The Cassadines

The Spencers

The Scorpios

Roy and Bobbie, Hannah and Taggert

Sonny and Carly

The Quartermaines

Jax and Chloe

Rae Cummings

The Spencers:

• Luke and Laura pull Felicia back off the edge of the cliff. They then decide to split up and cover two stops at once. (4/3)
• Alone again, Luke decides they've made a mistake. Laura gets irritated by a call from Felicia, and they fight. Later, she comes back to him and tells him how much she has missed him. They talk about Lucky and comfort each other, remembering the past. Felicia calls again, and Luke and Laura figure out Helena's next move. Luke tells Felicia to meet them, and Laura realizes that he doesn't see the same future that she's realized she wants. (4/6)
• Lucky chats with the waitress at the diner and ducks behind the counter when Stefan comes looking for him. (4/7)
• At the same time, Elizabeth's working at Kelly's, where she gets some encouragement from Emily. Nikolas arrives with news of Lucky, and they agree to wait one day and then go after him themselves. (4/7)
• Meanwhile, Luke, Laura, and Felicia arrive in British Columbia and drive together to the town where the Spencers used to live. Later, while Felicia waits outside, Luke and Laura come face to face with Lucky at the Triple L Diner. (4/7)
• Lucky punches Luke and runs away from his parents. Laura, Luke, and Felicia split up to find him. Laura remembers their time at the Triple L and asks the waitress to tell her about Lucky. Luke can't find a lead, and returns to Laura, who cries at the sound of a familiar song on the jukebox. Meanwhile, Lucky gets a ride out of town with a trucker. (4/10)
• There's no sign of Lucky. Felicia decides to go home, and Laura heads for Port Charles as well, in case Lucky is headed there. Luke remains to make one last search for a sign of their son. (4/11)
• Lucky finds a place to stay in a town near Port Charles. Meanwhile, Nikolas and Elizabeth make plans to search for him. (4/12)
• Lucky watches Elizabeth, but doesn't approach her. Laura arrives at Kelly's, and tells Elizabeth what has happened. Elizabeth and Nikolas leave for Canada to look for Lucky. (4/13)
• Audrey and Laura discuss Elizabeth's search for Lucky (Audrey is just fine about it and says she'll watch over the outreach program whenever Laura has to be gone), and Laura runs into Stefan. It is not a happy meeting. Later, Laura prepares to go out and search again. (4/14)
• Nikolas and Elizabeth find nothing in British Columbia, but the waitress at the Triple L says that Lucky was talking about the future. They head for New York City, hoping that Lucky will go there, where his future with Elizabeth was supposed to be. (4/14)
• Meanwhile, Lulu sees Lucky when he comes to the Spencer house for a look. (4/14)

I. You Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low Road (4/3)

Felicia: "Thank you. Thank you both."
Luke: "Anytime, anytime. You all right, darling?"
Laura: "I'm fine."
Felicia: "I'm much better, thanks."

Luke: "The rock doesn't mean anything."
Laura: "How could you say that?"
Luke: "Darling, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Anybody could have carved his name in that rock."

Laura: "Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's a pattern here, remember? Helena is retracing our steps. She started with the haunted star and then to the island and then here. It's like a guided tour of our past, basically. So then that would mean that the next stop would have to be--"
Laura and Luke: "Marrakech."

Luke: "Well, yeah. It's back to the airport, sure. We have to, you know, get on a plane, all three of us, or a couple of us. Or maybe I'll just take one."

Felicia: "Dublin's where you moved after Marrakech?"
Laura: "You got it, Nancy Drew."
Luke: "It's not a bad idea. Helena wouldn't expect us. Look, if we're in touch with you by cell phone and we talk you through it, do you think you can handle Dublin yourself?"
Felicia: "I know I can."
Luke: "Well, then you're on. Come on. We got planes to catch."

