General Hospital just gave us a tribute to a legendary actress and character in which you could feel every emotion her loved ones and the performers who portrayed them felt, which is why Daily Drama’s first-ever Performer of the Week for General Hospital belongs to the GH cast in attendance at Bobbie’s memorial.
General Hospital Actors Left Us In Tears
How do you choose one Performer of the Week during one of the most heartwrenching, emotionally draining, yet emotionally uplifting weeks the show has presented in its 60 years? You don’t. Instead, you need to acknowledge all the actors who outdid themselves as they said goodbye to co-star Jacklyn Zeman while their Port Charles alter-egos bid farewell to Bobbie Spencer.
As each character recalled moments with Bobbie, we knew they were also recalling their scenes with the late Zeman, who passed away at the age of 70 last May after a short battle with cancer. Longtime stars like Genie Francis and Kin Shriner, who were there with Zeman when she first started on GH in 1977, particularly moved us. Francis’s eulogy as Laura to her one-time enemy, one-time sister-in-law, and lifelong friend struck a cord, as did the flashbacks of Laura and Bobbie fighting over Scott.
Shriner’s Scott could barely keep it together as we shared his deep sadness at the loss of his real-life and on-screen friend as fans recalled that it was only a few years ago that Scott proposed to Bobbie out of the blue and all she could do was pretty much tell him he was crazy. Seeing that flashback later brought that moment home for us and put smiles on our faces.
Very Special Mentions
Bobbie’s memorial turned into a short and magical story arc in which a supposed Associated Press reporter named Angela Brighton told Carly, Felicia, and Maxie that Bobbie had been working to rescue young women who were trafficked during her time in Amsterdam. The reporter wanted to finish a story she was doing on Bobbie and Maxie helped her by bringing those who knew Bobbie best to Kelly’s to share their memories of the GH nurse.
Ryan Carnes’s Lucas and Rebecca Herbst’s Elizabeth tugged at our heartstrings when Lucas recalled his parents and sister calling him Champ and Elizabeth shared how much Bobbie helped her become who she is by being her rock and support after she was raped as a teenager.
From the moment Carly learned her mother had died, Laura Wright didn’t miss a beat and carried on her exceptional performance through the memorial episodes. From Carly’s despair and comforting talks with Elizabeth and Sonny to her heartfelt and heartbreaking words at the funeral and her uplifting whirlwind journey through Amsterdam, Wright was mesmerizing.
Then, we had Kristina Wagner smashing our hearts to pieces as Felicia absorbed the enormity of losing her longtime friend and former sister-in-law, but then came to an incredible realization after helping Carly rescue the last young woman Bobbie had been trying to help.
As Maxie and Felicia searched for Angela Brighton after she left Port Charles, they found she didn’t seem to exist. The moment when Felicia remembered BJ, Bobbie’s late daughter and her late niece’s voice, face, and signature cheeks, and realized that Angela Brighton was really BJ Jones, was everything. Wagner delivered the line, “Brighton was Barbara Jean” in the same say she cried “Not Barbara Jean” back in 1994 when Felicia learned that BJ’s heart would go to her daughter Maxie.
It was a chilling moment that could define what soap operas are all about, as was the scene minutes later when Kirsten Storms’s Maxie realized the same thing and both she and Felicia touched her heart and we heard that same heartbeat Tony Jones (Brad Maule, who was robbed of an Emmy 30 years ago) did when he laid on young Maxie’s chest and heard his little girl’s heart beating.
To top off this week that will go down in soap opera and soap performance history, GH brought back Brighton Hertford, the actress who played BJ from the time she was a few months old until she was 8. Hertford, too, mesmerized us during a General Hospital week like no other.
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