Howdy, fellow General Hospital viewers! Apologies for getting this one to you late — I'm traveling at the moment, and time zones have wreaked havoc on my ability to stay awake late enough to get the column finished. Before I nod off again, let's take a look at what went down on the show last week…
Curtis Has Become Uncomfortably Numb
As we all suspected the moment Finn mumbled "it's in his back," Curtis woke up from surgery to discover that he has no feeling in his legs. On the positive side, this storyline development has given Donnell Turner the opportunity to play something other than self-righteously angry; on the negative side, he's now mostly just withdrawn and mad at the world instead. This is an arc we've seen play out countless times on GH, most recently when Sonny was shot by Paul Hornsby in 2015 — we all know more or less how it's going to go. This can easily lead to a lot of viewer frustration when the writers don't give us anything new, and unfortunately, I think the odds of getting any real surprises or genuine creativity out of this storyline are probably pretty low. It's also happening at an inopportune time, both on and offscreen.
Consider, just for starters, what the show appears to be doing to Trina with all this — not only is the father she just found out about confined to a hospital bed, the dad who raised her has apparently become an insta-alcoholic due to the results of their paternity test. Meanwhile, she's dealing with her boyfriend's weird cohabitation with his psychotic amnesiac ex, and although she doesn't know it yet, her own mother is actively trying to break them up. Any single one of these stories could be legitimately compelling if handled properly in their own right, but taken together, they're just a maelstrom of misery that'll be hard to enjoy. Do any of us want to watch Trina struggling with guilt over standing by Curtis' bedside while Taggert drowns his sorrows? Or Curtis shutting everyone out while Portia and TJ have a sad? I can only speak for myself, but for me, the answer is a resigned no.
It's decisions like this that lead to widespread criticism regarding GH's overall handling of its couples. Yes, it's the stereotypical truth that domestic bliss is difficult to write for, and love stories often aren't worth telling unless there are obstacles to overcome. But Curtis and Portia have been through a lot already, and so have Trina and Spencer; there comes a point when you either need to let two characters be happy for a spell or split them up.
There's also the unplanned feeling of it all. In the second season of The Bear, the restaurant spends a lot of time developing a "chaos menu," which might be the most charitable way of interpreting GH's narrative aims of late — only in this case, it's far from appetizing. Over and over again, the show will toss out a development, only to forget it, undercut it, or walk it back. Over the last couple of months, Curtis has explored a reconciliation with Jordan, immediately changed his mind and decided to go back to Portia, considered a job offer from the WSB, discovered Trina's his daughter, been shot, and lost the use of his legs — and pretty much all of it has felt like the work of writers who have no clear long-term focus. The emphasis seems to be on coming up with enough storyline beats to fill a week's worth of episodes rather than building stories that are true to established characters and will leave a lasting impact on the canvas.
Oh, and there's also the writers' strike, which is set to begin impacting our screens this week. From what I recall, a number of stories turned on a dime on Frank Valentini's One Life to Live during the last strike, so I won't be surprised if we start to see some abrupt changes taking place in the weeks to come.
Sasha Gets Stabby (And I Know How She Feels)
Speaking of maelstroms of misery, Sasha's latest torment shifted into high gear last week. Hopped up on Dr. Montague's alleged sedatives, she hallucinated an altercation between Cyrus and Gladys, grabbed a knife from the Metro Court bar, and stabbed him — only to discover that Cyrus was still safely locked behind bars in Pentonville and she'd actually assaulted Cody instead.
Cody will be fine! Sasha, unfortunately, is being carted off to Ferncliff, where shady Montague will no doubt keep pumping her full of drugs so he and Gladys can help themselves to her money. This is an extremely clumsy and insensitive storyline — more than a few viewers noticed how Maxie tried to "help" Sasha by pointing out that she's on antidepressants "and you know the effect they can have on people" — but when you slather it on top of everything else Sasha's been through over the last couple of years, it's downright comical in its awfulness. Consider that the show killed off her infant son in December of 2021, then murdered her husband less than a year later — and now she's being locked up after being repeatedly gaslighted by her rotten former mother-in-law, drugged without her consent, and stolen from. And this isn't even taking into account the drug problem that almost killed her, or the paparazzi stalking that ultimately led to her arrest.
