Greetings, fellow GH viewers! Since this is the first edition of my column, I thought it might be helpful for me to start off with a few words about who I am and what I'm doing here. If you're part of Soap Twitter, you might be familiar with my work for a few reasons, including the time I interviewed Jack Wagner (before we knew he was a card-carrying member of the Candace Owens/Kevin Sorbo/James Woods Brigade) and the time I interviewed then-GH head writer Ron Carlivati about his favorite TV cliffhangers of the '80s. I'm also the author of Llanview in the Afternoon, an oral history of One Life to Live that tells the story of the show from its creation to its eventual short-sighted cancellation.
I've been watching and writing about/commenting on ABC's daytime lineup for a long time, in other words, although it's mostly taken the form of commentary on the behind-the-scenes reality rather than whatever's happening onscreen. I thought it might be fun to try breaking down the General Hospital canvas on a weekly basis, and this seemed like a great place to start; fortunately for me, Jenn graciously agreed to make room for whatever this ends up becoming.
I'm looking forward to seeing where this leads. For now, let's dive right into the week that was.
Anyone who's watched daytime dramas for any length of time will tell you there's a lot of waiting involved — specifically, waiting for stories to achieve cruising speed after they've established their stakes. Modern soaps try to create the illusion of motion through fast-paced editing that can verge on the downright choppy, but there's only so much that can accomplish when you spend weeks at a time watching characters have the same damn conversations in slightly different ways. The upside to this frequently frustrating method of storytelling is that it can't help but create a significant amount of tension within the viewer; even in today's landscape of diminished budgets, there's something undeniably satisfying about the endgame of a major storyline that's been dawdling in first or second gear for months on end.
That catharsis was the overriding theme for GH this week. The show's been keeping several storylines — Victor's secret plan, Willow's failing health, Sonny's deal with Pikeman, and Carly/Drew's insider trading — on a low boil for an extended period, but this batch of episodes saw a bunch of movement across the board. Let's take a look at what went down, starting with the stuff that interests me the least:
Never send to know for whom the SEC tolls; it tolls for thee, Carly
Corporate skullduggery has long been effective grist for soap storylines, but it can be tricky to pull off — you need to write this stuff in a way that makes at least moderate sense to the average viewer, but you also can't lose sight of the fact that it's character personalities that really make things go. Longtime ABC daytime fans may not remember whatever the hell Adam and Palmer's companies did, but they surely remember the fun of watching those two inveterate schemers go to war. ELQ has been good for a number of these stories over the years, but this insider trading thing is thus far a total dud — chiefly because its two most dynamic participants, Ned and Valentin, have spent most of it on the sidelines, leaving the action to be driven by the poorly chosen trio of Carly, Drew, and Michael.
Laura Wright is obviously a phenomenally talented actor, and Cameron Mathison didn't get where he is on teeth alone. Chad Duell, meanwhile, seems to do a fine job of remembering his lines. But as the center of a story about the latest struggle for power at ELQ, none of their characters — at least as currently written — make sense. It's impossible to care about any of it, because Carly's insider trading ranks high on the list of the dumbest things that she or anyone else in Port Charles have done in recent memory, and neither Michael nor Drew are remotely believable as high-powered business executives. Just as importantly, viewers have been taught not to hope for anything in the way of actual consequences for Carly, so there's no reason to believe that any of this will amount to anything.
All of which is to say that there wasn't much in the way of fun or entertainment in watching Carly get hauled off to the PCPD interrogation room partway through Michael and Willow's interminable wedding. I find Carly consistently grating and sanctimonious, so it wouldn't have taken much to give me at least a little bit of satisfaction here; instead, we just got yet another round of Carly mouthing off to authority figures doing their jobs, enabled by the forever smug Diane. The lone bright spots were Tracy letting the SEC agents in (after hilariously insulting Olivia's catering) and the agents themselves, who were played by a pair of pleasantly overqualified actors. Everything else? Snooze.
