Carly Corinthos-Jacks: Ruining Lives Since 1996

[dubbel zout]

The hank of hair LW didn't tuck behind her ear looks really nutty in those pictures. Like it's a tassel or something. 

[WendyCR72]

I hate Carly. And I don't mean "love to hate", just hate. With that said, if she had to stick around, watching clips with Cynthia Preston's Faith with Carly reminds me that I think, was she NOT Faith, I think SHE would have made a perfect Carly recast.

Useless bit of GH-related trivia: Jane Elliot, naturally, had other soap roles, including one on All My Children, whose character got mixed up with Palmer Cortlandt. The character's name? Cynthia Preston.  :-)

[UYI]

I had been meaning to post this here for awhile, but since it came up in the History thread, I decided to finally post it here, too.

I can't help but think that Carly's story should have ended something like the late actress Dana Plato's (Kimberly from Diff'rent Strokes). Dana's biological mother was a teenage girl, and she was adopted by two parents, where the dad walked out shortly after, but the mom stayed and happily raised her daughter.

After Kay Plato (the mom) died in 1988 (she had had a terminal case of scleroderma--she knew she was dying for a few years), Dana decided to locate her birth mother, and she did, and formed a relationship with her and other biological members of her family.

However, about a year later, she dropped all contact with them, and according to Dana's ex-mother in law (whom she remained close to even after she divorced her son--she was the grandmother of Dana's son, Tyler, who sadly committed suicide 11 years after his lost his mom), it was because Dana realized at one point that her biological mother and her various and sundry biological family members were strangers to her--she didn't know them, and in her heart, Kay Plato was still her mother (of course, just as much of this could have been Dana being ashamed of the drug addiction that would eventually take her life, but probably not entirely).

I have a feeling that's a story--in addition to adoptees who search for their bio parents and form strong relationships with them, and those who never try--that happens more often than we think. Adopted kids who want to meet their bio parents, only to come away disappointed and reaffirming who their real parents are, in every way that counts.

I think Carly's story probably should played out like that--first, to keep up with what happened on the show, she would tell Bobbie who she was, and then Virginia would die shortly thereafter. But then, unlike what happened on the show, Carly would realize that not only was Virginia her mother in all the ways that counted, and now it was too late to get her back, but that Bobbie, while technically not a stranger, like what happened with Dana, was a person who felt that Carly had poisoned the well too much for a real relationship--and so Carly would leave town with Michael, ready to repair her life and become a better person. Perhaps the scene where she goes to Florida with Jason to visit Virginia's grave could still happen, but this time it would end with them saying goodbye and permanently parting ways.

Plus, the two decades-plus destruction she has caused since would have never happened! What a nice dream. :) 

Edited May 9, 2017 by UYI

[Oracle42]

Carly is kind of a perfect soap type, though. Soaps need characters like that - they just should be offset by a "good" female lead. 

[UYI]

14 hours ago, Oracle42 said:

Carly is kind of a perfect soap type, though. Soaps need characters like that - they just should be offset by a "good" female lead. 

Oh sure, I just meant that an ending like that would have lessened the idea that a person should resent being adopted (albeit in a tragic, bittersweet way, given that Virginia still died), and it would have kept Carly from becoming Teflon once she became involved with Sonny. 

[dubbel zout]

21 minutes ago, UYI said:

an ending like that would have lessened the idea that a person should resent being adopted

Carly doesn't resent being adopted anymore—or at least she doesn't resent being given up for adoption—so that's something.

[Vella]

On 5/9/2017 at 5:13 PM, Oracle42 said:

Carly is kind of a perfect soap type, though. Soaps need characters like that - they just should be offset by a "good" female lead. 

But on GH, Carly IS the "good" female lead.  She's certainly presented as the good female lead.  She's definitely a classic soap type, only she's written and presented the wrong way.

[Oracle42]

Well yes, and that's partially on Guza. But I think that "grey" characters were kinda of swallowing ABC soaps. It's one thing to write complex, three-dimensional characters - but aside from Viki/Dorian, I just realized that I couldn't think of an ABC soap that maintained that dichotomy. Maybe OLTL's Jess/Nat pre-DID?

Carly/Robin fit it but they weren't really contemporaries and Carly/Liz even less so - and that was all about Jason anyway

Edited May 22, 2017 by Oracle42

[dubbel zout]

Carly has never had a true rival, unfortunately. Her issues with Robin and Elizabeth were always about Jason. If he hadn't been involved, she wouldn't have given either of them the time of day.

[Oracle42]

Aside from the brief period when Brenda came back - mostly the first time, not so much the second or third time. 

