Short week on General Hospital for this column, thanks to a Friday preemption triggered by the latest update regarding the worsening legal woes of a certain incompetent real estate developer/grubby pitchman/serial liar/self-obsessed lunatic who refuses to spontaneously combust and evaporate from history no matter how much I wish he would. The good news is that after a few weeks spent in a holding pattern, this round of episodes gave us a fair bit of motion and something that actually sort of resembled a Friday cliffhanger, even though it aired on Thursday. Let's dive in!
Jordan's Gettin' Jiggy…and Portia's Gettin' Messy
We touched on this a little last week, but General Hospital's general unwillingness to allow its protagonists to get deliberately, unapologetically messy has really undercut the stakes of numerous ongoing storylines. We see main characters do petty shit and backstab one another, but that's usually followed pretty quickly by a lot of whining about how bad they feel and/or failing to follow through on whatever nasty plan they were cooking up (looking at you, Buster Bluth Quartermaine Corinthos). This hasn't REALLY been an issue with the perpetually fraught relationship between Jordan and Portia — on the whole, I've appreciated the rather nuanced way they've had those two deal with conflict, which is far more interesting than watching grown women catfight over a man — but there's a whole mess o' mess on the horizon for both of them at the moment, and I'm ready for it.
First off, amen and hallelujah, we saw Jordan take the news of Curtis moving back home in beautiful stride. She told Curtis where to go, then she bellied up at the Metro Court poolside bar, where she just so happened to meet the handsome and very eligible Zeke. After some light verbal sparring, they adjourned to his room, hit the sheets, and exchanged numbers before Zeke was summoned by his client, ol' Googly Eyes Cain. Noticing that Zeke left his room key behind, she decided to find him at the restaurant and give it to him — and then moments after doing so, she discovered that her no-strings-attached hookup is Portia's brother.
Portia, meanwhile, saw Esme during her rounds, and decided to use their time together to not-so-subtly encourage Esme to get the hell out of town. I know some folks are unhappy about this, but I think it's great; there's a rich daytime tradition of moms meddling in their children's love lives, and Portia's motivations here make perfect sense. Why wouldn't she want to try and manipulate Spencer into following Esme out of Port Charles? We love him, but facts are facts — his arrival into Trina's life has been followed by all manner of drama and heartbreak for her. Sprina is the show's hottest couple and those kids are great together, but they need conflict to further raise the stakes, and this could work perfectly.
Just as importantly, both of these recent developments add some nice shading to a couple of characters who've often been written as boringly virtuous, at least of late. Jordan has every right to sink her fingernails into Zeke's back while his neighbors at the Metro Court call security, but Portia's gonna hate it; similarly, Portia has every right to want Spencer out of Trina's life, but we all know her plans will blow up in her face. This could be good!
The Quartermaine Event
Once again, you guys, seriously, I hate this SEC storyline — partly because it often feels like a freezer-burned spumoni of random plot points mashed together, seemingly on a whim. What was once a rather silly way of hitting the reset button on whatever passes for Carly's professional life has morphed and morphed again, until what we're left with is two extremely guilty and extremely stupid white-collar criminals plotting to blackmail one of Port Charles' most legendary schemers for no sensible reason, PLUS Sonny assuming that the whole thing is really about the Department of Justice going after him because of course he would.
Nina, meanwhile, has been fretting over Sonny finding out that she's the one who offered the anonymous tip that started the investigation — and while I think Cynthia Watros is a tremendous actor who can convey flinty determination just as effectively as heartbreak, I didn't need one week of Nina wringing her hands and feeling guilty for reporting an actual crime, let alone several. All of which is to say that I was very happy to see Ned figuring out Nina's involvement, hurrying off to tattle on her to Drew, and promptly tripping over a towel, falling into the Metro Court pool, and going into cardiac arrest.
Like I said: Random plot points, seemingly smashed together on a whim!
