Aside from the fact that Eva LaRue is a beloved daytime MVP, we can’t for the life of us figure out why General Hospital is keeping around Natalia, one of the most universally loathed characters in recent memory. But if the soap is intent on hanging onto her — and, heaven help us, it sure seems like it is — it’s got to solve the problem that she presents.
Let’s not mince words. Natalia was introduced with a crappy story, one that revealed that she was such a closed-minded, homophobic harpy that she’d intimidated daughter Blaze into the closet for most of her life. We already knew Blaze. We already liked Blaze. So we had less than no use for the rhymes-with-witch who came in and blew up her life.
General Hospital then made a bad plot worse by breaking up Blaze and Kristina, and sending the singer away. And keeping Natalia. Why? To be a love interest for Sonny? Literally no one wants that. It makes him look like the king of the jerkos to support Kristina on one hand and schtup her ex’s horrible mother on the other.
We know that the show has tried to say that Natalia had an epiphany, but we ain’t buying it. She only had a change of heart after her insulting, homophobic remarks were brought to light. She didn’t get enlightened, she got outed. So it’s galling to see her mixing and mingling with our faves and being treated like less of a pariah than Willow, whose only sin is one everybody in Port Charles has committed. (Raise your hand if you haven’t had an affair. No one? That’s what we thought.)
If General Hospital is going to carry on with Natalia, it’s going to have to do some serious damage control. How? By bringing back Blaze and writing her and her mother the hard conversations in which Natalia admits that she reacted to what she didn’t understand with intolerance. By having her do the work to make amends with her daughter. By having her not only say she’s remorseful but prove that she is remorseful.
