In 1996, Carly Benson (then Sarah Joy Brown) arrived in Port Charles with a chip on her shoulder the size of a hubcap. And rather than merely confront Bobbie Spencer, the mother who in her days as a teenage hooker had given away her baby, the human wrecking ball sought revenge by flashing a little midriff and seducing her unwitting stepfather, Tony Jones.
From the start, Carly had complicated feelings for sometime booty call Jason Morgan. And they only grew more complex after she mistook a moment between him and Elizabeth Webber as more than him comforting her in the wake of boyfriend Lucky Spencer’s “death” and did the one thing that made sense in that moment: Carly had hate sex with her BFF with benefits’ BFF, Sonny Corinthos.
After Sonny helped (cough) “convince” A.J. Quartermaine to give up his rights to his and Carly’s son, Michael, she couldn’t help but fall for the dimpled don. Soon, the two of them were getting married and remarried as often as we get our car’s oil changed. Not that their lives were all weddings and honeymoons, of course. There were also betrayals galore and a period during which Carly (then Tamara Braun) was hooked up with…
As anyone would, after being shot in the head by Sonny while Lorenzo Alcazar was helping her deliver son Morgan — hey, it could happen — Carly began a relationship with the rival mobster. But since his name rhymed with neither “funny” nor “bunny,” it didn’t last. And after another spin on the marry-go-’round with her favorite ex, Carly acted on her feelings for his longtime rival Jasper Jacks by saying…
For a hot minute, it looked like Jax’s marriage to Carly (now Laura Wright) might actually stick. But then she suffered a miscarriage after being caught in an explosion and Michael slipped into coma following a botched hit on Sonny, and she seduced her ex in order to get him to sign away his rights to their remaining children. Taking this development poorly, Jax retaliated by shagging Sonny’s old flame, Kate Howard.
Drawn once more to a mafioso, Carly was just starting to get serious with Johnny Zacchara (Brandon Barash, now Jake on Days of Our Lives) when… Dang it! Wouldn’t ya know? Kate’s alternate personality, Connie Falconeri, forced the baby-faced mobster into not only an affair but a marriage in order to really stick it to Sonny. Sorry, Johnny, no coffee for you, then. Not. Even. Decaf.
… it’s just one of the saner moments at Carly’s wedding to reformed serial killer Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth, who now plays Austin Gatlin-Holt). Not only did the groom’s maniacal mother Heather Webber take a shot at objecting in her own unique way, Franco expressed his own displeasure at his fiancée’s affair with her ex by revealing that Sonny had murdered Michael’s biological father. So, “Electric Slide,” anyone?
Though Carly and Sonny got a second (22nd?) chance at happily ever after, it was shattered by son Morgan’s untimely demise. Carly had thought that it couldn’t get any worse than when he was carrying on with Sonny’s babymama, card-carrying femme fatale Ava Jerome, but oh, the fates just had to prove her wrong. There would be no more touching moments of family bonding like this for the Corinthoses!
Much like Carly snuck into Port Charles and made mom Bobbie’s life hell, Mrs. C’s sorta half sister Nelle Benson did the same to her, pretending to have schtupped Sonny, really schtupping Michael and basically setting the stage for more heartache and agita than anyone since… well, Carly. And her legacy of pot-stirring would continue even after her death; that’s how you know that Nelle was a grade-A supervixen!
While an amnesiac Sonny was hanging in Nixon Falls and beginning a new life as mild-mannered “Mike,” his “widow” and bestie sought to shore up the Corinthos clan’s hold on their territory by tying the knot. (This apparently really impresses mobsters.) The renewed romance was just supposed to be for show, but we all know how these things go. Before long, Carly and Jason were remembering just how hot a couple they’d once been.
Shortly after Sonny “rose from the grave,” Jason met his maker, and Carly started needing a compass to know which end was up. By the time she caught her husband in bed with Nina Reeves, the woman for whom his Nixon Falls alter ego “Mike” had fallen, she was ready to pound the final nail in the coffin of their marriage herself.
For many years weeks after, Carly flew solo. Then she noticed that Jason’s twin brother Drew Cain would make a fine stand-in for Jason. Emphasis on the “fine.” Like his brother, he was handsome, smitten and found it impossible to stay mad at her.
Carly’s decision to withhold from Michael’s sweetheart Willow Tait the fact that Nina was her biological mother nearly killed her. But since Carly fessed up as soon as she found out that Willow needed a life-saving bone-marrow trasplant, all was forgiven. Not by Nina, of course, but by pretty much everyone else in Port Charles.
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