101: Killing Off a Long-Term Character

For reasons that remain unclear to me, soaps these days are moving faster and faster. One would think that, given the number of hours a soap has to fill in a year compared to the 22 a primetime network show gets (or the 13 or less a cable series offers), daytime television would use its greatest asset – time – to tell stories at a pace that allows viewers access to characters’ emotions and thoughts as the plot moves inexorably forward. But now in the rush to get to the Next Thing, even characters being written out are rarely given proper time for exit scenes before they’re shown the door. This trend is especially offensive when veteran actors are given the axe, as often many years of being a crucial part of the ensemble with prominent storylines give way to a few hasty goodbyes and, perhaps, a quickie memorial.

This week, we said goodbye to John Abbott, who has presided over his family on The Young & The Restless since 1980 and has been played by Jerry Douglas since 1982. Douglas is certainly not the only soap veteran to lose his job in the last few years, but as usual Y&R bucked the trend of a one- or two-day exit and gave John—and Jerry—the lengthy and respectful sendoffs they deserved. John’s passing due to a massive stroke was written, produced, and acted with such craft that it got me thinking about another fairly recent soap death—General Hospital's Tony Jones, who had appeared on that show since 1984. Tony’s ignominious end (at the hands of what I believe we are all still calling the “monkey virus”) was easily one of the most half-assed efforts any soap has produced in recent memory, and contrasts so sharply with Y&R’s tribute to John that a comparison of the two will bear out the textbook rules on how to kill a long-term character.

Rule No. 1. Give the character a story before they die. John Abbott possessed a devotion to his family unmatched by the other wealthy soap patriarchs created around the same time. This may be in part due to the fact that he raised his children alone—the Abbotts were abandoned by their mother prior to their introduction. Though he maintained the toughness and arrogance of the soap father, clashing most frequently with his son Jack, John was also characterized by a nurturing instinct. In Martha Nochimson’s excellent book, No End to Her: Soap Opera and the Female Subject, she writes that John represented a unique hybrid of masculinity and femininity in his approach to his family. (Indeed, daughter Ashley said to him on his deathbed, “You were my father and my mother.”)

Unfortunately, John was equally devoted to his wives, generally with disastrous results. Recently, his union with Gloria Fisher led him to murder Gloria’s abusive ex-husband, Tom, sending John to prison. Though we saw him only sporadically in recent months, John’s unprecedented act of violence brought him to the forefront of story, and so when people weren’t talking to him, they were talking about him.

Tony, on the other hand, had rarely been seen in the two years prior to his sudden departure. The actor, Brad Maule, had been taken off contract and most, if not all, of the characters surrounding Tony were either gone or barely used. Despite the fact that Tony starred in what is arguably the second most famous scene in General Hospital’s history (just short of Luke and Laura saying “I do”)—laying his head on little Maxie’s chest to hear his dead daughter’s transplanted heart beating inside her—more recent writers and producers seemed unable to come up with a story for him, and he languished. When the sweeps-month event of the (heaven help me) “monkey virus” hit General Hospital, doctor Tony suddenly reappeared to help during the crisis, evidently so that his death would add a cheap veneer of significance to the absurd proceedings. Upon his return Tony was given exactly one scene with his recast son prior to his death—a coming out scene, no less—and no scenes at all with his ex-wife and longest term love interest on the show, Bobbie Spencer, until the obligatory deathbed sequence.

Rule No. 2. Take a few days and let it sink in. There’s no reason to race through a character’s demise, particularly one with a lengthy tenure. If you can spend an entire episode with characters on a plane between, say, Springfield and San Cristobel, you can afford to spend more time saying goodbye to and mourning a major character. At the very least, the structure for a fatality would be spread over a week: Friday, the inciting incident occurs; Monday, the character is rushed to the hospital and family is informed; Tuesday, the vigil, farewells and the death itself; Wednesday, other stories are highlighted; Thursday, the funeral is planned; and Friday, the funeral is held.

For John, Y&R added in another protracted beat, as the family argued whether or not to take John off life support. This conflict—which feeds into Rule No. 4—also gave time to gather ancillary cast members like Tracy and Billy to return to Genoa City and have nominal screen time with their comatose father. All in all, it took a full two weeks to kill John, a time simply unheard these days, but absolutely appropriate to his status on the show and his importance to the characters left behind.

