honestly, but then remembered the night that he found out that Luke was alive and didn't tell her. (10/30)

Katherine

We opened the month with a great sequence between Katherine and Stefan. Well, at least Stefan was great. I loved that he came to make the peace but with a clear undercurrent of threat against her. He was in ClassicStefan mode, and it was nice to see. Unfortunately, the writing for Kat since her resurrection has been confusing and inconsistent. We have been led to believe that she is out for revenge, that she quite possible knows everything that happened on the parapet that night but isn't saying, that she's done with Stefan (although she seems to regret both the news that Laura and Stefan are closer and the conviction that she should give back the ring--it seems an empty gesture), and that she's in cahoots with Helena against both Stefan and the Quartermaines (or is it that she's going to use the Qs to get at Stefan?). At any rate, it ain't good. It seems, however, that we're then supposed to shift gears and believe that she has nothing but Nikolas's best interests at heart. Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. It is as though we've had, in the course of a few weeks, a microcosmic recreation of the different incarnations of Katherine over the years she's been in Port Charles. None of them work, none of them integrate her into the canvas (the only consistent thing about her is that she's been an outsider this whole time), and none of them help me to stand her. She was the sore spot in an already fairly uninteresting month for me.

Katherine: "I had few illusions left. Now the last one's gone."
Nikolas: "Oh, god, I hate hurting you."
Katherine: "You haven't. The hurt has already been done. But I told myself if we just had a little more time or if I had married Stefan before Laura came home. I had created a whole fantasy of '"might have beens' that I have to let go of now. It's sad to hand your heart to someone and get nothing in return. I don't think Stefan ever really loved me. I wonder if anybody ever has."
Nikolas: "I love you."

Katherine: "You were in pain that day, just as I was this afternoon. And both times, it was for the same reason--loss of love. And both times, we made an understandable mistake. But it can never happen again. I have tried to be a good friend to you, and that what I need now from you."

Nikolas: "So tell me--why did you give the ring back to my uncle?"
Katherine: "It belonged to Laura. And from what you told me about them, it still does. Giving the ring back was the right thing to do. Now we're all free to get on with our lives."

As for the particulars, I was intrigued, rather than repulsed, at the first kiss between her and Nikolas. I expected a storyline in which Katherine preyed on Nikolas to get back at Stefan, but I was pleased to see that this was more about Nikolas. Now that Katherine is not his Uncle's fiancée, now that he is more confident of Laura, he is reclaiming that affection which he had for her before Twist of Fate. Katherine's part in it was in character too; she wants so much to be loved that she can't quite turn away from this lovely person who wants her, even if she thinks it's wrong--or tells herself it's wrong. Finally, we get an assured Nikolas behaving like the grown Cassadine he is, and that, for me, outweighs the awful experience of Katherine sending mixed signals and certainly allowing him to get into a situation in which he'll be hurt. She is in the wrong, quite clearly, because if she's not using him in a plot against Stefan, she is using him to make herself feel better. She should know better and do better, and she is not. The whole thing, however, is as fascinating as a bad train wreck. Finally, though, it's fascinating because of Nikolas and because of the potential for disaster where Nikolas and Stefan are concerned. Katherine seems to be doomed to disaster, no matter what form she comes in.

Nikolas and Laura

Laura: "This is really so sweet of you."
Nikolas: "Hey, I'm sorry. This isn't meant to upset you."
Laura: "Oh, no. You haven't done anything wrong. Not now or ever. Oh, Nikolas. You are the worst victim of the war between our families. I mean, whatever pain it caused me, I--I guess I earned in some way, but you deserve so much better than this. A mother and a son meeting like strangers and--your trying to decode other people's memories of me."
Nikolas: "Well, hey, I've made a choice. I made a choice to look at it as a chance for us to begin building our own memories."

My favorite Cassadine/Spencer scenes from this month came from Laura and her son. Their reunion was beautiful, primarily because it came quietly and almost unexpectedly--subtly, not planned for. He was every inch the gentleman with her, almost courtly, as their lunch began, and yet so much the little boy at the same time. Their awareness that they knew of each other, rather than knowing each other, was wonderfully handled in his choices of all her favorites, and the relief and happiness on her face and in her tears, coupled with his comfort of her truly moved me.

