Paris & Helen. Tristan & Isolde. Lancelot & Guinevere. Anna Karenina & Alexei Vronsky, Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund, Count Laszlo de Almásy and Katherine Clifton. Luke & Laura.  From ancient tales to modern cinema, the adulterous love affair has made for some of the greatest, most tragic love stories of all time. When done right, they can be achingly beautiful and heartbreaking, with impossible (often contrived) circumstances forcing the hero and heroine to violate their ethics and inflict a world of hurt on an innocent spouse. On the other hand, when done wrong, the parties come off as selfish at best, skanky and horrible at worst.

 

And it has been ages since GH did adultery right. Consider the idiotic, forced romance between Nikolas and Courtney. Two seconds after she married Jax and while he was still married to the erstwhile love of his life, the two were skulking about the docks, making out and making goo-goo eyes at each other. Romantic? I think not.

 

Yet, I'm not a prude and soaps shouldn't be run by the moral police. A good adulterous love affair can be gorgeous, wonderful soap.  

 

And I see some real interesting potential story with Georgie and Diego. Unlike the Courtney/Nik skankathon I believe the writers could write Georgie falling for Diego and Diego falling for Georgie without making the characters heinous.

 

Georgie is a basically good kid but darn it if she didn't make an enormous mistake when she married Dillon. She's too young. She's also always been written as naïve and idealistic.  She loves Dillon. She wants her marriage to succeed, and at this point is probably blissfully unaware of Diego's feelings toward her or why she subconsciously finds herself near Diego all too often.

 

(Note to Georgie: You can be in love with one man and find yourself attracted to another. It happens all the time. That's why you shouldn't get married until you are mature enough not only to recognize those feelings but also be strong enough to resist acting on them.)

 

Diego, on the other hand he seems to really want not to interfere with Georgie's life. He wants her to be happy, but when he was spiraling out of control and believed there was no choice but suicide - Georgie reached into the fire and saved him. And she kept her promise to write him in prison. No wonder he loves her.  But as yet, we've never seen him do anything but be a puppy dog and kind of sort of accidentally get into her sphere because he's lonely and wants to be near her. He's never tried to seduce her. He's never tried to convince her Dillon was cheating or bad or do anything deceptive to woo her in any way. He's trying to do the right thing.

Now Dillon has run off to have an adventure with Lulu, and Georgie is left home working and without a prom date. The fact that she wants to go so bad makes it even more painfully clear that she's too young to be married. And poor Diego resisted offering to take her, but Georgie asked him in all naiveté. And again, I actually believe that Georgie doesn't "get" how Diego feels toward her.

 

And why is Diego both resisting Georgie but following her around and accommodating her wishes when he can? Because he may well really, truly love her. And love makes you do crazy things like take a woman you are in love with to the prom when she's married and you sincerely want to stay away from her so she'll be happy with the man she loves. But when a man loves a woman, he makes bad choices. Especially a young man who has made big mistakes and wants to reach out to the one person who has thought the best of him.

 

Best of all, GH is letting this happen slowly. Because Georgie & Diego aren't front burner, this potential romance has been building over months, scene by scene and  on the strength of one or two surreptitious, smoldering glances sent across Kelly's to a wide-eyed, clueless Georgie.

 

Do the writers know what they have here? Do they know they have a modern day Lancelot & Guinevere, except that Lancelot isn't so much worried about violating the property of his best friend the husband? No, Diego could be a post-feminist Lancelot. Georgie isn't Dillon's property. She owns herself, and he wants her to be happy. To make her own choices. To be proud of herself. So he resists, for now.

 

Please writers, don't screw this up. Don't demonize Dillon to make this an easy out. Don't turn Diego into the evil seducer. Don't make Lulu into the Iago-like manipulator. Make it more messy. Make it more tragic. Write it well.