Jason is very aimless under Riche in what I've seen. There is the desire to be the doctor and the very complicated relationship with Karen which becomes so nasty and vicious by the end, but that's more than likely Levinson's misogynistic slant to the material. He is tethered too long to Karen as the loser, which was sort of the fate of Kurt McKinney's Ned Ashton for a bit. I think the Karen / Quartermaine connection is very interesting, but they probably should have leaned into the possibility of Brenda / Jason sooner even if it was as a scheme for both of them to get the other person, though Jason would have been a more manipulative character. Because he's the good brother, he is always forced to play mediator. It might have been nice to have gone with a Brenda / Jason story where Jason was trying to break free of always being the good guy and wanting to be more carefree and slightly dangerous. Break his moral compass long enough for Karen to save him and allow Karen and Jagger fight when Karen (wrongly) assumes that Brenda is the source of all Jason's woes, but only for Brenda to bluntly inform Karen that it's Jason inability to get over his obsession with St. Karen that his driven him down this road. Of course, if I'm allowing for a briefer moment of a darker Jason, I would also have Jason and Karen reconnect when Karen worked as a stripper with Karen confessing the truth about Ray to Jason before Jagger, causing more Karen / Jagger tension, and later causing A.J. / Jason tension when A.J. continues to slut shame Karen. And in this situation, you could play out the possibility of people thinking Jason killed Ray which could add more tension to many dynamics (Jagger / Karen, Alan / Monica, Alan / Rhoda, Jason / Brenda, Jagger / Jason). I'm going to stop before I go too far down roads not travelled.
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dc11786 ·
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