Can I Get Disability Pay for Outrage Fatigue?

If you are totally unspoiled for GH, stop reading now.  I used to be one of you, but I feel like 1) I should probably read the magazine that we write for (I heart paychecks!), and 2) with GH it really is helpful to know at least a little bit of what's coming up, so that you can take adequate precautions (e.g., hide heavy objects, soundproof living room walls, warn neighbors about possibility of random expletives).

I will admit that I was already suffering from a bit of TV outrage last night.  I watched my cheesy guilty pleasure, Dancing With the Stars.  Innocent fun, that show!  (Side note:  Jason Taylor = made of sexy.)  So what genius decided to ruin the night by making the adorably curvy Marissa Jaret Winokur dance to Tpain's "Low," with special emphasis on "gave that big booty a smack"?  That is the tackiest thing I have ever seen on that show, and I've watched six seasons of outfits made entirely from illusion fabric and sequins! 

ANYWAY.  Back to GH.  Upping the TV outrage since 2002 or so.  So I'm flipping through the front part of Soap Opera Digest that I allow myself to read (I like my spoilers in small quantities, just like I do spicy food, cultural activities, and CNN), and what do I see but a preview of what's to come next week with Carly.  Hey guess what everyone?  Carly's going to miscarry!  Do you know why you're thinking "are you effing kidding me with this?!"  Because Carly has miscarried like 17 times before and, oh yeah, SO HAS EVERY OTHER WOMAN ON THIS SHOW.  And usually as the result of spectacular[ly unnecessary] violence, as is the case this time in which some combination of Diego the Undead Serial Killer's bomb and Claudia's bitchiness will culminate in Carly miscarrying.

Look, I don't even like Carly.  Laura Wright is fabulous, and I'm sure she'll sell the scenes, but Carly is still about 98% odious.  And I don't like Carly with Jax.  I never have.  And I did not want to deal with years of Jax suffering through co-parenthood with Carly.  So this is not some fangirl reaction.  What is it with this show and endangering pregnant women?  It is seriously disturbing.  Like, more disturbing than its obsession with guns.  Even more disturbing than Carly's vision of heaven being in a dive bar, in Claudia's cheap red shoes, playing pool, drinking cheap beer, lusting after Jason.  Yes, that disturbing!

I get that soaps are about drama, and miscarriages can be dramatic, but it is about 20 miscarriages past the point where this show can claim any artistic originality with this, right?  Am I crazy?  Is everyone going to respond with how per capita, Port Charles women actually carry pregnancies to term at a much higher rate than any other soap towns, having figured this out using several soap encyclopedias and multi-tabbed Excel spreadsheets? 

Okay, maybe I am overreacting (well, I NEVER!).  Let's try to compile a list in the comments of all the poor Port Charles women who have had miscarriages or stillbirths in recent years, shall we?  I'll start:  Elizabeth (x2).  If we want to get crazy we can tally the newborn babies in peril, too.  And those of you who watch other shows can weigh in on whether my soap outrage is legit, or whether I am going to have to come up with some other reason to skip town to Tahiti next week.  And also, as always, you can count your blessings and/or gloat that you don't have to watch what the people running GH have done to this once amazing soap.

Comments

[Vicki]

Sam and her daughter, which we are reminded of weekly...

[KellsBells]

Can't argue with anything that you said. I can only the Anal and correct you that Low is by Flo Rida and features TPain... I can't help it. I'm a Type A person....

[Beth R.]

Word to everything you said...in fact the only way to have a baby on this show is to either A - be a Guza pet character (Courtney's "miraculous" recovery from infertility anyone?) B- be impregnated by a mobster or C- be pregnant in real life and have the good luck to be pregnant while GH is fighting a law suit that they fired Kari Wuher for being pregnant (AWESOME TIMING ROBIN CHRISTOPHER! YOU ROCK!) Acutally I'll add a D for Robin's pregnancy here....be a storyline specifically designed to get press and court Emmys. (I didnt' say the last part was working at this point but I can smell Emmy bait with the best of them)

[Sarah]

Your warning is dead on. With spring arriving and all my windows reopening for the season I need to warn my neighbors about my "GH related tourette's syndrome". It also makes itself known when my computer fails, my sister calls, or when some telemarketer interrupts my evening peace.

Miscarraiges/stillbirths...

-Courtney (threw her high risk pregnancy self unnecessarily off Lorenzo's ship into icy waters!)(still dead and always dumb)

-Carly multiple times (once threw herself down Q stairs to prove AJ was abusing her to Sonny, puhlease)

-Sam (who obnoxiously named her baby Lila for Jason when Sonny was the baby daddy)

-Liz multiple times (Faith chucked her down some stairs, a GH standard and once "crazy" Carly ran her over right?)

-Alexis and unborn Kristina both almost died while in labor and delivery...why she murdered Luis-he wouldn't be bothered to help her (this murder led to Alexis being Dobson, the new Q mystery male butler while Skye and Ned claimed the baby....ouch!)

I know there are more, but I only watched the show sporadically after 98. Going back I recall Anna's miscarraige with Duke and Tiffany's with Sean.

