General Hospital Exclusive: As the Headwriters Contemplate Taking Jason and Carly From Friends Back to Lovers, They Ponder ‘How Close Can They Get, Especially When Sonny Is Believed to Be Dead?’

All these years after the BFFs were a couple, history just might repeat itself.

There was a time — a long time, actually — when it would have been unthinkable for General Hospital to move Jason and Carly out of the friend zone. Sure, they had been an item back in the 1990s. But since then, she had married his boss — and remarried him and re-remarried him. She was as committed to Sonny as Ryan Chamberlain is to Ferncliff. And Jason would no sooner betray his mentor than he would wear something other than a tight black T-shirt.

In recent months, however, things have changed. Heck, everything has, you could say. In the wake of the December bridge collapse that made the don a missing person, Carly has assumed that she’s a widow. At the same time, Stone Cold has been frozen out by his own “widow,” Sam, who’s decided that the safest place for her kids maybe, just maybe isn’t in the proximity of an infamous hitman.

So both Jason and Carly are grieving. They are both under tremendous stress from the ongoing threat that Cyrus represents. And they’ve always been one another’s touchstones. Could they lean so hard on one another in the days to come that, without even meaning to, they once again cross over the line between friends and lovers?

You’ve probably already read why we think it’s going to happen. Let’s see what the ABC soap’s headwriters have to say now.

“Whad’ya say we drink all that booze over there and make this thing happen?”

Credit: Paul Skipper/JPI

‘The Great Loves of One Another’s Lives’

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Jason and Carly are the most significant sort of others, the scribes agree. “I would say they are one of the great loves of one another’s lives,” Chris Van Etten tells Soaps.com. 

But — and it’s a big “but” — that “doesn’t necessarily mean romantic love,” he adds. “That relationship transcends a lot of the traditional concepts of love and romance on a show like this.”

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“Right about now, I could really go for some — sniffle — grief sex.”

Credit: Howard Wise/JPI

Too Close for Comfort?

As Cyrus turns up the pressure on Jason and Carly, they could find themselves in need of some stress relief. And who better to get it from than one another, the people they trust most in this world aside from the “late” godfather? “There is always the question of how close can Jason and Carly get,” teases Dan O’Connor, “especially when Sonny is out of the picture and believed to be dead. We’ll wait and see.”

We’ll wait alright — but on pins and needles. A whole lot more would change if Jason and Carly became a couple again, even for a night. When Sonny returned, given his well-known feelings about betrayal, he’d be sure to see shades of red that he didn’t even know existed. And were Jason to actually hook up with Carly, it might push Sam to move on from him even more quickly.

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“Ya snooze, ya lose, Sam.”

Credit: Howard Wise/JPI

Jason/Carly Could Doom Jason/Sam

“Under ideal circumstances, there would be no question as to whether or not Jason and Sam would spend the rest of their lives together,” notes Van Etten. “But right now, Sam believes she is making the right decision for her family, and Jason agrees. They’ll always be in each other’s lives, but Jason believes staying away is the right thing to do for now.”

For the ex-Morgans, the question isn’t whether they love one another. As O’Connor puts it, “the question is how committed can both of them be to this new arrangement when potential romantic spoilers start to enter their lives?”

Perhaps especially if one of those spoilers is someone like Carly, to whom Jason has always been as devoted as he is to Sam. What do you think, General Hospital fans? Is the show really going to go (back) there with Jason and Carly? Would you like to see what Steve Burton and Laura Wright are like as a romantic couple on screen (since the first time around, Burton’s Carly was Sarah Brown)? Hit the comments with your thoughts, and while you’re here, acknowledge the anniversary of One Life to Live’s final episode on ABC by perusing the below photo gallery of the soap’s whole wild run.