NOTE: This post is a copy over from one I made on the main site. I took it offline due to the negative nature of it and that I felt it didn’t or shouldn’t be there. Reposted here due to the content of this blog.
So this is the part that might not be fun for anyone to read, but I feel a need to say it. I’m loving seeing Tamara again. That’s what this site is all about, sharing my love of Tamara with her fans. Posting clips and screencaps of her work for you. Loving the work of clipping and capping. It’s the simple pleasures of being a webmaster. I’m not sure if what I’m about to say will drive you away, or help to validate what you perhaps have been feeling in your gut. Tamara’s return to GENERAL HOSPITAL has been a mixed blessing. We get to see her almost every day again as we did during her time on the show from 2001 to 2005. Same with her short-term stay on DAYS OF OUR LIVES as Ava Vitali, then as Reese Williams on ALL MY CHILDREN in 2008-2009, then back to DAYS OF OUR LIVES as Taylor in 2011, and finally as Ava again in 2015-2016. However, this time is a bit of a hard one to take, probably a little less than DAYS as Taylor Walker. But I’m not sure I felt the same as I do now seeing her on her old stomping grounds where most of us saw her first. That of the Prospect studios where GENERAL HOSPITAL tapes. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, if not a bit like I’ve got a rock in my gut every time I watch the show seeing the old standbys of Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis), Steve Burton (Jason/Patient6), Kelly Monaco (Sam), Maurice Benard (Sonny), and going forward likely some other faces I’ll recognize, others likely not. Admittedly I haven’t watched the show since April 1, 2014, the infamous Carlypalooza episode seeing the return of Sarah Brown and Tamara as their “versions” of Carly. But therein lies what is at the heart of my unease about watching this show again. That unease is fueled by this feeling that Tamara is only back to bring us back to the show. This character won’t be a long-term one, certainly not on the scale of Carly and that is the unease. I want her to be Carly. I’m watching seeing her at the door of the Jason’s penthouse today and all I can think of are all the times her Carly showed up there and knocked the door down to get in. I’m not sure if it’s being back at that studio but there’s a lot of Carly in Tamara right now. I know she’s supposed to be this Kim Nero, but I’m not feeling it. I’m not feeling her as this character because everything I’m reading off of her IS Carly.
Soaps are a breed apart from other shows. Primetime consists of a standard show with a cast and with the exception of the procedurals like Law & Order and it’s spin offs, Grey’s Anatomy, Will & Grace….. there is a common theme with those. You have a cast of your regulars and with the rare exception no one is “replaced”. On the NBC procedural Law & Order: Special Victims Unit when series regular Christopher Meloni left his role of Det. Elliot Stabler, a role he played for twelve years, that role was never recast. At no time during the past six years has there been the impetus to recast that part. Meloni has said he has no intention of returning due to his other commitments to his own SyFy show Happy (Happy has since been cancelled by SyFy but is awaiting whether Netflix or other streaming service will pick it up) and other films and guest appearances on other shows. The only place where characters are replaced when actors leave is in the soap opera medium. So when Tamara decided to leave GENERAL HOSPITAL in 2005, it was logical the powers that be would recast. They did when Sarah Brown left, so it was inevitable when Tamara announced her decision. And they did with Jennifer Bransford who was no stranger to soaps in that she’d worked with Jill Farren Phelps before on the soap opera One Life To Live as pycho Georgie Phillips (1997-1998). However, she sadly wasn’t long for the show. After only a scant six months in the role, Jennifer was fired citing the oft told excuse “storyline purposes”. As again happened, Carly was recast with Guiding Light alum Laura Wright who played Cassie Winslow. Now the fascinating thing here is, while posting on the old IMDB message boards, I happened to go to Wright’s and someone named BORED558 had posted something that became almost prophetic. I’m going to copy out the text of it and provide the actual screenshot to show what was said by him/her. Note: All types are his/hers. To view the large version, please click on the image.
