Gosh, it takes me back when I think of the old WSB spy days on General Hospital. I used to see the great friendship between Sean, Robert and Anna and wish I could find a friendship like that. They were always there for each other when the other needed them. Always working together to take down some bad guy. Now I look at the so-called friendships on GH and don’t really find any. The ones that are there seem shallow and empty. Watching Dark Shadows and seeing Quentin, Barnabas and Julia working together to stop the Leviathans was like watching Sean, Robert and Anna all over again. It really brought back old times for me. If romance is a sad case on General Hospital, than friendship isn’t in much better shape. When I look at the friendships on General Hospital I can honestly thank my lucky stars I don’t have friends like that. Cause as the old saying goes, with friends like these, you sure don’t need no enemies.

Jason and Sonny I suppose would be catergorized as the uber friendship of the show. At one time these two characters did have a good friendship, but that time has long past. Now the friendship seems to exist solely so Bob Guza’s pet character can hi-jack whatever storylines Sonny has from him. Jason has the being there for a friend thing down a little too pat. He’s there trying to play Mr. Fix-It before a problem even exists. He won’t even give Sonny the opportunity to handle his own problem. He’s sticking his beak into Sonny’s business when there’s no need for him to even be in it. He has no respect for Sonny, as he’s constantly second guessing anything he says and does. He seems to think Sonny needs him to do his thinking for him and to make all his decisions. He’s also constantly betraying Sonny, but his betrayals are written off as him knowing what’s best for Sonny. It’s like he thinks he’s Sonny’s mother or something. The character of Sonny survived years of childhood abuse without Rain Man there to do his thinking for him and to take care of him. This whole Jason Knows Best stuff is ridiculous. Sonny is perfectly capable of taking care of himself and making his own decisions, without the all-knowing one there to decide if he’s made the right decisions or if he needs to be corrected in the decisions he’s made. The best thing Sonny could do for himself is free himself from this leech permanently.

Next on the friendship hierarchy would probably be Courtney and Carly. Just why are these two friends? Why because they both worship Jason as their own personal god and woe be it to anyone who doesn’t feel the same about him, since they’ll bash and trash them all over town for not seeing the magnificence of Jason. That seems to be the only reason these two are friends. Actually, a more apt description would be to call them cult members. I’d like to see how long this so-called friendship would endure if Carly should, get bitten by the Jason Lust Bug again. I have no doubt their non-existent friendship would immediately disappear if they were in competion for the heart of the mighty borg. Actually, if Sonny could shed himself free of Carly, then Jason/Carly/Courtney could make the perfect menage a trois. Jason could stand by the window shirtless staring out at nothing while Carly and Courtney sat on the couch idolizing him from afar. Wouldn’t that be must-see TV? It would probably be more interesting to watch than their so-called friendship.

Another friendship on the show, but not on the same level as Jason/Sonny or Carly/Courtney is the friendship between Jax and Ned. Ah, what a touching friendship it is. When Jax came to town he tried to steal Ned’s wife, then he tried to steal Ned’s company. Jax exemplifies the old saying about not turning your back on him or you’ll find a knife sticking out of it. By contrast when Jax lost his fortune, Ned helped him recoup his losses. Why is Ned friends with Jax? Probably because they can’t think of anyone else to be friends with Jax and they figure someone as great as their trying to tell us Jax is, should have at least one friend. Even if he’s stabbed said friend in the back countless times and will probably continue to do so many more times in the future. The best that can be said for this so-called friendship is it’s all one-side and all on Ned’s side. If Ned was begging for alms for the poor, Jax would step over him without giving him a second thought.

The last real friendship on this show would probably be that of Liz and Emily. Of course, that took a real nose dive last year when Liz boinked the love of Emily’s life Zander. But strangely enough when Emily found out, she didn’t really care. If rumors are true, proving the old adage that once is never enough, Liz will again boink Zander again and get knocked up by him. Wonder if now that Emily is married to Zander if she’ll be so willing to let bygones be bygones. Of course, at the moment she’s lusting after another man, herself, as Zander has lost stock in Bank of Emily, so maybe she won’t care and the friendship between these two will continue to flourish.

Would you want to have a friendship like any of these? If you don’t have a friend that’s trying to control you and your life, you’ve got a friend stabbing you in the back or sleeping with your man. These friends make better enemies than friends. Unfortunately, the real enemies on the show come off looking like cartoon caricatures, so their on the same level as these so-called friendships. Unbelievable and pretty pathetic.