Amy: "Laura should expect the same focus on Lucky from Luke that she's given; she's put aside the question of Stefan (even as he makes it more and more difficult for her to choose him, with his bullish behavior and ultimatums and strings attached), and Luke should put aside the question of his relationship with Felicia. I do understand why he didn't, however, and it's because of the differences in the two 'outsiders.' And I really didn't see him focusing much on Felicia along the way. I saw him focus more on Laura--and on the search, wanting to ignore the questions of both Felicia and Stefan, to my mind."

"That said, I was pleased as punch to see Felicia (albeit sullenly) offer to go her separate way, and for Luke to hesitate over how many of them would be getting on the plane, as if he were unwilling to state a preference or to get in the middle of things. But Laura, having spoken her mind once, didn't turn it into an argument again. She stayed focused on Lucky."

"When she sighed and rolled her eyes at Felicia taking hold of Luke's arm on the plane, I wondered. Is she simply jealous? Imagining what they did on their past adventures? Or is she irritated that Luke doesn't send her home? Is she thinking of Mac and criticizing Felicia in her mind? Which is most prominent? In other words, is she making this about Mac or about Felicia, or about Luke, rather than her own feelings? And more importantly, does she realize that what she's feeling now--what Mac's feeling now--is akin to what Luke felt about her and Stefan? Does she get that parallel? I keep waiting for her to identify with Felicia, rather than with Mac, and to recognize that part of why she's so pissy about Felicia is because this is similar to what she's done herself--have a husband and a man on the side, while still claiming she's choosing her family."

"That said, I was rolling my eyes right along with her."

II. The Past, The Present, and The Future (4/6)

This is that oft-used hotel set, redressed again. The earliest time I saw it was as the Puerto Rican hotel during the location shoot there. It's recently played a hotel in Florida over on Port Charles.

Laura: "I think we should give it one more day."
Luke: "I don't think they even brought him here."

Luke: "Well, this is all part of Helena's plan, you know? Take us through our past, through the ruins."
Laura: "To remind us of what we lost?"
Luke: "Together."
Laura: "Maybe that's the part she underestimated--the together part of it. I mean, maybe we're not invincible, but here we are. I think she underestimated the power of us. I think we did, too. We're going to find him."

Felicia: "We'll find him, Luke."
Luke: "You and Maddie have a couple of pints on me, huh?"
Felicia: "You got it."
Laura: "So, where do you want to look next? Or do we have to wait for Felicia?"

Luke: "Oh, darling, please. Let's don't do the Felicia thing right now. Let's just relax a bit, take a breath, have a drink."
Laura: "We should never have come here, Luke."
Luke: "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."
Laura: "Yeah, but now Lucky's even further away."
Luke: "Well, this doesn't help."
Laura: "I thought I saw him today, running through the market."
Luke: "Yeah?"
Laura: "Yeah. I almost called out his name. And then I realized that it was a little boy chasing a dog through the market the way Lucky used to do when we lived here."
Luke: "This has been a rough day all the way around, hasn't it?"
Laura: "This is our trip. It's not Felicia's. I don't see how she's helping us."

Luke: "'Dear Lulu, Marrakech is a very strange place. People wear robes all'--"
Laura: "Luke?"
Luke: "Hmm?"
Laura: "I don't want to fight with you, ok?"
Luke: "Me, neither."
Laura: "I know that you can't help what Felicia does."
Luke: "Look, I know that this is our trip. Nobody else's."
Laura: "I miss you."

Luke: "Well, this trip is all about finding our son, but--I don't know. For so long now, it seems like no matter where we start, we end up in different places."
Laura: "We end up at Lucky. Remember that time that we got fogged in at Maddie's and--with all those crazy Irish musicians?"
Luke: "Yeah, I remember."
Laura: "And the fiddler player taught Lucky to dance."
Luke: "Yeah. Seems like we were there for days."
Laura: "Yeah, maybe. Gets all mixed up."
Luke: "That's what I remember--days."
Laura: "I need to sleep."
Luke: "Yeah."
Laura: "I miss that feeling that we could do anything."
Luke: "We could."
Laura: "I guess most people never get that. Maybe if we'd stayed on the road--"
Luke: "But we didn't."
Laura: "Is that because of me?"
Luke: "That was because of a lot of things, a lot of different things. And we aren't the same people we were then. We can't go back."
Laura: "No."
Luke: "I thought love could change it. I guess it can't."
Laura: "I thought ours could."
Luke: "We'll find Lucky."
Laura: "I hope so."