Nikolas: "Well, that portrait used to hang in my father's bedroom. I'd stare at it for hours, and then I'd stay away from it for weeks, months. I mean, I wouldn't even go into his bedroom. I was so confused. But--but I loved you. I loved you anyway. Sometimes, man--sometimes--"
Laura: "It's ok. Say it, it's ok."
Nikolas: "Sometimes I hated you. I hated you more than anyone in the whole world."

The fact that he could speak of his hatred in the past tense--but that he had the chance, finally, to tell her of his emotions then, first-hand--was nice. They have found honesty now, and rather than Stefan telling Laura these things to hurt her or to guilt her into coming back or choosing them, Nikolas can tell her in order to make his (and her) peace with it.

I question the transcript, though I don't have the audio to double check. Did Nikolas really say "man"?! He really is spending too much time with Lucky!

Laura: "I was given a choice that no one should ever have to make--who will live and who will die. I did the only thing that I could do. I waited and I hoped."
Nikolas: "For what?"
Laura: "For a moment like this, when I could look you in the eye and I could tell you that I love you, that I've always loved you. I never wanted to leave you, and I never, ever stopped thinking that you were mine--never."

Somehow, the Sophie's Choice language here made me see this more strongly than I had before. I'd always thought of it as a choice to save her Spencer family, which makes it sound like it was the only choice she could have made. That impression, though, buys into Laura's typical "out"--her typical pattern of letting others make her choices or demand her choices from her. This was a choice that she made on her own: not to tell Luke, not to tell her family, not to return to her child. While Luke (or circumstance, or fate) may have made the initial choice for her when he saw her on the lawn at the Mayor's house, she made choices after that, or so we now learn. And that takes more strength than I believe some people give her credit for. At any rate, the language struck me.

Later, Nikolas was to tell Laura that he wanted to know about his father, though he didn't want to pain her. She told him at this time that he had been conceived in love. It's not the whole truth, but somehow this time I saw it as something she could give him, rather than something she was keeping from him. Their scenes were lovely, and Nikolas's criticism of Stefan throughout the month--his instructions no to upset her with memories of the past, not to drive her away--made me wonder if Stefan would come to be jealous or resentful of this reunion. He claims he wants it, but now that he doesn't have Nikolas as a reason to draw Laura to him, will he perhaps not be pleased with the very thing he's always said he desires?

Nikolas has come into his own this month, it feels like to me, or at least I've come into a new appreciation for the character. I'm interested in him, in his new found strength, rather than liking him just because of the interesting things he does for other characters and stories.

Alexis

Stefan: "I want you to find the person, or persons, responsible for Katherine Bell's fall."
Jerry: "Why don't I just find Amelia Earhart while I'm at it?"
Stefan: "Should you accept, you would start with the name Luke Spencer and follow the trail from there. You would also explore the possibility that my sister, Alexis Davis, is involved."
Jerry: "Your own sister. Is there anyone you trust?"
Stefan: "No."

Alexis appeared, primarily, with Ned this month, and I found myself missing her scenes with her own family. I don't know, however, that they'll be pleasant together for a long while. After she convinced Stefan to forgive her (or, perhaps, after he chose to forgive her in the face of Helena), for him to find out again that she's betrayed him in some way may be the end of them for the foreseeable future. His repeated line that she was the only one he could trust paid off here. I was very intrigued by his request for her to find Luke; was it an attempt to find out whether they were in contact? Does the fact that Stefan later knows where Luke is mean that she found him? Or was Stefan looking for him on his own?

Those things may remain unanswered, but all questions left my mind when Stefan brought in Jerry Jacks, both to steal money from Nikolas's trust and to find proof of Alexis and Luke's conspiracy. The potential for conflict of interest on Jerry's part is delicious, and the scenes with the two of them have been great fun, from their initial conversation to Jerry's approach to Alexis and the subsequent impromptu-yet-staged fight at the Grill. I love Stefan's choice; I love that this means both characters cross the boundaries of their own storylines; I love that Jerry infuriates Stefan. Fun!

Helena

Helena was woefully underused this month as well, which both added to the confusion of the Katherine material and disappointed me on general principle. Even after she brought Katherine back from the dead, Stefan treats her as if she's not truly a threat. He always seems to have the upper hand and be one step ahead of her, and I really wish that would catch up to him and bite him on the butt sooner rather than later.

Besides, I want some scenes with her and Jerry, both because of the way he interacted with Veronica and, again, on general principle.

