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As I've finally caught up with my GH viewing to the point where I've
"met" most of the new characters brought on recently, I've been thinking
a lot about which ones I like and why. I almost never change my mind about a character
from my initial, gut reaction. There are exceptions--when the writing doesn't
pan out, or the actor never gets any better than their initial scenes, despite
their seeming potential. But for the most part, while characters may go up or
down in my estimation in a matter of degree, I don't completely flip-flop on a
character. (Interestingly, AJ is the main exception. I go from hating his guts
to cheering him on, depending on what year it is, it seems like.) Neutral, negative,
nice--whatever my gut tells me the first time they come on the screen, I usually
stick to it.
Of the current wave of new characters--the recast for Carly and the additions
of Skye, Melissa, Stavros (actually a recast), and Angel--I have seen the first
three in action so far. I haven't really taken to any of them. With Carly, it's
the acting (and the writing--the Carly I know would never pull a stunt like this,
and I'm sick of the repetitious storylines of Sonny's women); with Skye, it's
the writing of her heavy-on-the-sarcasm entrance; with Melissa it's the character
(definitely not the acting; Jensen Buchanan is wonderful!), who was so passively
aggressive in her first weeks in town that I stood up and cheered when Bobbie
finally read her the riot act (lying to herself my ass; she and Elizabeth have
both used that excuse to get out of confrontations over romance in recent days,
and I don't buy it for a minute).
My disappointment (so far) with this set of additions got me to thinking about
the last wave: Chloe, Hannah, Juan, Zander, and Gia. Chloe was too sweet, and
the writing of her entrance both too unsure of itself--and at the same time too
obviously a set-up for Jax. Hannah is one of my exceptions; I saw potential in
the character when she started, but the writing played dirty. Hannah's attitude--while
working at Luke's, for example--vanished when we found out she was FBI, and she
slid steadily downhill towards the pathetic scenes with Sonny playing the tape
of her betraying him. I had no tolerance for Juan from the start: acting, character,
and writing--none of them worked for me.
Now, given the above, I've been trying to make sense out of my gut reactions
to new characters. 1) Writing is a plus, but I'm willing to give the writers time
to find their footing. Skye grated on me in her opening scenes, for example, but
I'm holding out hope because I like so much the addition of an Alexandria/Tracey
sort of female Q in the family. At the same time, the early characterization of
Melissa has stacked the deck against her, but Jensen Buchanan may well win me
over if the writing gets better. 2) Character may have more bearing than the actual
writing of the initial scenes. I tend to like characters who are added for a purpose,
not just because somebody thinks we need new characters or because Jax needs a
date. But Zander was just as arbitrary an addition as Juan or Chloe, and I liked
him from the start. No, the truth is, I like troublemakers. Not only because they
are fun to watch, but because they drive the narrative. Characters like Chloe
react to what happens to them; characters like Zander cause what happens to them.
I don't like them too sweet or too arbitrary--but as with the writing, I can get
over wobbly beginnings for a character if the writing and acting are good. That
leaves 3) Acting. I would rather watch good acting in a character that I'm neutral
about than bad acting any day. And if the acting is good, I can forgive a multitude
of sins in the writing, or come to like--or at least respect--a character I didn't
take to right away.
Now for Gia. She came on in an extremely arbitrary way, as part of an insta-family
for Taggert. The irony is, the number of days we've seen Gia with her family I
can count on my fingers (and maybe a couple of toes). She has been from the start
part of the teen scene, probably my least favorite storyline. Early on, the blackmail
of Emily was just plain silly. More recently, the writing for Gia has at best
been spotty, with the Face of Deception debacle and the repetitious scenes with
Elizabeth and Nikolas.
So why do I like her? Why have I always seen potential in her, been willing
to cut her a break, been willing to forgive the writing? The actress is good,
holding her own as a little snot, a girlfriend, a daughter, a would-be-now-is
model. The character is just my type: Coming into the clique as she did, she spouted
off insults and cut through the ridiculousness of the whole situation, just when
I was really sick of the whole thing too. She was trouble with a capital T. The
attitude would have grown old, however, if we hadn't seen another side to her.
I like that we have been shown the reasons why she's a pill (as my grandma would
say), that we've seen her insecurities, her fears.
I think that Gia is the kind of character that plays to our fantasy (or perhaps
only my fantasy) of being the one person to really know somebody, and of wanting
one other person in the world to really know you. It plays out, for me, primarily
with male characters--Sonny, Luke, Roy all fit the bill to a certain extent. The
bad boys who can only be truly loved by one woman, who let their guard down with
few people, who hurt but won't let anybody see it. But this time it's a chick,
and that appeals to me. Carly was once like that for me, when she first came on,
as was Elizabeth.
The smartest thing they could have done to sway people to Gia's side was to
pair her with Carly--and then make Gia doubt the lengths they were going to in
order to get what they wanted. While it made Carly look worse, it made Gia look
a little more sympathetic, and gave her a way to take action on her change of
heart. She backed off because she didn't want Nikolas to find out, and because
she realized that she didn't need the job to be important to somebody. But instead
of the decision being all about her new boyfriend, Gia saw close up and personal
how she could wind up like Carly, who has become more and more hopeless to me
since the beautiful scenes of her wedding to Sonny in Martinique.
Gia is not one of my favorite characters. But as I've watched her with Nikolas--as
she became The Face, and as he has decided to turn his back on his family--I have
liked her. I've felt for her. I dread the day when she has to face up to the bad
things she's done when Nikolas finds out. But I look forward to it, too, because
I care something about her. Gia isn't one of my favorites, but she's an example
of a new character who actually worked--and still works--for me.
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