Luke: "Lucky used to look down at that market for hours."
Laura: "Yeah. He liked the goats."
Luke: "And then one day I saw a man in a suit looking back at him."
Laura: "We took the next plane out, didn't we?"
Luke: "To Ireland."
Laura: "I remember I didn't have any time to pack anything except for the carpet bag. But I never did. I have stuff scattered all over the world."
Luke: "You always knew how to get us out the door fast."
Laura: "That's the part I forget about, though, you know? Being afraid all the time, having to leave in the middle of the night, having to check my driver's license to see what my name is."
Luke: "You needed a place to be."
Laura: "I needed a home."
Luke: "And I needed to keep moving."
Laura: "Yep."
Luke: "I think I always will."
Laura: "I know."
Luke: "But we still have our son."
Laura: "I hope so."
Luke: "We're going to get him back."
Laura: "He was our miracle."
Luke: "Laura, I need to say--to tell you something. And it's not going to change who we are or where we are, but I really need to tell you."
Laura: "Ok."
Luke: "The happiest I've been in my whole life was with you, just flying down some road we didn't even know the name of."
Laura: "Me, too."

Felicia: "Where did you and Laura live the longest?"
Luke: "Where did we live the longest?"
Laura: "Besides Port Charles?"
Luke: "Hang on."
Laura: "That's it."
Luke: "What?"
Laura: "Not the longest, the happiest. The triple L."
Luke: "That's it. Yeah, that's it."
Laura: "Got to be it."
Felicia: "Luke, are you there?"
Luke: "Yeah, I'm here. Meet us in Vancouver at the airport."
Felicia: "I'll be there."
Luke: "Ok, and then we'll hit the road from there."
Felicia: "Got it."

Terry: "So what do you guys think of Luke's feelings about Felicia now? Somewhere in my stack of mail I have messages in which you guys give plausible explanations for Luke's reaction in Texas that argue that he was not anxious to keep Felicia around, but was merely polite to her as a gentleman letting a gal down easy, as he was more interested in Laura than Felicia. Do you still feel that way? I'm trying to make up my mind. I vacillate between 'He wants Felicia around to protect himself from feeling old feelings for Laura' and 'he really wants her included in his life.' After all, he specifically invited her to join them in Vancouver, when he could have told her they were headed there and waited for her to invite herself or suggest some role for herself."

"I loved the talk he and Laura had the other day and wondered what you guys thought of it. She was talking about missing him and he was talking like a man who didn't want to go back. It occurs to me that along with not being sentimental, he seems a guy who lives 'in the moment' and wants to move forward, and maybe he doesn't want to try to settle down yet again. He did it the first time, in large part, for Laura's sake. I think Laura sees the trip as being about 'us searching for Lucky' and Luke sees it as 'us searching for Lucky.' The accent is slightly different for the two of them, but especially after Felicia showed up, I think there was a bit of a gap between the two Spencers' ideas of what this trip did and did not mean."

Amy: "I didn't think he was thinking about it when he told her to meet him in Vancouver. Not until Laura slammed the door. Finally, I think that he's unwilling or unable to do without the distraction. Felicia divides Laura's attention, and his. With her around, they will not face the biggest questions about their breakup--they're still talking about the question of mobility, after all, not about Stefan or Felicia. Luke can use Lucky to divert attention from that discussion, but he can also use Felicia."