Thank you Laura Wright for KILLING my favorite TV show
by bored558 a Fri Oct 7 2005 13:34:22
IMDb member since July 2005
Let’s face it: GL is more or less cancelled. They’ve been scaling back the budget, decreasing actors’ salaries, and it’s been largely speculated that P&G are trying to cut their losses before the show gets the axe in probably less than a year. It’s a crying shame too, because GL has been my favorite TV show for over 20 years and under Ellen Wheeler and the new head writer, it’s honestly the best it’s been in years. Actually, I’ll go as far as to say that it’s the second best daytime drama on TV right now, behind Y&R. But unfortunately, the improvements have been too little too late because the Light sadly went through an irreparable slump that lasted over five years and can be summed up with three words: Princess Cassie Winslow.
Over the past 8 years (*shiver*), Laura Wright has been by far the worst front-burner “actor” on Guiding Light. She has two facial expressions: mad and very mad, shown subtlely with the grimace you’d find on someone who juice ate a bowl of sour blueberries. I feel very sorry for General Hospital fans, because a complex and compelling character like Carly — played beautifully by Sarah Brown, Tamara Braun, and Jennifer Bransford — is going to be taken over and ruined by perhaps the most one-note actress on daytime. Maurice Bernard rightly fought to save Jennifer Bransford’s job for a reason: Not only is JB a far superior performer to LW (I would even speculate that if JB were allowed to continue in the role, she’d win an Emmy for the show), but he had to have known that Laura Wright would be his new acting partner. Imagine an actor with such subtlely and talent as the Emmy-winner Bernard, who’s played opposite Emmy-winners Vanessa Marcil and Sarah Brown in the past, acting opposite someone who turns every character — even characters we’re supposed to like such as Cassie — she plays into a one-note b!tch, who fans have sarcastically nicknamed Big Bird. Cassie caused more damage than any other character in the history of GL: Reva’s mother died so she could be introduced. Dinah and Hart — one of the show’s all-time best couples — were broken up so this stripper with a heart of gold could have a love-interest. Frank Grillo even said that his problems with the story were one of the main reasons he left the show (Wendy Moniz shortly followed) — and while I loved them both as talented actors who portrayed (at one point, at least) complex, interesting characters, I don’t blame them for leaving one bit. Not to mention that the character of Dinah — my all-time favorite character on GL — was all-but-ruined so she’d turn into a nut-case to make St. Cassie look even more pure and angelic. A character as popular as Dinah was completely off the show — never mentioned — for SIX YEARS because of Cassie. She’s finally back, and in some ways, I personally think Gina Tognoni is even better than Wendy Moniz, but it’s too little too late, not to mention ridiculous statements like “Dinah always wanted everything Cassie ever had.” Excuse me, but I don’t recall Dinah ever wanting to be an orphaned, knocked-up teenage stripper whose kid gets taken away from social services. And let’s not forget that we also got to see Vanessa lose credibility in our — or at least Cassie’s — book, by protecting her daughter from the police. And that’s just the start of it. We had to endure chemistry-free love interest after love-interest after love-interest with Cassie, from Hart to Jim to Richard to Danny to Edmund to Jeffrey. The writers even created a whole island for her, so Richard and Cassie didn’t interact at all with the other cast members. Rather, we were treated to watching them talk back and forth five episodes a week for three years in that one tiny room in their San Lristopei castle. i couio go on ana on about wny Lassie s a norrioie cnaracter, out 1 a like to get pact< to Laura Wright. The viewers left the show because they were bored. I used to watch GL 5 days a week. During the height of the Cassie years, I'd maybe tune in once every other week, and when I saw Cassie on, I'd usually change the channel. Laura Wright is simply a terrible actress who isn't fit for a community church theater project, let alone a front-burner storyline on a soap opera. Now comes word that after she's killed the show, she's decided to jump ship ("It's not about money! Honest!!"). While I personally can't blame her for going after the best deal and certainly am not upset about her leaving and this role FINALLY being recast, I think it says a lot about the type of person she must be if she's willing to be the first one to jump ship, and then glibly gossip to the soap press "Maybe GL will be cancelled. Maybe it won't." Sheesh, I bet her coworkers love her for those statements. Not to mention that she's also insulted the fans on previous occasions, saying at a fan club meeting that she didn't