Ship from the Past

Sometimes a ship reminds you of why you shipped them in the first place.

I was bored the other night and reading TWOP. On the GH thread I saw that there was some sort of Duke/Anna reunion so I got curious and tuned in.

Duke/Anna were what? 25 years ago? They were one of my first 'ships.'

I don't know that I remember the story very well because in trying to think of what it was, I'm drawing a lot of blanks.

From my very sketchy memory, Anna was sort of a 'bad girl.' She was a DVX spy which in those days on GH was their rough equivalent to being part of the KGB... except Anna is British, so how did that work? She was a double agent or something?

She had had an affair (and a child) with Australian good guy super-spy Robert Scorpio, and I think she was a double (triple?) agent because at the end of the day she became a show heroine.

See? I said that I was rather vague on the details. I was young.

Anyway, Anna was originally brought in to be sort of a spoiler for the big Robert/Holly romance but was eventually made a heroine in her own right and that's when they created a love interest specifically for her.

I'm as vague on Duke as I am on Anna. Duke is Scottish and... he was in the mob? LOL! Was there ever such a thing as the Scottish mob??? Was he only peripherally connected to the mob? Was it the mob or just bad guys? GH loves its mobsters so I think it was the mob, but I don't actually remember. What I remember was that in some way or another, Duke was connected to the bad guys. By that point, Anna was not only heroine but the Police Commissioner (Hey, that sort of career change happens on soaps. *snerk*)

So out of love for Anna, Duke went straight. They had a wedding in a Scottish castle and Duke wore a kilt. And, unfortunately, Duke was eventually, tragically 'killed' as a result of his leaving his bad guy roots behind. *sniffle*

This is my vague memory of the plot and the ship from my kidhood.

Now, reading that Anna was back and that Duke was back 'from the dead' made me curious enough to tune into the show. And, from the bits that I saw, these characters/actors still have chemistry. There was a dancing scene intercut with a 25 year + flashback of their dancing and I sort of felt the nostalgic twinge. Then the 'twist' reveal that it's some sort of soap opera-esque machination where Duke is being (and long has been) held prisoner by Big Bad bad guy that also returned to the show. Then...

There was this scene of Duke taunting the Big Bad guy to go ahead and kill him. He would die happy knowing that Anna will figure out the bad guy's plans and will, with absolutely certainty, destroy the bad guy...because Anna is smart and dangerous and Duke has absolute faith in her ability to best the bad guys in anything.

And, I thought, damn! No wonder I shipped these two when I was a kid! That's really kind of awesome.

Both actors admit to being in their mid-fifties (which knowing actors means you can probably add a few years to that) so these aren't exactly the 'soap romance' you run across every day, and will probably go off the rails because that's what soaps now do. But seeing them again, I can see what I liked about them in the first go-round (and it is some mysterious mixture of character and chemistry because both actors have played other characters on other shows and it just not work. But these characters with those actors... work.)

It's kind of nice to get a glimpse of what made me ship something from when I was a kid... and to still kind of like it.