Cynthia Watros (NINA, GH)

■ When Nina and Carly went another round in their war over Willow, the emotional precision with which Nina’s portrayer, Cynthia Watros, navigated the scenes was fascinating to watch.

Nina was agitated and on edge when she charged into Ava’s home and found Carlythere instead, and her tone was clipped when Carly asked if something was wrong, snapping, “Yeah, my daughter’s dying.” As Nina apologized for her flash of temper, Watros dialed down the animosity but maintained Nina’s wariness, born of a certainty that Carly was incapable of keeping the conversation civil. Indeed, the tension soon escalated again when talk turned to Willow’s wedding. It was news to Carly that Sonny had made the invite list, and Nina pounced on the chance to make a sarcastic dig at the outsize influence her rival typically exerts on her son.

Carly took the bait, ticking off the myriad ways Nina had earned Willow’s mistrust. Watros played Nina as determined not to give Carly a win by appearing visibly wounded, but she let her eyes cloud with pain as the diatribe unfolded, and when she spoke again, her voice was husky with the emotions she’d been bottling. “I’ve made mistakes,” she allowed. But with a growing outrage, her words coming out in a venomous snarl, she maintained that it was Carly’s fault that she was running out of time to fix things with her dying daughter. Carly had a lot to say in response, none of it kind, and Nina chose her next words carefully, raw and sorrow-filled as she spoke of the rapidly dwindling opportunities she had to rebuild her relationship with Willow: “That’s you, Carly.”

The narrative impetus for these scenes was to set up Nina’s retaliation: siccing the SEC on Carly. Watros clearly understood this, but her performance made it impossible to see Nina as motivated solely by spite. She infused Nina with humanity, laying bare the volatile mix of blind rage and Technicolor anguish that drove Nina to extremes.