Stefan and Laura

My objections to Stefan over this month and the next were to be three-fold: 1) the above 2) the fact that they are rewriting little details about the time on the island 3) the way his style of lying has changed. I'll talk about these more along the way, but suffice it to say I was one unhappy Stefan fan. I've reconciled myself to some of it, but not to all.

Stefan: "It's a simple question, Laura. Did you tell Nikolas he was conceived in love?"
Laura: "Don't read into this."
Stefan: "Thank you."
Laura: "Stefan--"
Stefan: "No, it helped him. It helped him. It's what he's wanted to believe. And he needed to hear it from you."

Laura: "I don't think we should go back there."
Stefan: "Well, if Nikolas asks, our stories should match."

I take it back. Stefan can still use Nikolas to get to her, only this time he's using her new found closeness with her son against her. "Our stories should match?" That's such a blatant manipulation. But at least it's in character for him to say one thing and mean another in a way that what is said isn't a direct lie. He got her to talk about the past, and the fact is she needs to do that. With Luke, she only thought of the horror of the past; he could only see the horror (and in fact, even these happy parts are horror to him). That was easier, for it let her focus on the bad and not face the reality of the good. People have complained that they're not showing us the horror of her time on the island, but I think that's part and parcel of what she's got to go through to make a conscious decision now, in the present, as to which family she'll choose. That choice has always been made for her, as I've argued ad nauseum elsewhere, and I'm a firm believer that she's got to face the potential for a family with Stefan and Nikolas and not take her marriage as a given. It can only make her faith in her marriage stronger--and Luke's, hopefully--to know that she chose him. When there was a conscious, present choice to be made, she chose him.

Finally, she's been seeing Stefan and Nikolas as a package deal. Stefan still wants her to do that, still wants her to focus on the time they were a family on the island. For the danger to him is that she'll have a relationship with her son and not be dependent on his good will for that. As in her arguments with Luke, they've channeled things onto Nikolas--have made their relationship be about Nikolas--and while Stefan still does that, at least they're coming to the point where they're facing the fact that this choice is about the two of them and their past, not about giving a family to Nikolas (though of course that is a factor).

Stefan: "Again it begins."
Laura: "No, this is not a beginning."
Stefan: "The familiar dance. You draw me close, then pull away."
Laura: "Don't--"
Stefan: "No, how long this time until you vanish? Our last kiss was a prelude to your death. The kiss before that, a brief parting that lasted a decade and a half."
Laura: "No, I refuse to let you--"
Stefan: "Oh, then this is not us bidding each other good-bye? This--this kiss was intended as something more than a signal of flight?"
Laura: "This wasn't intended at all."
Stefan: "No. Nothing between us ever is. Not what happened between us on the island. Not our silent connection. Or our son."
Laura: "I don't regret any of it. You kept me sane when I was being held prisoner, when I thought my husband was dead. And, yes, you gave me my first child. But things are different now. I'm not a prisoner anymore."
Stefan: "Now we are free to build a life."

I hated the "familiar dance" line. Hated it. The reason? Not because it was wrong, but because it was a paraphrase of Luke's line in the rape retelling. Perhaps it is the way Laura deals with men she isn't sure she should/can choose, but I don't like that the words were repeated in Stefan's mouth. It seemed to invade that other scene, as well as make the overtones to this one aggressive rather than romantic. And indeed, the force was to come, and I was to dislike where we were headed in this sequence of scenes.

It is interesting to me to see the many ways Stefan disregards her marriage. By that I mean not how he disparages Luke, but how he sees her marriage vows null and void. The truth is, she's not free to build a life with him. She would need a divorce, or at least a messy parting, and Luke would never make that easy. Stefan elides all of that, however, with the language of freedom. The same language, I would wager, they used together on the island.

Stefan: "You always loved staring out at the water."
Laura: "You know, I'm not the same girl that you used to know."
Stefan: "Some things don't change. The tie that binds us--"
Laura: "Is Nikolas. It's Nikolas. The rest of it was over a long time ago."
Stefan: "No."
Laura: "Well, it was for me."
Stefan: "Who are you trying to convince, Lasha?"
Laura: "You. And I wish that you would listen to me. I am not the same girl who was held captive on that island. When I thought that Luke was dead, a part of me died, too. It's Luke. Luke is the one who makes me whole." Stefan: "Is that what he's taught you? That nothing is real except your connection to him?"
Laura: "You see over there?"
Stefan: "The yacht harbor."
Laura: "Mm-hmm. When I was still a teenager, Luke got into a fight with my then-husband, Scotty Baldwin. Scotty knocked him overboard, and everyone thought that Luke had drowned. But he didn't. He got out of the water, and he took my hand, and we ran away. I still remember that feeling. I knew that I would follow him anywhere. Anyway, a lot has changed over the years. But my certainty about that hasn't."
Stefan: "And Nikolas and I--what are we? Mere particles in the Spencer cosmos?"
Laura: "I love my son. And you--you are a part of his life. And beyond that, there's just nothing more to say. What we had ended a long time ago."