Soap characters lead colorful lives. Viewers know this. But Sasha has been put through a ridiculous series of ordeals in a very short period of time, and it's beyond the point of bad parody. Yes, Sofia Mattsson has to be written off temporarily in order to accommodate her maternity leave, but there are many ways to take a character off the canvas for a bit — and anyway, even when she's on full-time, it seems like the writers only know how to knock Sasha down and keep kicking her while she's horizontal. On a show that's recently made an unfortunate habit of screwing up storylines that mirror real-life afflictions, Sasha's treatment really stands out in an awfully negative way.
Pine Valley, We Hardly Knew Ye
On a much lighter note, Lucy and Felicia's visit to Pine Valley ended as quickly as it began, with Jackson revealing he knew Lucy's true identity and catching Felicia in the act of snooping through his files. They didn't go to jail, though — instead, we were treated to a fairly fun series of scenes that saw Felicia and Lucy being scolded over the phone by Mac while Jackson reconnected with Anna, who told him she'd be forever in his debt if he'd be willing to let them go. In the aftermath, Lucy and Felicia compared notes, and Felicia said she discovered that the $50,000 payments to Martin were coming from a shell company.
As with pretty much everything else happening on the show these days, it's difficult for me to discern what the point of any of this might be, but I don't really care where this interlude is concerned because I'm happy to see the various characters in action. Given how sporadically we see Lucy and Martin, I'm sure the rest of this will play out in fits and starts, but it's already given us a few nods to ABC Daytime's glorious past (including mentions of Erica Kane and Lucy's Aunt Charlene), so I'm not complaining — yet. That being said, sooner or later the writers (whoever they happen to be at the time) will have to stop horsing around and tell us who's paying Martin, who Tracy's in cahoots with, and what the hell any of this has to do with Maquillage. While I'm less than optimistic for a wholly satisfying payoff, the journey so far has been a highlight of recent episodes.
Eddie, Eddie, Scruffy and Sweaty
Tracy didn't have much time for Deception/Maquillage shenanigans last week — she was too busy popping up at a deserted Rice Plaza to stop her addled son from getting into a song-off with an enraged street musician to determine who'd have the privilege of busking for Gregory and Harrison Chase.
The entire Eddie Maine storyline is depressingly dumb, so praise the soap gods that we at least have Tracy to serve as the loud voice of reason, repeatedly pointing out that Eddie isn't a real person and never was. At the plaza, she leavened her criticisms with some genuine warmth, telling her son she loves him and urging him to at least pretend he cares about his actual family until he recovers his memory. It's advice he seemed to be willing to at least temporarily heed — he showed up at the Quartermaine mansion with Chase not long after, sticking around long enough to engage in some awkward bonding with Leo, who is going to need so much therapy to process what's happening with his adopted dad.
Eddie didn't stay long, but we got a little hint regarding whatever the hell is supposed to happen next thanks to Cody, who volunteered to give up his apartment over the stables so Eddie could be close by without actually living in the mansion. Eddie declined the offer, but with Cody on the mend following his stabbing, I suspect he'll need to bunk elsewhere for a bit once he's released from the hospital, thereby making it possible for Eddie to sing for Comet all day long.
I sincerely hate this storyline. Every character and actor involved deserves so much better.
Austin Gets Grilled
Speaking of people who deserve better, good lord are Roger Howarth and Maura West being hung out to dry right now. GH did a very dumb thing when they killed off Franco and brought Howarth back as the incredibly poorly defined Austin: He's been a deeply frustrating character at nearly every turn, from his barely leveraged family ties with Jimmy Lee Holt and Charity Gatlin to his dud of a romance with Maxie and his excruciatingly drawn-out backstory with Mason and whatever shadowy organization they're involved with. I refuse to believe that any of this was so much as a glimmer in anyone's mind when Howarth was handed this character — Austin's entire time on the show has reeked of half-hearted fumbling.