All of this remains so very dumb. And yet now at least we're being treated to the spectacle of Tracy — who was chuckling her way through Drew's incompetent blackmail attempt moments before Ned plopped into the pool — seizing on the opportunity to thank Drew for rescuing Ned by accusing him of assaulting Ned. While it's true that security cameras seem to break every minute in Port Charles, I don't see this going anywhere, just as I cannot fathom why Tracy is so desperately interested in Deception that she'd pressure Brook Lynn into going back to work there. But if Jane Elliott's doing it, I want to watch it; she's the dash of spice that this big dumb storyline desperately needs.
(Drew, meanwhile, can't seem to decide whether he wants to try and blackmail Tracy into getting the SEC charges dropped — which, again, makes no sense — or turn himself in. I want a comet to strike him.)
Generalissimo Victor Cassadine Is Still Dead
The repercussions of Victor's demise led to a series of quick plot bursts across the canvas last week, starting with Spencer and Trina opening the safe deposit box and discovering that Victor left him (very likely doctored) evidence that Esme drugged Trina and recorded Cameron and Joss having sex. Trina, understandably, was quite eager to take it to the cops — until Spencer confessed that he'd asked Victor to get him evidence of Esme's guilt, and the risk of it being faked was high. They agreed to get rid of the box's contents…but after Trina left the room, Spencer decided to keep it, "just in case."
Laura, meanwhile, set about planning her emergency trip to Chechnya to try and rescue Nikolas, with Kevin along for the ride and Yuri(!) offering to join them as a translator. (I'm assuming this will lead nowhere but a summer vacation for Genie Francis, at least in the short term.) Across the hospital, we saw Ava and Austin fretting about Laura's determination to find Nikolas — understandable, given that they think he's dead — after which Mason showed up to blackmail Ava into digging up dirt on Sonny's deal with Pikeman, and pressuring Austin into keeping her "on task."
Finally, there's the series of scenes that pissed me off the most this week: Sonny showing up at Anna's house to pledge his friendship and support in the wake of her WSB file going public. From a dialogue and acting standpoint, these were superb — Finola Hughes can do no wrong, she's a solid scene partner for Maurice Benard, and there's a lot to be said for scenes depicting characters reckoning with their past choices.
On the other hand, these scenes are also highly illustrative of the moral rot that's been eating at the stakes supporting this show for decades now. Anna Devane is a secret agent who's spent most of her life upholding the law while tormenting herself for briefly being lured into acts of treason more than 40 years ago. Sonny Corinthos is an unrepentant gangster whose fondness for power and money have consistently outweighed his responsibilities to his friends, family, and loved ones. There's no good reason to make these characters friendly, nor is there any good reason to pretend that Sonny is any kind of shoulder to cry on for Anna. Yes, he knows what it feels like to see the details of your life become news — but the difference is that Anna has been beating herself up for her DVX days for as long as she's been a character on the show, while Sonny has steadfastly refused to grow or change.
A solid soap needs villains as much as it needs morally dubious protagonists. General Hospital's problem is that it doesn't have the spine to treat Sonny as a villain, but it insists on making him a mobster, leaving viewers with a nonsensical world in which he's a dangerous criminal who's evaded justice for 30 years AND just a really great guy who lives by a code of honor and donates to worthy causes and is just the best dad and oh god I want to put my head in the oven just talking about this.
Everything about Sonny's shtick is tired on a good day. When the writers use other characters as a prop to loudly remind us that he's effectively the hero of the show, it's offensive. Whatever Anna does next now that she's a retired WSB agent, I hope it takes her far, far away from his orbit.
A Little of This, a Little of That
Between all the major plot points, we saw a light sprinkling of characters doing stuff that may or may not end up mattering much in the long run. Lucy and Maxie hung out at the Deception office, celebrating the company's success before acknowledging the hilariously long-ignored fact that Maxie's apartment is way too small to make sense as a living space for her and her two kids; Lucy, no longer a Realtor but still enjoying access to "the real estate website," promptly found her a new place to live.