He can't listen to her stories and actually hear them. He has to spin them as Luke's teachings, or the past, or habit. He can't grant that she had a minute of happiness with Luke, or that Luke is anything less than a bully. That makes sense to me. It's also interesting, however, to see that he's trying to put that in the past just as she's trying to put her relationship to him in the past. He has the disadvantage, however, because Luke has been firmly in the present, and it's not so easy to dislodge him as Stefan might like.

Stefan: "You know, if you would rather fight the memory, I will refrain from allusions to our past."
Laura: "You won't have to. You won't have to because I'm not going to come back to Wyndemere anymore. From now on, I will just see my son in my own home."
Stefan: "I have no desire to make you uncomfortable."
Laura: "I'm not interested in your desires or in your rehash of our--"
Stefan: "Our what, Lasha? Our love affair? Because that's what it was for me. We didn't speak the words, but the love was there. And I feel it as deeply now. This can't be a shock to you. You know me as no one has. Surely you realized long ago when I love, I love forever."

Their first meeting ended like this. My question to Stefan was whether, since he loved forever, he could love one more than one woman. Certainly at some point we were supposed to believe (though I never did) that he felt something genuine for Katherine. We're also going to get scenes in November that suggest he still feels for her. So while the writers hedge their bets, Stefan looks as though he's hedging his as well, or at least that he's not telling the complete truth, no matter how firmly he believes he is. That's what I hate about the current Stefan/Katherine writing.

Laura: "Stop it."
Stefan: "Stop what, loving you? I can't."
Laura: "Well, you have to."
Stefan: "Why? Because you don't love me?"
Laura: "Because I love Luke."
Stefan: "So you've said hundreds of times. But what do you feel for me? What is it? Just define it; name it, for both our sakes. What is it? Attraction? Revulsion? Gratitude? What?"
Laura: "I'm committed to my husband."
Stefan: "Don't tell me what is impossible. Tell me what is happening right here, right now. You want to run. I can see that. But what are you running from? Is it my unwelcome feelings, or could you possibly be afraid of your own?"
Laura: "I made a choice."
Stefan: "You chose to abandon your son. I understand why you love Luke so insistently. You must. How else can you rationalize the choices you've made in his name?"
Laura: "No. No, no. I've made mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes. But Luke is not one of them. He isn't. My future is with him. I'm afraid if you can't accept that, then I really can't come back here anymore."
Stefan: "I can accept it. I can accept whatever you say. I can. Come and go whenever you please. Visit Nikolas, and bring your daughter when you like. I have no wish to make that difficult. I will speak no more of love until you do."
Laura: "It's not going to happen."

I did like this. I liked that he forced her to articulate what she felt about him--to define it. It's something Laura doesn't usually do voluntarily. In the latest rape revision, she refused to label it, to call it rape. And while I admire her openness about labels and interpretations (that event certainly is rape and yet more, all at the same time (note I'm not saying it's romance or seduction)), sometimes it is a cop out. Here it is. She simply won't say the words or choose a label.

Stefan's argument about her rationalizing her choice makes sense too. It's not the reason she loves Luke, but the fact is that she could look only at the bad for so long that she could make things easier on herself, as I've said before.

At the end, Stefan vowed that he would never speak of love until she did. Liar. We are, perhaps, supposed to see this as desperation, as the conviction he has that Luke will indeed come back and that he has to work quickly while he is so close to his goal. I just got tired of the lying, and am less and less predisposed to give him the benefit of any doubt.