like the people on the discussion group I participated in because we're "too negative" (if I'm going to invest an hour a day in your show, I think I have a right to complain). She also sarcastically told fans of Michelle and Danny (when Cassie the homewrecker was coming between the two) that "Paul doesn't go home at night with Nancy." A statement like this says that she thinks Michelle and Danny fans are not only dumb, but also insane and unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality. The more I hear from her, the more she sounds like she's not a very nice person -- on top of being a lousy actress. Outside of Laura Wright and several other unqualified (though still more qualified than LW) performers, GL has one of the best casts on daytime -- and I really, really hope this new girl that will be playing Cassie can act, or at least can do better with the role than LW. (I saw a pic of her in SOD and she looks a lot like Wright, only prettier. The casting director spoke very highly of her, and while she definitely has an extremely difficult task ahead of her --undoing eight years of damage done to Cassie by bad acting and writing -- I'm going give her the benefit of the doubt and welcome her aboard.) This is a serious warning to GH fans: Be very afraid. This girl makes Pamela Anderson look like Nicole Kidman, and unlike Pam, Laura Wright takes herself seriously. You can say goodbye to the Carly you once loved, assuming you did love her, because LW is going to turn her into a one-note sanctimonious b!tch that fans are supposed to love but they really just hate. And she's already said she sees similarity in the characters of Carly and Cassie!! Is she intentionally trying to scare the fans?!! She's been on three shows that have been/are soon to be cancelled: Loving, The City, and now Guiding Light. Three shows ... all of which she's been a part of ... you figure it out. Nothing against GH, but I think it would be so funny when November sweeps begin, as LW takes over Carly on GH and the new girl joins GL, GH's ratings go way down while GL's rise up. Not only is LW going to ruin a character you once loved, she's probably going to kill General Hospital too.
Bored’s statement “You can say goodbye to the Carly you once loved, assuming you did love her, because LW is going to turn her into a one-noted santimonious bitch….” is very true. Under Wright Carly has become stagnant due mainly to Wright’s inability to do subtlety. What Bored mentioned “She has two facial expressions: mad and very mad, shown subtlely with the grimace you’d find on someone who juice ate a bowl of sour blueberries,” is again true. She cannot act. She does not understand chewing scenery is not acting. It’s grandstanding. In this scene from Guiding Light as Cassie Winslow, Wright displays the exact same schtick she’s done on GENERAL HOSPITAL for the last fourteen years.
She does not variate her performances one iota. It’s always the same thing. This clip was from 2004, just a little over a year before she would take over Carly. And she is still doing the same thing as “Carly”. When Tamara played Ava Vitali on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, she was different in her looks, movements, the way she held her body. As Reese Williams on ALL MY CHILDREN, she was different again, and as Taylor Walker again on DAYS. And as Kim Nero she was different enough that unless you were there when she played Carly, you wouldn’t know it was the same actress. But that’s what an actress/actor does. They change their bodies and or looks to suit the roll they’re taking. In the case of a recast doing what is needed to become that character according to when the last actor/actress left. Tamara cut her long hair and bleached it in order to look like Carly when Sarah Brown left her. With Jennifer Bransford, she did the same. Being a theatre major she knew what it took to become that character. Wright somehow thought she could slide in without doing what it took to become Carly as Tamara did. Nothing is remaining of who Sarah, Tamara, and Jennifer’s Carly was. None of the aspects of who Caroline “Carly” Benson Roberts Quartermain Corinthos remains today. It was never more evident than when Tamara and Wright were onscreen together. None of the complexity of the character remains. And that is the fault of no one other than Laura Wright for her lack of understanding of what a recast does, and what her job as an actor is.
I know there will be people who will say, “Well it’s Laura’s role now. Tamara left of her own accord….” Very true, but the reasons why Tamara left in 2005 need to be examined.
In her column Channeling Armchair Outbursts: The Carly Conspiracy, Carol Banks Weber said this (reproduced in full):
CARLY CONSPIRACY
Is this simply another recast, an act of revenge against a popular actress daring to play with the big boys, or simply another sexist move to continue showcasing Sonny and Jason as GH’s stars?