Every new person that comes to town is an enemy of Sonny Corinthos. Unfortunately the last real good enemy Sonny had was Hernando Rivera in the days Sonny cut a deal with Rivera to marry his daughter Lily to get a get out of jail card free, but in the bargain he had to give up his true love Brenda, something Sonny had big problems doing. Sonny was actually afraid and intimidated by Rivera. You could see it in the scene when Rivera told Sonny if he didn’t stay away from Brenda he would kill her. I think to have a really good and believable enemy there has to be a fear factor present. An enemy has to present a threat to you in some way to up the ante. It ups the risk factor in the adversarial relationship between enemies if you feel personally threatened by the other person in some way.

The crop of enemies that came down the pike after Rivera are laughable. From Jax to Alcazar, none of these people intimidated or even scared Sonny and why should they. As enemies, these people came off as big jokes. Alcazar and Ric’s reasons for being out to get Sonny are ridiculous to the extreme. Sonny didn’t off Alky 1, but Alky 2 is supposedly out to get him because he holds him to blame for his brother’s death. Duh, if someone didn’t kill someone than how are they to blame for someone’s death. What makes it even more ludicrous is Alky 2 knows who really killed his brother and he’s not out to get that person. The whole Alky/Sonny got a little better when Alky 2 fell in love with Sonny’s disloyal wife and now he actually has a real reason to be out to get Sonny. He wants Sonny’s wife for himself, but the enemy thing still isn’t working. Enemies are like making love. It’s takes two and the so-called enemy thing is all on one side. Sonny has no reason to hate Alky or to feel the intense passion enemies feel for each other. If they keep building this thing between Sonny/Alky they may eventually emerge as real enemies.

As for Ric, apparently he had a womb with a view not to mention a memory like an elephant, as he remembers how Sonny pushed his mother down the stairs when Adella was pregnant with him and almost killed him. Now he blames Sonny for every imagined wrong in his life. Most times Ric comes off like a sociopathic whiner. He’s done some nasty things to Sonny like Alky has, but Sonny sees him as a weakling and there’s just no threat or risk factor with these two. At this point I don’t think anything could help make them come off as real enemies. It’s just not there.

Sonny also inherited AJ as an enemy from Jason. AJ’s jealousy of the favored brother Jason has always been there. It was ridiculous trying to put it off on Sonny. As for Sonny, like brother Ric, Sonny isn’t the least bit threatened or intimidated by AJ. Sonny treats AJ like an insect Sonny could easily squash if the mood should strike him. And every time these two have gone up against each other, Sonny has won. The enemy has to occasionally win a battle or there’s no reason to feel threatened by them and they pose no threat to you.

But the most ridiculous enemy of all that Sonny was subjected to was the wussy womanizer, Jasper Jacks. Watching this gnat of a character constantly threatening the head of the mob was a bad joke. To say the guy was a lover, not a fighter, was the understatement of the year. And every time there was a scene of Jax getting in Sonny’s face and trying to threaten him, you had to stop yourself from laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. He wasn’t even a threat to Sonny romantically, as most of the women seemed to prefer Sonny over Jax. In the end, Jax was little more than an annoying fly buzzing around Sonny’s face. He was just not the material a true enemy is made of.

Sonny wasn’t the only character to inherit another character’s enemy and for it to end up laying a very stinky egg. Luke inherited Cesar Faison, the supreme villain of all villains, but opposite Luke he just became a silly and ridiculous prop to prop up the burgeoning Luke/Felicia pairing. The thing this show failed to acknowledge was that Robert Scorpio and Cesar Faison were the super couple of enemies. When Robert and Faison were in a scene together the air just crackled with danger. One of the reasons they made such incredible enemies was the fact in their own way each of them was afraid of the other, even though they refused to acknowledge it out loud, but you could see the fear factor there in their scenes together. The closest Robert came to admitting it was when he said he believed Faison was evil and wondered if he could ever really be stopped. You see, there were times when Faison won, and Robert couldn’t forget that. As for Faison, Robert was like the Roadrunner and Faison was like Wile E. Coyote. No matter what he tried, he could never ultimately beat Robert. Robert would always be victorious over him in the end. And that was there in every scene they shared together. The reason for their hatred of each other was Anna, who they were both in love with, but Anna loved Robert and never returned Faison’s feelings for her. There was also the backstory of how Faison threatened to kill Robert if Anna didn’t do one more spy mission for him and he used that mission to make sure Robert learned Anna was a double agent, which was what destroyed their marriage.

