#i still kinda wish there was more public fallout cause soapy

[bklynmusicnerd]

And here are my Trina/Portia thoughts (they're a lot lol):

Trina's dramatic entrance being the official end of the wedding was both funny and a good choice thematically. Portia's undoing is ultimately going to come at the hands of her beloved daughter so of course it's her daughter, full of demands for answers, that brings her false happily ever after to a screeching halt.

Trina's anger at her mother leading her to even push back on Taggert when he tried to check her tone makes me think that she probably already had a good idea of the betrayal that Stella was hinting at but she had to hear it from her mother. Portia trying to make weird cracks about Trina "not getting any ideas" from the bouquet (girl what???) as she tries to maintain control of a situation she lost control of a long time ago was a great character quirk.

I wasn't really sure what kind of energy Portia was going to bring with Trina in this confrontation because she's been defiant when caught in her lies before. And at first, Portia does commit to her lie by telling Trina that she was so happy when "got past" her lying to Trina the first time. Except, they never really got past anything because Trina committed to transparency with her mother while her mother continued to lie to her face. Ultimately though, I do think seeing Trina that stressed out and angry finally broke her resolve.

I do think the moment that Portia loses Trina is when she tries to put the blame on Taggert being an inattentive husband for her decisions. As calculated as Portia has become over the years, I don't think she was that calculated when it came to Trina's paternity back then. I think all the decisions she made, from the affair to leaving Trina's actual paternity up in the air so she could choose, were emotionally driven decisions.

Curtis left her, Taggert was improving so in that moment she wanted Taggert to be the father and that's the narrative she went with. Later in life, her and Taggert are divorced, Curtis is there and now she wants to play family with Curtis and Trina like Trina isn't an adult because her preferred narrative shifted. I don't know if Portia was intending to put the blame so much on Taggert as she was speaking from the perspective of Portia in her 20s and what her thought process was.

The problem for Portia is that Trina is a daddy's girl as much as she is her mother's daughter. You can see Trina seeing through Portia's attempts to make herself the victim in the situation and despite Trina probably being the biggest victim in all of this, she immediately goes into protective mode over her dad. Trina isn't just outraged on her behalf but on her father's behalf as well and you can tell that catches Portia off guard.

It was really powerful to watch Trina in the middle of a self-admitted identity crisis defiantly say that Taggert would always be her dad, even if he wasn't her father. I do think that's a sign that Trina will ultimately make it out of this identity crisis okay because her instinct to define herself is still intact. We really saw today that Trina is the daughter that Portia and Taggert raised because Trina really gave Portia no quarter and knocked down every single one of her excuses. Trina really saw her mom for the first time and she didn't like what she saw.

The most heartbreaking moment of these scenes and probably the thesis for them was Trina saying that she doesn't know who she is anymore and immediately following that up with also declaring that she doesn't know who Portia is. Even though this is a story about paternity, so much of Trina's sense of who she is was wrapped up in her understanding of who her mother was. Trina took pride in being Portia's daughter and now she's finding out that everything that her mother presented herself to be was a complete lie. Portia is selfish, she's calculated, she's manipulative, she's a consistent liar. And she's still the mother that raised her.

That is the most important and formative relationship in her life that she can no longer have faith in because of Portia's pivotal decision. To say Trina is adrift is an understatement. Portia positioned herself as an infallible north star for Trina and now all of that has been completely tainted. I do think this story is ultimately about mother and daughter rather than either father. Portia gave Trina her last name, not Taggert's. And part of that was to keep Trina safe from potential enemies of Taggert's but I also think part of that was because Portia saw Trina as hers before either potential father.

You see it when Trina tries to leave and Portia yells "no" and holds onto her with both hands, while we see Curtis and Taggert looking on confused. Trina and Portia losing each other is traumatic for both of them. Portia has lost her daughter, the love of her life and Trina has lost her sense of self because so many things that she knew to be irrefutable facts, are now nothing but questions.

#general hospital #trina robinson #portia robinson #they're not going to be the same after this and that's a good thing imo #i still kinda wish there was more public fallout cause soapy #but this is the kind of character driven writing i want more of from this gh regime #sorry for the long post but i have been waiting for this schism lol