Hell hath frozen over. I’m about to defend GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Tamara Braun as the second Carly.
You’d think with all my bitching about Tams’ excessively mean, one-dimensional interpretations, the bug eyes, the arms flailing (and the arm grabbing), that weird stuttering, stammering imitation of Maurice Benard (Sonny), the sniffling without tears, the constantly invasive glaring, etc. etc., I’d have been throwing a virtual party celebrating the actress’s decision not to re-sign.
God knows other GH fans have on various message boards. They’ve called Braun an airhog, danced on the grave of her departure, even gone so far as to prematurely align themselves with the new, third Carly, Jennifer Bransford (ex-Georgie, ONE LIFE TO LIVE), days into this GH newcomer’s April 18th debut, just to rub salt into Braun’s wounds.
As usual, towards the end of Braun’s tenure, she improved, adding inflection, nuance, layers to the role of a grieving, shaken mother faced with the brutal murder of her eldest boy. She impressed me with understatement – not normally in her repertoire – in soothing Sonny’s frazzled, suicidal nerves. She forced herself to back off slightly when in this case, she would’ve been fully within her rights to bitch-slap Alexis in a heap, after the bitch declared war on Sonny, Michael’s presumed-dead body barely warm.
But what really galvanized me in Braun’s favor was the disrespect given her. I’m not talking about the two parties in her honor, executive producer Jill Farren Phelps practically kissing her ass, ABC Daytime president B.S. Frons on hand to join in the ass-kissing, blah blah.
I’m talking about the recent comments from co-head writers Bob Guza Jr. and Charles Pratt Jr., published in various soap magazines and recently, in a Q&A with TV GUIDE ONLINE’s Delaina Dixon. They defended their choice in recasting quickly and airing the recast even quicker; no time to mourn, one Friday there’s Tamara Braun’s Carly opening the door to Sonny and Reese about to fuck, the next Monday, there’s Jennifer Bransford’s Carly bugging her eyes, staring at the fuckfest about to occur.
Seamless. Insulting.
The head writers are betting fans care more about the ongoing kidnapping saga (and how it affects Sonny Corinthos) than they do about the actress who saved Carly (and the Sonny franchise through bombs like Hannah and Angel) for four years, who slaved through day in and day out trying to make sense of the complete misogynistic, Sonny-centered bullshit, all with a smile on her lips and only a kind word for the show and its fans.
Guza and Pratt are also banking on the short-term memory loss of most of their youth demographic, since, obviously, it makes no difference whether soaps were and are supposed to be about familiar faces fans have grown to love, respect and rely on to be there year after year. That includes the actresses with those faces, dumbasses! And I’m sure they figure most of us viewers watching year after year value the male performers over the female.
The opening credits feature the females as beauty accessories, ending in a group shot of all the men in tuxedoes. Maurice Benard (Sonny), Steve Burton (Jason), Tony Geary (Luke) would never in a million years be given the Tamara Braun treatment. Hell, Geary enjoys lucrative perks not even his equal (in legendary status) Genie Francis (ex-Laura) could, so she bailed, and nobody in charge gave a fuck.
Finally, here’s what baffles me. TPTB (The Powers That Be) were the ones who started this goddamned star system in the first place, back in the 1990s, taking advantage of the insane obsession fans developed over Sonny/Brenda/Jax, taking it from there by transforming a small-time, part-time thug into the central star around which the lesser sub-humans revolve.
Not even the exodus of superstars in their own right (and younger too), Jonathan Jackson (ex-Lucky), then Tyler Christopher (Nikolas/ex-Connor), then Amber Tamblyn (ex-1st Emily) made any dent.
TPTB seemed to cling to Sonny even tighter. It’s sick and perverted, but now, as high up on the totem pole as Geary is, he’s second fiddle to Benard.
Almost a decade of TPTB rationalizing, pushing, pimping this star system – and suddenly NOW we’re all supposed to let Tamara Braun go, like she never happened?! NOW we’re all supposed to blink and fart and welcome a new Carly in her place?!
