“General Hospital”‘s Anthony Geary Tribute: Bravo!

I’m so glad the current management at ABC Daytime finally has a clue about what made their predecessors in the eighties and nineties so spectacularly successful, with a line-up of fabulous contemporary soaps and landmarks promotion campaigns like “Love in the Afternoon.”) Executives of that era knew the only way to make soap opera successful was to garner and appreciate the love and loyalty of the longtime fans.

Genie on Tony: “Our hearts are bonded”

And so, this week ABC’s “General Hospital,” with full episode-long tribute to its late superstar Tony Geary, gave us ardent fans the best and most exceptional soap experience in years. Beautifully produced, written and played, it will go down in “GH” history as unforgettable.

The story of the phenom known as Lucas Lorenzo Spencer was told through the recollections of the charactersclosest to him. His daughter Lulu (Alexa Havins Bruening) never got a chance to mourn her father, who was killed in a European cable car accident, because she was in a coma when his death occurred. Like her, other characters who were so important in Luke’s life shared their memories and reflections in a cleverly devised procession guided by Tracy Quartermaine (the exceptional Jane Elliot) one of Luke’s wives.

At first Tracy and Lulu went to All Saints Church but quickly realized that that wasn’t the right place to reach that rascal Luke’s true spirit. They adjourned to a closed local bar. Tracy bribed its janitor — named Luke!! — to keep it open.

And one by one Luke’s friends and relatives arrived. Sonny (Maurice Benard) remembered their mutual bad boy connection when, as good friends as they once contemplated a shiny gun. Next came the most important person of all Luke’s wives and once in a lifetime love Mayor Laura Collins (Genie Francis.) More on her to come. She was followed by Luke’s wayward niece Carly (Laura Wright), who reminisced about the days he would try to keep her in line by calling her Caroline, his pet name for her. Also arriving was his former daughter-in-law Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst), a nurse once married to both Luke and Luke and Laura’s son, Lucky.

All soap retrospectives are properly rich in clips, and this one did not disappoint. As expected, we revisited one of the most defining moments in soap history: the wedding of Luke and Laura in November 1981 that drew thirty million viewers and put soaps on the map as a national obsession. Of course, Luke’s other marital adventures were not overlooked. What fun it wasto see Tracy and Luke’s Las Vegas wedding again. And of course what brought the house down (watch the cliches, Miss Marlena) was the final scene of Luke (and Tony) disappearing into the mist of the Port Charles docks when he left the show in 2015. And made a quick comeback in a 2017 cameo.

We fans love our shows because, despite the fantasy element, the good ones always feel true to life. Laura (Genie Francis at her most brilliant) had a marvelous soliloquy in the tribute in which told us connection with the now dead Luke is never over. She stated that relationships like theirs never end, because “our hearts are bonded together by time and loss and our lifetime. Nothing can change that. Thank you for the dance and the adventure. And thank you for the love of a lifetime.”

And thank you ABC and “General Hospital” for a memorial episode so emotionally true to our great memories of the late Tony Geary (1945-2025). It was as great as he was!