So Austin and Ava are a couple now, sort of, because they suddenly fell into bed months after he helped her cover up the accidental murder of her husband (who, duh, isn't actually dead). Except she acts like she can't stand him, and he's barely a character, so there's no evident spark between them despite the fact that these are two actors who've shown they're capable of striking a spark with almost any scene partner on the planet. Meanwhile, they're being blackmailed by Mason into digging up dirt on Sonny's dealings with the Pikeman organization, which they intend to do by…getting Avery's nanny fired? So they can hire someone who'll spy on Sonny for them?
As Austin (or maybe it was really just Roger) said on Tuesday, "If we just go along with it, maybe it'll be over soon."
Even though it feels like this story has been dragging on for ten years, it's still relatively early going, and if all this hemming and hawing eventually leads someplace fun, I'll be able to find forgiveness in my heart. Despite the fact that the writers have shown zero interest in leveraging Austin's connection to the GH of the past, they keep saying there's a family connection with whoever's forcing him to commit various vaguely defined criminal acts, so there's still a chance that the payoff here could involve the show's history. Maybe after the big bad tries and inevitably fails to kill Sonny, we'll get a story about the Gatlin-Holt gang and…oh, I don't know. I'm so tired. I just want this to be better and fun. Can't it be better and fun?
Well, in the meantime, we have Sonny in the mix, and of course he's very suspicious of Austin, especially after interrupting an altercation involving Austin and Gordon, a disgruntled former operative of Mason's in the alley behind the Port Charles Grill. Sonny broke up the fight, but as we later learned, he also overheard Gordon saying Austin's "in on it" with Mason — so naturally, he quickly ordered Dex to surveil Austin, and Dex almost immediately overheard Austin tell Ava that Sonny's "on to us."
The Pentonville Players
We got a new set last week, and something tells me it'll be getting a lot of use in the weeks to come — with Drew locked up in Pentonville alongside Heather and Cyrus, the prison's visiting room should be the social spot of the season in late summer 2023. It certainly was last week, starting with Carly stopping by to let Drew know she's determined to sell Greystone in order to pay her SEC fine and oh by the way, Curtis was shot. After Carly left, Drew strode menacingly toward Cyrus, who'd recently ambushed Esme while she was waiting to see Heather.
Like a number of you, I have fairly little use for Esme as a character, at least in her current state; she's never been terribly likable, but she was at least wildly dynamic when she was running around town making life willfully miserable for people. These days, all she does is mewl about how much she loves her baby and how much she hates being judged for all the horrible things she did before she conveniently lost her memory. It might have been a decent change of pace for the first couple of weeks, but it's really gotten stale.
Maybe the end is in sight, however. After rebuffing Cyrus, who informed her that he's related to baby Ace through the kid's paternal grandmother, Esme had a lengthy heart-to-heart with Heather, demanding to know why she was given up for adoption. Alley Mills, wonderful as always, really put her back into these scenes — where Robin Mattson's definitive version of the character was always delightfully duplicitous, Mills puts more of an emphasis on Heather's deluded yet damaged heart, continually insisting (wholly believably) that she's merely misunderstood. While futilely trying to assure Esme that she gave her up for adoption because it was her only way of assuring her daughter a decent life, she also let slip something interesting — that Esme, or perhaps even Heather, may have been responsible for the deaths of her adoptive parents.
I have no idea where any of this is leading, but if it breaks up the monotony of Esme and Spencer squabble-bonding over Ace, I couldn't be more for it, especially if Heather and Cyrus are involved. Drew, of course, should serve his whole sentence, with extra time tacked on for that prison knife he's hiding in his cell.
The Rest of It
Anna agreed to let Dante help her flush out the Metro Court shooter. I like these two together and it's been far too long since they shared scenes on a regular basis, so please bring it on.
Molly and Kristina argued for two days over whether or not Kristina is an asshole for wanting to offer her womb to Molly and TJ. As many, many people have noted, the new (and apparently not temporary) Molly is an…oddly seasoned choice for a character who's supposed to be in her mid-20s, although I think most of us will be able to get past it over time.
Joss received a strange phone call while lounging by the Metro Court pool and reading Port Charles' favorite book, Pierce Rupp's Budapest Crossing. With our luck, it'll be from Dex's abusive older brother Tex.
Gregory called Tracy a harpy and dropped his car keys. No one will miss him if he is never seen again.
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