Worst of all, TPTB expect the new Carly, Jennifer Bransford, to suddenly take up where Braun left off, keeping most of her predecessor’s mannerisms – the bug eyes, the flailing arms, the stammering – without a proper introduction to help her get a feel for the new role. Bransford is supposed to just step in the next day, resemble enough of Braun so as not to be too jarring for fans, and then quickly, take over and hold her own amongst the giants of the industry like Benard and Burton, Ted King (Lorenzo).
No small order.
My suggestion would’ve been to introduce Bransford, after a few weeks had elapsed (they’ve fudged plot points before with nobody leaving, they can fudge plot points in her case), in Bransford’s element – this chick can do intense to the point of psychotic like nobody’s business. How about A.J. kidnap Carly to torment her, to eventually kill her? Think that’s uncharacteristic of him? Kidnapping and brainwashing a child, almost punching Emily and shooting his own father in the back ain’t exactly sticking with accuracy, folks. Then, we could watch Bransford kick some of A.J.’s ass, bargain and bribe him until he’s a flaming heap at her feet. Carly saves Michael and brings her own son home.
They pretty much did the same thing for Sarah Brown’s successor. Braun’s Carly was rumored to be on the chopping block before she even got a foot through Sonny’s penthouse door. As often as I’ve heard that Maurice Benard enabled Braun to turn her temporary stint into a permanent stay, I believe it was really the episode where Braun’s Carly kept calm while a mob rival of Sonny’s kept her, Alexis and Zander (I think) his prisoner. That’s when Braun earned her keep, and proved she had a few tricks up her sleeve the old Carly could never imagine. Tough? Not Brown, try Braun.
TPTB can’t have it both ways. They can’t work a soap newcomer like Braun to death, prostitute her as the next big thing to sell their show and keep Sonny afloat through damaging second-place romantic attempts, then drop her just because she doesn’t want to stick around for more of the same, and expect the rest of us to take it without SOME bitching.
On the surface, in the press, Braun’s decision to leave GH was merely her chance to try something new, primetime and film. As an actress who craves challenge, variety and truth to her roles, in vehicles that give birth to change, inspiration, it’s inevitable she’d want to spread her wings. She stressed it’s nothing personal, just a career decision.
And yet, Maurice Benard (Sonny) let it slip in a Northwest Afternoon talk show interview with co-host Cindi Rinehart that Braun wasn’t happy on the show for a few months now. Rumors seem to support this: Braun couldn’t stand Carly as Sonny’s doormat, Carly without a career or a life of her own, Carly constantly returning to Sonny instead of being independent or heaven forbid, with another man like Lorenzo.
Another rumor gaining strength is the one about the quickie recast. Perhaps it wasn’t done just to avoid, in the words of Pruza, derailing the ongoing storyline. Perhaps it was to also stack the romantic odds in Reese’s favor, in that with a new Carly in view, Reese’s portrayer Kari Wuhrer wouldn’t be the greenhorn on the show anymore. This slight advantage could win Wuhrer’s Reese extra fans no longer invested in a Tams and Mo combo.
Of course, I can’t help wondering if maybe this quickie recast is TPTB’s way of sending a clearcut message to both Braun and those remaining the cast thinking of pulling a Braun: Leave GH in the lurch, and you pay, we’ll make the audience forget you ever existed.
Look at how quickly they replaced Braun, the actress, the opening credits, all the framed photographs in Sonny’s mansion; every trace of Braun’s distinctive touch, gone.
She’s lucky she’s not Genie Francis.
You all remember what they did to her.
Right?
