On General Hospital, for as long as Port Charles has had a skyline, the Quartermaine family has been waging an annual, losing war against Thanksgiving dinner.

It’s practically a civic tradition at this point: someone drops a match, someone screams, the smoke alarms kick in like they’re auditioning for a nightclub, and the bird ends up charred,

missing, stolen, or airborne. Everyone ends up throwing their hands in the air, and the whole clan caves and orders pizza. It’s a disaster, yes — but it’s their disaster,

so iconic you half-expect the PCPD to patrol the house every fourth Thursday in November just to be safe.

Key Takeaways

• The Quartermaine Thanksgiving curse strikes again.
• Olivia bets on a new pizza oven…and loses.
• The oven dies a spectacular, smoky death.
• Chaos erupts; pizza seems inevitable.
• Chase and BLQ secretly cooked a full turkey dinner.
• The curse finally breaks — Thanksgiving is saved.

Olivia Tries to Outsmart the Curse

On one hypothetical holiday, though, picture Olivia (Lisa LoCicero) deciding she’s finally done tempting the Thanksgiving gods. No turkeys. No stuffing. No stove that “mysteriously” short-circuits whenever The Qs gather in one room. Instead, she drags everyone to the kitchen to show off the new toy she’s been itching to use — a chunky, brick-lined pizza oven she swears she “got a deal on,” even though it looks like something out of a celebrity chef’s backyard. And if The Quartermaines are doomed to end up with pizza anyway, Olivia figures she may as well pretend it was the plan all along.

And for a minute — a glorious, fleeting minute — it works. Dough flies. Sauce simmers. Even Tracy (Jane Elliot) admits it smells “passable.” But the Quartermaine curse always finds its opening. Olivia slides in the very first pie, and the oven immediately coughs, wheezes, and makes a sound no appliance should ever make outside of a horror movie. A second later, the whole thing slumps sideways like it just gave up on life, sending everyone scrambling and Tracy yelling that she “knew this would happen!”

Chaos naturally follows. Brook Lynn (Amanda Setton) panics. Leo (Easton Rocket Sweda) asks whether the oven “went to heaven.” Ned (Wally Kurth) instinctively reaches for the phone to order pizza, muscle memory kicking in like an old football injury. It’s over, Olivia thinks. Another year. Another culinary crime scene.

A Very Unexpected Rescue

But then — in a twist so wholesome it might give Tracy whiplash — Chase (Josh Swickard) and BLQ step in. Turns out the newlyweds spent the morning secretly preparing a full Thanksgiving meal in case Olivia’s plan went sideways (in this house, paranoia counts as wisdom). They pull out a golden turkey, real sides, actual rolls that didn’t come from a frozen bag.

The room shifts. For the first time in decades, The Quartermaines sit down to an honest-to-God turkey dinner, the curse broken not by luck but by two people who have finally figured out how to steady the chaos. Olivia’s emotional. Jason’s (Steve Burton) impressed. Tracy pretends she’s not.

And somewhere in that dining room — maybe in the flicker of a candle, maybe in Edward’s (the late John Ingle) portrait — you can almost feel the old man nodding. This year, Thanksgiving wasn’t a disaster. This year, it was earned.