Ed Ranks the Cassadine Family

A bunch of Cassadines.

Hey guys, it's been a minute due to some horrific family tragedy. That sucks. But now my brain is back to partially re-working again.

In a tribute to my awesome mom, I'm going to rank members of the villainous Cassadine family from the ABC Soap Opera General Hospital. Yeah. She loved her some of that terrible show.

15. Dimitri Cassadine - A Cassadine featured briefly in 1986 once they started retconning to create new Cassadines. Pretty non-relevant, and quickly gone from the show.

14. Charlotte Cassadine - A new-ish-ly introduced Cassadine kid (ugh, Soap Opera kids) who is supposed to be the daughter of a Cassadine. Only that Cassadine she is the daughter of is Valentin Cassadine (see directly below), who himself is totally a throwaway Cassadine because he was only retconned into existence recently.

13. Valentin Cassadine - This is just a lame Cassadine who is supposed to be a brother of the much cooler evil Cassadine children like Stavros and Stefan. But he didn't actually exist until 2016 when they said, "Oh, let's just pretend that 35 years ago they always had a brother, but that he was just disowned and nobody talked about him."  Lame that he was never mentioned by his brothers or mom once in the 40 freaking years they were characters on the show.  This is like when Buffy's sister Dawn appeared out of nowhere and they just pretended she had been a character all along.

12. Irina Cassadine - Minor Cassadine introduced as the daughter of Helena in 2011, but killed off after a year. Pretty forgettable.

11. Kristina Cassadine - Another minor Minor Cassadine, introduced in 2001 as the daughter of  Mikkos in 2011, but killed off after about year. Also pretty forgettable, but hey... the actress (Jaime Ray Newman) at least went on to actually do other stuff like The Punisher and Eureka.  Also she gets ranked higher than Irina because she came first, and Irina was just sort of the same thing again.

10. Spencer Cassadine - Son of Nikolas Cassadine and Courtney Matthews, who is herself the sister of mobster Sonny Corinthos. I hate Nikolas and I hate the stupid Corinthos plotlines, so I hate this character too. A very boring and lame child character who isn't even super evil.

9. Tony Cassadine - Youngest of the original Cassadine brothers, but killed off way back in the beginning in 1981 when he accidentally walked into his brother Mikkos's cool ice chamber. Oops. He didn't last long. Still, he gets some credit for being an original.

More like Mediocre Cassadine. AMIRIGHT?

8. Victor Cassadine - One of the original Cassadines from waaaaaay back in 1981. However he was the least important and vanished immediately. That is, until 2014 when they brought him back. With the exact same actor playing him. Wow. 33 years later bringing back the same actor to play a minor character? That's actually pretty good. Points for not being recast, despite his mediocrity. Also points for being one of the originals.

7. Nikolas Cassadine - Brought onto the show in the mid 1990s as a teenage heartthrob and the son of Laura (from Luke and Laura) and Stavros Cassadine. Technically, I think this character was the Cassadine who lasted the longest on the show (although played by different actors over time) and is therefore the most important and notable. But I'm going to rank him down here because he was mostly an annoying, heartthrob, good guy character. Which bores me. This family is supposed to be full of evil supervillains, damnit.

6. Alexis Davis - The only person who is a "Cassadine" who doesn't actually use that name, introduced in 1996 and has been on the show forever with the same actress playing her. So I guess she's like Nikolas as being an actual important and long-lasting character on the show, but for even longer since they did recently kill Nikolas off. Alexis, unfortunately, is a good person and lawyer rather than evil. Too bad. Evil is cool.

5. Petros Cassadine - Sometimes when you're on a soap opera and they kill you off, they bring you back.  Most of the time they just say "He didn't actually die. Never mind." It's sort of cheap, but it's too be expected. Just like comic books. But occasionally they bring an actor back and then they play a different, IDENTICAL character. That's the story of Petros. The original badass Mikkos (John Colicos, more on him later) came back a few years after they killed off Mikkos, this time as Mikkos's identical cousin, Petros. The identical cousin thing is weird, but not unprecedented even for this show. I'm pretty sure that Luke had an identical cousin too.  Anyway, this Cassadine only lasted for a very short time but because he's JOHN FUCKING COLICOS, he gets moved all the way up here.