Nikolas: "Well, you're obviously upset about something."
Laura: "Nikolas, it's just when I think about the time that I lost with you, the time that I threw away--I let you grow up without a mother."
Nikolas: "Don't, don't. That's over. I have my mother now."
Laura: "I never intended to stay away. You have to believe that it just wasn't planned. All I wanted to do was to see Luke, to see if he was alive, if he was all right. But if he hadn't looked back from the balcony at me--"
Nikolas: "I don't want to dwell on the past anymore. I mean, let's look ahead. Come have lunch soon, will you? Come Friday. And bring Lesley Lu, ok?"
Laura: "Friday?"
Nikolas: "Do you have other plans?"
Laura: "No, I don't have any other plans. We'll be there."

That Nikolas would invite her immediately following this scene was ironic, certainly. It also made my point. She can now return to Wyndemere with the excuse that it's about Nikolas, knowing that she will see Stefan, but confident that he's not the reason she's going back. She knows, though, that there's unfinished business there, but takes this chance both to see her son and to return with a clear conscience, perhaps.

Stefan: "We didn't argue. We merely spoke of the past. Memories of the island can sometimes be painful for Laura."
Nikolas: "Was she miserable the whole time she was there?"
Stefan: "No. There were moments of enormous joy."

Nikolas asked her if they could talk about his father, though he didn't want to upset her, and I have to say (though I may have mentioned it above) that I grow tired of the series of secrets they've kept from him. There's one last one, however, and that reminds me of the sequence of lies I spoke about in my last "Now and Then" column--Laura's confessions to Luke.

Laura: "Beautiful crystal. You have so many beautiful things."
Stefan: "They're from my father's table. You recall them?"
Laura: "I don't spend as much time in the past as you do."

Their second meeting was the point where I simply grew angry. I admit freely that I'm biased more and more against Stefan, primarily because of the writing and the rumors I hear of backstage things, but also just because of the past two years. I loved him for 6 months and have put up with him for 23. That wears on me. I still have hope, but this scene did much to wreck it. While I can still understand him, I just don't have the inclination to like what I understand. It's a shame, since this is the story I was waiting for all this time.

Stefan manipulated Laura to the island and told her the small craft warning trapped her on it. I know he's a manipulator, but the whole thing felt as though he was recreating their past situation so as to get her to confess her love for him--stranded on the island, dressed in the same clothes, remembering the past. It was creepy, and felt less like romance than like obsession. He was making her into Lasha just as he had tried to make Katherine into Lasha. If I'm supposed to cheer this romance (and I doubt I am, actually), how can I do it when he's lying to her and when he's treating her just as falsely as he treated Kat? He's not, finally, interested in Laura in the present--or that's what these scenes feel like. He's interested in recreating the past. Ick.

Laura: "I can take the launch myself."
Stefan: "Oh, I can't allow you to do that."
Laura: "Ok, then I'll swim."
Stefan: "You know, you said that before, long ago on the other island."
Laura: "Stop it. Why do you insist on doing this?"
Stefan: "I didn't know if thinking of our time together was such a torture to you."
Laura: "I think of the past sometimes, too. What do you think I am, made of stone?"
Stefan: "It's not for me to say."
Laura: "You won't let me be a fond memory. You won't let the past be the past. You keep dredging it up like an old bill that's overdue that you want me to pay. And I can't. I can't return your feelings now. You know that, don't you? Do you want me to hurt you?"
Stefan: "I wasn't aware I'd asked you for anything."
Laura: "Ah--why do you make me treat you this way?"
Stefan: "Oh, yes, yes, it must be terrible for you. It must be terrible for you always knowing there's one man somewhere in the world who is living his life for you, calling your face to mind as his eyes close for sleep, reaching for you in the morning across an empty bed. How excruciating it must be for you to think of that empty bed, to know that he can never be happy with any other woman, can't imagine any family but the one that never was, to know that his present will forever be a pale shadow of his past. Why does he insist on sacrificing himself at the altar of Laura Spencer? Doesn't he know how terribly upsetting it is for you?"

His anger is one of the things that I understand but don't like. I want the courtier, the romancer. Instead, when he speaks of love it's aggressive and--as it is here--angry. That's not the way I wanted these two to come to this point, but perhaps this is the only way. He has to have enough emotion to actually speak these things, and some of that emotion is anger at her for choosing Luke.

The language of entrapment here, even down to him pointing out that she'd threatened to swim off the other island away from Helena, made me uncomfortable, as I said.

Stefan: "Lasha. Come back inside."
Laura: "No! No."
Stefan: "I'm sorry--"
Laura: "I can't do this anymore. It's--it's too hard for me. I'm too lonely."
Stefan: "I'm sorry."

