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Credit: ABC screenshot

“So we’re pretending Reese didn’t come to Port Charles years later?”

They say that those who don’t remember the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat it. But in the case of the current Carly storyline on General Hospital, it seems that those who don’t remember the character’s past are determined to revisit it… and mess it up, big time.

Clearly, Carly’s recent visit to Jacksonville has been designed as a way for her to show her vulnerability to Drew. After all, he’s been by her side this week as she relived a dark period from her life. Which is well and good… except the writers have gotten a whole lot of the history wrong, from where events unfolded to what happened years later.

Drew Carly talk Reese GH

More: Is General Hospital setting up a true tragedy? 

For newer viewers (or those who, like the writers, may have forgotten), here’s why Carly’s Jacksonville story doesn’t really make sense, in a nutshell: Although you’d never know it from the story currently unfolding on air, Reese didn’t actually die in that car crash. In fact, years later, she came back to Port Charles as an FBI agent and turned Sonny and Carly’s lives upside down.

But wait… there’s more.

Because not only did Reese not die, but her name wasn’t “Reese.” It was actually Charlotte Reese Roberts, whose nickname was Carly, and whose identity the woman we now know as Carly eventually stole.

More: Laura and Wes celebrate an unusual ‘anniversary’

You see, some of the story we’re being told now is kinda sorta accurate. Because the original Carly did supposedly die in a car accident, although that was actually a lie told by her mother. Which is why when she turned up in Port Charles years later using the name Reese Marshall, she was able to do so without anyone getting suspicious.

And not for nothing, but as some fans with way better memories than us pointed out… all of this took place not in Jacksonville, but Fort Meyers. And the school was Robert F. Kennedy — which was later abandoned because a dam had been built and the area was going to be flooded — not John F. Kennedy, the facility Carly and Drew spent a lot of time at this week.

Still others pointed out issues that had less to do with the details than the story itself and its place on the canvas. As Wubsnet pointed out, “There is no damn reason this [story] is on as much as it is and Liz’s story is a slug-snail fest.”

Others felt that Drew rushing to Carly’s side to help her deal with an out-of-town trauma from the past felt an awful lot like a retread of the Nixon Falls story which brought Sonny and Nina together last year.

One thing pretty much everyone with a familiarity of the show agreed with: that this couldn’t — or at least shouldn’t — be laying the groundwork for Reese to return (again). Why? Because the character died, this time for real, during the 2005 train wreck story which happened to be Laura Wright’s very first episode in the role of Carly!

Need a refresher course on all things Carly? We’ve got you covered with this photo-packed gallery illustrating her life and loves!