The death of Tony Jones, on the other hand, was divided into six acts. You heard me right: they did it in a day. After a few hints the day before (mainly consisting of Tony sweating as he treated patients), Tony succumbed in act one, family and friends were told in act two, they rushed to his side in act three, goodbyes were said in act four, Tony died in act five, and Bobbie was left alone with the corpse in act six. It was like a death written for Archie Comics. Tony’s memorial wasn’t until nearly three weeks later—once sweeps were over, naturally.

Rule No. 3. Surround the character with loved ones. In an exit interview, Jerry Douglas expressed gratitude that his show cared enough about him that they paid for fifteen actors to be in the room when John passed away. Imagine! Fifteen actors is more than half Y&R’s cast. Practically everyone who mattered to John was present to send him off, including characters who returned to the show just for that purpose, and each had an individual moment to say goodbye to him. The result was an incredible feeling of weight and tragedy surrounding this event. When everyone else cares, the audience cares.

Telling a story like this properly naturally costs money—you’d be hard pressed to find a show that pays to feature fifteen actors on any regular day, let alone one that will bring back former characters who wouldn’t logically miss the funeral. (Y&R loses a point, though, for Mamie’s absence.) General Hospital couldn’t really be bothered with Tony, and so the only people who showed up were Tony’s ex, Bobbie; his son Lucas; his niece Maxie; former friends Alan and Monica; and, most curiously, his brother-in-law Luke, with whom he’d only shared a few nominal scenes over the years, but who apparently took it the hardest. At Tony’s memorial, several other Port Charles denizens turned up, apparently to fill the pews, because Tony’s brother Frisco and sister-in-law Felicia couldn’t make it.

Rule No. 4. Use the death as a springboard for story. One of the basic rules of soap opera storytelling—and one that GH’s current writers are really, really bad at—is that every event leads to something else. Stories spin off in other directions. A character’s absence should ripple across the town and transform existing situations and relationships. The argument over whether to take John off life support has added a new, vicious strain to the revived conflict between his son Jack and widow Gloria, as well as their two families. Jack wants Gloria out of the Abbotts’ lives, while Gloria seeks to define her role, as well as those of her sons, in the evolving family dynamic and in the Abbott empire. Now that John is no longer present to mediate the dispute, the audience can anticipate a bitter war that will add a dramatic new dynamic to future stories.

No such luck with Tony Jones: He had been reduced to such an ancillary presence that his death was literally meaningless for the world of General Hospital. While his loss might have been a defining moment for Bobbie as she began to seek out another chance with Noah, or for Lucas as he came out, or for selfish Maxie as she could have realized she was wasting the gift Tony and her cousin gave her, even these meager possibilities were ignored. Which brings us to the ancillary rule 4(a):

Rule No. 4(a). Let the death inject life into another character. Stories must not just be redefined by a death, but so must characters. Jack’s egotism now fuels what he perceives to be a dynastic responsibility to replace his father, and it is apparent that even as his grief is laid naked, he is growing colder. His cruel decision to tell the Fishers the wrong time for John’s funeral so that they could not attend is likely the tip of the iceberg as Jack draws into himself and exacts tighter control over his family. Always a complex character, Jack’s brushes with darkness now appear to be overpowering him.

Conversely, GH’s unwillingness to give any story to Bobbie resulted in a focus shift to her brother Luke, who though barely acquainted with Tony—or really anyone, for that matter, he is so insular—felt moved enough to give the eulogy. The following day, Luke returned to being unaffected, as it was time for the Next Thing.

Rule No. 5. Don’t forget the little touches. In the end, though, it’s the little things that elevate a character’s death to a classy production. Soaps shouldn’t skimp on the flashbacks—both Y&R and GH had them aplenty, though Y&R’s were tied directly to surviving characters. Mentions of absent family members are welcome, as there’s nothing more frustrating than when someone’s child somehow doesn’t return to town for a parent’s funeral. But it’s getting to the heart of the dying character that makes the day. Though GH didn’t earn their ending, it was absolutely essential that in his last moments Tony see his dead daughter B.J., and thus despite the slapdash scenes preceding it, Tony’s death brought him full circle by evoking the part of his character we all loved most about him. And though the scenes between John and his children were incredibly moving, it was Katherine’s last words to him, evoking their bygone childhood together, that got me: “See you at the lake.” It was at once a fond goodbye and an admission that Katherine herself is closer to the end than she was the beginning.

It would have been nice, especially for this long-time GH viewer, if Tony Jones had gotten the John Abbott treatment. Y&R’s storytelling remains matchless, though any show can follow these rules and create a moving event that celebrates the departed, energizes the characters left behind, and drives story for years. The irony is that General Hospital did it ten years earlier, when Tony’s daughter B.J. died.