And there's the key. She's vulnerable to this because Luke is gone and she knows that she's failed him with her lies. Laura's lies to Luke are complicated, and I won't go into them here, but the fact is that Stefan is getting this far precisely because Luke is out of the picture. It's a hollow victory, and the fact that he would be willing to accept a hollow victory disappoints me.

Stefan: "Lasha."
Laura: "No. No, I can't do this. I--"
Stefan: "Lasha."
Laura: "I'm married."
Stefan: "To whom? If your husband loves you so much, why isn't he here fighting for you?" Laura: "Because I hurt him."
Stefan: "So this is what he does? He runs? Did you marry a coward?"
Laura: "No. Luke isn't a coward."
Stefan: "Then why isn't he here? Why? Because he can fight outside opponents, but when there's trouble within his marriage, his reaction is to flee. And you deserve better. You deserve a husband who stays and fights."
Laura: "No. No, stop it. This isn't about some kind of macho thing. I mean, this is about my marriage, and you just don't know anything about that."
Stefan: "I know you kept us a secret. You kept our child a secret."
Laura: "That's because you're a Cassadine."
Stefan: "No. Because you knew in your heart of hearts that this is exactly what Luke would do. His despotic pride would be bruised. He would twist it around to make it look as if it was your fault when the truth is if he were the man you deserve, you could have come to him in the beginning or at any time."
Laura: "I love Luke."
Stefan: "You love who he was when you were a girl and he was an adventure. Answer a question!"
Laura: "Stop it."
Stefan: "Answer this question, please. Why didn't he put you before himself? I would have."

Again, Stefan has some things right, in a way, but he doesn't understand Laura's guilt and certainly doesn't understand their relationship. He continues, also, to say that he will take her any way he can get her, whether she loves him only or not. But I don't think that she would be what he wants once he has her. He sees an image of Laura, and he sees the person he couldn't have then. The rest he refuses to see. He think that she stays with Luke because of various weaknesses, but he then excuses those weaknesses in order to preserve the picture of the perfect woman. He doesn't know her at all, and I truly enjoyed the scenes at the birthday party in early Nov. because he was forced to see a moment where they didn't agree about their son. That's the day-to-day; that's the practical. And in that realm, these two are absolutely not compatible. We've seen Stefan in a life with Bobbie and Katherine. Laura simply won't fit. She cleans ovens, for Pete's sake, and I notice that we've never had Stefan walk in on her while she was doing that. Laura is not a princess in a tower, and she actively resists that role--or has in her past. She does not fit in at Wyndemere, no matter what Mrs. Lansbury might think.

Stefan: "If anything were to happen to you, I would have to answer to Nikolas. This is not a good time to prove how stubborn you can be. You have my word I won't touch you again. Please."
Laura: "Like you gave me your word that you wouldn't speak of love?"

Again, he uses Nikolas. At least she has a good come back.

Stefan: "What if he doesn't come back? Have you considered the possibility?"
Laura: "Of course not. He's going to come back--when he's ready. He's hurt right now. He's angry. But our family is his whole world. He's not going to abandon us."
Stefan: "Are you so blinded by your devotion to him that you can't see he already has?"
Laura: "No. I love my husband, and he loves me. We're going to survive this. Luke and I will never be over."

That's a fact. Finally, whether Luke and Laura stay together or not, they will never be over. Stefan would have to live with one half of a partnership his whole life, and he wouldn't be the other half. He doesn't see that, however.

Stefan: "Something in a man dies when he knows the woman he loves has made love to another man, willingly, with a loving heart. It's much easier if he can tell himself that his rival is a brutalizer, a rapist, a kidnapper, that she lies beneath him, gritting her teeth, hating his touch, rather than rising to meet it. Mental images like that can burn a hole in a man. And in one with Luke's particular brand of pride, those images become all he sees."
Laura: "Stefan--"
Stefan: "That is the difference between him and me. Luke will allow his pride to be more important than love. I'm also proud, but I never take love for granted. I haven't experienced enough of it to dare. Lasha, you don't have to have loved only me."

More of the same. I talked about this above. The thing is, he knows this well, because he has had these responses. Does have them, I'm sure. Yet he thinks he can put them aside for his image of Lasha.