We were also treated to a Liz and Terry sighting, as Liz was given the happy news that the hospital board has accepted Epiphany's recommendation that Liz be made head nurse. Given that "head nurse" has translated to "rarely seen" for at least the last 20 years or so, I'm not sure I want to celebrate this turn of events, but it at least gave us a handful of sweet scenes that included Liz talking to the Steve Hardy photo on the wall and telling her grandfather she hopes he's proud of her.
Corinthos Corner
Goddammit with these people. They're all awful all the time, but Michael and Joss had the gall to be so shitty last week that they actually made Carly seem reasonable, which is a neat trick but also infuriating.
With an "encrypted" thumb drive containing Dex's recording of Sonny accepting the Pikeman shipment in hand, Michael and Joss both angrily insisted that Carly take it to the feds in order to preemptively save herself from going to prison for insider trading (which, again, she is totally guilty of). Appalled, Carly rightly pointed out that Sonny going to prison would create a power vacuum that would leave all of them fatally vulnerable, and then stomped on the drive, shattering it.
Out of context, this is all decent drama. As an end point to a story that started with Michael petulantly hiring Dex to worm his way into Sonny's organization and bring him down, it's comically lame. What in the world was the point of any of this? The audience knew from the moment it started that Michael would eventually back down, but the way it's been handled is so incredibly tiresome. On paper, I guess I can see why the writers might think that each of this story's beats might make for good drama, but too little about the way it's been executed makes any sense.
The writers had a strike against them from the beginning, given the sloppy way they had Joss fall into bed with Dex at Cam's expense. They were able to wring a few bits of tension from the idea that Joss and Dex had to hide their relationship from Sonny because they were afraid of what he'd do to Dex, but that all went away when they had Sonny say he'd known from the start and didn't care. When Michael chickened out, Dex was ostensibly trapped working as an undercover mobster — but that tension lasted for all of 15 minutes before Dex revealed he wants to stay in Sonny's organization.
The fumbling of that last bit is arguably the most annoying, because it actually brushes up against something real. Dex is a military vet with a high school diploma and very little in the way of useful work experience, and he's dating a college sophomore who was up to her impeccable cheekbones in trust funds even before she was born. It stands to reason that he'd be self-conscious about the money he's bringing in, and that the idea of working for Sonny would have a strong appeal for him on that level. He's one of maybe two characters on this show who seem to even have to think about money, so it would have been at least interesting to see an element of class consciousness injected into the mix. But they've only paid lip service to it.
As of the end of last week, here's where we are with this: Carly, determined to "fix everything," is pressuring Michael into [deep breath] continuing to keep Dex on his payroll, but instead of working undercover to bring Sonny down, now he'd be funneling Michael information so Michael can secretly advise Dex about how to keep Sonny out of trouble. This is a plot development that only deserves to be greeted with sputtering. Even if we're prepared to take his stints as Boss Baby of ELQ and CEO of Aurora Media at face value, there's no reason to believe his long proximity to Sonny's organization makes him in any way qualified to shape Dex into a — goddammit, ugh — "new Jason."
Soap stories can often take the shape of a spiral, echoing and paralleling what's come before; when it's done right, it can be a really entertaining and even powerful example of what's special about long-term serialized drama. But that isn't the same thing as regurgitating old crap in the name of leveraging history. At best, that's just dull; at worst, it's insulting. If the real world keeps preempting General Hospital, it may never be necessary to film any scripts written by fi-core writers during the strike — but if it does come to that, this storyline would be a prime candidate for having new talent come in, rip up the status quo, and start over.
Finally, Willow is still in her hospital bed and still hates Nina, although she was given food for thought by a rando nurse who came in and was like "OH YEAH WELL WHAT IF SHE DIES IN A CAR ACCIDENT HOW WILL YOU FEEL THEN HUH." I hope Liz gives her an amazing performance review.
Once again, that's the week that was on General Hospital. As always, if there's anything you think I got particularly wrong or right, or just want to add your two cents, let me know in the comments!
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