HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Since so many GH fans are female (I know you guys are out there and I promise to do a Father's Day deal as well), and since so many females are mothers or at least have mothers, it would seem appropriate to do the column under the auspices of motherhood. But what can one say about the mothers on GH? Lesley is the greatest mother to ever walk the planet and I want one of my own. Please come live with me in my meager military family housing, Dr. Lesley. Katrina loves you. Audrey's child is in far away Africa and needs little in the way of mothering. Laura does a quasi-decent job now , but I'm sure Lucky would beg to differ, not to mention the fact that she, for WHATEVER reasons, good or bad, abandoned her newborn son for almost 20 years. I mean, there is that. Bobbie isn't exactly the picture of virtue one would want to see in their mother. She made friends with Tony just to have a babysitter for her sexual escapades, I think. Since Monica, Helena, Carly and Felicia can hardly vie for the Mother of the Year award, I'd have to let Lesley and Lila fight over it. Both love their children and grandchildren unconditionally, but are there with wisdom, guidance, and a kick in the butt when needed. Lesley is sort of a Lila-in-training, without Edward to bring her down. Cheers to these two moms for their ongoing role modeling of all that a mom should be (tho "not a doormat" should be in there somewhere - sorry, Lila, you role over just a bit too much).

I have commented before that I am impressed with how ABC/GH is tackling the issue of absentee parents head on instead of acting as though it's all rosy and fine for Felicia to be gone ten months out of the year and still rates the World's Greatest Mom cup. People are acting as though Felicia has spent the last ten years or so hanging out at the house making peanut butter sandwiches and putting out her Virginia Slim's in a ceramic ashtray crafted by six-year-old year old hands that is supposed to be a duck but instead looks like Hostess Ding Dong left in the sun too long (God, though, doesn't your heart melt when your little one shyly brings you that heavenly creation…ahh, I love it). On the contrary, Felicia has always kept herself in the line of fire. It didn't just start with the Quartermaine mystery. Her private detective business, both with and without Mac, kept her in harm's way. That was how she ended up engaged to Mac in the first place (actually, the second place since it was their second engagement), through faking an engagement to get the faux Mac (aka Jimmy) into a trap. Felicia was forever being stalked or kidnapped or going off on this case or that. Granted, she had more interest in the well being of her kids before, but hey, she was still working in her own world. This little jones (oooh, no pun intended) she has for danger and excitement is in no way new…the only difference really is her change of partners now that Mac the Mercenary has decided to settle down. I'm all for going out on adventures, leading a full and exciting life and swallowing up all the rush that life has to offer, but in my opinion, you give up your right to do that for a little while when you bring a child into the world. You then have an obligation to keep yourself safe and present in that child's life until they are ready to make it on their own. Call me old fashioned, but that's how I see it. Happy Mother's Day, Felicia…now get your butt home and stay there.

NOW, I do have to take society to task for some serious double standards and I would be remiss to not polish both sides of the coin. A very wise GH fan wrote to me with a most interesting perspective, one of those that makes you say, "hmmm." It is obvious that Felicia is being LAMBASTED for her inattentiveness to her family and children, but LUKE has ignored his kids and family continuously for YEARS and is generally thought of as a pretty cool guy. The truth of the matter is that Luke is a dead-beat dad. Carly really summed it up well to Sonny this week when she said that Luke loves his kids "…when it's convenient, when he doesn't have a better offer, when he's in town…" Very true. The worst he ever gets is, "LuLu misses you" then it's a big deal when Daddy's coming over for a visit. He has the nerve to criticize Sonny for making a family with Carly. He can rail into Sonny and Carly and come off all snotty and high-horsed, but at least Sonny is involved and conscientious as a father.

I'm looking out my door and seeing icicles, so surely hell hath frozen over. Did I actually hear the words, "Carly" and "has a right" in the same sentence coming out of Monica's mouth? Did she actually agree that Carly has a right to keep AJ from seeing Michael if he's drinking? That she has a right to anything? Brrrr.

Speaking of Carly, I have to send her big kudos for deciding to hold out for love, or at least affection, before jumping into Sonny's marriage proposal. It would have been easy for her to accept his proposal while they were still in the throes of disdain for one another, but she waited him out until they at least could get along in the same room for more than ten minutes. I'm really enjoying this relationship and I'm BUMMED that the spoilers seem to indicate that they will lose the baby. Sure, if that happens we can show that Sonny really does care about Carly and chooses her life over their son's, but there could have been so much to work with in a continued pregnancy, up to and including a labor scene between the two. Let's hope some post production editing works for the positive this time.