Laura: "Why do you want me to hurt you? I'm not denying what happened between us. But it's in the past."
Stefan: "You can't tell me you don't have feelings for me. Your words can lie, but not your eyes. See."
Laura: "Um--not every feeling should be acted upon. Luke is my husband."
Stefan: "He doesn't deserve your loyalty."
Laura: "Yes, he does."
Stefan: "No. He walked out without a backward glance because his precious ego was bruised. He couldn't deal with the knowledge that you'd loved another man years ago. I would have stayed."
Laura: "Luke will come back."
Stefan: "If I had felt you slipping away, I would have moved heaven and earth to keep you."
Laura: "Stefan, you said that you weren't going to do this. Please. I love Luke."
Stefan: "You love Luke, but what is this that I see in your eyes? What is it?"
Laura: "Stop."
Stefan: "No. I don't want it to be so easy for you to turn me away. Maybe the time for me to fight is now."

The aggression continued to anger me. But the scene was to change as we saw it again the next time:

Stefan: "Maybe the time for me to fight is now. No. The next step must come from you. I've made enough choices for us. It is for you to come to me now."
Laura: "It's not going to happen."
Stefan: "It's already started. That's why you're here."
Laura: "No, I--no. I'm here because I had plans with Nikolas. That's the only reason. Like I said before, every feeling doesn't have to be acted on. Luke is my husband and I shouldn't--I want to go home."

Laura: "Unlike what you said. You planned this whole situation, didn't you? You didn't want me to get Nikolas' message. You wanted me to be here with you, alone."
Stefan: "I suppose you think I also arranged the storm?"
Laura: "You know something? When we're together, nothing good can come of it."
Stefan: "That's not true. We made Nikolas together. Don't lie to yourself."

I very much liked the intermingling of past and present--the repetition of this scene, with an expansion, and the hazy boundaries of the past on the island and this room at Wyndemere. It was a nice way to show how Laura was bringing past possibilities into the present, but it continued to be creepy the way Stefan was trying to recreate only the past.

Nikolas: "It isn't wise to trick or manipulate her. I don't want to lose her, ok?"
Stefan: "Nikolas, I did not force your mother to spend the afternoon here. Laura is only forced by Luke."

Liar.

Nikolas: "I know. Look, I'm not saying that you meant for it to happen, but it did, ok? And it's only a matter of time before Laura realizes it's impossible to be with somebody as erratic as Luke Spencer. And when she does, she'll have you to turn to here at Wyndemere. That's what you want, right?"

Nikolas: "Maybe I shouldn't have told her about Laura."
Stefan: "This moment was inevitable from the instant she fell from the parapet. Perhaps earlier. Now, before we were interrupted, I gather that you want your sister and mother to live at Wyndemere."
Nikolas: "Yeah, I do. But how do you feel about that? I don't want you making any more sacrifices for me."
Stefan: "Anything done for your happiness is no sacrifice, Nikolas. Laura is your mother, and as such she will always be welcome here."
Nikolas: "Is it fair? Is it fair for me to gain a family when Katherine and lucky lose one?"
Stefan: "Nikolas, none of that is your doing. You were deprived of the family you deserved for most of your life. Now the wheel has turned. Your mother is back with you. I believe there's justice in that."

Stefan makes this all about Nikolas, again, for the secret's sake. I'm glad to see that Nikolas is beginning to understand there's more to it than that, though the sight of Laura coming down the stairs was a harsh awakening, perhaps. Nikolas also has to maintain this image of Luke to understand his mother's choices, and I'd like to see mother and son deal with that in the future. What I adore about this dialogue, though, is that Nikolas is aware of the consequences of his desires towards Laura where Stefan isn't. Stefan dismisses any consequences to any Spencer, or to Katherine, while Nikolas worries at what price he might get the family that he's always wanted. Yes, I like him more and more.

