Several aspects of the show contribute to my displeasure. A major weakness is the poor development and portrayal of characters such as Chloe, Hannah, and Juan--all of whom have been given prominent "front-burner" stories in the past year. Another flaw (frequently noted by the editors of the General Hospital Review) is the continued isolation of the characters and their stories. Yet another flaw is the anticlimactic ending of stories such as the "mixed marrieds" storyline or the insignificant revelations of Lila and Edward's love letters. A final weakness, and one that I'll focus on in this article, is the preponderance of false emotional moments that make the show seem oddly off key.

I'm not a viewer who demands that a storyline conclude a certain way or that a favorite couple stay together (or get back together). I'm willing to let the writers tell me a story, but I want the story to feel emotionally true. I want the story to unfold and end in such a way that I don't question why the characters involved acted as they did. This isn't to say that I want the characters to be predictable--I love to see characters change and grow--but that I want the behavior of the characters to make sense. If a character acts in a new and surprising way, I want a plausible explanation of the character's motivation.

The behaviors that have disturbed me the most are not the big obvious departures from character. For example, I was not perturbed that Felicia would leave her husband and children behind to spend time with Luke. Nor was I upset that Luke and Felicia slept together. What disturbed me about the adventures of Felicia and Luke was precisely that they were depicted as adventures. Initially, when Felicia and Luke teamed up to research Lila's past, the adventurous, comic tone was fine. The same spirit was even fine in Felicia and Luke's battles against Faison. But once Luke learned that Lucky might be alive, the tone should have shifted. Finding his son was not a mere adventure for Luke; it was an earnest, serious enterprise. Instead of Luke's anxious search for his son, however, we saw Luke and Felicia continue to call each other Hiram and Orphie Goodlove, as if they were still on some madcap adventure. We saw comic scenes such as Luke getting sick from eating bad food in Greece, and Luke trying to curb his desire upon waking up next to Felicia.

A more recent example of such an "off" behavior would be Stefan feigning his death without letting at least Nikolas know. Stefan might have grounds to distrust Alexis and Laura, but he's had an unconditional love for Nikolas, even after finding out that Nikolas wasn't his son after all. (By the way, having DNA tests show that Nikolas could not be Stefan's son was another emotionally "off" moment. Since the Cassadines returned to Port Charles in 1996, the undercurrent of truth about Nikolas was that he was Stefan's son. Thus I found it very satisfying when we saw just that revelation in the wonderfully moving scene where Stefan told Nikolas he was his son. When a year later DNA tests showed that Stefan could not be the father, the scene was flat and pointless. The writers have never shown the significance of the switch, and to this day I still think of Nikolas as Stefan's son, because that seems more emotionally true than whatever the DNA test may have revealed.)

Although the audience knows that Stefan feigned his death, no one in Port Charles (except Andreas) knows that he's still alive. Therefore, it's very troublesome to me that we've barely seen anyone mourn him. Last year, when Lucky was presumed dead, we saw weeks of gut-wrenching grief that seemed entirely appropriate since everyone believed Lucky was truly dead. Although Stefan does not have the family ties and friendship ties that Lucky had, it's still bewildering that we've had almost no scenes of Alexis and Nikolas mourning and consoling one another.

Another small scene that struck me as odd occurred when Alexis recently surprised Ned in his hotel room, wearing a teddy and holding a rose in her teeth. The scene itself was amusing, and had it been shown on another day I would just take it as a small bright moment. But the scene came on the day after the episode on Helena's yacht when Alexis realized that Chloe's uncanny dream about Stefan's death must mean that he is indeed dead. On the following day's episode, Chloe advised a shattered Alexis to go see Ned who was on tour as Eddie Maine. The appropriate scene would have been for Alexis to seek consolation from Ned, not playful sex.

At times scenes feel off not so much because they seem emotionally false but because they seem highly improbable. Granted that the entire "psychic Chloe" storyline is preposterous, the recent scene where Helena deduced that Alexis knows Helena killed Stefan because Alexis's friend Chloe must be "seeing though Helena's eyes" was laughable. Surely Helena could have considered some other possibilities such as Alexis having witnessed Stefan's poisoning or Andreas having betrayed Helena.

Another jarring item was the placement this year of "Ice Princess Island" off the coast of Argentina, when every serious General Hospital fan knows the island was originally set off the coast of Venezuela. Whether the island is off the coast of Venezuela or Argentina is immaterial, of course, but since Venezuela was used as the original location, care should have been taken to keep Venezuela as the location. Another minor but distracting occasion was seeing Elizabeth sporting a complicated hairdo the day after she found out Lucky was alive. Surely someone who's just had a major shock would not spend an inordinate amount of time fixing her hair. I realize that hairstylists on the set style the actors' hair, but Elizabeth the character should not have looked like she'd just gone to the salon or that she'd spent hours fixing her hair.

These false and odd moments, when added together, make for a show that's frequently irritating to watch. The fault is rarely with the actors. The majority of General Hospital actors are exceptional performers, frequently rising above the material they're given. The fault seems to lie with the writers and/or producers of the show. I've been a fan of headwriter Bob Guza, preferring his work to Claire Labine's. (I do think Claire Labine's episodes were better crafted and more uniformly edited that Bob Guza's, but I can do without Labine's talking ducks, mating dogs, and "user-friendly" Spencers.) Lately, however, I long for a change in the writers.

To be fair, the problem may be less with Guza than with the daily script writers. Since the departure of the sublime Patrick Mulcahey, General Hospital has tried several new script writers, none of whom seem to match Mulchahey's exceptional skills. General Hospital does have good writers--Michelle Patrick, Michelle Val Jean, Elizabeth Korte, and Gillian Spencer are all skilled writers--but Mulcahey's deep knowledge of characters, his exquisite sense of structure and timing, and his ear for language and metaphor are probably unmatchable. General Hospital has simply not been the same since Mulcahey left on a sabbatical leave last October. There are rumors that Mulcahey may be back on September 29, 2000. If the rumors turn out to be true, I'll be ecstatic. With Mulcahey back on board, in whatever capacity, General Hospital is sure to become the riveting and gratifying soap it has been in the past and still has the potential to be again.

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