As He Makes His Days of Our Lives Return, Steve Burton Reflects On the One Thing That Could Have Saved General Hospital’s Jason
Wednesday, March 15th, 2023
It’s not what you think, either.
Ahead of his March 16 return to Days of Our Lives, Steve Burton was tasked by castmate Wally Kurth to contemplate how Harris Michaels differs from the Emmy winner’s other soap characters, General Hospitalpreppy-turned-hitman Jason Morgan and Young & Restless’ military vet-turned-detective Dylan McAvoy. (You can watch the actors’ whole talk below.)
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When Burton made his General Hospital debut, Jason Quartermaine was pre-med, and then his brother A.J. drove drunk, I was ejected from the car, hit my beautiful hair on a rock… ”
Back then, Burton was sporting such lush locks that they practically counted as bubble wrap. “I thought I had enough hairspray for a helmet,” he joked, “but apparently, it didn’t work.” Jason, at least the Jason viewers had first fallen for, couldn’t be saved. “My character changed,” becoming “very stoic… kinda emotionless.”
Viva La Difference
It wasn’t until Burton left General Hospital for Young & Restless that he got to play someone who reminded him of… well, himself. “I was really able to incorporate more of my personality into Dylan,” he said. “Jason was troubled, Dylan was troubled, and Harris is kind of in between these two. He’s fighting some demons.”
How could he not be, considering that he’s basically a straight arrow that got bent by Megan Hathaway’s brainwashing. (Little did she know she could’ve just hit the Navy SEAL on the head with a rock.) Harris is “also a good guy. He’s been a bad guy.” Now we’ll be eager to see whether, with Bo returning, he can manage to be Hope’s guy.
When Burton debuted Harris 2.0 on Days of Our Lives spinoff Beyond Salem in 2022, he and leading lady Kristian Alfonso had to get comfortable with one another fast. “We really were thrown right into the fire,” he recalled. “We don’t shoot anything in order, so one of my first days with her, we had all this highly emotional stuff, and I didn’t know” which end was up.
Luckily, “she has amazing eyes as an actress,” Burton noted. “That was kinda what I locked in on, and it was a great day. We’re best friends now.”
Review Jason’s wild life and “deaths” in the below photo gallery.
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Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
1/24
<p>“It’s not yours, sweetheart, but… ” Although Jason was born to Dr. Alan Quartermaine and ill-fated mistress Susan Moore, the philanderer’s wife Monica soon came to love the baby as her own. In fact — and we’d never tell this to his half brother, A.J. — we kinda think that Jason was Monica’s favorite. Shh! Shh! We said <em>don’t</em> tell A.J.!</p>
Image: Universal/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
2/24
<p>After a stint in boarding school — where apparently there was an outbreak of soap-opera rapid-aging syndrome — Jason returned to Port Charles as a strapping teenager played by up-and-coming Hollywood hunk Steve Burton, at that point best known for his stint as surfer dude Chris on the whackadoo syndicated sitcom <em>Out of This World</em>.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
3/24
<p>At Port Charles High, girl-crazy Jason pretty much <em>lived</em> with hearts in his eyes. But his main crush Karen Wexler… Well, we don’t want to say that she was out of his league back then. However, she <em>was</em> playing a different ballgame — and with a very different player to boot.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
4/24
<p>Karen only had eyes for buff boxer Jagger Cates, who, as this photo so clearly illustrates, gave the best neck rubs this side of the Paradise Lounge. How could Jason compete with that? How could anyone, really?</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
5/24
<p>Jason might’ve stood a better chance with Brenda Barrett — yet another classmate, you’ll recall — if she’d ever elected to turn into reality a certain fantasy she had involving a bubble bath, the honor-roll student and apparently a <em>whole</em> lot of baby oil.</p>
Image: Craig Sjodin/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
6/24
<p>Jason finally got himself a serious girlfriend in Keesha Ward. They even punched one another’s V cards over spring break in Paris. But their young-love story came to a screeching halt after he was involved in a car crash with a soused A.J. When Jason woke up, he was all, “No more Mr. Nice Guy”; instead, he was… Wait. You’ll see.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
7/24
<p>Overnight, brain damage transformed Jason into a shirt-averse amnesiac, a born-again bad boy who eventually went to work as a violent flunky for Brenda’s on-again/off-again endgame, Sonny Corinthos — you know, Port Charles’ answer to both Don Corleone <em>and</em> Juan Valdez.</p>
Image: Craig Sjodin/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
8/24
<p>While Keesha tried to mend the pieces of her broken heart with, of all people, A.J., Jason sought to resolve his identity crisis by exercising his right to “bare arms.” Needless to say, he’d soon draw quite a crowd to his particular brand of “gun show.” And yes, we will stop putting “everything” in quotes now.</p>
Image: Craig Sjodin/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
9/24
<p>Port Charles saw Jason as an unfeeling shell of his former self and onetime school chum Robin Scorpio as the quintessence of all that is good in the world. The yin/yang pair fell in love, anyway; in fact, it didn’t even occur to them to solicit outside opinions of their romance. Go figure.</p>
