Go On Now Go, Walk Out the Door

Just turn around now, 'cause you're not welcome anymore, Ric Lansing. First, let me just say this:  Rick Hearst is amazing.  He's adorable, a great actor, seems content to stay in daytime, has played several roles on different shows and always been fantastic and made the most out of what he's been given.  Honestly, how can you not like this guy?

So Rick is great.  I hope he somehow escapes this craptastic show and finds another daytime home where he is valued.  Hey, he could go back to Days!  Scotty Banning could totally come back to Salem, with a newly fabulous, non-mousy Faith, now that Melinda Clarke can't live in The O.C. anymore.  I'm giddy just thinking about it.  Anyway, I digress.  To sum up:  Rick Hearst = love!  Ric Lansing = hate.  No, seriously, I hate this fictional character.  Almost as much as Sonny.  I don't want to, and I know it's absolutely the fault of the GH writing staff who best as I can tell employ some variation on Mad Libs to write this show, but I do.  I hate Ric Lansing.

And it's not that I can't love a villian. I watch soaps - of course I love a good villian! Delicious villian-iness, with even the smallest of redeeming character traits? Sign me up. But where are Ric's redeeming qualities? Let's take a gander at a sampling of his recent exploits, shall we?  

• Idolizes Sonny most of the time.  Really, that's enough, but moving on . . .
• Had his estranged wife and mother of his child arrested for smoking medicinal marijuana to help with the side effects of her chemotherapy, all in an attempt to take custody of their baby daughter away from said cancer-stricken wife
• SLEPT WITH HIS STEPDAUGHTER (not coincidentally leading to aforementioned divorce)*
• Aligned himself with Alcazar to further irritating Sonny idolatry and/or hateration
• Basically got Alexis fired for having cancer, and then took her job
• Made Alexis feel guilty for having a career (this is before he SLEPT WITH HIS STEPDAUGHTER)
• Falsely accused Alexis of favoring one daughter over the other, and is trying to use that BS as a reason to take custody away from her
• SLEPT WITH HIS STEPDAUGHTER
• The final nail in the character's coffin came today, with this:  "Someone shoot him in the leg!"  That was Ric directing SWAT team members to shoot the unarmed Luke Spencer in the leg to keep him from trying to resolve the hostage situation that Ric as DA has only made worse. WTF? 

And it's not like he's falling back on a history rich with altruism.  Past misdeeds include:

• Abducted Carly and locked her in a panic room
• Tried to smother Liz (after drugging her with birth control pills)
• Cheated on Alexis with Reese
• All kinds of other stuff that I'm forgetting on account of the rage about his having SLEPT WITH HIS STEPDAUGHTER and trying to steal custody from his cancer-ridden wife

Now, I'm not saying the dude is as bad as Sonny, but I have only so much Soap Opera Hate to go around, and on GH it goes around to Sonny.   He is the irredeemable asshole whose scenes I fast-forward through and whose fanbase confounds me. I can't handle feeling that way about more than one character. So since my Sonny-hate is more longstanding, Ric, you've got to go. I will survive. And so will you, Rick Hearst, because you deserve much, much better than this one-dimensional, cartoonishly evil nonsense.

* A sampling of Promising Ingenue and my comments at the time of the whole SLEPT WITH HIS STEPDAUGHTER incident. Notice how our hate had been more directed at Sam, but has since metastasized to Ric? Don't think we can't see how you're manipulating us, GH hacks!   

PI:  I guess if one has to have sex with their stepfather, Ric is a much better choice than Tony was for Carly. Brad Maule was fantastic and the scene where he listened to BJ's heart in Maxie was a classic, but the man was sort of...let's just say Sarah Brown deserved her Emmys and leave it at that. Rick Hearst is so handsome and I think he hates himself for this storyline, as he should.

EBT: But one does not have to have sex with one's stepfather. Do you hear us, GH showrunners? ONE DOES NOT!

But yeah, Brad Maule is a good actor but is unfortunately fug. I thought Sarah Brown was unattractive, so I never thought of them as unfairly matched, but Kelly Monaco and Rick Hearst finding each other attractive is more within the realm of believability. Without all the squicky family issues, of course.   

Somebody hold me. I thought all the Liason scenes today were fantastic, and that includes Steve Burton's performance. I think I must be stoned on painkillers. Does someone have some stairs I can fall down, or an inappropriate semi-relative with whom I can have sex?   

PI:  Oh, dear. Where is AJ to push someone down the stairs when you need him? I think you should lie about witnessing sex between two people in order to best seduce someone, that seems like it always makes people feel better, think clearer and get knocked up.   

In other GH news, I hate Sam. I seriously and truly hate the character of Sam and I think Kelly Monaco does as well. She has NO redeeming qualities. I can't believe she told Ric (her stepfather/lover) that Jason (who dumped her months ago) would kill him (for having consensual sex with her). What a loser.   

And not to bring the conversation to the gutter, but...Ric and Sam were having sex, Alexis saw them having sex, she had Jason take her to the hospital, she hacked up a lung before he left, he drove back to the lakehouse, and they were still having sex?! Maybe that's why Sam wanted to have sex with him. And, ew, she didn't even take her skirt off! Ew!   

 

EBT:  That, and I can't believe she threw up, wiped her mouth with her shirt, and then put her shirt back on and wore it for the rest of the day, including during a conversation with her mother hiding the fact that SHE JUST SLEPT WITH HER STEPFATHER. Sorry, I won't be getting over that anytime soon. They should kill Sam off, and have Kelly M come back as her twin who Alexis didn't know she gave birth to.

- Evil But Twinless

Comments

[Cecily]

I am so crazy in love with this blog and your GH posts especially. You rock!! I can't believe I used to like Ric.

[Evil But Twinless]

Aw, thanks, we're so happy to have people visiting and commenting!

Don't worry about the fact that you used to like Ric. I used to like Jason, for god's sake, as recently as for a week this past summer. And even Sonny! We're all young and naive once.

[OceanReed]

I, too, LOVE Rick Hearst. I am only holding onto the hope Ric Lansing will be more VILLIAN and less EVIL. I believe you know the difference.

[OceanReed]

BTW that was in no way to mock your name EBT.

[Promising Ingenue]

I just wish they'd give the character some sort of motivation. Rick Hearst could be awesome with a complex villain, but this is doing nothing for him.

I would also like an explanation of the DNA on both sides of Sonny's family, because he and his siblings are all freakish.