4. Stefan Cassadine - So I'll start this by noting that the original Cassadine brothers debuted in 1981 was a set of three brothers (led by Mikkos, and with Victor and Tony as his brothers) who were evil and wanted to rule the world. Cool. But they were quickly done away with, and soon after they started debuting new Cassadines. It wasn't until 1996 when the Cassadines had a big comeback in this show that they introduced Stefan as ANOTHER son of Mikkos. I guess he was pretty okay. He certainly lasted on the show for a while. But the actor who played him, was actually more famous for playing an eye-patch guy on NBC's Days of Our Lives. And since that eyepatch guy ("Patch") had an eyepatch, he was obviously much cooler in his eyepatch persona and eventually decided to jump back to be eyepatch guy again because EYEPATCH.

Mr. Frozen Icy Villain Terrorist Guy. Cool?

3. Stavros Cassadine - Stavros debuted waaaaay back in 1983. Since the original Cassadines debuted in 1981, this technically means he wasn't an original one. However, he is the original "next generaton" Cassadine, introduced initially as a cousin, but then retconned to be Mikkos's eldest son and heir to evilness. Back in the day in '83, he was obsessed with Laura and kidnapped her.  That's how in 1996 they introduced Nikolas as a secret love child. He lamely died by falling down some stairs (which doesn't seem that deadly, all things considered) and vanished all the way until 2001 when they brought him back, recast him, and made him a crazy, super-evil villain who had been placed in cryonic suspension for 20 years in a secret room under General Hospital. FUCKING SWEET. He then engaged in some world domination plots involving bioterrorism in the summer of 2001... until... you know... September 11.  After that, the producers of this daytime television show were sort of like, "Shit, I guess we can't do this terrorism plot anymore, huh?" That totally ruined this awesome plotline. God, that Bin Laden sure was a dickhead.

2. Mikkos Cassadine - The ORGINAL OF ALL ORIGINAL Cassadines. Debuted in 1981 with a simple plan - to use a weather machine, controlled by a priceless diamond called the "Ice Princess," which he would use to TAKE OVER THE FUCKING WORLD. HOLY SHIT!!!  Soap Operas had always been about boring shit like drama between rich white aristocratic people.  General Hospital was all about "here are the lives of a bunch of people who work in this city with this Hospital and shit."  But for some reason in 1981, they must have hired a writer who was like, "FUCK IT! Let's just add a James Bond villain and/or Comic Book Supervillain to this daytime drama for middle-aged women." And who did they hire? John Colicos. YES. JOHN COLICOS. I know that might not be the most famous person in the world, but DUDESSSSSS... this guy is Count Baltar from Battlestar Galactica. He is Kor from Star Trek, one of the original Klingons from the Original Series. He was Cromwell in of Anne of the Thousand Days. He was the voice of Apocolypse in the 1990s X-Men Animated Series. He was Nick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. He's been a guest star on shows like The Six Million Dollar Man, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Gunsmoke, and Mission: Impossible.  HELL YEAHHHHH, MIKKOS!!!!!

White Diamonds.

1. Helena Cassadine

About two months after they killed off Mikkos in September of 1981, they debuted his wife, Helena. She was basically the same as him - an evil super-villainess. Oh, yeah, and they also decided to cast this character with ELIZABETH MOTHERFUCKING TAYLOR. THAT'S RIGHT, ELIZABETH TAYLOR WAS ON GENERAL HOSPITAL, Y'ALL! WHAT THE FUCK?! WHITE DIAMONDS. CLEOPATRA. WEIRD FRIENDSHIP WITH MICHAEL JACKSON. DID I MENTION WHITE DIAMONDS? OH WAIT. I DID. Years later, they'd bring the character back again to continue to be a super evil lady, although this time she was re-cast because honestly, how do you expect an ABC daytime soap to permanently be able to afford Cleopatra?