Love with the Perfect Hit Man,
or,
Is This a Journey or a Jip?

Last week we looked at how soaps deal with resurrecting couples from the past, dealing with baggage, creating a bridge to a shared history. This week we’ve got the total opposite side of the coin. How do you create romance out of thin air? How do you take two people who’ve been on the same show for awhile, intersected with barely a ripple, and suddenly make it seem like love at first sight?

As a writer, I certainly have to expect to build my stories and not just have characters wake up one day and say, “Whoops, I guess I fell in love with you when I wasn’t looking. When was that again?”  But that certainly seems to be the case with pretty partners Jason and Courtney, currently all love-smitten and gooey and writing X’s and O’s in their spiral notebooks and passing notes between Geometry and Gym. Oh, wait. They’re not in junior high. Sometimes it just seems that way.

That junior high sweeter-than-sweet milieu is decidedly off when you consider who they are. Jason is a brain-damaged hit man whose one true love seems to be his best friend and employer, mob boss Sonny. Courtney is a reluctant stripper, the child of a gambling man and a hard-boiled casino cutie, married to a black sheep with an alcohol problem who happens to be the estranged brother of the hit man. She’s also the sister of the mob boss true love. Why in the world would these two hard-knock kids be involved in a cotton candy and bubblegum romance?

I suppose there was a possibility of a dewy-eyed, innocent love story that would wipe away their sordid surroundings and make them feel all shiny and new. You know, like Madonna sings about being a virgin. If they’d built the story that way. But they didn’t. In fact, I don’t see any evidence they built anything at all. One day she loved her husband. Then the husband curiously recovered his money and chose to spend it all on stalking his wife, which sent her slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am into the arms of his brother. And if that makes sense to you, I suggest you join the Guza and Pratt writing team, because it sure doesn’t work for me.

But let’s analyze this couple further. Jason, tell us. When did you fall in love with Courtney? Was it when she married your brother? Was it when she gave you that half-hearted lap dance? Perhaps when she began to call every moment of the night and day to ask you to come to her rescue? Well, that doesn’t sound like a woman worthy of love, does it? Instead, it sounds more like a wimpy wet noodle who’d rather strip than fight.

Okay, how about you, Courtney? What was it about Jason you fell for? His steely gaze when he pops a rival with two slugs to the back of the head? His loyalty to the mobster brother you hated? Maybe his antipathy for your husband and part in the plot to murder him? How about his trashy Vegas wedding to another damsel in distress? Maybe that works for somebody. Anybody?

For a soap as bereft of real couples at the moment as General Hospital, it also seems strange they would stick Jason and Courtney together in a quickie sort of relationship and have Mr. Silent suddenly start spouting sticky-sweet words. I think we were supposed to think this hasty her-hubby-is-a-stalker-so-she-turns-elsewhere story was love struck and romantic. Hmmm... I’m afraid it plays more snakebit and odd to me. Try as hard as I might, I just don’t see the important moments for this couple. When did they feel the first attraction? What conflict caused them to pull back? Why are they right for each other? What need do they fulfill in each other (besides a roll in the hay, which has never seemed important to Jason, anyway)? Why and when did they make the leap from simmer to boil, when their desires could no longer be denied? I haven’t a clue. I didn’t see any of that on my screen.

But I have to admit — I never found Jason all that interesting to start with, and none of his Not-All-That-Defrosted Caveman relationships really worked for me. I go for a smarter kind of guy with more to offer than a blank stare. Plus there’s the incredibly boring way he’s written. He wants a girl, he gets a girl. He wants out of jail, he gets out of hail. He hates someone, that someone is evil forevermore and will never catch a break. He likes someone, they get a gold star of goodness stamped on their foreheads and will never ever lose again. No tension, no conflict, no weakness.  That point is illustrated in the song of the week, which was written for “Beauty and the Beast,” but might as well’ve been penned for Jason Morgan himself.

No one’s as slick as Ja-son

No one’s as quick as Ja-son

No one’s neck’s as impossibly thick as Ja-son

For there’s no man in town half as manly

Perfect, a pure paragon

You can ask any Bob, Chuck or Stanley

And they’ll tell you whose team they prefer to be on.

Ja-son!

With appropriate apologies to Disney, that, in a nutshell, is my problem with Jason. They were being funny when they made Gaston a puffed-up paragon of pulchritude in “Beauty and the Beast.” Guza and Pratt don’t seem to be joking with Jason, however. So how can you find someone interesting when he is presented as a paragon and no plot will ever touch him or take him off that pedestal? A perfect hit man on a pedestal. Oh, my, my. If that’s a romantic hero, call me Marie Antoinette and slap some cake on a plate.

On balance, I felt a certain suspicion I was not the right person to judge Jason with Courtney, since I don’t find Love with the Perfect Hit Man a cool idea. So I asked a romance writer friend for help. She told me she liked Jason because he was a bad boy. “But he's a bad boy who isn't really trying all that hard to be bad,” she explained.  “He's always been good to the women he loved.  And tried to keep them from harm, even if it meant that he might end up alone. I always loved how they wrote him as honest. Like he couldn't lie.”

Ah, yes, but she went on, “Now all he is is a big lie. He's lying to Sonny, his supposed best friend and someone who is like a brother to him. His love nest is all about a lie.”  My friend works up to full rant speed. “Then there's the Elizabeth situation. Because Steve Burton and the writers have portrayed Jason as a man who doesn't waste words, he often is action-oriented. If someone is going to run into a burning building, Jason's your guy. As such, he shows love, doesn't say it. He showed it to Elizabeth in a million different ways over the three years they've been on and off again. Then he goes and tells Courtney that he never loved Elizabeth and badmouths Robin. It's just trashy.”

Uh oh. I think she’s totally off the Good Ship Jason. What can I say? I don’t blame her. When the one thing you like about a guy — his honor — is a lie, it’s a long, hard fall from Journey to Jip.

As for me, I conclude that Jason and Courtney rate way down on the fizzle scale. They can tell me they love each other till the cows come home, but it won’t make a difference if I don’t see the steps along the way.

Next week, let’s get ready for Valentine’s Day with Liza and Adam, the spicy spouses who heat up the Chandler mansion. Keep the comments coming! I just may pick your couple for my persiflage!