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Why does Bob Guza still have a job? The one element soaps have that all other TV shows lack is history. Rather than play to this strength, Guza seems intent on destroying it.

The Quartermaines were a core family for almost 30 years, and they have been decimated in the past couple years:

• A.J. was destroyed because he was inconveniently Michael's father.
• Alan was killed because the show was too cheap to keep its veteran actors, and he was kept as a ghost because producer Jill Pharen Phelps wanted to milk every last penny from Stuart Damon's contract before putting him out to pasture.
• Emily's departure was "storyline dictated," meaning they sacked her so they could hire three actresses playing intern nurses.
• Michael was put in a coma so he can return in 6 months to be Lulu's latest suitor. Nobody will mention they're cousins, because cousin-on-cousin action is really trendy on soaps these days.

Then there was Georgie. We were watching as she was conceived during one of the most powerful storylines in GH history and when she was born in Luke's blues club. When the character was inevitably aged, we fell in love with her because she wasn't a typical boy-obsessed soap teen. Then she died stupid, just to serve another violent storyline.

And now Logan. Scotty Baldwin's son. Lee and Gail Baldwin's grandson. Did he ever get to meet his grandparents onscreen? Will they be brought back for his funeral? Will Logan even get a funeral? Why didn't we ever see scenes where Gail counceled Logan and found out about his experiences in Iraq? Why weren't Lee and Gail brought in to help reconcile Scott and Logan?

What the fuck is the point of tying characters to the show's history if you're going to ignore that history to serve storyline purposes? The Scotty/Logan pairing had so much potential. But after the DNA test, Scotty just disappeared from Logan's life, despite the fact the kid was (a) his son and (b) deeply troubed based on his behavior in Iraq. Which reminds me... GH creates three Iraq vet characters, and then kills two of them off within a year under clouds of suspicion that they're violent criminals. The third just disappears, but he was also dangerous. What sort of message does that send? Guza must have as much respect for our troops as he does for law enforcement.

All these deaths have been myopic. By pruning all the family trees in Port Charles, we're left with a bunch of new characters who lack Port Charles history. And why should we bother getting invested in new characters when at least one of them is bound to die when the next sweeps period rolls around?

This is how you kill a soap opera.

I am so sad. I decided to watch today's episode, and this is no longer entertainment. It's a sick joke on the viewers.

Personal disclosure: I was briefly involved with General Hospital in the 1990s when the show was toying with the concept of giving one of its characters HIV and I was helping the Centers for Disease Control with its network outreach program. ABC decided to do the story, and the CDC provided the background information to ensure the story was medically credible. Everybody involved with the story of Robin and Stone had reason to be proud. It was gripping drama, but it was also a first-rate, socially responsible cautionary tale at a time when HIV was largely unknown and misunderstood. Topping it all off, it was medically accurate.

What has become of that show? Is there a character on the canvas who isn't a killer? And what has Bob Guza done to Robin? How is it possible that daytime's first HIV-positive mother - who happens to be a character we watched grow up in real time - could be reduced to Sonny's sounding board? And why is her storyline not front and center on a show called "General Hospital"? The show could be making history. But instead, it's making people ill.

Way to go, Guza.