GH: The OLTL Takeover

The One Life to Live “takeover” of General Hospital has begun. This entry has spoilers, so please don’t continue if you don’t want to read more.

This week two bits of news came out, the first in depth interview with Michael Easton who plays John McBain at tvguide.com and tvline.com announcing that Roger Howarth who portrays Todd Manning is coming back to General Hospital again in May with a long term contract.

My first thought with the Michael Easton interview was John and Natalie (Melissa Archer) got married, off screen after OLTL ended what?! At least, it looks like for now they aren’t breaking up John and Natalie even if John is on screen in Port Charles. Of course, this could change depending on how long John stays in town.

My initial reaction to the Roger Howarth news was “by the time Todd is on screen again after this short stint, will GH be technically cancelled.” It is sad that my mindset is so negative, but we haven’t heard that ABC has made any plans for GH to continue once it loses its 3 pm eastern slot in the fall. Since new fall schedules come out in April/May, hopefully we will hear more soon.

This has been a double edged sword at least for me. While I am glad for the actors getting more work, I can completely understand the frustration from General Hospital viewers who never watched One Life to Live. An influx of new characters even if they aren’t “new” is frustrating. Robin (Kimberly McCullough) dying shouldn’t take a backseat to new characters, though in my world Robin’s death has been faked.

The other issue I have so far as someone who has watched all of the ABC soaps is them undoing the “happy endings” the Llanview characters had. Watching Cole (Van Hughes) and Hope die in an exploding car crash was upsetting. I do give GH credit for saving the money and not showing us a CGI event. Before their demise, I was amused how Cole mentioned Luke and Laura to Starr (Kristen Alderson). While I understand them wanting Starr to have a clean slate in a new town, killing her family is rough. Maybe Angel Luna (Susan Batten) got in trouble for sparing Cole, and had to take him away again. Of course, I see this crash as a “death” and Hope and Cole are really alive. Cole thought he lost his mother Marty in a fiery car crash that was on camera, and she survived. So Cole and Hope did too.

Blair (Kassie DePaiva) came to Port Charles for a visit to see Starr after the crash. We found out from her conversations that she is back together with Tomas (Ted King) and everyone including Viki hates Todd for killing Victor. WHAT? First off, Viki would never hate Todd. Also let’s undo Blair and Todd reconnecting and have her all about Tomas who caused Todd to be tortured for years. This bugs me especially if this is the last we will see of Blair. When Todd comes back to PC they will have to explain how he is not in prison for killing Victor, though the OLTL audience already knows that Victor is alive. Todd and Carly (Laura Wright) becoming a couple is just an odd idea and then if Starr is with her son Michael (Chad Duell) we have a father/daughter duo dating a mother/son pair. That seems to happen more on tv than in reality.

We all will see what happens, but if the treatment of the OLTL characters is too horrid, I’ll imagine that it didn’t happen. I’m already calling it Mirror Universe Mannings and McBain just in case to prepare for the worst.