‘General Hospital’ Fluke or ‘The Young and the Restless’ Yack Confessional Storyline – Which Was the Bigger Letdown (POLL)

Soap opera fans are frustrated with two recent storylines on General Hospital and the Young and the Restless. For those of you that watch both shows, as we do here at Soap Opera Spy, we’re wondering which big reveal you found more disappointing. Was it the Luke/Fluke character arc on GH or the Jack/Yack character plotting with Victor in the confessional on Y&R?

As soap fans, we’re accustomed to evil twins, spontaneous resurrections, mystery babies that pop up out of the blue and any number of plot lines that stretch our tolerance and imaginations. We let most of this go for the love of our shows, but it gets really frustrating when writers seem to forget origin stories, violate character histories or the basic behavioral tenets of a long-established character.

On General Hospital, one of the core problems with Luke and Fluke is that we’ve already seen Luke Spencer [Anthony Geary] as part of a doppelganger plot. Back in the early 90s, when Tony Geary got bored with playing Luke, but still wanted to stick with the show, GH show runners created Bill Eckert who, conveniently looked just like Luke. Turns out he was a look-alike cousin of Luke’s.

When Fluke first popped up, there was a lot of speculation that Fluke was really Bill Eckert who had been killed off back in 1993. As a matter of fact, the writers’ original intention with the Fluke storyline was to make him Bill Eckert, but then changed mid-stream and made him a more evil version of Luke himself that was channeling the worst attributes of his jerk father Tim Spencer (also played by Tony Geary in flashback).

Tony Geary told TV Guide, “At first, I was definitely playing two different people, and the assumption was that Fluke was Bill Eckert. But I think when the fans started to guess that outcome – Ron [Carlivati] monitors all of the comments so closely—they decided there was a better way to go.”

So, in the end, the big reveal was that Luke had a split personality of sorts caused by the trauma of having killed both his parents as a teenager. Young Luke accidentally killed his mother and then intentionally murdered his father in a fit of rage and his mind snapped then blocked the memory. Turns out that incident supposedly explains when Luke would periodically go off the rails in the past.

Admittedly, Fluke being the alter-ego of Luke and embodiment of the evil Tim Spencer is better than Fluke being a whole separate entity and a resurrected Bill Eckert. That being said, it was months and months (and months) of dog and pony show for a measly outcome. But to give GH producers some credit, at least they rolled the reveal out in style with the cool black and white episode with Laura Wright (Carly) playing mama Spencer and Geary playing dear old drunk abusive dad.

But the core question we’re asking today is whether this is better, worse or just as bad as the Jack/Yack story. Let’s take a look at that one now.

For months, Victor Newman [Eric Braeden] has been visiting church – not to better his soul or atone for all his evil doings – but to plot more evil. Victor’s been meeting with a mystery person in the confessional of the church and there was a lot of speculation about who this was. The conversations centered on taking down Jack Abbott [Peter Bergman] so that led to plenty of rumors.

Some of the suspected candidates for Victor’s confessional partner in crime included Kelly’s mom Maureen Russell [Meredith Baxter] and Kelly Andrews [Cady McClain] herself. Other speculation included that it might be Sage Warner [Kelly Sullivan] or even Austin Travers [Matthew Atkinson]. What’s interesting is that the plot that many fans found least likely was the one that occurred – an evil Jack twin.

Jack’s evil twin is being referred to by many fans as Yack because of the way the minister in St. Bart’s pronounced his name. There’s also been speculation about when the switch was made. Since the real Jack was kidnapped by Kelly (likely with help) and we saw a wedding ring on his finger as he worked his way loose of his bonds to try and escape captivity, the assumption is that it was the real Jack at the wedding that tied the knot with Phyllis Summers [Gina Tognoni].

Many think that Jack was taken away and Yack installed in his place when Phyllis went to freshen up after the wedding and she was in the bathroom and out of sight of her new hubby for a while. Kind of a bummer that Yack got to enjoy the honeymoon while Jack was tied up kidnapped then clubbed with a baseball bat by Kelly as he tried to make his escape. The main difference is that the Fluke/Luke storyline has reached its culmination but Jack/Yack is still in play.

You have to wonder who fake Jack really is. If he’s a random guy who loosely resembled Jack and Victor convinced to get plastic surgery to help play the part, that’s reasonably plausible in the soap opera spectrum. But if it’s a hitherto unknown twin of real Jake, that’s pretty outlandish. Or if it’s a prior Y&R character that has been miraculously made to resemble Jack, that would also be even more far fetched and deeply unsatisfying.  The one thing we do know is that Victor found Yack in a Peruvian prison.  We’ll revisit this once we know more about who Yack really is.

For now, Soap Opera spies, what do you think? Which was the bigger letdown – was it Fluke or Yack? Share your thoughts on this question and also your ideas about who Yack’s real identity may be in the comments below.

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