Howdy, fellow GH watchers! Apologies for missing my last column — I was out of the country all week, and pesky international rights issues prevented me from streaming the show while I was away. I'm all caught up now and glad to be back, so let's dive in and see what happened on the show last week.
Orange Is the Drew Black
After making the rounds and saying bye-for-now to his friends and loved ones, Drew Cain is back behind bars, locked up at Pentonville for an ostensible three-year sentence in order to pay his debt to society for his role in the asinine ELQ/Aurora insider trading scandal. I'm not going to get back into all the reasons that none of this makes any sense — I'm just glad we've at least earned a mild temporary reprieve with a couple of decent distractions.
But before we get into Drew's new accommodations, let's talk a little about Carly, who has been slapped with a $5 million fine by the SEC. As she explained during an interminably long conversation with Sam, her initial plan for paying it off involves selling Greystone Manor and then using whatever's left of the proceeds to purchase a condo — which would make a fair amount of sense if she didn't also own another very large house, which is presumably only being used by Bobbie and should have plenty of room for Carly and Donna.
Well, never mind all that for now. Both Sam and Diane have urged Carly to reconsider selling Greystone, with Sam pointing out that it's more than a house, it's a home, and Diane offering some sort of alternate solution that was largely delivered offscreen and hasn't been explained yet. I have no idea where all of this is heading, but at this point, I think it's probably safe to assume that it will lead to zero lasting change for Carly — she's gotten divorced and been forced to sell her half of the Metro Court over the past couple of years, but she's still essentially the same character, doing more or less the same stuff with the same people.
Much as I loathe the wildly imbalanced amount of screentime gobbled up by the various versions of this character over the years, there's no denying that a properly written Carly is one of the most dynamic presences on the show. Kassie DePaiva once described her Blair Cramer to me as "the spoon that stirs the cereal bowl," and I think that's Carly in her finest moments — she has tons of history with all kinds of people on the canvas, she's brash and impulsive, and she certainly isn't above scheming to get her way. She's just the type of character, in other words, who's more than strong enough to handle a good old-fashioned reset, whether it's through a reversal of fortune or simply a change of setting. In fact, one would think that's exactly why a writing team would put a character through everything Carly's experienced since Sonny fell off that bridge and floated off to Nixon Falls — but so far, the current regime seems bound and determined to keep Carly exactly as she is.
Drew, meanwhile, might be an unsalvageable character at this point, but at least the beginning of his Pentonville sentence brought the return of Cyrus Renault, who waited all of 20 seconds before sauntering up to Drew's cell and handing him a hollowed-out Bible with a shiv in it. Given that half the canvas never shuts up about how Drew was a Navy SEAL and that Sonny is "looking out" for him in prison, it seems weird to say the least that the show wants us to believe Drew would need a weapon that badly, but whatever — I like Jeff Kober and I'm glad Cyrus is back for now, so I'm at least mildly curious to see where all this leads.
Scorpio Season
Time has taught me to take nothing for granted where this show's long-term commitment to consistent screentime for Mac and Felicia is concerned, but they've had a fairly good year so far, and both of them were pretty busy last week. If the show could just get Robert out of his deadly dull pairing with Diane and find something exciting for him to do, we'd be approaching a new golden era for the Scorpios.
In the meantime, we have Mac pulling double duty as chief of detectives and interim commissioner at the PCPD — duties which still apparently leave him with enough free time to drop everything and babysit James on a moment's notice, or pop by the Metro Court pool to offer Cody some unsolicited advice.
Cody, of course, has retained Scott to help him sue the WSB for the loss of the Ice Princess necklace, which was allegedly part of his inheritance from Leopold Taub's estate — a lawsuit which only stands to see Cody strung up for fraud, since he's secretly Mac's son and not Leopold's. As Scott helpfully pointed out to Cody, the "S" in WSB stands for Security, and if there are any skeletons in his closet, they're bound to be shaken loose by the Bureau once that lawsuit is filed. So what's Cody's endgame here? Are we supposed to believe that a petty grifter/stablehand has it in him to pull one over on an entire intelligence agency?
In general, I'm all for any story that gives Kin Shriner something to do, and if I have to choose between a storyline centering on the WSB or Sonny's mob, I'll pick the WSB every time. It would be nice, though, if it were possible to discern the slightest glimmer of clear intent where all this is concerned. It would be the height of unintentional hilarity if Cody somehow managed to win this civil suit against the Bureau; instead, it seems far more likely that he'll be exposed as Mac's son, and Mac will discover that the son he never knew he had (but would have been very happy to have) was willing to pass up a father-son connection in exchange for a shot at millions in ill-gotten loot.
Much as I love to see John J. York getting screentime, this all strikes me as more than a little gross. As longtime viewers are aware, Mac gladly acted as a surrogate father for Robin, Maxie, and Georgie; as far as I'm concerned, the only reason to give him an insta-child is to rectify a decades-old oversight and expand the Scorpio family. To do it by breaking Mac's heart all over again just feels mean, cheap, and unnecessary. I'm not saying this story should be without drama, of course, but Cody's motivations here are cloudy at best and his actions are consistently stupid — it's hard to imagine a satisfying conclusion to any of this.