"I hear that we'll have some scenes with Luke and Felicia that show that they're still connected, etc. But I am less convinced by the argument that Luke really loves her and wants her to be in his life than by my own impression that he's insisting that he has to move on--almost especially because of the strong incentive to live in thoughts of the past these days. And when Lucky turns out to be not quite Lucky, maybe he will turn to Felicia because he's still hesitant about Laura, who didn't choose him, or who wants everything the way it was, or something."

"In other words, Felicia has always been a way for him to move on, and he has insisted on doing so. Yet she's also a way to not move on, because she's married (v. Tammy). She's an escape, then, some action he can take, and some new partner he can think about, rather than facing the questions about him and Laura."

"Since Laura never chose to leave Luke (my opinion--Luke made the choice, Stefan by default), I think that she has less closure about their breakup. But since he made the choice for her, he also decided to move on. I think that their talk of mobility has become a way of talking about moving on with partners too (though I still don't think it was intentionally veiled code about Stefan in the Lulu's illness conversation on IP isle)."

"I think that Laura sees this now as a chance to have Luke back in her life, and she's hurt that he doesn't see it that way. She sees that Stefan may have been a mistake, so she wants her other option back--because she doesn't want to be alone, or something about family, or something about the past, etc. Trouble is, the other option isn't sure he wants to go back to being the other option. So they focus on Lucky."

"At least, I hope that's what I'm reading in Luke. There's a bit of avoidance, a bit of unwillingness to hurt Felicia, etc. But I agree; Luke's focused on Lucky, because he has to be. And I wonder if Laura's insistence that losing Lucky was the final straw to their breakup means that, as she imagines having Lucky back, she imagines having the family together too. But the final straw to their breakup, at least for me, if not for anybody on the screen, wasn't the fact that Lucky died and they couldn't grieve together. Maybe that's what I was supposed to see, or maybe I was supposed to see that as their last chance to get back together. I don't know. But I'm not convinced that, if they had grieved together, they would be together right now--mostly because I think Luke would hold off from that, not wanting to conflate the issues of Lucky and the marriage."

"Bottom line: Luke can imagine Lucky outside of the marriage, and getting him back without returning to Laura. I'm not sure that Laura can imagine getting Lucky back without getting the whole family back."

"Hmm. I think, in part, the dialogue has been a bit unwilling to nail things down, precisely because they are both unwilling to have that all important conversation yet. Instead we get, 'I miss you,' and 'I'll always have to keep moving.' I'm not convinced, however, that Luke's wanderlust is the reason he won't choose to settle down with Laura again. Hell, they made it almost 7 years in Port Charles and that wasn't the thing that split them up, after all. That can be worked around."

Joan: "Hmmm. I'm leaning more to Amy's take, but with a little bobble to the left. I like the word-emphasis (very Teresa, who pays attention to misplaced stresses for all of us) on "looking for Lucky." (By the way, I just mis-typed 'Licky,' and think it's a good nickname, short for cowlick-y.) I think Luke is keeping Felicia around as a buffer, protection against letting Laura distract him or do the come-here/go-away thing she did formerly. It's very reminiscent of the way he protected himself after the police station renunciation back when, hen he used Alexandria (when she was tolerable, i.e., the docks scene) as a shield against letting himself forgive Laura. I do not think that Felicia really lets Luke go on with his life, Amy, I think he feels a debt of gratitude toward her that he doesn't know about--it's not love, it's thankfulness that she was there to lift him back into life following the loss of Licky. Does that make sense?"

Amy: "Oh, absolutely. And I really think that he wouldn't hold Laura's depending on Stefan in her grief against her, precisely because he had somebody else too. In fact, he might argue that they needed not to be together at that point, or they'd have dragged each other down into the past. But that's part of what I meant, I thought--that Felicia helped Luke move on after Lucky's death, and he doesn't believe he can ever go back to life before Lucky's death, even with Lucky back, though Laura does."

