Good-bye, Sonny Corinthos
Another ancien regime GH piece dredged from the bottom of the former hard drive. This dates, I think, to 2002, and I wouldn't even bother using it to fill up space...except for the fact that I have been proved so very very agonizingly right.
Good-bye, Sonny C. I never really knew you at all….
{humming}
I hate having to write this post-my Mea Doofus post. But one can’t argue with reality: I am an idiot.
Short reason (for those whose eyes just glazed over at the length of this post): I thought that “Sonny Corinthos” was something special, something rare-and he’s not. (You may now skip to the “post a reply” button. You know you want to.)
Long reason: Follows. :-)
You see, I’ve spent years watching a character on this show that I constructed only in my mind, a character who doesn’t even exist in the fictional “reality” of GH. I thought that Maurice Benard was playing the mobster Sonny Corinthos. But in fact…his character is someone that, to differentiate, I’ll call Mickey Brown-Eyes.
But before we go any further, let me make one thing PERFECTLY clear: although for simplicity’s sake I’m giving him a new name, Mickey Brown-Eyes IS, WAS, and HAS ALWAYS BEEN the REAL character portrayed by MB. Mickey Brown-Eyes IS, WAS, and HAS ALWAYS BEEN the Sonny Corinthos we see onscreen, the character that GH’s writers and Eps recognize.
Sonny Corinthos, in this post, is the name of the character I thought I saw. But I was wrong. He never existed. I made up a distinguishing characteristic that the REAL character doesn’t have, and it colored the way I saw and understood “Sonny.” And so I’ve been completely wrong about Sonny for years.
See? Mea doofus.
Now, admittedly, I think it was an easy mistake to make. In fact, I think that there are probably other people out there laboring under the same misapprehension who still haven’t realized. This post is for you. Mickey and “Sonny” are very much alike. They both have tortured pasts. They both are mob bosses. They both are controlling, explosive, sexy, and sometimes sweet. They both have speaking dark eyes and adorable dimples. The very talented Maurice Benard portrays both.
But there’s one crucial difference, one trait I ascribed to “Sonny” that kept me from seeing Mickey as he is.
Sonny Corinthos was a swan. Mickey Brown-Eyes is a chimpanzee.
Swans, you see, mate for life. Chimpanzees…don’t. :-)
Humans, in general, don’t mate for life either. After all, we’re something like 94% chimpanzee. They’re our closest genetic relatives on this planet. I read a book (I think it was The Anatomy of Love) that theorized, in fact, that serial monogamy is a human survival strategy that, if not hard-wired in our DNA, is at the very least deeply, deeply behaviorally embedded in our species, going back to hunter/gatherer days. The average length of a human relationship-a love affair-is four years; that’s long enough for a male and female to meet, mate, produce an offspring, and raise the child past its dangerous infancy. But after producing healthy young, it was actually to the advantage of both male and female to part and seek new mates. For the male, it was a good idea to mate with as many females as possible to produce as many young as possible to ensure the survival of his DNA. As for the female, it’s to her advantage to have young by several males, who will then all take an interest in her, and therefore help the survival of her offspring. A female who had only one male hunting for her was screwed if he was eaten by a giant carnivore. One who had several males had an advantage when it came to survival.
Interesting, huh? (Or not. But I’m getting there, I promise.)
Human beings aren’t swans. But for some reason, we want to be.
Somewhere along the line from hunting/gathering to our strange, mixed-up current 21st-century culture, we bought into the cultural value of romantic love, into the idea that males and females can and should ideally mate for life and love each other, at least moderately consistently :-), until death do them part.
So what does this have to do with “Sonny”/Mickey?
Soap opera characters, because of the intensive and serial nature of the genre, tend to out-chimpanzee chimpanzees. (Erica Kane, anyone?) The four-year cycle is actually LONG for soaps-most affairs and marriages play out at a very accelerated rate. We, the viewers, understand that; it comes with the territory. The most passionate lovers will separate shortly and chimpanzee their way on to other stories. Even though many of us watch soaps for larger-than-life romance-for swanlike mate-for-life love. But that’s the basic paradox of the genre.
