General Hospital Episodes That Feel Like Deja Vu

When a show is on the air for more than half a century, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, it's bound to repeat stories — or at least types of stories — and even have episodes we feel like we have seen before. "General Hospital" premiered on April 1, 1963 and throughout it's nearly 60 years on the air, as of this writing, it has only had one makeshift rerun season and that didn't come until 2020 when Hollywood productions were forced to shut down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than not have any soap opera programming during the day, ABC gave fans theme weeks that included encore episodes of some of "GH's" best hours (via Soap Central).

While those theme weeks certainly gave fans a feeling of deja vu, many still get that sense watching first-run episodes that seem eerily similar to plot points and story vehicles we have seen before. In 2021, we even saw characters doing and saying the same thing over and over again for days on end, making fans wonder if the soap is back in its only rerun season again.

Since 1993, one of "General Hospital's" most popular characters has been Sonny Corinthos, played by Maurice Benard, who eventually became the mob boss of the fictional New York town of Port Charles. Sonny is always defending his territory from one interloping mob family or another, making sure drugs and guns stay off the streets (Fans have yet to figure out what Sonny really traffics through the town, although he claims it's just Corinthos Coffee).

Despite Sonny not wanting Port Charles to be the wild west with guns in the hands of all citizens, he has plenty of them, as do his hitmen and mafia enemies. So shootouts on Pier 54 happen every so often. New fan-favorite Brando Corbin was introduced in the 2020 shootout that introduced the character to the show (via Soaps In Depth), but it still seemed like any other "GH" gunfire sequence through the years, including the one that put in bullets in Kiki Jerome (Hayley Erin) and Nathan West (Ryan Paevey) in 2016 (via Michael Fairman TV).

It was 2019 when put-upon heroine Sasha Gilmore (Sofia Mattsson) was poisoned by Cassandra Pierce (Jessica Tuck) — and this poison introduced a version of the bird flu to Sasha's system, according to Soaps.com. As Sasha lay near death, Dr. Hamilton Finn (Michael Easton) had to race against time to save the character, which he eventually did.

Too bad Dr. Finn couldn't save Sasha's newborn baby, who died just in time for Christmas in 2021, enraging fans, according to Soaps.com. However, he did manage to save his brother, Harrison Chase (Josh Swickard), in 2021, when Chase was poisoned by the cartoon villain, Peter August (Wes Ramsey). Once again, Dr. Finn had to race against the clock to concoct any antidote for Chase, which led him to figuring out that Chase really was his brother after all and not his son, as a false DNA test had led him to believe (via Soaps In Depth). The poison left Chase paralyzed and married Willow Tait (Katelyn MacMullen), a woman who didn't love him but married him because she thought he was on his deathbed. And deathbed weddings? As a soap trope, every single one makes fans feel an enormous sense of deja vu.

It was only 2012 when mob enforcer Jason Morgan (Steve Burton) was shot on Pier 54, kicked into the river, and presumed dead. Carly Corinthos (Laura Wright) and Sam McCall (Kelly Monaco) walked around in tears for months and Carly almost married a man she thought was Jason's brother, Franco Baldwin (Roger Howarth), who eventually turned out to be his cousin. Jason was deemed a hero by all who knew him, despite the fact that he was a hitman for nearly 20 years at the time. At least he turned out to be alive in 2017.

Flash forward a decade and Jason is presumed dead once again after a tunnel collapse on Cassadine Island (via Soaps In Depth). Sam isn't as broken up about it this time, but Carly is once again apoplectic and turning to Jason's actual brother, Drew Cain (Cameron Mathison), for comfort. And, just like before, Jason the perpetual hitman is being hailed as a saint by the entire town. The more things change in Port Charles, the more they stay the same.