"I don't believe for a moment that Luke wants to 'move on' with Felicia--that he really, truly wants her to leave Mac, come with him, and be a new permanent partner. She is and was for him the first step. I think she's realizing that, and it's why she's pouty--but now why she's stepping aside a bit, here and there. I actually get this feeling of Luke's having taken a step, and then just stopped, hovering in the moment with Felicia before either of them has to go on. The next step won't be with Felicia, I'm pretty sure, but Luke has to decide if the next step can be with Laura without being a step backwards. And that comes down to what they want, separately or together. If L&L reunite, I'm betting that there's a new constitution. And I see Luke being the one to insist that they look closely at what needs to be changed, or what needs to be new, and that Laura will be just too happy to have him back and will want to overlook all the hard stuff, as she tends to do."

"I think, back to the current stuff, that Luke doesn't mind Felicia being there. He knows that she feels she needs to be, and he won't hurt her by telling her to go home. And they have depended on each other through some things that Laura wasn't a part of. Felicia started this, and maybe she just needs to finish it--and I would think Luke could respect that. I think that the distraction she offers, and the buffer, are things that he may not be conscious of doing, but may be the side benefit to a decision he's making based on a true friendship and partnership and attraction."

Joan: "You know, I seem to remember a slew of posts back when Luke was foaming at the mouth about Stefan right before and after the revelation about Laura's affair with Stefan--how intolerant he was, how extreme he was, etc., etc. What strikes me nowadays is how tolerant he has become, even when he's faced with Stefan. He may hold him at gunpoint, but he was way dialed back from the monomaniacal hothead he was then. And here, caught between two women, he is low-key again. You're right; his energy has been held in reserve so that he can battle for his son if need be. There is a sweetness to his sadness, and it makes one want to ask both women to give him a break. Until he finds his son he can't deal with issues like how he feels about women, even these women."

"Thousands wouldn't credit it, but we know Luke is kind. He's being very kind to Flea, but I do believe he thinks of her as a pet. One of those beautiful but stupid big dogs--Irish setters come to mind. (Forgive me if any of you is devoted to an Irish setter. I love them, but to me they are dumb as dirt.)"

Amy: "I think, also, that it is part and parcel of his having to face certain things about Laura. He finally accepted that she couldn't choose, etc. And he's had to deal with the fact that her forgiveness of him--her acceptance of him even when he didn't believe that she should accept him--has extended, at least in part and at least sometimes, to somebody else. They are different, and his reaction has become different."

"I was amazed to read somebody on ratsa say that they didn't think Luke had changed. This quietness--this sense of resignation, in some ways--is most definitely different. Also, while Luke has fallen into some of his patterns in this whole thing, and while he has seemed very much in character in so many ways throughout the various sides of this storyline, I definitely see a difference from past reactions. When he turned away from Laura after the Left-Handed Boy stuff, it was clear that he wanted her to chase him, wanted to forgive her, wanted to get back together. Now it seems that he's very much trying to move on, because he believes that she genuinely has. His responses to her, though they are, perhaps, the most subtle thing that has changed, have altered irrevocably."

"Meanwhile, again, Laura seems to be realizing that she wants things back the way they were--seems to believe they could be, even. Luke doesn't. And that could make for some great stuff as they negotiate what they want out of the future.

Joan: "But I like to think that Laura wasn't reminiscing for the sake of auld lang syne. She really does want to know where things went wrong, but she IS guilty of thinking the search for their son is that of a married couple. Here's where Lucky's altered state may be the outward and visible sign of the price one pays for attempting to recreate the past. Maybe that's Helena's revenge."

Amy: "I think that this may be part of why L&L weren't talking about Stefan and the Cassadines and Nikolas. They know that that went wrong. The question is how did they come to the point where that could affect them so much. Hmm. I think I like that."

"But I still get this feeling that Laura really thinks that things could go back to the way they were--or that they would have stayed the way they were without Lucky's death. I don't think that's right."

"I also still think that part of the reason Laura is snippy with Felicia is that she's jealous, part of it is that Felicia's doing what Laura has done, and it's pushing her buttons. She would have been jealous, perhaps, if Luke had ended up with Tammy, but Tammy wouldn't have been leaving a husband and kids."

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