Laura: "To be honest, as long as they're not strangling each other, I'm delighted that they're spending time together. And while I'm very happy to be informed, you know, this isn't something that we couldn't have discussed on the telephone. So, what else?"
Stefan: "Next Friday is Nikolas' birthday."
Laura: "I know."
Stefan: "No matter what celebration I have planned for him in the past, it's always been a bittersweet day for him--missing the one thing a child wants most. I've always preferred to believe that wherever you were, you were with him in thought, that you would set aside time for him."
Laura: "I never missed one. I made a ritual of it. Every year, that day, I managed to slip away so that I could be by myself, so that I could be free to think about him, to imagine him--what he looked like, where he might be, what his laugh might be like. And more than once I picked up the phone, thinking of dialing, you know, hoping that by some quirk of fate he might actually answer the telephone and not one of the servants. And I would get to hear his voice. Then I would hang up, of course. And I never did it because I knew that I wouldn't be able to hang up. And I was afraid that, in that silence, he would know it was me."
Stefan: "You never did that? Call and then disconnect?"
Laura: "No."
Stefan: "The phone would ring. No one would be there. I always found myself believing it was you. My ritual has been to recall every detail of the first time I saw him. Do you remember?"
Laura: "Oh, yes. I was lying in bed, and I was holding him. You had to wait outside for Stavros to leave. And I knew that was killing you. And then you came in. Then we looked at each other. Then you saw him. I asked you if you wanted to hold him."
Stefan: "I know you don't want to speak of our love. But I can't help but see it every time I see Nikolas. We created someone remarkable. And I was thinking that perhaps this year we could give our son what he's longed for his entire life."

Hearing Laura speak of her son is always powerful. I liked very much that, after that scene on the stairs, she distrusted him. She was letting herself see the present--Lucky and Nikolas and what this might do to each of them--where he was not. She was also seeing behind his schemes and not letting him play the same games again.

Laura: "What exactly do you mean?"
Stefan: "A birthday celebration for Nikolas at Wyndemere. One that includes his mother, his sister--"
Laura: "And his father?"
Stefan: "His uncle."

Laura: "You know, I don't think it's such a good idea for us to spend time together in his presence."
Stefan: "I'll wear dark glasses."

Crack me up.

Stefan: "You've spent the entire meal avoiding a direct answer. Will you participate in Nikolas' birthday celebration at Wyndemere? You know, there was a time when you would've entrusted me with your very life. Now a mere dinner party gives you pause."
Laura: "No, our, um--recent interaction gives me pause. You know, you are referring to a time when I thought Luke was dead and that you were my only friend. I--I don't just owe you for the way that you have raised Nikolas. If it weren't for you and your constancy in my life when I was pregnant with him--I was so sad, grieving for Luke. Even with that new life growing inside me, I still ached. And you were my lifeline."
Stefan: "No matter what happens between us, isn't it possible to find a bridge back to that trust we once shared? Doesn't Nikolas deserve that? For us to trust one another. Can't we, for his sake, put the past behind us and move forward?"
Laura: "I don't trust you enough to put the baggage down."
Stefan: "What would it take to inspire your trust?"
Laura: "For you to tell me the very things that you've tried to keep secret from me."

Laura: "You see? Your mind just jumped to some secret that you don't want me to know about. So are you going to tell it to me? No. You say that you want to inspire my trust. So why don't you just tell me? I dare you."

That line about the baggage was amazing to me, and it is the difference between them. Not the trust part, but the fact that she sees their relationship as having baggage and he sees it as an ideal.

Now, this is the point where I screamed out loud at the screen. We were led to believe, in the first round of Greek Island flashbacks, that Stefan was just as much a prisoner on that island as she was, that they only saw each other in secret, and that he helped her get off the island to see Luke when she found out he was alive. I believed that he found out and told her, and then sacrificed his love and hope for happiness with her to do what she wanted. Now, we see that he knew of Luke's survival, was visiting her in public in plain sight of the guards, and lied outright, despite her pain. That version of Stefan infuriates me, and I don't like it. This may have been the turning point in my reaction to the character. I thought it was the bad Culliton writing, but I can make that shoddy work fit the character I knew from 1996. This I can't. And I suspect that it's due to the writers hedging again. Still, it's canon now, and I can't dismiss it because of my suspicions about the writing. I simply hate it.

I should account, before I continue, about the Greek flashbacks. The first included their first meeting, when Laura was hiding from the guards and he helped her get away. The second was of the night Stavros had read Stefan's poems to Laura (she knew they were for her, though they weren't marked as such) and the two got their revenge by putting frogs in Stavros's and Helena's beds. This was the Laura we knew from back then--the one that learned to find happiness where she could take it, the adventuresome one who found the Left-Handed Boy and the Ice Princess. I liked it. The last, however, were of a depressed Laura pregnant without Luke, and then of Nikolas just after birth. We had a shot of the happy family--Laura, Nikolas, and Stefan--as if they knew for sure. I want the proof! It was much more Romantic to think of Stefan taking on Nikolas as his ward when he wasn't sure of the parentage, and now, poof, we just have it as a given? I have hopes that Nikolas isn't Stefan's child.