In 2013, As the World Turns Emmy winner Maura West signed on to play Ava Jerome for five measly episodes of General Hospital. But even before her first airdate, the powers that be realized that she had the potential to leave viewers shaken as well as stirred, and signed her to a contract to mix and mingle with the likes of Anthony Geary as Luke Spencer.
Initially, Ava tried to pass off daughter Kiki (then Kristen Alderson) as the product of her affair with unstable artist Franco Frank Baldwin so that she could cash in on the Quartermaine megabucks that were attached to that particular family tie. One problem: Kiki wasn’t actually Franco’s at all; her dad was Silas Clay (Michael Easton, in his post-John McBain/pre-Hamilton Finn days).
When Kiki learned that brand-new husband Morgan Corinthos had kept from her the fact that she wasn’t a Quartermaine — so as to keep her from hooking up with his half brother, Michael — she turned her back on him, their short-lived marriage and her conniving mother. Heartbroken, Ava and Morgan engaged in a little sexual healing between the sheets.
When Derek Wells arrived in Port Charles, he turned out to be Ava’s “late” brother, Julian, with whom she hoped to take over the territory belonging to Morgan’s father, Sonny — as if anyone has ever achieved that goal! Before long, Ava had murdered the don’s old flame Connie Falconeri to keep her secrets, you know, secret, and had good reason to think she should reserve herself a spot in the morgue.
After framing Michael’s biodad A.J. Quartermaine for Connie’s murder, Ava lucked out — Sonny put his longtime nemesis six feet under. The fates smiled upon the femme fatale yet again when a little mausoleum sex with the godfather during A.J.’s funeral resulted in her getting pregnant — a development that made the mobster hesitate to exact revenge when the truth about Connie’s death came to light.
As if Ava’s situation couldn’t get any direr, Silas’ wife Nina Reeves (then Michelle Stafford, aka The Young and the Restless’ Phyllis) emerged from her decades-long coma and decided to take from “the other woman” the child that should’ve been her own. By force! After baby Avery was returned to Ava, she was sent up the river and escaped, only to fall into an actual river, where she was presumed to have died.
In retrospect, we could kinda see why Nina so badly wanted Ava and Sonny’s little girl. Mom’s fling with the temporarily mad woman’s former spouse notwithstanding, Avery has always pretty much defined “adorable.” But we digress. When last we left our story already in progress, Mom was (giggle) presumed dead.
Just kidding. That’s Ava dealing the shock of all shocks to mom Delia Ryan by showing up with a pulse after her own memorial service. Dee, longtime ABC Daytime fans will know, was once the baddest of bad girls on Ryan’s Hope. (Relive her exploits on that show here.) But c’mon, let’s get Ava back to Port Charles, shall we?
Though after being rescued from the river by Silas, Ava was told that cancer would soon kill her, she cheated death once again. Then, as if determined to find out whether she really does have nine lives, she risked another one by returning to Port Charles with a wig, an accent and a kooky plan to pass herself off as Ava’s identical cousin.
When Tracy Quartermaine’s ex, Paul Hornsby, returned to Port Charles after more than 20 years away, he immediately gravitated toward fellow ne’er-do-well Ava. And by “gravitated toward,” we mean “fell into bed with.” But he turned out to be not just a metaphorical lady killer but a literal one, so their affair probably cost her another of her nine lives. What does that leave, seven? Six?
In 2016, Ava wound up sitting on a flight overseas next to someone with whom she had a lot in common. Or at least with whom she had a history of playing dead in common. Sparks flew between the martini lover and the “late” Nikolas Cassadine (then Tyler Christopher) and would almost certainly have started a fire at the time, had he not wound up “dying” yet again at the hand of Valentin Cassadine.
Hoping to keep Kiki from reuniting with Morgan, Ava… Oh dear. Ava, pulling from the bottom of her bag of dirty tricks, switched her bipolar ex-lover’s medication with placebos, causing him to spin so quickly out of control that he wound up dead. Then, during a confrontation with his outraged parents, Sonny and Carly, Ava threw down a lantern that created such a blaze that she wound up scarred for life a few months.
