If You Wait Long Enough, They Usually Come Back

So I DVR'd an episode of General Hospital last week, for the first time since college, although not because James Franco is sporadically appearing as a character named... wait for it... "Franco," who may be a serial killer (?) (At least, that's what I gleaned from his brief, sinister cameo. I could be horribly off-base on this point.)

Nope. The reason I taped the show is because the original Lucky is back! Terms like "the original so-and-so" are pretty much confined to the soap opera world, where recasts occur every couple years as a matter of course, like snakes shedding their skin. Soap actors like to stretch their wings on prime-time or in movies, but if you give 'em a decade or so, they usually return, even if they've had success on the outside.

Despite my time away from the program, I recognized several familiar faces.  Jax, Sonny, Jason, Luke and Liz are all still wandering around as though in a time warp, proving that you can basically dip back into any soap at any point in your life and feel like you never left.

Now the problem is that I have to figure out what's happened to Lucky since I last saw him (killed in a fire), more than three actors ago. He's Luke and Laura's son, and he used to be a little shady as a teenager, running "errands" for the local mobsters by driving up to Canada and back, but now he's a cop? This doesn't seem right.

Further research may be required.