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TVSource Magazine: What would you say is your least favorite soap opera at the moment?
Alina: Let me ask this. Is your least favorite show the one you tune into the least or the one that when you watch it, it infuriates you?
TVSource Magazine: The latter.
Alina: Then it would have to be General Hospital, that’s easy. (laughs) The one I watch the least right now is Y&R so I guess you could say that’s my least favorite? I just check in for my EW column. But that’s the one that’s painful to watch. But the one I keep turning in to is GH because I keep expecting a miracle to happen! (laughs)
TVSource Magazine: What’s been bringing you down with General Hospital lately?
Alina: I’ve always had a moral problem with Sonny being the heart and soul of the show. Robin once said he’s the most moral man in town – now I was never a Robin fan to begin with but she was dead to me after that.
TVSource Magazine: We’re seriously on the same wavelength right now! It makes absolutely no sense to me too!
Alina: And then the police are demonized. TJ is demonizing his mom for being a federal agent and turning in drug dealers.
TVSource Magazine: On top of just being an awful police force. (laughs)
Alina: Well they have to be! I remember interviewing Real Andrews who played Taggart for a lot of years. We talked about that because the fact was that the police were demonized and Sonny was the good guy. Now the police, as we all know, have their flaws. As we may have seen recently in America, they could use some work, some sensitivity training and some other things. But do not set them up as the moral dark to the white hats of the mobsters, the decent mobsters who only kill when they’re threatened.
Although just the other day I was telling my husband about Sonny having originally shot Dante in the chest. And so my husband was saying, “Well, you know if the cops don’t identify themselves…” But that was the irony! He did it exactly by the book! He had a warrant! He identified himself! (laughs) And [Sonny] shot him in the chest! So you can’t even say the police aren’t supposed to do that because no, he did everything right. That’s always been my problem for the last twenty years.
TVSource Magazine: He’s been pretty much taking over the whole show.
Alina: But my current nausea inducing state comes from having decided that Luke and Laura were never really a thing, Robert and Holly were never really a thing, and those of us who spent about twenty years of our lives invested in those storylines… well, we got it wrong. And then there’s my personal favorite, “Well, it’s just a TV show!” Then if it’s just a TV show, how about I turn it off and you don’t get paid your salary?
TVSource Magazine: And the ratings show, they’re dipping every single week because of that.
Alina: It’s just the re-write of the Luke, Laura, Robert and Holly relationship is making me insane. So I’ll tune in every few days just to check in and see what’s going on but I can’t finish an episode. I don’t think I’ve finished an episode in weeks.
TVSource Magazine: Is there anything that you love on General Hospital at the moment? Or at least anything you’re enjoying, not loving?
Alina: I like Tracy! (laughs)
TVSource Magazine: Tracy and Sabrina, right? They’re adorable!
Alina: I mean, it’s good! It’s surprisingly adorable. Sabrina is blah to me but I think she’s fine with Tracy. With Jane Elliott it’s just like, every line she gets she’s going to…
TVSource Magazine: Just eat it, rip it to shreds…
Alina: And make it her own! You mentioned you loved Passions and I remember I judged the Daytime Emmys one year and the episode they submitted was the episode where everyone has a gun and is out to get Julian. And I remember saying at the time that Ben Masters should give a master class on how whatever material you’re given, to commit to it 150% percent. Because whatever was given to him, he went out and he delivered. He never walked through anything.
TVSource Magazine: Like when he had to have sex with his hermaphrodite son!
Alina: Right, as one does. And his penis was re-attached upside down which happens. In that sense, I think Jane Elliott does the same thing. Whatever’s given to her she even gives it layers that I don’t think the writers even knew were in the script.
TVSource Magazine: I haven’t watched GH for very long, I started watching around 2012-ish? When the first Jason died. I was a little iffy about Tracy back then mostly because she was very loud and boisterous, but I’ve come to love her. I wouldn’t say the writers have toned her down but I feel like they’ve made her a lot more relatable?
Alina: I think they’ve given her some depth. Before they just had her yelling.
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