The passing of Faison on to another character might have worked if it was a character Faison actually had some history with like Sean Donely or Mac Scorpio. But Luke Spencer had no history with Faison. To make it worse, they had Faison [unbelievably] obsessed with Felicia Jones. If the show was going to have Faison obsessed with anyone, it would have made more sense to have him obsessed with Anna and Robert’s daughter Robin. Yet, they had him become obsessed with a woman he’d barely even noticed while making Robert and Anna’s lives miserable. To be fair, it could have worked if the story concentrated on Mac and Faison. Mac was Robert’s brother and Faison becoming obsessed with the wife of Robert’s brother would make a certain kind of sick sense, but Mac was completely excluded from the Faison story. So the story ended up tanking big time, ruining the villainous Faison’s character in the process.

To make good and believable enemies there needs to be a reason for two characters to be enemies. Like a good romance, the story needs to be there, and with most of the enemies on GH there is no story. The writers slap together some lame reason for two characters to be at odds, and the results are some very lame and laughable enemies. Sonny has past bad blood between Ned, Taggart and Scotty. All would make believable enemies for Sonny, but instead we’ve got the likes of Jax, AJ, Alcazar and Ric. You can’t just bring on a new character as someone’s enemy without building some kind of believable back story on why they’re someone’s enemy. Unfortunately, that just seems to be too much work for the lazy scribes who work at GH. Telling a real story isn’t part of their forte.

That’s why the enemies on Dark Shadows are believable and GH aren’t. You could take the building of new enemies Quentin and Gerard as how to construct a successful pair of enemies. Gerard was brought on the show and he was out to get Quentin. He even lured Quentin to a room planning to strangle him, not to mention burying him alive. Currently on Dark Shadows recasts the story is unfolding on just how Quentin and Gerard became enemies. As it so happens, Quentin and Gerard were originally friends, with Gerard being envious and wanting everything the wealthy Quentin had. The tale is now slowly unfolding on just how Gerard and Quentin became the enemies they are in the present time.

If you want to bring a new character on the show who is the enemy for a current character, you need to tell the story of why their enemies and just how they became enemies. You can’t get away with some lame, "I was in our Mommy’s womb when you tried to kill me and I’m going to make you pay for that" nonsense. There’s got to be a real story and real history involved between two characters for them to make believable enemies.

If you build the story well, you won’t need to be constantly bringing on new enemies to beset a character. Dark Shadows; Barnabas and Angelique are a prime example of that. They built their adversarial relationship from scratch. Angelique was in love with Barnabas and when he spurned her for another she first made his sister ill to force him to marry her, then she turned him into a vampire. Every time he thinks he’s finally free of her, she suddenly shows up to make his life miserable. Recently, she came to visit his coffin on the anniversary of the night she turned him into a vampire and when she found his coffin missing, she was off to the races again, declaring she would let no woman have him but her. Putting action to her words, she turned the woman Barnabas was now in love with into a vampire and got her to bite Barnabas’ best friend, Julia.

In an interesting contrast Barnabas’ best friend Julia is also in love with him but he’s never returned her feelings. Poor Julia must sit on the sidelines as she watches him fall for one woman after another. But instead of going the route of Angelique, Julia and Barnabas developed an enduring friendship and a loyalty to each other that knows no bounds. Julia, ultimately decided if she couldn’t have his love, than his friendship would be enough for her.

Just like there could be real romances on General Hospital, there could be real friends and enemies, as well. Sonny and Luke were the super couple of friendships, but they were suddenly split up for no good reason, at all. The only apparent reason there seems to be for Luke and Sonny not being friends currently is that it would cut in on Jason’s time and you can’t have that on Jason Hospital. As for enemies, Luke and Scotty are long time enemies going back to when Luke stole Laura from Scotty. Yet this is an adversarial relationship that’s hardly even played on anymore. Instead Luke goes from one ridiculous antic to the next.

Once again, the problems go back to where they always go back to. The writing on this show and the writers refusal to take time building relationships, whether they be friends, lovers or enemies. Until they start doing so, there will never be any super couples, super enemies or super friends again on this show.

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