Now and Then: My Kind of Woman
by David Welsh

So, I come home from work, turn on the television, and there she is, eyes bugged and up to no good. She's Judith Chapman, playing some ball of trouble on a Magnum, P.I. rerun. (In theory, you stand as good a chance of finding a Magnum episode guest-starring Judith Chapman as you do of finding a Law and Order with Tovah Feldshuh.)

Seeing her rain goggled misery down upon Thomas Magnum, I was reminded of my abiding fondness for a particular era of General Hospital: the era when two difficult women--Ginny Blake and Celia Quartermaine--were the most interesting games in town.

Well, to me, at least. They had a lot of competition from longtime beloveds like Bobbie Spencer and Holly Scorpio. Hell, even Amy Vining had a front-burner story back then (with the boxer and the drugged sponge…ewww). But Chapman and Sherilyn Wolter came on the heels of some difficult departures, too. Robin Mattson's mesmerizing Heather Webber had just shuffled out of town (for a spectacularly miscast turn as Delia on Ryan's Hope). We'd all managed to wash the taste of the Templeton sisters out of our mouths. So the stage was set for newcomers to capture the audience's attention.

Ginny and Celia certainly managed that with me.

Chapman's Ginny and Wolter's Celia never really interacted, and really, why need they? They fit the same basic mold. Both were capable of--some might even say prone to--atrocious behavior born of colossal selfishness. They were smart as tacks, which was only marginally useful as circumstances were almost invariably stacked miles high against them. They kept things moving and made people angry, which is really the highest compliment one can pay a soap character, isn't it?

Ginny won my allegiance early by upsetting Lesley Webber so badly that the good doctor ran in front of a truck. (Forgive me, Lesley lovers, but I am not among your number.) Aside from her mystifying fondness for little Mikey Webber (David Mendenhall--the horror…the HORROR!), Ginny seemed specifically designed to curry my favor. By the time she'd killed D. L. Brock (you go, girl) and pinned the crime on Bobbie (*swoon*), I knew it was love.

I specifically remember a lunchroom discussion with my friend, Joy, after Ginny's crimes had been revealed to God (Rick Webber, or so he thought) and everybody. Joy and I agreed that it was the pinnacle of cool that Ginny never once apologized for anything. The murder, the frame-up--she didn't even flinch. (Note: I'm not much for the "He needed killin'" argument, generally. Don't even get me started on Brooke from All My Children. But it's a tribute to Chapman's work that I could buy the position, this one time. Okay, maybe twice. I loved it when GH's Carly Roberts shot Tony Jones.)

Celia was another case entirely. While Chapman's Ginny was something of a new breed of soap character, Wolter's Celia was the soap ingénue turned on her head.

Of the people I knew at the time who watched GH (pretty much everyone), a lot of people didn't "get" Celia. They thought she was a simp and a fool and a tart, and that Wolter was a terrible actress. The discerning among us knew better, that Wolter was constructing a very smart parody of the soap opera heroine. She was ridiculing the very role she was playing to the hilt.

Think Jessica Lange in King Kong. A lot of people mistook Lange's wonderful portrayal of a bad actress as simply being bad acting. Subsequent Lange credits would clear up that misconception. Hopefully, the people who dismissed Wolter as Celia made a reevaluation when they saw her as evil-made-flesh Elena on Santa Barbara or icy contract killer George on Guiding Light.

There were just so many reasons to like Celia. First and foremost was the fact that Holly Scorpio, her old chum from boarding school, liked Celia a lot. Generally, when soaps showed women as friends, it was to talk trash about their rivals or scheme or reinforce their own wonderfulness. When Celia and Holly got together, it was a refreshing vibe: they would actually talk about their lives and problems, generally while Holly was trying in vain to master some arcane domestic activity. (Sight gags with a pasta maker come to mind.) They were two naughty little rich girls who didn't judge each other, and it did a lot to soften Celia's rough edges.

Those rough edges were considerable, for neither Wolter nor the writers ever let some silly little thing like audience sympathy keep them from crafting astonishing displays of narcissism for Celia. Right at the moment you felt you might be able to unequivocally root for her, some bitchy, elitist impulse would scoot its way to the surface and wash the sweet taste out of the mouth. Thankfully.

Another point in Celia's favor was that she genuinely liked sex. No timid little princess she, Celia didn't make any bones about the lust in her heart. Remembering the dueling tans Celia and Jimmy Lee Holt (I've seen Steve Bond naked, but who hasn't?) sported during their frequent, illicit romps, I practically squint today. It was the glow of good, old-fashioned soap nookie.

Celia also tended to think carefully about things. (That isn't to say this deliberation wouldn't lead to her making the wrong choice…often.) When her husband, Grant, was revealed to be a DVX mole, half the town lined up to offer sympathy and advice. Edward Quartermaine, in particular, was bellowing for an annulment or a beheading. Celia, on the other hand, wanted time to actually consider her situation. In fact, she insisted on it. Good girl!

Of course, soaps being subject to the laws of diminishing returns, neither ended as strong as they started. Ginny, in particular, seemed to slink out of town. (Curse you, Mikey Webber! And you, you damned Barrington family! I care not how dressed for success you are!) Celia got out a bit better, deciding that money was better than love, which was entirely consistent with everything about her.

But it seems to be the fate of all of soapdom's truly difficult women to burn brightly, and then dim. And it's sad, because I do seem to love them all: Liza and Marian Colby, Kelsey Jefferson, and Carrie Genzel's Skye Chandler on AMC; Bridget Reardon on GL; Mattson's Gina Timmons on SB; Sofia Coppola's Lorna Devon and Ann Heche's Victoria Love, both brilliant on Another World; and, spectacularly, Sarah Brown's Carly on GH. The actresses who crafted them leave them in the hands of inferior actresses, or they're needlessly softened when powers that be mistakenly believe that sympathy is necessary to maintain popularity.

One has to wonder in these days of simplification (or stupefaction) of storytelling and homogenization of character if women like Ginny and Celia could still be created. I'm amazed when I see the problem some viewers have with complex characters, as if the only comfortable response is a certain one. "I hate her!" "She's so sweet!" I suppose there's nothing wrong with the kind of characters who elicit that kind of response, but how many of them are we expected to stand?

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