[Vicki]

Going back a bit further, didn't Holly miscarry as well? Was it Luke's or had she hooked up with Robert by then?

[CHIgirl2112]

Guza and Frons are going to continue the "tradition" because they are apparently 180 years old, stuck in their ways, and don't realize what worked TWENTY YEARS AGO when all that is going on was actually SHOCKING - the try to continue the s/l today is a yawn for us. Someone - ANYONE - please explain to me what the hell they teach writers in Soap Opera 101 that makes them think that they have to be all hell bent on keeping all the characters miserable in order to attract viewers.

PLEASE - because try as I might - I have not been able to fit that concept into my head

[Molly]

I second your love for Laura Wright, but I have to ask... WTF is up with these SoapNet promos with her looking all smirky and saying, "Carly DOES have a soulmate...and it's not Sonny... it's JASON." That plus the ridiculous poolhall heaven makes me very, very afraid that they're going to Go There.

[Steph]

Both Alexis kids were in peril... wasn't Molly born during that (actual) train wreck, and they both nearly died?

[Sarah]

Molly I have sad news for you. Carly has only EVER truly wanted one man, and that is St. Jasus. Hence her warped version of heaven. If he ever gave her hope that he would sleep with her again, she would dump EVERYONE else in a split second. So if Guza is sick of Liason/Jiz and wants Carly away from Jax.....beware. Horror of horrors a return to slimey insane unbalanced Jasly may plague us all.

[Madelyn]

I am personally all in favor of Jason and Carly, because then maybe Elizabeth would be watchable again (I'd settle for 'not boring') and Jax would be free to be awesome with...anyone. Anyone at all. Wait, wait, REVISION. Not Marianna or Leyla. Or Kate.

...maybe a Princess could come to town. Jax deserves a nice Princess.

[Beth]

I can't add to the miscarriage list Sarah compiled, except to say that the day I found out the only reason Courtney thought she couldn't have babies was that she was apparently too "stressed" was the day I had to send my neightbors flowers to make up for all the noise from me throwing furniture against the wall.

And what is it about Jax that he's constantly on the losing end of the "Here's Your Baby!" wheel of chance? (On a tangent, Emily never even had a pregnancy scare, for goodness's sake.) Sonny can procreate a Third World country, Jason is allowed to birth the Miracle Child, Carly and Liz get pregnant when the wind blows in the opposite direction, but Jax, a basically decent guy (I'll just overlook dumping Skye on their wedding night and humiliating Brenda at the altar), gets bupkus? Nikolas should give Spencer back to him as a consolation gift.

[Dawn]

Becca I loved this but I just wanted to make one minor correction to your Post. "Low" is by the rap group Flo-Rida (yep Florida). T-Pain is only there to sing the hook.

[Madelyn]

I think I heard gleeful screaming in the distance during Jax's speech to Carly today. *rubs ears* Had to be you.

[Telaryn]

Vicki,

Holly's miscarriage was her pregnancy by Luke. Her marriage of convenience with Robert was largely motivated by a need to keep Luke's child in the States (he was presumed dead at the time).

[Karen]

I COMPLETELY agrre with you on this! Didn't Lucy have a miscarriage? (don't remember for sure) It is to the point now that any time any character on the show is preggers, I start trying to guess how the miscarriage will happen.

[Danny]

Yes, this show is loathsome, but at least we got to see Sonny get his ass kicked.

[B]

i actually mentioned to a friend of mine that at the rate GH has been losing legacy characters and the fact that almost no babies actually make it, i'm not hoping for robin to have a boy or a girl or even twins, but sextuplets and maybe the quartermaines can adopt a few of them...

[Meg]

I'm glad about it, actually. I don't know why everyone loves Jax because I can't forgive him for how terribly he treated both Sam and Courtney when he thought they were pregnant with his babies (luckily for them, they weren't!). I don't think he should ever be a father with his, "This baby belongs to me and I'll RUIN you and NEVER let you see this child!" attitude. I hope Jax ends up sterilized in the next major Port Charles disaster.

[Carl]

"-Carly multiple times (once threw herself down Q stairs to prove AJ was abusing her to Sonny, puhlease)"

Didn't she accidentally fall down the stairs during an argument with AJ?

[Michelle]

so the list looks smaller than what i remember, but when i really think about it, LIZ HAS BEEN PREGNANT FOUR EFFIN TIMES since 2003...that is really disturbing.

and on a totally random, nit-picky side note, when did Courtney ever think she couldn't get pregnant just because she was too "stressed?" i thought it was because of some never-explained mistake or damage from her first pregnancy?

how many miscarriages has Carly really had? the only one i can remember at the moment is her and Sonny's first child...but maybe i'm having a brain fart. it seems like she's had so many more miscarriages because of her constant whining about not being able to get pregnant.

Sam's miscarriage was really ... i don't know ... we never stopped hearing about it. i mean, i guess it was true to life, and the one thing in her "history" that wasn't rewritten, but sympathy lines like that only work for likeable characters, which GH has none of!

this show's obsession with endangering pregnant women is really, seriously, wrong.