I love the way you can almost predict when Carly is going to let the cat out of the bag. In her confrontation with Luke, I could nearly count down (and a three, two one, cue Carly - "Roy is an FBI informant!!) to her blurting. I don't think I'd trust her with any of my secrets, that's for sure (listening, Sonny?).

It's also interesting they contrast between Mike and AJ. Here we have AJ, exploding in public and making a mess everywhere while Mike nurses his gambling problem pretty much in secret. For the most part, it only affects whether he and Tammy eat at the PC Grill or at McDonalds.

Emily is now the lyricist, I'm sure. Her poetry sounds like the B side to an Air Supply single, so no doubt that's where we're heading and soon it will be set to music. It's like sliding down a greased hill into hell (which has frozen over, remember).

Now here's what I'm wondering. We are assumedly supposed to be putting together the pieces on the Helena-Chloe connection via the nightmares, but I'm starting to feel as though my puzzle is a Goodwill store kick off. Either it's missing some critical pieces or the boxes got switched and I've got a different picture on the box. When the music was playing and we were getting the bad camera angles of Jax looking at her "as though he hated" her, were we supposed to be connecting the scenes of him in her dream with the scenes of him with Helena earlier? I was scrambling to remember if he was sitting down while talking to Helena (I was thinking they were standing at least part of the time). My VCR had a fit that day and part of the episode did not record, so I'm in the wind on this one. If she is looking out with Helena's eyes, was she seeing Helena's view of Jax? Is that why she saw and felt the hatred? Should I be punctuating that sentence with "duh!" or "huh?" Wake me when this story is no longer "once upon a dream," OK? I don't even mind Chloe and Jax any more…I just am wishing this thread would get out of the starting gate and run rather than just sitting there, pretending to look cerebral (hmm, that's two nasty puns today) and standing still.

Hannah and Taggert are working out just fine together, as are Hannah and AJ. I liked how AJ tried to sell himself and had to promise to remain sober for their date. You kind of know you are a pathetic drunk when you have to promise not to be falling down drunk to get a chick to go out with you. I had to laugh about Hannah and Taggert were setting up their out of town date. When he was telling her they could go in disguise, I was imagining him actually saying, "We can meet incognito" and she could reply, "Where's Cognito…is it near here?" *sigh* Another great moment missed. I suppose they could borrow Jax and Chloe's Russian disguises, Sigfried and Roy or whoever they were.

You must have known that I'd be all up into the Luke and Felicia rape scene. At least that was how it looked from my end of the couch. What was with that comment to Bobbie, "But it just got so hot so fast... and then I froze. Of course, that didn't go over very well with Luke." What?? When did Luke come off as angry that Felicia hadn't put out? Of course, that doesn't compare to the "You're all I have" line that she threw at Luke in the moment. Where did the real writers go when THOSE lemon lines made it onto the script? Let's take off half of our clothes, you swipe the desk clean, lay on me, we make out for a second, then start the "No" chant and tear out half dressed and half nuts? Luke then pole vaults out of the office directly into bad lighting that shows his age and then some, zipping his pants and looking like a dirty old man? Nope, that was a little more than I needed to see. At least she didn't suck on his nipple.

While I'm on the subject, did the Port Charles Wal-Mart have a sale on black bras or what? Carly, Hannah (who also picked up a hairy blanket, as I recall…no way was that nasty thing in Sharper Image), Alexis, Bobbie and now Felicia all seem to be wearing ugly black bras when the clothes fall off. I hope that we aren't cutting costs in wardrobing and they're all sharing the same bra. Nah. Nix that idea. The other four could live in and hang drapes in Bobbie's bra.

I've left it alone for a few weeks, trying to give it every opportunity to grow and flourish, but what IS with this new and not improved Lucky? If the brief moments in real time and the nasty remaking of flashbacks are any indication, the chemistry between Rebecca Herbst (Liz) and Jacob Young (Lucky) is like too much wet and not enough blanket. I was hoping beyond hope that the ultra-romantic Valentine's Day church scenes between Herbst and Jonathan Jackson (ex-Lucky) would remain sacred and not be defiled with retake, but sure enough, it had to happen. I'll know more after "the kiss" next week, but for now, although the jury is still technically out, they are making slashing motions across their throat with their respective index fingers.