– C
Some posters on message boards have said that Tamara chose to come back as Kim Nero. That she didn’t like playing Carly, I know from her interviews when she came back she said that she “loved Carly with her whole heart….” That doesn’t sound like someone who wanted to play someone she didn’t like? Was she given the chance by Frank Valentini doing what he did to Billy Miller in De-Jasoning him when Steve Burton decided to trot on back after his stint on Y&R ended? Was she actually told she could? Did Valentini call Wright aside to tell her she was being fired or that she was being made another character since fan favourite Tamara Braun was back? It’s not like he hasn’t done it before. Heck he did it many times with the One Life To Live three in Micheal Easton (Finn Hamilton/Silas Clay/John McBain), Roger Howarth (Todd Manning/Franco), and Kristen Alderson (Star Manning/Kiki Jerome) who played no less than two or three characters in the course of two years during the whole ABC schmazel. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to make the switch. Write Wright off for a series of weeks to bring her back as another newly minted character allowing Tamara to slip back into Carly’s shoes. My guess is that Valentini just wanted the benefit of having Tamara’s fans back watching the show with no real commitment to her character. Face it Kim Nero was not overly developed. Tamara had three key scenes throughout her first year: 1) Going to see “Charlie” (William deVry) and flirting/sleeping with him, 2) Being a doctor (though barely), and 3) hovering over Oscar (Garren Lake Stitt). That’s all she did. Her character was never truly about Kim Nero. It was about being a parental figure to Oscar’s needs. The flimsy nature of the sudden onset brain tumor story the writers thought would showcase Tamara’s talents was thinly disguised as a ways and means to show they had no interest in writing for Kim Nero. The nature of how they devolved Kim after Oscar’s death shows they either didn’t know what they were writing or they saw her return as Ava Vitali in 2015-2016 and thought, “Oh yeah. Didn’t she rape that guy with the patch? I seem to remember that and there being some furor over it so let’s do that. We know Tamara can do that.”
I have no idea what Valentini thought in his mind when he did this. The sick thing of having Tamara begin her return in a scene with the “Corinthos Clan” at Thanksgiving was a doozy.
That scene where she recognized Jason as “Drew” then nothing for at least two years only to have her major scenes with Roger Howarth as FrankenDrew was sad and disgusting. Instead of having Billy Miller have Drew get his memories back, that was given to Howarth. The resulting trial and again having Franco believe he was Drew was next to hilarious. Having Tamara play out those last few weeks were sad and depressing. Even she knew the writing was on the wall. A character cannot recover from the amount of character assassination they performed on Kim. And I will always believe it was on purpose. And at the end of her tenure as Kim Nero, posters on message boards were starting to see her Carly coming out. They wanted her to be Carly again. And that in and of itself is sad. Sad that where Tamara is in her life and career that she couldn’t “come home” to where she began in soaps to play the character she worked to make iconic enough for Wright to be able to take over. Even in her early months as Carly, there were rumors going around she was on her way out. She soon proved her worth and in the many reviews of her being recast critics were calling her Carly more electric than Sarah Brown’s. All the growth and character development Tamara infused Carly with, were gone the moment Wright took over. Under Wright Carly has returned to the gutter snipe Sarah Brown created. And there are a lot of fans who are happy with that. They say Carly isn’t supposed to be fashion model. But then Carly isn’t supposed to be a matronly vamp either. Nothing about Wright’s interpretation smacks of growth or maturity. It smacks of someone who is unschooled on her job. Meaning, both Tamara and Jennifer have studied theatre. Wright was nothing but a fashion model before she turned to acting. Oh, she had high school plays under her. That’s I think an accomplishment.
Tamara once said that soap fans were so smart. I have to say having engaged with them on the various forums where one can post about the soaps, they’re not. Some of them are so stupid it’s hard not to want to slap them. They say they want Carly to be the same as she was when Sarah played her. They lack the understanding that with a character having been on a show that long, the character ahs to grow and evolve. They have to become something more than they were when they started. Look at Bobbie Spencer played by Tamara’s on-screen mother Jacklyn Zeman. Bobbie came on as a shit disturber and became a wife, mother, nurse. Would anyone say Bobbie should go back to being the scheming bitch she was when she first started? I don’t think so. So why expect Carly not to grow and become something more? I know for me I did. I wrote a tribute to Tamara on the main site explaining why I loved Tamara as Carly. One of those things is that I wanted Carly to be something more than she was. I also said the metric of a successful recast is if I can see the new actress/actor playing out the same scenes as their predecessor did. I could have seen Tamara playing out Carly’s arrival. Her making AJ (Billy Warlock) think he fell off the wagon. I could have seen Tamara playing out hate sex. Michael’s birth. Shooting Tony (Brad Maule) at the courthouse. All of those things I could have seen Tamara playing out. I could have seen Jennifer Bransford playing out the Panic Room. The alternate life story. The death of Michael (Dylan Cash) and kidnapping of Morgan. I could have sen it. Could I have seen Laura Wright playing out all those scenes I mentioned of Tamara and Jennifer? Not in this life. She couldn’t even match up to what either Sarah and Tamara did with the scenes she recreated when she first came on.