[Beth R.]

yeah Liz has been pregnant four times...but I tend to discount one because it was a write in for Becky's real life pregnancy so I'll cut the writers very LIMITED slack on that one. The rest were just...well makes me question her intelligence yes.

[Rebecca]

Actually I knew this was coming even though I'm also spoiler free (usually). GH and most other soaps are predictable. No two women can be pregnant at the same time, and carry the baby full term...unless there is the "great baby switching" storyline. Right now Robin and Carly are pregnant, so therefore one baby must die. If you remember correctly Lulu and Liz were pregnant at the same time, so the show made Lulu have an abortion. Courtney and Liz were both pregnant at the same time twice and once Liz got a baby and once Courtney got a baby. It's some unwritten rule I guess.....also the same as the rule that a character cannot be shown in a car unless they are going to wreck.

[Alyssa]

I don't think Guza's and Fron's like woman, the way their written and cry and fight for men, with so many men in Port Charles, and only Jason and Sonny are allow to have children, good guy's like Jax, and Lucky are push aside for these back door thug's ( got that quote from AZ) I'am about ready to shut my TV down at three, I'am going boycott this soap till they start writing woman, in a better light I did it to AMC, for two year's just started again because Angie and Jessie came back.What woman cry's for a man day in and day out for man, unless he's in Iraq.

[marion]

Unfortunately, I think GH is pretty par for the course in terms of miscarriages/stillbirths, both overall and per capital. I also agree with Rebecca's comment - the only times you really see exceptions to that, except in rare cases such as Lauren/Fenmore and Phyllis/Summer on Y&R, is when there are multiple actresses pregnant in real life who put their feet down when the topic of their characters miscarrying comes up. Where I think GH really stands out is the aspect that Beth H. pointed out - in recent years, virtually all of the babies that have survived have been somehow connected to the mob. Cameron was one exception; if Robin's baby survives, that will be another. Combine that with the fact that GH is whacking legacy characters left and right and the picture gets even more ugly. Sigh.

(Note: My use of the word "babies" wasn't meant to get into the whole "are they fetuses or unborn babies" thing. I am well aware that the topic of abortion is a contentious one in real life. But soap writers don't end fictional pregnancies because of severe financial/emotional/physical stress - they do so because they want to give the audience a brief moment of happiness followed by a longer period of bleak despair. I can't emphathize or sympathize with that. It's possible to write a soap without having eighty gazillion miscarriages - Hogan Sheffer was doing that on ATWT for a while - and I'd really like to impose a strict miscarriage/stillbirth rule on soap writers in general for a year or two.)

[Melissa]

Lily being blown up in the car while pregnant - can't forget that one!

[Sarah]

Hi Carl-That is exactly what happened. She and AJ were fighting AGAIN and she stormed down the stairs and he followed right behind her....then she fell. She went to the Q's to fight w/ AJ knowing she was pregnant. She brought this all on herself as always. Sonny was there at the bottom of the stairs so Carly screamed that AJ pushed her. Which was a lie. AJ did not push CXarly down at all. It may have been an accidental fall technically, but she created the drama 100% that put her in peril.

[BarbE]

And have you noticed the miscarriage is always someone's "fault" on daytime. Cause medically miscarriages are nature's way when something is wrong with the fetus. Or that's what I've gleaned from watching prime time medical shows.

I bet Jax is kicking himself now for turning away from Sky. The character would have had her drama but he would not have suffered all these years of 4 different baby mamma dramas. Do ya'll remember the Carly locking Sky in the boatshed incident? I couldn't help the evil smile that came on my face at the irony of Carly taking her turn at being trapped in freezing water. As a Skye fan yesterday was all good for me. At least Sky got a warm bath and love scenes with Jax out of it. I'm bad.

[Laura]

Lucy Coe miscarried three times (I think?), and at least on of them was definitely on GH. It was Scotty's baby, and she was passing it off as Alan's. Then she miscarried Kevin's baby on Port Charles. What was the third one? Does anyone remember?

[Beth]

Michelle, yep, originally Courtney was told she couldn't have any other kids because of complications from her miscarriage. But, when she did get knocked up, I distinctly remember the OBGYN telling her that she had been stressed, and just relaxing and letting it happen is what made the difference. It was such a WTF moment I couldn't possibly ever forget it.

[Bethie]

Just saw this as part of the "new" possible miscarriage story for Claudia or Carly, so here's my list:

I started watching around the time of Tania Jones, but I know at least Lesley Webber had a miscarriage before that. . .

Lesley Webber
Tania Jones
Holly Sutton
Anna Lavery
Tiffany Hill
Lucy Coe
Lily (both she and baby died in explosion)
Liz (more than one)
Carly (more than one)
Courtney
Sam

and I'm sure there are many more. . .over the years.

Now I know from close to personal experience, that some women have many many miscarriages, BUT it is most often a fertility thing, and that would actually make a good, prolonged storyline for someone. But I'm sure the writers would botch it and there'd be some "miraculous" cure and that would blow the story right out of the water.