For the show management, it’s a GOOD thing that characters are chimpanzees. It makes it possible to keep selling shampoo and antidepressants. Swans, unfortunately, are generally most viable only with one other partner (you can get several big romances out of a swan if you kill his/her previous partner. That makes it acceptable for the swan to move on-till death do them part, after all). It’s hard to work around a swan. Chimpanzees are a more valuable commodity because they are more flexible; in fact, more or less interchangeable.
Still, even on soaps, some characters are swans. And because of their rarity in that environment, they are even more transfixingly beautiful. The genre’s true and most beloved supercouples are swans-despite heartache and separation and affairs and amnesia and misunderstandings and (usually) at least one presumed death, they always navigate back to each other.
It’s a curious fact, but while there are certainly soap “good guys” or mostly good guys who are swans (Y&R’s Nick Newman, GL’s Philip Spaulding, SB’s Cruz Castillo, AMC’s Mateo Santos, off the top of my head), most of soaps’ swans are villains and anti-heroes. They may commit unspeakable crimes, but they are redeemed for the audience by the intensity and the fidelity of their love. Luke Spencer-swan. Roger Thorpe-swan. Todd Manning-swan.
And “Sonny Corinthos”-swan. I thought.
I knew that he loved Brenda with everything that was in him, and I thought that if she hadn’t died, he would have loved her until his death. And he didn’t fall in love again until years later (I thought), and again, once he gave his heart to Carly is was in her keeping forever.
But I don’t think there’s any question any longer that GH is telling us that Mickey has moved on from Carly. He may not be in love with Alexis yet (or he may be), but his heart is inclining toward her and away from Carly. Which means that his love wasn’t a death-defying, all-encompassing, lifemate love of a swan. It was the intense, passionate, but ultimately short-lived love of a chimpanzee.
I know there those of you out there who are muttering “Ha! I see the flaw in your diatribe. Sonny NEVER loved Carly! So there!” This is one possible interpretation of the characters; part of the fun of soaps is playing Sit and Spin, in which you interpret what’s onscreen through the lens of your agenda. The best game EVER, LOL.
But there is one unfortunate and unspinnable fact.
GH sold S&C as a love story. As a GREAT, once-in-a-lifetime, soulmate love story.
Whether you bought it or not is up to you. But that’s the product they were selling.
And now GH is selling/going to sell S&A in the same way. Once again, you can buy it or not, that’s the product.
Which means that to GH, Mickey is just another soap chimpanzee, better-looking than many, played by a better actor than most, but not so different from Ned or Adam Chandler or OLTL’s Kevin Buchanan. He can be inserted into one romance after the next, each equally valid.
Mickey isn’t a swan. But it’s not that he isn’t a swan anymore. Characters don’t change their very nature. He NEVER WAS a swan. He NEVER WILL BE a swan. That’s what GH is telling us. That’s just the way it is. Which means that after his love affair with Alexis has run its course, he’ll move on to another woman-Skye or Kristina or whoever-and SHE will become the only person who understands him, the only one who can share his torment, the only one who can be his equal.
It’s just how things are gonna be. I was a dope for ever believing otherwise.
I think this crystallizes my ultimate problem with S&A from the standpoint of an Alexis fan. I think that Lex is a swan-that was why, ultimately, she couldn’t commit to Ned (who is definitely a chimpanzee). I wanted another swan for her. But in “winning” Mickey, she gets the booby prize; like fairy gold, he’s revealed as the chimpanzee he is and always has been. It’s an unwinnable game.
I hope for the best for Alexis. I hope she gets something out of the relationship-even a child (I’d be upset if Sonny, a swan, had a child with someone not his soul mate, but Mickey is a chimpanzee who needs to spread his DNA as far as possible).
And I’m going to enjoy MB’s performance, and like Mickey as much as I can for what he is, although Mickey is a pretty unlikeable character without his swanness to redeem him. But I certainly won’t ever make the mistake of believing he’s more than a slightly more interesting run-of-the-mill soap chimpanzee.