Image: ABC
10/24
<p>They’d never have believed it in the 1990s, but years after Jason had a no-strings-attached fling with future bestie Carly Benson, she’d end up married to… Can a person <em>have</em> two besties? If not, she’d end up married to his <em>second</em>-bestie, Sonny.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
11/24
<p>Rather than bother with son Michael’s actual father — A.J., the Meg Griffin of <em>General Hospital</em> — Carly enlisted her buddy Jason to at first fill in as a father figure. Over the years, Jason and Michael remained so close that the former got himself thrown behind bars in hopes of protecting the latter. Eh, it was the thought that counted.</p>
Image: Paul Skipper/JPI
12/24
<p>When Jason fell for Elizabeth Webber, he fell hard. Like “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” hard. They could never make it work, though. She had this weird thing about not wanting herself or her kids to be used for criminals’ target practice. Also, Jason always wanted to canoodle when she really, <em>really</em> just needed to have her morning coffee.</p>
Image: John Paschal/JPI
13/24
<p>Following a brief marriage of convenience to Brenda — what better way to avoid testifying against one another in court? — Jason put a ring on the finger of Sonny’s half sister, Courtney Matthews. When that ring came right back off, the don’s henchman tried to bolster Sonny’s relationship with Carly by pretending to be the babydaddy of his mistress, Sam McCall.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
14/24
<p>Given their affinity for black clothes, danger and one another, it was inevitable that Jason and Sam would wind up becoming a supercouple and living happily ever after. Ha. As if. They did indeed become a supercouple, but her mom also drove a wedge between them, Sam shtupped her stepfather, and Jason knocked up Elizabeth. And that was just for starters!</p>
Image: Lisa Rose/JPI
15/24
<p>Maybe if somebody had gotten to Franco (originally James Franco) when he was a baby-faced kid like this, he wouldn’t have grown up to be Jason’s worst nightmare, a stalkery painter who made the object of his obsession believe that he’d raped Sam. Note: No one got to Franco when he was a baby-faced kid like this. So before having his homicidal brain tumor removed, he was a helluva headache.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
16/24
<p>Two years after Jason was murdered by Cesar Faison, the deceased resurfaced in Port Charles with a new face (that of Billy Miller) and a telltale fondness for Liz and Sam. (As you can see, he <em>even</em> knew their secret handshake!) Of course, it would eventually turn out that this Jason wasn’t Jason at all but his twin brother, Drew. D’oh!</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
17/24
<p>Obviously, Jason’s loved ones welcomed him back with open fire. Er, <em>arms</em>. Open <em>arms</em>. But seriously, once the shock wore off, they were happy to have the original-flavor Stone Cold back. By and by, Sam even decided that she preferred the first version of her husband to the second; Drew was way too willing to wear colors other than black.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
18/24
<p>It seemed like no sooner had the Morgans made their way back into one another’s arms than they were targeted by Shiloh, aka Henry Archer, a cult leader whose father had once been duped by con artist Sam. As Jason is wont to do, he made a rational, well-thought-out argument for why maybe Shiloh should let bygones be bygones.</p>
Image: Walt Disney Television
19/24
<p>Only one thing changed in Jason’s life as rarely as his standard wardrobe of a black T-shirt and jeans: Sonny’s need for his protection. In 2020, the “coffee importer” had his turf threatened by rival… um… “businessman” Cyrus Renault. Somehow the underworld overlords didn’t even consider that in one of those plants, there might be a bug. (See what we did there? Plant… bug… Never mind.)</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
20/24
<p>Finally, after Cyrus had the Floating Rib blown up in hopes of reducing Jason to smithereens, Sam realized that maybe, just maybe, being married to the Mob was going to make her a widow (again) or cost her a kid or two. And she really didn’t have among her offspring an A.J. that she could bear to lose.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
21/24
<p>Neither JaSam nor their fans were going to like the answer to that question. After Cyrus Renault had the Floating Rib blown up, Sam made the painful decision to split from Jason to ensure that none of her children became poor Dev Cerci’s afterlife playmates. In the wake of that game-changing move…</p>
Image: ABC screenshot
22/24
<p>Not only did Sonny “die,” but Jason wound up going on the run with, of all people, Britt Westbourne (with whom, as you can see, he got a <em>whole</em> lot closer). And once he returned to Port Charles, things only got weirder: He and Carly decided that they had to tie the knot to protect the Corinthos crime syndicate from the Five Families.</p>
Image: ABC
23/24
<p>By the time Carly and Jason made it to the altar, they had rediscovered feelings for one another that they’d been sure were dead-dead, not Port Charles “dead.” Of course, it was that very night — right before the newlyweds were to consummate their marriage — that Sonny revealed that he was only the latter kind of dead.</p>
Image: ABC screenshot
24/24
