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At the risk of appearing as obsessed by Helena Cassadine as she is with her
son, Stavros, and dreams of power, I am returning to the subject of previous columns
("A Study in Character,"
vol. II, issue xi; "Quick Takes," vol.
III, issue x). I confess it freely: my fascination with the character is of long
standing and three actresses deep, and the attraction by now is too strong to
deny. That said, I find myself sadly disappointed with my favorite lethal weapon
lately. In fact, I wonder whether she can recover from the terrible quagmire in
which she is enmeshed.
In her heyday of mayhem, murder and manipulation, Helena Cassadine had nothing
on Medea, Lady Macbeth, or my personal favorite, the lethal Mrs. John Iselin of
Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate. The character of Helena owes
a great deal to Mrs. Iselin, wife of a U.S. Senator who gave her Stefan-like son
over to the North Koreans to be brainwashed into a human weapon to further her
own Cold War goals. Our own black widow spider has never hesitated to get her
own hands dirty, nor flinched from the hard decisions necessary to pursue her
ruthless goals. Well, never until now.
The Helena of today is as near to being a paper tiger as we have ever seen
and, frankly, I am sick of it. Who is this woman who wrings her hands, begging
one son, recently reanimated, to kill his brother? And are we to believe that
Helena, the living embodiment of evil, is spending her days dealing with children?
It pains me even to write this, much less dwell on it, but the day Mrs. Cassadine
stood in the Port Charles Grill be-smeared with pastry cream I, her staunch supporter,
laughed. At her! This will never do.
Amusing though I find Stavros to be, I must conclude that in bringing him back
to life, Helena gave up virtually all her strength. He has turned her into an
almost unrecognizably pale counterfeit of her original, diamond-hard character.
With Stavros on one side and the terrible trio of Lucky, Elizabeth, and Gia on
the other (Nikolas, for some reason, invigorates her) my poor pit viper of a Mommie
Dearest will soon be reduced to babysitting Lucas. I cannot bear it.
I long for a good bloodletting. If Helena wants Stefan dead, let her finish
the job she once started. It's not that I want him gone, but I do want the Helena
I know and love back, and if a few throats must be slit to do it, so be it. It's
only soap blood, after all, and she can always bring them back to life anytime
she wants to. Gentlemen, she has the technology.
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