While recovering from her burns, Ava fell in love with easy-on-the-eyes Dr. Griffin Munro, a man as unlike her as water is to oil. Despite her past sins, the ex-priest saw the good in her. That is, he saw it for as long as he could. Once Ava showed her true colors too boldly for him to ignore, he threw her over for Kiki, at which point Mom sought revenge so enthusiastically that her serial-killer suitor Ryan Chamberlain murdered her firstborn!
At this juncture, it might be worth mentioning that Ava hasn’t alienated everyone in Port Charles. In fact, legal eagle Scotty Baldwin, a dyed-in-the-wool schemer himself, is always in her corner, ready to supply a Get Out of Jail Free card when needed. (And it’s been needed a lot.) Of course, he also has a soft spot for the she-devil on which girlfriend Liesl Obrecht would be wise to take a hard line.
When young Trina Robinson (then Sydney Mikayla) started working at Ava’s art gallery, she took a shine to the teenager that has never dimmed. Ava adores the kid, and the feeling is mutual. Not too many folks in Port Charles about whom the trouble magnet can say that!
You’d think that after Ava had an affair with Nina’s husband and Nina (now Cynthia Watros) retaliated by kidnapping Ava’s newborn, restraining orders would be involved in any interaction between the two of them. But against all odds, they’ve forged a lovely relationship. Maybe the martinis help more than we imagine.
Did we mention that Carly despises Ava? ’Cause she does. That’ll happen when you’re at least somewhat responsible for the death of the moll’s son, pals with Sonny’s new squeeze (as of 2022, anyway) and the least favorite of her former husband’s babymamas. Look at ’em; even here, they’re working their tails off to figure out whether if they just tried harder, looks really could kill.
Once Nikolas (now Marcus Coloma) rose from the grave — in which he never, ya know, was — Ava strong-armed him into a marriage that, let’s face it, they both really wanted, even if neither of them was willing to admit it. By the time the sparring partners were ready to confess that they were in love, his SORAS’d son Spencer was back on the scene. And let’s just say that he was not an Ava fan.
Ava knew in an instant that she didn’t care for Spencer’s girlfriend/partner in crime, Esme Prince. What Ava didn’t know, though — and couldn’t have realized at first — was that the younger woman was the daughter of an obsessed-as-ever Ryan. And since forewarned is forearmed — and Ava was anything but forewarned — she could scarcely protect herself from the madness that was about to rain down upon her.
In short order, Nikolas knocked up Esme, Ava knocked her off the Parapet of Doom, and the Hook Heather Webber used up another one of our favorite hellcat’s nine lives. As if that wasn’t all bad enough, Ava was reduced to drinking from a plastic cup at the Quartermaines’ charity picnic. A plastic cup. Ava has ordered hits on people for less!
… into the barn. Ava was so pissed at Nikolas that she gave Spencer the means to destroy his father. This, in turn, so pissed off Nikolas that he threatened to kidnap Avery. This, in yet another turn, so pissed off Ava that she “killed” him and, with the help of Franco Austin Gatlin-Holt, hid the body, which soon vanished. Now the expressions that they’re wearing here make sense, don’t they?
Following Austin’s murder — and did anyone ever bother to ask whodunit? — Ava shacked up with a suddenly single Sonny and immediately began looking for bad decisions to make. First up: Arrange for bestie Nina to further alienate herself from her husband. Next on the agenda: Withhold from Sonny the fact that somebody had messed with his bipolar medication. If we didn’t know any better — and do we, really? — we’d swear she learned nothing from Morgan’s demise.
Considering how often she and Nikolas had come back from the dead, Ava found it difficult to refrain from suggesting to a grief-stricken Trina (now Tabyana Ali) that maybe Spencer was only gone for now, not gone for good. And there was reason to be hopeful, not that either Ava or Trina knew it.
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