Go to the damn light already, Willow
A well-balanced canvas needs unequivocal heroes, clearly outlined villains, and a handful of morally mixed characters. On paper, Willow has traditionally been written as one of the more upstanding citizens of Port Charles — a cult survivor turned teacher turned nurse! — which makes it all the more comical that she's been slowly but surely warped into one of the most consistently irritating characters on the show. Plot points intended to underscore her selfless nature (she really cares about the life of her unborn child, you guys) only end up making her look like an idiot (she refused leukemia treatment until she was allegedly just about dead), and her feud with Nina is noteworthy only because watching Katelyn MacMullen try to play tough is like watching a kitten try to chop down a tree.
This week, Willow got to walk down the aisle with her fellow sugar-free vanilla pudding cup Michael, a radiant bride despite being moments from death's door. Again, Tracy was a bright spot, but the rest of this was genuinely uncomfortable to watch — MacMullen and Chad Duell have never had any onscreen chemistry, and watching their characters exchange vows was as cringe-inducing as the final moments of any Very Special Episode from the worst '80s sitcom. It's all the more galling because GH has had a decades-long unhealthy fascination with antiheroes, sacrificing countless fundamentally decent characters on the altar of morally questionable ones (one in particular, but more on him in a minute).
What's been done with Willow and Michael represents a failure of imagination and a puzzling unwillingness to tailor the characters' arcs to the strengths of the performers — Duell has all the vocal and physical gravitas of a kid running a popsicle stand, but I have no doubt he could play the hell out of a storyline that asked Michael to finally, honestly grapple with the grim circumstances surrounding his birth, upbringing, and overall family background. MacMullen isn't remotely believable as a sparring partner for Nina, but she could be a great hinge for drama at the hospital (after Willow is forced to retake the "leukemia" portion of the nurse's exam, anyway). Together, they form a powerful vacuum of disinterest, arguably second only to Carly and Drew as the least compelling couple on the show. There's more sexual heat between Ava and Spinelli, and no amount of straining for Epic Love Story status is ever going to change that. As it stands, many viewers have resorted to loudly hoping for Willow's death — a sentiment I share to a certain extent while remaining disappointed in the ongoing mistreatment of characters who could have been used to balance the canvas in useful and entertaining ways.
Sonny's latest (yawn) threat
Stop me if you've heard this one before: A shadowy figure from out of town has arrived in Port Charles, and he wants to cut a deal with longtime local crime kingpin Sonny Corinthos. The deal's too good to pass up, but danger is waiting in the wings and omigod will Sonny make it through this without going to prison or worse?
This Pikeman thing is just another version of the same story that's centered around Sonny for decades, and there's never any doubt as to how it'll play out. Even when something actually happens to this character — he's partially paralyzed, he goes to prison, he falls off a bridge and forgets who he is for nine months — everything eventually snaps back to the status quo. I've found Sonny to be 50 percent less aggravating since he regained his memory, and I actively appreciate the extra layers Maurice Benard has been bringing to his performance, but this Pikeman thing looks and smells like chewed gum. We can't even trust the single slightly new wrinkle, which is Michael working with Dex to bring Sonny down from within; in the end, we know it'll eventually end with Michael reassuring Sonny that he's a great dad and silently agreeing never to discuss the fact that he tormented and eventually murdered Michael's biological father. Rinse and repeat.
Also, if Stephen A. Smith is the actor delivering the most interesting line readings in a scene, you know you're in trouble.
Ice, Ice Maybe
Daytime dramas take a lot of heat for recycling storylines, and it's partly justified — you know you're a true soap fan the first time you feel the sphincter-tightening dread of knowing there's a baby swap or "who's the daddy?" in the works. On the other hand, their ability to leverage decades of history is a big part of what makes these shows special, and given that it's GH's 60th anniversary, it was pretty much a given that they'd be exhuming a past glory as part of the celebration. The fact that they chose to go back to the Ice Princess yet again would seem to indicate a certain laziness on the part of the writers, but there are still glimmers of potential here.
For starters, framing Victor as a sort of fanatical idealist adds some timely fuel to this iteration of the storyline — where Mikkos was just a comically over-the-top maniac bent on world domination, Victor really believes the world is in peril and sees it as his duty to fix things. (On a show with more room for this type of thing, it'd lead to some serious conversations about climate change, but I'll settle for the subtext here.) I'm also not going to argue with anything that sets us up for a healthy dose of hot veteran action, and this story has made fair use of a bunch of them — including the perpetually underused Robert, Mac, Scott, and Felicia — in occasionally interesting/amusing ways, all while mixing in a pair of the show's best younger actors (Tabyana Ali and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, natch).