“Sonny Corinthos” isn’t dead to me.
He’s a ghost, a figment, a pleasant dream.
He never existed.
Good-bye, Sonny C. I never really knew you at all….
{humming}
I hate having to write this post-my Mea Doofus post. But one can’t argue with reality: I am an idiot.
Short reason (for those whose eyes just glazed over at the length of this post): I thought that “Sonny Corinthos” was something special, something rare-and he’s not. (You may now skip to the “post a reply” button. You know you want to.)
Long reason: Follows. :-)
You see, I’ve spent years watching a character on this show that I constructed only in my mind, a character who doesn’t even exist in the fictional “reality” of GH. I thought that Maurice Benard was playing the mobster Sonny Corinthos. But in fact…his character is someone that, to differentiate, I’ll call Mickey Brown-Eyes.
But before we go any further, let me make one thing PERFECTLY clear: although for simplicity’s sake I’m giving him a new name, Mickey Brown-Eyes IS, WAS, and HAS ALWAYS BEEN the REAL character portrayed by MB. Mickey Brown-Eyes IS, WAS, and HAS ALWAYS BEEN the Sonny Corinthos we see onscreen, the character that GH’s writers and Eps recognize.
Sonny Corinthos, in this post, is the name of the character I thought I saw. But I was wrong. He never existed. I made up a distinguishing characteristic that the REAL character doesn’t have, and it colored the way I saw and understood “Sonny.” And so I’ve been completely wrong about Sonny for years.
See? Mea doofus.
Now, admittedly, I think it was an easy mistake to make. In fact, I think that there are probably other people out there laboring under the same misapprehension who still haven’t realized. This post is for you. Mickey and “Sonny” are very much alike. They both have tortured pasts. They both are mob bosses. They both are controlling, explosive, sexy, and sometimes sweet. They both have speaking dark eyes and adorable dimples. The very talented Maurice Benard portrays both.
But there’s one crucial difference, one trait I ascribed to “Sonny” that kept me from seeing Mickey as he is.
Sonny Corinthos was a swan. Mickey Brown-Eyes is a chimpanzee.
Swans, you see, mate for life. Chimpanzees…don’t. :-)
Humans, in general, don’t mate for life either. After all, we’re something like 94% chimpanzee. They’re our closest genetic relatives on this planet. I read a book (I think it was The Anatomy of Love) that theorized, in fact, that serial monogamy is a human survival strategy that, if not hard-wired in our DNA, is at the very least deeply, deeply behaviorally embedded in our species, going back to hunter/gatherer days. The average length of a human relationship-a love affair-is four years; that’s long enough for a male and female to meet, mate, produce an offspring, and raise the child past its dangerous infancy. But after producing healthy young, it was actually to the advantage of both male and female to part and seek new mates. For the male, it was a good idea to mate with as many females as possible to produce as many young as possible to ensure the survival of his DNA. As for the female, it’s to her advantage to have young by several males, who will then all take an interest in her, and therefore help the survival of her offspring. A female who had only one male hunting for her was screwed if he was eaten by a giant carnivore. One who had several males had an advantage when it came to survival.
Interesting, huh? (Or not. But I’m getting there, I promise.)
Human beings aren’t swans. But for some reason, we want to be.
Somewhere along the line from hunting/gathering to our strange, mixed-up current 21st-century culture, we bought into the cultural value of romantic love, into the idea that males and females can and should ideally mate for life and love each other, at least moderately consistently :-), until death do them part.
So what does this have to do with “Sonny”/Mickey?
Soap opera characters, because of the intensive and serial nature of the genre, tend to out-chimpanzee chimpanzees. (Erica Kane, anyone?) The four-year cycle is actually LONG for soaps-most affairs and marriages play out at a very accelerated rate. We, the viewers, understand that; it comes with the territory. The most passionate lovers will separate shortly and chimpanzee their way on to other stories. Even though many of us watch soaps for larger-than-life romance-for swanlike mate-for-life love. But that’s the basic paradox of the genre.
