A recast unafraid to reinvent a different slant on perfection…

Tamara Braun had been given the most difficult task of any other daytime actor in recent years: replace- and win over- zealous viewers and critics from the indomitably innovative Sarah Brown in a role that earned her three consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards and artistic sovereignty.

To ask Braun to eradicate her predecessor from our collective consciousness would be futile. However, in recent scenes opposite leading man Maurice Benard (Sonny), the ingénue has proven capable of achieving memory lapses in GH viewers by equipping Carly with sudden vulnerability and fragile charm, grossly under-developed by Brown.

Braun excels as both the seductress and Super Mom. She has proven to be extremely adept at knowing exactly when to fall into each persona without drawing similarities between herself and a bowl of cooled wax.

Seemingly frail, Braun appeared as a pillar of strength when forced to tell Michael about her recent estrangement from his “Uncle Sonny,” comparing the pain the child felt to a skinned knee. Then, suddenly, a tear outlined her eyelid, visible for only a member as the actress instinctively lunged a fistful of long layers out from behind her ear; a definitive mommy mechanic that would shield Michael from observing Carly’s harried state.

Braun’s salacious stalemates with Benard, as Carly and Sonny trace their way back to the other’s erogenous zones, are flirtatious without appearing ranching, and constrained without being superfluous. Sharing similar features with Braun did help in the initial melding, but Braun struts a to a different rhythm with Benard. Before the couple’s showdowns topple over, viewers witness a mild apprehension, not enraged irrationality, in Braun, as Carly contemplates her next move.

Braun is an example of those thespians who fear little, and in downing so, gain so much…just like someone else we used to know… Sarah Brown. IN our estimation, Braun’s turn once envisioned undesirable, has developed into a most pleasant surprise indeed.