In the clip above showing how Tamara played it out and how Wright recreated it, one can see how Tamara played it better. Granted she’d had three years under her. But for someone like Wright who claimed she’d watched the character while she was on GL, she shows a lack of understanding who Carly is. According to Wright she used to marvel at Sarah Brown’s portrayal, even stating she would during her lunch breaks on GL sit and watch GH and love watching Sarah’s work. She said she admired Sarah and her acting. However, when asked what she thought of Tamara’s tenure, Wright stated she was “too busy getting married and having babies to watch.” In effect she was saying she didn’t care enough to watch, in effect dismissing Tamara’s entire time as Carly then kissing her ass when Tamara came on. This shows just how shallow Wright is. Then there’s the fact she and Maurice Benard (Sonny Corinthos) have ZERO chemistry. While Sarah and Tamara smouldered with him, there is a Siberian coldness with Wright. Ice blonde. She has no charm. No nothing. The only two pairings she ever really sold were with Ingo Rademacher (Jasper Jacks) and Roger Howarth’s Franco. But then again who could even have imagined Carly and Jax married? I couldn’t. And still can’t. Carly would never have married Jax ever. While Tamara and Ingo did have some chemistry, there was never a hint of putting them together as love interests. Yet there was Wright being paired with him. Probably the only pairing she ever sold. And what’s also interesting is in the polls conducted in ABC Soaps In Depth magazine, Maurice always ranks in the male top five. But Wright is in and out consistently. Sonny and Carly who with Tamara there were always in the top five, now ranks around eighth or ninth. That shows the level of nothing they have. The Carly and Sonny of old are gone. Sadly in the few scenes Tamara and Maurice did have they showed the magic was still there. Certainly in some of the photos both have posted on the Instagram accounts. So why didn’t Valentini capitalize on having Tamara back and making her Carly again?
Interesting that some posters on Twitter have said Wright refused to allow Tamara any scenes with Maurice. I’d believe it. Considering Wright’s boyfriend Wes Ramsey was hired right out of the parking lot shows the amount of pandering Valentini is willing to do. I have to wonder if there is anything Wright could do to get fired, or is she a sacred cow. All in all I’m not holding my breath that Valentini will do the right thing and hire Tamara back to reclaim the part. Right now I’m not even sure Carly can be retrieved. Wright has so damaged her at this point I really want Tamara far, far, far away from this disaster. Considering how they’ve ruined the character of Mike Corbin once played by Ron Hale now played by Max Gail, I don’t think unless GH changes regimes will things change. I keep holding out hope they can get Wendy Riche back. In fact I’ve tweeted to her telling her as much and she’s given me the impression she would love to. But I think at this stage the bosses at ABC love what Valentini is doing to the show no matter how much he’s ruined it with shoddy casting decisions and stupid, non-sensical storylines that meander on for years. GENERAL HOSPITAL is currently in the ratings basement for daytime soaps, and is it a wonder why. He shows he has no intention of changing anything up or doing what it takes to being the show back to a sense. Brain mapping, doppelgangers galore, whose-the-daddy, kidnappings, and any other number of idiotic stories are here to stay. I’m not so sure GENERAL HOSPITAL will be. And the reason for that will be Frank Valentini and his failure to do what is best for the show. And letting Tamara go a second time will be one of those hills he kills GENERAL HOSPITAL on.
Please let me know what you thought of this post by discussing it in the comments.