Soap Opera
The Legendary ‘General Hospital’ Love Story That Was Never Meant to Happen
Steve Burton reveals ‘General Hospital’s’ Jason and Sam were never meant to be a couple, making their iconic pairing an unexpected chemistry test success.
For nearly two decades, General Hospital fans couldn’t get enough of Jason (Steve Burton) and Sam (Kelly Monaco). Known by the portmanteau “Jasam,” Jason Morgan and Sam McCall were star-crossed lovers who could never seem to get it together. While their love story came to a tragic close in 2024 when Sam died, Steve Burton recently revealed a secret about his most popular GH pairing yet.
A ‘General Hospital’ Chemistry Test Gone Right
Soap operas make it a habit of testing certain character combinations in scenes to see if there’s a spark. Most of the time, those various chemistry tests fizzle and fans barely think anything of them. But on a rare occasion, those scenes can sizzle and daytime television history is made. That’s just what happened in 2003 when con woman Samantha McCall met mob hitman Jason Morgan in the Port Charles Police Department interrogation room, one of Jason’s most common spots to this day.
On a recent episode of “That’s Awesome,” the podcast hosted by Steve Burton and GH co-star Bradford Anderson (Damian Spinelli), the actors discussed some recent scenes between Jason’s other former lady love, Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst), and police commissioner Dante Falconeri (Dominic Zamprogna). The soap has clearly been chemistry-testing them for months and fans like what they see. That’s when Burton made an admission about “Jasam.”
“With Kelly Monaco, it wasn’t even supposed to be a couple,” Burton confessed. “You just never know when it happens. So I guess it makes sense.”
From what wasn’t meant to be to what soap fans couldn’t wait to see every day for years, Jason and Sam endured it all. Affairs and romances with others, shooting, ill-fated weddings, missing babies, and presumed deaths are just a few of the soap tropes that Jason and Sam had experienced since 2003. The couple broke up for good in 2021 when a more mature Sam decided she didn’t want to raise her children around Jason’s dangerous lifestyle.
Sadly, Sam passed away in 2024 after donating a part of her liver to Lulu (Alexa Havins), leaving Jason behind to raise their teenage son, Danny (Asher Atonyzyn), but fans will never forget “Jasam,” a soap opera chemistry test gone right.
General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC and each weeknight on Hulu.