For the show management, it’s a GOOD thing that characters are chimpanzees. It makes it possible to keep selling shampoo and antidepressants. Swans, unfortunately, are generally most viable only with one other partner (you can get several big romances out of a swan if you kill his/her previous partner. That makes it acceptable for the swan to move on-till death do them part, after all). It’s hard to work around a swan. Chimpanzees are a more valuable commodity because they are more flexible; in fact, more or less interchangeable.
Still, even on soaps, some characters are swans. And because of their rarity in that environment, they are even more transfixingly beautiful. The genre’s true and most beloved supercouples are swans-despite heartache and separation and affairs and amnesia and misunderstandings and (usually) at least one presumed death, they always navigate back to each other.
It’s a curious fact, but while there are certainly soap “good guys” or mostly good guys who are swans (Y&R’s Nick Newman, GL’s Philip Spaulding, SB’s Cruz Castillo, AMC’s Mateo Santos, off the top of my head), most of soaps’ swans are villains and anti-heroes. They may commit unspeakable crimes, but they are redeemed for the audience by the intensity and the fidelity of their love. Luke Spencer-swan. Roger Thorpe-swan. Todd Manning-swan.
And “Sonny Corinthos”-swan. I thought.
I knew that he loved Brenda with everything that was in him, and I thought that if she hadn’t died, he would have loved her until his death. And he didn’t fall in love again until years later (I thought), and again, once he gave his heart to Carly is was in her keeping forever.
But I don’t think there’s any question any longer that GH is telling us that Mickey has moved on from Carly. He may not be in love with Alexis yet (or he may be), but his heart is inclining toward her and away from Carly. Which means that his love wasn’t a death-defying, all-encompassing, lifemate love of a swan. It was the intense, passionate, but ultimately short-lived love of a chimpanzee.
I know there those of you out there who are muttering “Ha! I see the flaw in your diatribe. Sonny NEVER loved Carly! So there!” This is one possible interpretation of the characters; part of the fun of soaps is playing Sit and Spin, in which you interpret what’s onscreen through the lens of your agenda. The best game EVER, LOL.
But there is one unfortunate and unspinnable fact.
GH sold S&C as a love story. As a GREAT, once-in-a-lifetime, soulmate love story.
Whether you bought it or not is up to you. But that’s the product they were selling.
And now GH is selling/going to sell S&A in the same way. Once again, you can buy it or not, that’s the product.
Which means that to GH, Mickey is just another soap chimpanzee, better-looking than many, played by a better actor than most, but not so different from Ned or Adam Chandler or OLTL’s Kevin Buchanan. He can be inserted into one romance after the next, each equally valid.
Mickey isn’t a swan. But it’s not that he isn’t a swan anymore. Characters don’t change their very nature. He NEVER WAS a swan. He NEVER WILL BE a swan. That’s what GH is telling us. That’s just the way it is. Which means that after his love affair with Alexis has run its course, he’ll move on to another woman-Skye or Kristina or whoever-and SHE will become the only person who understands him, the only one who can share his torment, the only one who can be his equal.
It’s just how things are gonna be. I was a dope for ever believing otherwise.
I think this crystallizes my ultimate problem with S&A from the standpoint of an Alexis fan. I think that Lex is a swan-that was why, ultimately, she couldn’t commit to Ned (who is definitely a chimpanzee). I wanted another swan for her. But in “winning” Mickey, she gets the booby prize; like fairy gold, he’s revealed as the chimpanzee he is and always has been. It’s an unwinnable game.
I hope for the best for Alexis. I hope she gets something out of the relationship-even a child (I’d be upset if Sonny, a swan, had a child with someone not his soul mate, but Mickey is a chimpanzee who needs to spread his DNA as far as possible).
And I’m going to enjoy MB’s performance, and like Mickey as much as I can for what he is, although Mickey is a pretty unlikeable character without his swanness to redeem him. But I certainly won’t ever make the mistake of believing he’s more than a slightly more interesting run-of-the-mill soap chimpanzee.
“Sonny Corinthos” isn’t dead to me.
He’s a ghost, a figment, a pleasant dream.
He never existed.