GH: A few spoilers from TV GUIDE

[titan1978]

Jax after Guza/Pratt arrived always seemed like a chess piece used to annoy Sonny.  Courtney, Carly, Brenda…he wasn’t even really a character anymore.

[Darn]

Relegating show star Carly to B-couple reads like a placeholder for her to me. This whole thing with Drew is a placeholder too.

Yep, the show has zero interest in Jax as a character outside of being a contrast to Sonny.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Darn

[Vee]

Carly had transitioned to a different role at that time in the mid-late 2000s but she was no placeholder. She absolutely is today.

They literally told the audience, either onscreen, in print or both that Jax was frequenting hookers to get his rocks off post-Brenda when he wasn't in a pairing. That's how little Guza gave a shít about him.

[Darn]

Jax was a placeholder for her until they could pair her with Sonny again.

Carly was a placeholder for him because Brenda wasn't around.

Why are you so difficult??

[Vee]

Because you're wrong like always! 

In seriousness, their priorities for Carly post-Brown and Braun had changed. Tamara had challenged them by generating heat and trouble with Ted King/Lorenzo and was vocally not happy in the Sonny/Carly romance anymore. She had enough popularity and pull to make things difficult. They took that out on her in the writing (the incredibly vile stuff written for the men and Michael about Carly in early '04) before she finally quit. Then MB (allegedly) wanted to be tested with Sam and other women, and then Guza hit on adding Kate, which became a popular love interest for Sonny, and began slowly building his cherished Dante long-form story which was allegedly in the works for years before they cast DZ. And meanwhile Jason just did Jason things with Sam and then Elizabeth.

So all that was Guza's main event. They didn't have room for a canvas where a third Carly became as massive and influential a force as both Sarah and Tamara had been, pulling focus from the male leads and stories that Guza preferred to prioritize. So Carly retained a considerable role, but it was largely not about all her love life. She was the town troublemaker again, but happily married to Jax. And a lot of that frankly worked for me for a long time.

[titan1978]

The placeholder in my mind was Guza.  His idea of Carly no longer worked because Laura Wright did not sizzle with MB.  But they kept writing Carly like she and Sonny still had this undeniable sexual chemistry.  They went to that well several times and the heat was long gone.

It worked for me because we got Kate and Brenda’s return during the latter part of their dominance.  And we got a slow burn of Jason/Carly starting to questions Sonny and their choices involving him.  I will refuse to discuss what became of Kate as that recast might as well have been another character, they did her so wrong.

[Vee]

I don't think they ever really cared about trying LW with MB tbh. Maurice was in the throes of the disastrous Sonny/Emily pairing he had pushed for when Laura Wright was hired. Laura's Carly was almost immediately shunted to Jax - I mean, she came on in November sweeps, they were getting tight around February or March of the following year, got instant audience response and were a couple very soon after, by summer '06 at the latest IIRC. I think they made the calculation to change Carly's focus very early with the recast. They were not going to allow a Carly that could materially compete for individualized story with Sonny or Jason again after the BTS headache with Tamara. And Guza's focus being on Sonny/Kate, then Dante (with Olivia) later only reinforced that disinterest. The beats with Carly's relationships with Sonny and Jason, with Carly and Sonny occasionally going back to the well and sleeping together in moments of weakness were still there but that was it. And yeah, it all worked for me.