All that being said, when it comes to telling a story like this, the General Hospital of 2023 simply doesn't have the ability to compete with the General Hospital of 1981. They don't have the budget for location shoots, they don't have time for extra takes or much rehearsal, and the episodes cram in too many scenes to build the type of investment or dramatic tension that allows for sufficient suspension of disbelief. In asking viewers to remember beloved stories from decades ago, the show sets itself up for unfavorable comparisons, putting a strike against the writers and actors before they've even stepped up to the plate.
Fortunately, there's a lot of plate-stepping going on with this portion of the show right now — and that, combined with the aforementioned sense of relief over things finally happening, is just about enough to paper over many of the less foundational cracks in the story. As is often the case, you need to be prepared to take the good with the less good, but I'm enjoying this more than I'm not.
The strongest component of the story right now is arguably the Cassadines, which I can't believe I'm saying. Nikolas has been the center of that family for a long time now, and he's been a remarkably poorly written character for almost as long; sweeping him off the canvas for a bit has allowed Victor, Valentin, and Spencer to take center stage, and it's been a real breath of fresh air. We know Victor is on his way out, at least for awhile, and I don't think Charles Shaughnessy is a particularly imposing villain — that accent of his is doing a lot of the heavy lifting — but he does a fine job of swinging between avuncular and menacing, sometimes within the space of the same line. He brings out the best in James Patrick Stuart, who I think is a tremendous talent, and never more compelling than during the moments when Valentin is in barb-trading mode.
Between the two, Spencer has become arguably the most dynamic, potential-loaded character currently on the canvas, brought to life by an actor with a palette just as rich as the two scene partners I just mentioned. Like most green soap actors, Chavez seemed to struggle a bit when he started, but he settled in remarkably quickly, and it's been incredibly entertaining to watch him make the character his own. I don't know how intentional it is, but I see parallels between the way Stuart and Chavez are playing their responses to Victor's nefarious plan to wipe out 80 percent of the world's population via pathogen. Think about the moments after Victor forces Liesl to inject Valentin with the pathogen: Valentin asks "How long before I'm dead, Dad?" with a resigned flippancy that echoes the weary chuckle Spencer lets out when Victor's goon pauses hitting him to ask whether he's had enough.
This is all juicy, genuinely engaging stuff. Somewhat less compelling but still entertaining: Laura in full Mama Bear mode, tromping off to "somewhere in Greenland" intent on beating Victor's ass once and for all. It's easy to complain about her travel companions — Taggart really should have been a part of this, and I would much rather have seen him team up with Laura and Curtis so both of Trina's dads could save her together. Aside from wanting to whisk him out of Port Charles just in time to miss the SEC, I can't think of any reason for doofy Drew to be a physical part of this mission; it might have been different if he'd been able to recover any memories of Project Demeter, but as it stands, he could have been lifted right out with very little impact.
Meanwhile, it's also been fun to see Robert, Holly, and Anna mix it up a little with Scott — these are characters who go way back, and they don't share scenes together often enough. I'd have preferred to see them do it in a way that didn't leave Tristan Rogers handcuffed to a hospital bed with his mouth taped shut and/or mixing it up with a day player who looks and acts like he moonlights as a Mike Pence impersonator, but again, we take the good with the less good. Also, these scenes let us know that Frisco, who as far as we know hasn't done anything right since the mid-'90s, is no longer the director of the WSB. Holly should have gotten the gig next; it'd be just as sensible as Victor running the joint, and it'd leave the character with a sensible reason for existing mostly offscreen.
All in all, I'd argue that this little excursion to "somewhere in Greenland" has been just about as satisfying/sensible/exciting/emotionally impactful as one could reasonably hope under the intense time and financial constraints that go along with daytime drama in the 21st century. If nothing else, it's offered up yet another example of how virtually any soap situation is rendered more believable when you've got Genie Francis and Finola Hughes selling the shit out of it.
And that's the week that was on General Hospital from May 1-5, 2023. Anything you think I got particularly wrong or right? Anything you'd like to see more or less of in future installments? Let me know! I'll be back next week.
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