Then, RC brought Brenda back so she could crap on Jax and leave instead of just pairing her up with Sonny. 

At this point, Carly should be scrapping with Skye and Monica while she works out her relationship with AJ.   Instead, RC/FV put all their eggs in the Cranco basket and then parked Carly with Sonny while they tried to figure out another way to make Franco happen

Edited May 22, 2017 by Oracle42

[dubbel zout]

Carly's beefs with women are because of her men, where Viki and Dorian had rivalries outside of that.

[Oracle42]

Their beef was initially over her father. But the wonderful thing was that their personalities and values were so genuinely different that their later conflicts felt rooted in that instead of just being an outgrowth of daddy drama.

I think Carly/Skye could've managed something similar. And a possible Skye/Franco thing might've bothered me less than Friz/Cranco because he never specifically hurt or targeted her or her child

Edited May 22, 2017 by Oracle42

[navelgazer]

On 5/22/2017 at 8:45 AM, dubbel zout said:

Carly has never had a true rival, unfortunately. Her issues with Robin and Elizabeth were always about Jason. If he hadn't been involved, she wouldn't have given either of them the time of day.

What about Sam?  Carly wouldn't know Sam's name except that Sam played round-robin with all of Carly's men before she settled on Jason.  Carly knew how deeply Sam would connect to Jason, that he would willingly take on caring for another man's child, usurping Carly/Michael's place in Jason's life.  

I've just come off of a binge of S&C from HateSex to their real marriage -- through the miscarriage and Jason coming back.  (I'm on The Barge now because I refuse to get behind Friz.)  Watching SBr's Carly, I'm reminded why I liked Carly so much.  I only started watching GH because of the prodigal daughter stealing Mom's husband story.  I had watched some GH with Mom when I was a kid, so I knew the older characters some.  Then I was mesmerized by the beauty of a young SBu and I was hooked.  Anyway, SBr's version of Carly was insecure, intuitive, self-deprecating, loyal, impatient, tempestuous, capricious.  SBr could communicate all those varied things with a single look.  

[sunnyface]

Does Carly ever take a vacation?

[loiswests]

On 5/10/2017 at 7:58 AM, UYI said:

Oh sure, I just meant that an ending like that would have lessened the idea that a person should resent being adopted (albeit in a tragic, bittersweet way, given that Virginia still died), and it would have kept Carly from becoming Teflon once she became involved with Sonny. 

Carly had that realization when she was in Florida. 

Carly: No. He left when I was, you know, just a little bit bigger than Michael. Haven't seen him since. It's funny, you know, I was supposed to be the miracle that saved their marriage. Oops! Wrong again. Ended up being just, just, uh, me and Mom. God, she loved me so much, Jason. Why couldn't I see that? She adopted me, she gave me a home, and she treated me just like I was her flesh and blood. And all I ever did was give her a hard time. Lie to her - all the time. Sneak out in the middle of the night. Curse her to her face. It was like, our whole relationsihp was like I was begging her to throw me out. To prove that she made a mistake by adopting me, you know? But she never saw it that way. She just, she just love me. No matter what. (pause) And when she came to Port Charles, she had just the best of intentions. To surprise her good pal, Bobbie Spencer. And, and what did she find out? The news that had already been there for two years, had wrecked Bobbie's marriage, had lied to everybody in town, had lied to her, just like always. And she tried to find a way to deal with it, to cope with it, to make sense of it...and I just got into a fight with her again. Like nothing had changed. Except this time it was too much. She couldn't take it. (pause) I killed my mother...and I just, I don't know any way that I can make that right...

Carly: I'm sorry I never thanked you for everything you gave me. I don't know how I managed to convince myself that Bobbie could love me more than you did. Or why I couldn't see that the mother I had dreamed of was the mother I already had.(a pause, she looks at the flowers and places them on the grave) I love you, Mama. I didn't say that enough. And I didn't show you the way I should have. [...] You know, when, um, I found out I was adopted, all I could think about was that I had this real mother out there somewhere. But Virginia Benson was my real mother. 

Edited April 3, 2018 by loiswests

[Dr.OO7]

Carly from 1996-late 1997 had a streak of humanity that made me feel for her no matter how horribly she acted--her jealousy over Robin was because she genuinely felt inferior to her, her desperate attempts to be the perfect doctor's wife/girlfriend to Tony, etc  

Guza ruined that when he came back and made her this self-righteous uber-bitch who thought she was in the right no matter what she did.

[sunnyface]

Does this character ever take a vacation or a business trip?

[dubbel zout]

No, and even if she did, I'm sure we'd see that, since we are doomed to witness every moment of Carly's life.