General Hospital celebrated its 51^st birthday Tuesday by slapping all of its fans in the face. With a baseball bat.

Head writer Ron Carlivati kept touting the greatness of the anniversary episode – while forgetting to mention it was a big middle finger salute to longtime fans.

He kept talking about flashbacks. Not from the rich history of GH, though, but from the toxic relationship that toppled GH’s ratings: Carly and Sonny.

So, in the episode where Monica is dealing with the death of her fourth (and last) child (yes, I know, Jason is actually a thugsicle somewhere and not really dead) we spent the bulk of the episode watching Maurice Benard’s Sonny act with three different actresses – all playing the same character. The flashbacks were all of Sonny and Carly – the couple that (literally) dragged GH’s ratings to the basement.

GH welcomed back Sarah Brown and Tamara Braun to share Carly duties (for the day) with Laura Wright

so they could show a bevy of Carly and Sonny clips. This was all part of the grand story, where Carly informs Sonny she knows he shot (and killed) A.J.

The flashbacks were meant to be a way for Sonny to convince Carly not to tell anyone what he’s done. He reminded viewers that AJ “killed” his unborn child with Carly. That’s not true, by the way, Carly fell from the stairs. It’s not like AJ pushed her. Then we had to watch Carly find out that Michael was “dead” – when AJ had really kidnapped him – and that’s what convinced her it was totally fine that Sonny shot AJ in cold blood.

Where were all the flashbacks of what Carly and Sonny did to AJ? Why not show the scene of SB’s Carly as she dumped liquor on AJ in an alley to convince him he’d fallen off the wagon? Why not show scenes of Carly lying about who Michael’s father was (time and time again)? Why not show Sonny hanging AJ up on a meat hook to make him sign away his parental rights on Michael?

Instead, we got treated to another round of kick A.J.

Sure, it was a nice touch that GH brought Natalia Livingston back to usher AJ to Heaven – and we got body

doubles that looked like Lila, Edward and Alan watching, too. Couldn’t they get Stuart  Damon back? I know the actor has been having health issues, but if the issue was money – they could have taken everything they gave the two visiting Carlys and given it to him – which would have made fans so much happier.

In the final story of the day, RC dusted off Felicia, Mac, Scotty, Bobby, Lucy and Kevin for their monthly appearance – even though they had very little to do.

RC claims he loves GH history – and yet he keeps trashing it. That doesn’t sound like love to me.

So, thank you RC, you gutted the Quartermaines (again) – and yet you still wonder why fans are ticked.

What do you think? Was this an unhappy GH anniversary?