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General Hospital’s Rebecca Herbst Reflects On Elizabeth’s Thwarted Happy Ending: ‘I Don’t Really Understand Why the Writers Decided to End Things’
Saturday, August 13th, 2022
The nurse was with a partner who was an Rx for a bright future. If only it had lasted…
Rebecca Herbst feels your pain, “Friz” fans. The General Hospital leading lady was as sorry to see Elizabeth widowed as you were. Though Roger Howarth is still on the show as Austin, Franco had been good for Liz.
“I think [she] grew up a lot in her relationship with Franco,” Herbst tells Soap Opera Digest. “It was the first time she was able to truly be honest with herself and stand up for herself and have a man support her, which was monumental in her life.”
Not only that, but Herbst and Howarth clicked on screen like nobody’s business. “We had great chemistry,” she agrees. “He’s another one where I don’t really understand why the writers decided to end things the way they did.”
You’ll recall — painfully — that after the show spent years transforming Franco from the psycho killer that James Franco originally played to the family man who became such a wonderful father figure for Liz’s boys, he was killed during an altercation with the nefarious Peter August.
At least Herbst still has fond memories of her time opposite soap-hopper Howarth (who also played One Life to Live’s Todd Manning on the show). “We had a lot of fun working together,” she says.
Review Liz’s whole history, from losing Lucky to finding Finn, in the below photo gallery.
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Image: Craig Sjodin/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
1/15
<p>Elizabeth Webber had no sooner arrived on grandma Audrey Hardy’s doorstep in 1997 than she’d become enamored of verbal sparring partner, Lucky Spencer (then Jonathan Jackson). Unfortunately, he only had eyes for her big sister, Sarah, who in turn only had eyes for his half brother, Nikolas Cassadine. (Everyone just needed glasses, we’d have said if you’d asked us!) Only after Liz was raped did everything change. In the aftermath, Lucky first felt protective of her, then… well, so much more.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
2/15
<p>Only months after Liz and Lucky secretly exchanged vows in an abandoned church, he was believed to have been killed in a fire. Operative words: “believed to have been.” Of <em>course</em> he came back from the dead (with Jacob Young in the role). The trouble was, thanks to his nefarious abductor, Helena Cassadine, he didn’t remember ever having fallen for Liz. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she eventually caught him in bed with sibling rival Sarah (whom no amount of recasts ever got right!).</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
3/15
<p>In her grief, Liz found herself drawn to Mafia muscle Jason Morgan. But when he got involved with BFF Sonny Corinthos’ half sister, Courtney Matthews, Liz settled for the godfather’s half brother, Ric Lansing. We say “settled,” but the dude <em>was</em> willing to keep Carly Corinthos prisoner in a panic room in order to give his own wife her baby (to replace the one that his mistress had killed). So, ya know, not exactly a fine, upstanding guy, but in his twisted way… devoted?</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
4/15
<p>By the time Liz made the dubious decision to reunite with Ric, she was pregnant by Mob flunky Zander Smith. And though her babydaddy conveniently died, she still couldn’t make it work with Ric, owing to his vendetta against Sonny. (That’s a deal-breaker in Port Charles, anyone could tell ya!) Eventually, Liz and Lucky (then Greg Vaughan) tied the knot just in time for an injury to leave him addicted to both painkillers and their supplier, Maxie Jones, who back then was quite the vixen.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
5/15
<p>Sent careening back into Jason’s arms by Lucky’s betrayal, Liz found herself pregnant thanks to defective condoms. When Lucky assumed that the baby-to-be was his and vowed to straighten up and fly right, Jason gravitated toward Sam once more. Disastrous! As soon as she realized that Jason was more into Liz at that point, Sam seduced Lucky, which ironically freed up her rival to marry the man to whom they were both drawn. Until, that is, Liz remembered that he was still a freaking hitman, at which point she called the whole thing off.</p>