So storywise, what do we know? Helena let him go intentionally, so we know that she has a mission and he has stated that he knows what he has to do. There's no way it can be as lame as Lucky just hearing Helena's spin on his past and feeling his parents lied to him his 'whole life. There has to be more than that. He is affectionate and loving to LuLu and Emily, so we know that it's not something as simple as Helena removing his love chip. He CAN feel love. He's all confused in his reactions to Liz and can't stand his parents. What he told Emily about not quite knowing what to do with Elizabeth is valid on the surface, but it still seems as though something weird is going on. His reaction to her paintings was strange and an inadvertent (or advertent) red herring was when it was mentioned that he used to seem almost hypnotized by Elizabeth's paintings. (!!) Does the music box that Helena owns and Chloe dreams about have anything to do with Lucky? I'm not a Jonathan Jackson disciple per se. I think he is an awesome actor and I loved him as Lucky, but I was more than willing to accept a recast if it meant getting the story on the move. Now, I'm beginning to formulate the words in my mind, "Is THIS what we were waiting for?"

Helena has made a MAJOR production of hiding in plain site where Nikolas and Luke are concerned. She has told them both the same exact story about saving Lucky from Faison and having to continuously move around to keep Lucky safe. Since when does Helena explain herself to anyone? Especially Luke? Why did she make a point to seek him out, go to his office and lay her (fake) cards on the table like she did? This is all part of the master plan of Helena and if this falls flat with some stupid, anticlimactic fizzle (like the Quartermaine mystery sham of 1999), you are going to hear me screaming coast to coast.

I was really looking forward to Laura's confrontation with Felicia, but I certainly didn't expect to have it end with Laura standing bug-eyed with her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water ("We are not a codfish"…Mary Poppins, 195?) GO HOME is right, Felicia. Like Bobbie said, Felicia is expecting that everything is going to be fixed overnight. She thinks she can bat her eyes until they water, wrinkle her nose and skewer up her mouth and everyone will forgive her because they know how sorry she is. You gotta work it, girl. She screwed up one too many times and she's got to prove herself before Mac is going to take her seriously. Playing doctor in the back office of Luke's Club isn't exactly going to make the grade, either. She needs to be doing exactly what Bobbie is saying (yep, hell has truly frozen over because I'm agreeing with Bobbie). She has to understand that what she and Mac had before is now in the past. That doesn't mean that they won't be together, but their relationship will never be the same again. Not worse or better, but definitely different. She needs to keep working to prove herself to both Mac and the girls and stay as far away from Luke as she geographically can. She's spinning out of control, looking for a quick fix that isn't there. One interesting point that did come out from Laura's clash with Felicia is that both are women who are (now) set on winning back their families. If they shake hands and walk away, perhaps they can both get what they want. The way Luke has been acting, though, perhaps they should shake hands, swap spouses and laud their winnings from the highest mountain top.

It cracked me up to hear Luke and Bobbie discussing all that happened in his absence. To hear the past 2 months come rattling out of their mouths made it really obvious how ludicrous soap life is and how blessedly boring real life seems in comparison. Roy has been arrested, but managed to escape and is really a federal informant and his daughter, who is Hannah Scott, the waitress you hired, is by the way a federal agent and Sonny is marrying Carly who is pregnant with his baby and Lucky, the son who was thought to be dead is really alive, but is a near-zombie, playing this "your wish is my command" game with Helena who is invading brain tumor victim, Chloe's dreams who is being treated by Tony who just had reconstructive surgery on his hand so that he can return to being a surgeon after having it smashed while kidnapping…

And the beat goes on…

See ya next week.

LINES OF THE WEEK

LAURA: If you love something, let it go. if it doesn't come back -- LUKE: Chase it down and beat it with a brick.

MAC (TO FELICIA): I still have a family. You just aren't in it.

LUKE (TO SONNY AND CARLY): I hope the two of you shack up, move to the suburbs, and raise a psycho soccer team.

SONNY: You kind of like me a little bit, a tiny bit, like this much. CARLY: Shut up.

BOBBIE: She is going through hell. LUKE: Barbara, hell's big enough for everybody to pass through.