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How Helena Cassadine Can Save General Hospital

By Ed Martin

ABC's once-mighty General Hospital has been on a downward slide for far too long. Too many years of too many violent and repetitive (and ultimately silly) stories about mobsters and their women, coupled with the senseless deaths in recent years of a number of popular core characters, have left it in ruins.

But the last two weeks have brought with them a blast from the past that has once again made GH a television show worth watching. Given the industry's cock-eyed obsession with youth at the expense of all else, it is rather satisfying to report that the bolt of lightning that has brightened up the dull and dreary world of Port Charles is a sizzling senior citizen played by Constance Towers, a veteran actress who was born in 1933 and is now in her sixth decade of film and television work! As the murderous, manipulative madwoman Helena Cassadine, Ms. Towers rocks the witch.

Actually, I have never been a fan of the all-powerful, unstoppable, bloodthirsty Helena. She was created way back in 1981 as the means by which Elizabeth Taylor -- then a self-declared GH super-fan -- could attend the wedding of the now-legendary Luke and Laura. She was barely referenced during the decade that followed, except when Laura disappeared (in early 1982, when Genie Francis left the show) and reappeared (in late 1983) after being held captive at the Cassadine compound in Greece, where she was forced to marry Helena's oldest son Stavros. But throughout much of the '90s and frequently during this decade Helena has returned to Port Charles time and again to cause all kinds of trouble.

As written for Ms. Taylor, Helena was the epitome of class and elegance, her malevolence measured by her place in international society. But as written for Ms. Towers, she is just a mad, malevolent meddler. If it were up to me, Helena would never have come back to Port Charles after the big wedding, or she would have been killed off years ago. Back in the days of the grand executive producer Gloria Monty, when stories on the show had distinct beginnings and endings and villains came and went, always paying for their crimes, a homicidal evildoer like Helena would have never been permitted to survive for as long as she has.

But I am so alarmed by the current state of General Hospital that I'm going to cut Helena some slack. In fact, I now believe Helena could be utilized in a story that would undo much of the seemingly irreversible damage that has been done to GH during this decade, especially where the show's once story-rich Quartermaine family is concerned.

Indeed, it seems to me GH has been losing fans at a rapid clip since it began killing off members of the Quartermaine clan. It would take a drastic and outrageous story to fix the resultant mess, and that's precisely what makes Helena uniquely qualified to ride to the rescue on her broomstick. The character and her family's history, dating back almost 30 years, are so over the top that nothing she might do would surprise viewers. After all, it was the saga of the Cassadine family's plan to freeze Port Charles in August 1981, by way of a weather-controlling machine hidden on a remote tropical island, that propelled GH into the pop-culture pantheon even before Luke and Laura famously got hitched.

Here's what GH should do with Helena. In a wild storyline that would recall the GH of old, it should be revealed that AJ, the oldest son of Drs. Alan and Monica Quartermaine, did not die in 2005 when he was murdered by an already forgotten minor character. Rather, one of Helena's minions got to AJ before his "lifeless" body was discovered and injected him with one of those only-on-a-soap drugs that kept him alive, albeit with a barely perceptible heartbeat. AJ was later removed from the now-crowded Quartermaine crypt and whisked away to that secret lab Helena had built ages ago, several floors below the basement of the title hospital. In 2001, we were told that Helena's son Stavros hadn't really died when Luke seemingly killed him back in 1983. He was actually in that same subterranean lab in a state of suspended animation awaiting the development of the treatment that would revive him almost two decades later.

As Helena's story progressed, we would learn that Cassadine medical personnel revived AJ and slowly nursed him back to health, all the while programming him to be loyal to Helena, who had grown tired of her long-running conflict with Luke and Laura Spencer and decided instead to seek long-overdue revenge on the Quartermaines -- and not simply because Tracy Quartermaine is now married to Luke. Longtime viewers will recall that it was a Quartermaine -- the globe-trotting Alexandra -- who first brought the Cassadines to Port Charles back in 1981 and touched off a series of events that eventually led to the death of Helena's beloved husband, Mikkos. With AJ as her pawn, Helena would eventually take control of the Quartermaines' vast business empire, restoring her to a position of great power in the international financial community.

We could then happily discover that, despite his programmed loyalty to Helena, AJ felt the need to make things right with his father Alan, whom AJ shot in the back the last time the two were together. When Alan suffered that fatal heart attack after the Metro Court Hotel hostage crisis in 2007, AJ secretly arranged to have him brought to Helena's subterranean lab, where he has since been stabilized and remains in a coma. Helena was fine with this because she had nothing against Alan and thought that he, too, could be useful to her if he regained his health, perhaps as chief of staff at General Hospital after she takes control of it.

Further, it would be revealed that Helena had, at the time of Emily Quartermaine's murder in 2007, been having the young intern followed at all times, since she despised the girl and could not abide the love her grandson Nikolas Cassadine had for her. Helena had been planning to kidnap Emily and brainwash her into rejecting Nikolas, and she had arranged for a double to replace Emily while the brainwashing took place. As it happens, it wasn't Emily whom Diego Alcazar murdered on that fateful night. It was the double. (Remember, the actual murder occurred off-camera!) The recently introduced Rebecca would turn out to be the brainwashed Emily, sent into action by Helena as part of her nefarious plan.

There are other much-missed characters that could be tucked away in Helena's lab, including Justus Ward, the grandson of Quartermaine patriarch Edward, and Georgie Jones, ex-wife of Tracy's son Dillon. It's not like any of this extreme science-fiction would be new to GH, or even to the Cassadines. After all, Stefan Cassadine secretly kept Lesley Webber alive for 12 years after Helena attempted to kill her in 1984, and Helena held Lucky Spencer hostage for one year and brainwashed him while Luke and Laura grieved the "loss" of their son in a fire. And, as mentioned above, Helena kept a comatose Stavros alive for 18 years until he returned to briefly wreak havoc on the residents of Port Charles in 2001 before falling into a bottomless pit in that same subterranean lab. The Cassadines are world-class experts at mischievously switching bodies, keeping the almost dead alive, creating convincing lookalikes, and fooling everyone into thinking their loved ones are either lost or not. We need them to be restored to their full power, and we need that now!

Think of the excitement that would be generated by this wild and wacky storyline -- one that would be very vintage GH -- as so many much-missed characters returned to the narrative in the biggest Cassadine caper since the classic story of the weather machine. (And if some of them had to be recast, so what?) Best of all, the sublime Ms. Towers could act the hell out of it all as she became the shining salvation of daytime drama that she deserves to be.

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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
Earlier in his career, Ed was publicity director for the independent feature film production and distribution company Vestron Pictures, where he orchestrated publicity campaigns and produced electronic press kits for dozens of movies including the one and only Dirty Dancing. The fact that it is now referred to as a "classic" makes Ed feel old.