Image: Sean Smith/JPI
6/15
<p>Oh, if only Liz’s affair with Nikolas (then Tyler Christopher) had been as much fun as this photo taken backstage at the 36th Annual Daytime Emmys! Rather, it was entirely angst-filled as, at the time, she had decided to get back together with Lucky and wound up uncertain of the identity of Aiden’s father. (Calls to Maury Povich were not returned.) In the end, Lucky was revealed to be the proud (?) pop, but the fork was soon stuck all the way into his marriage to Liz by the “demise” of Jake, her son with Jason.</p>
Image: Sean Smith/JPI
7/15
<p>Eager to keep Jason from reuniting with Sam, Liz conspired to prevent him from learning that he, not then-demented and rape-y Franco Baldwin, was Danny’s father. But that was easier said than done — Liz <em>does</em> have a conscience, after all. And no poker face whatsoever. (Just look at that picture. Liz, were you even trying?) Soon enough, guilt drove our heroine to come clean… just in time for Jason to be shot and “killed.”</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
8/15
<p>Liz had just fallen back on her bad habit of giving Ric another chance when she became inexplicably drawn to a heavily bandaged patient nicknamed Jake. Only her attraction wasn’t so inexplicable after all: Jake turned out to be the “late” Jason (then Billy Miller). Until suddenly, he wasn’t again, because Jason himself came back from the dead to reclaim the life that he hadn’t meant to leave behind, and Jake was revealed to be his heretofore-unknown twin brother, Drew Cain. All together now: Mmkaaay.</p>
Image: Jill Johnson/JPI
9/15
<p>We hadn’t seen Sarah in years when Liz discovered that Hayden Barnes, the conniver who’d been introduced as Jake’s (cough) wife, was their half sister, owing to pop Jeff’s affair with Naomi Dreyfus. Clearly, the himbo had learned zilch from his romps with the likes of Franco’s bat-guano-crazy mother, Heather Grant. Also clear from this photo, Liz was thrilled, just thrilled.</p>
Image: Walt Disney Television
10/15
<p>Against all odds, Liz found true love with Franco, who wasn’t nearly as creepy once he had his homicidal brain tumor removed. He proved to be an all-around swell guy and super father figure to Liz’s boys. So <em>obviously</em>, he had to meet a horrible fate: Just as he began to fear that he was again being turned into a psycho killer, he wound up being murdered at (what we hoped was) the peak of Peter August’s reign of terror.</p>
Image: ABC
11/15
<p>Dead was how Peter was left after an altercation with Hamilton Finn, who was either the brother or father of the villain’s poisoning victim, depending upon at what point you joined the story. Either way, Finn wasn’t cool with poor Chase being escorted to death’s door for no good reason. So he and Liz teamed up to keep it from the world that they <em>might</em> have hastened the baddie’s demise and then hidden the body. Which doesn’t <em>sound</em> sexy, we know. But considering that he’d just dumped Anna Devane and Liz was a new widow… Well, we could all kinda guess where their team-up was headed, right?</p>
Image: ABC screenshot
12/15
<p>Just as Elizabeth and Finn were getting couple-y, weird things began happening. For starters, her art studio was burned down, and her wedding dress was cut up. Was she in a way being “ghosted” by her late husband? No, it turned out that she was sleep-wreaking havoc. So she sensibly agreed to check into a mental hospital for some R&R (ruminating and resetting).</p>
Image: ABC
13/15
<p>An exceptionally fraught reunion with Mom and Dad brought to light Elizabeth’s long-repressed memory of accidentally killing Finn’s wife. (What?) He was able to more or less shrug off the fact that his girlfriend had made him a widower before they’d even met. (What?!?) But there was no sort of shimmy to get him past what happened next.</p>
Image: ABC
14/15
<p>Too late for <em>that</em>. Liz might as well have pulled the plug on her relationship with Finn when she let Nikolas (then Marcus Coloma) rope her into his scheme to keep prisoner his expectant babymama — his son Spencer’s conniving girlfriend, Esme Prince. When the nurse went so far as to pretend that she was pregnant by Nikolas, Finn called time-of-death on their romance.</p>
Image: ABC
15/15