Felicia, meanwhile, is back in action as a private investigator (hooray!), working for Lucy (double hooray!) in an attempt to figure out what Martin is up to, starting by disguising herself as a Metro Court maid, breaking into his room, stealing his trash, and sorting through it with Mac and James' assistance. I'd be down for all of this even if the story didn't involve Pine Valley and the imminent arrival of Walt Willey as his All My Children character, attorney Jackson Montgomery; the fact that those delicious Bac-O-Bits have also been tossed into the salad makes this a perfectly soapy summertime treat.
Here's what we know so far: Martin, who's been credited by Lucy as being the source of her inspiration for the Deceptor, is up to some shadowy shenanigans involving monthly payments of $50,000 from an unknown person who's banking in Pine Valley, and he's also hiding from his third ex-wife. Tracy, who has retained Diane, is evidently in cahoots with whoever really invented the Deceptor — this is why she blackmailed Brook Lynn into going back to work at Deception, pressuring her granddaughter into stealing confidential files outlining the product's development. Not content to expose Martin as a fraud, Tracy has also convinced him to serve as temporary CEO of ELQ while Valentin is off in Chechnya with Laura and Kevin.
As is often the case with GH these days, it's difficult to outline all this without sounding like a kindergartner drunk on Capri Sun who's making up the world's most convoluted story one idea at a time. While I like the idea of Martin giving Lucy the idea for the Deceptor under false pretenses, Tracy's pretext for blackmailing Brook Lynn is flimsy as hell, and her motivation for luring Martin into the ELQ fold is very difficult to understand. Also hard to understand: the point of having Brook Lynn steal those files and give them to Tracy, only to make herself Suspect No. 1 by quickly telling Lucy and Maxie she took them in order to "build a social media campaign." I'm sure plenty of classic soap storylines have been cobbled together on the fly, but there's a whole lot of "...and then this happened!" energy around this show right now, and this storyline has pllllllenty of room to go wobbling off the rails at any given moment.
On the other hand, we still have Felicia and Lucy conspiring, we have some sort of AMC crossover on the horizon, and Tracy's right in the middle of everything. Maybe it'll all work out.
Gladys Digs Deeper
Speaking of mean, cheap, and unnecessary…ladies and gentlemen, Gladys Corbin!
I kid, I kid. As I've said before, I don't mind Gladys' spot on the canvas — what I do object to, specifically as it pertains to her current storyline, is the writers' apparent unwillingness to let her lean into her dirty deeds. As it currently stands, Gladys is willfully and intentionally stealing from her dead son's wife and colluding with said daughter-in-law's court-appointed therapist, all in the name of secretly paying off a mountain of gambling debts incurred at Selina Wu's secret card table.
These are bad things! Especially in light of all the horrible things that led to Sasha's breakdown and Gladys ultimately becoming her conservator — including the death of Gladys' grandchild and the horrible murder of her son. But instead of treating her like a villain, the writers keep showing us how terribly conflicted she is, which strikes me as a fundamental mistake. The show has already firmly established Gladys as someone who's willing to lie, cheat, and steal in order to gain material wealth; it would have been very easy, and far more sensible, to show her slowly being curdled by jealousy of Sasha's sudden Deception-driven wealth, and rationalizing her deceit by convincing herself she's entitled to a bigger cut anyway. Instead, we get scene after scene of Gladys deliberately hurting Sasha and then biting her lip and wringing her hands over it. She's never been depicted as particularly sharp, but if the writers really wanted Gladys to ruin Sasha's life all over again, they would have been a lot better off not choosing "blind panic over getting caught" as her sole motivation.
Coffee Talk
When I interviewed Jerry verDorn for the One Life to Live oral history, he talked about the senseless carnage of modern soap sweeps, and how the network would frequently mandate that something needed to explode or a character had to die. His contention — which I absolutely agree with — is that while location shoots and the like might be fine for short-term excitement, the true heart of a lasting daytime drama will always be conversations. As he put it, you could just sit a couple of characters at a coffee table in front of a black curtain and still come up with solid soap.
I thought about that a lot while watching GH last week, because even if I thought the conversations themselves were often unnecessary and annoying, the show did a decent job of dropping a lot of old-fashioned talking in the middle of the action. We saw Sam and Carly gabbing at Carly's kitchen counter (hello, Moss); we saw Jordan and Anna catching up by the Metro Court pool; we saw the Davis women chatting at the nail salon; we saw Curtis, Marshall, and TJ talking about Molly's fertility issues at the Savoy.
Oh, and a whole lot of Liz and Finn talking to and about each other.
This is, of course, a pairing that a lot of viewers have deep-seated issues with, and one that I myself have always found frightfully dull. But the writers seem to view it as a love story for the ages, which is why they dreamed up a week's worth of episodes in which Violet steals her dad's phone to pretend she's him and text Liz a dinner invitation, followed by multiple lengthy conversations about whether these two will, won't, should, or shouldn't rekindle their romance.
Rebecca Herbst could sell water to a goldfish, and Michael Easton does a thing that a lot of viewers seem to really enjoy. By themselves, these are actors who are more than capable of delivering compelling work. Together, though? Try as they might, I just don't see it. This relationship isn't a slow burn as much as it's a long, drawn-out attempt to start a fire where there simply isn't any heat — and just as importantly, it's weird to watch Portia and Terry get so invested in the love lives of their middle-aged colleagues, even if they are Liz's best friends.
All that being said, there's something soothingly familiar about watching this type of conversation click into place. Do I care about what happens with Liz and Finn? Not in the slightest. Do we need another silly spat between Kristina and Molly in order to understand that Kristina is definitely going to end up being Molly and TJ's surrogate? Absolutely not. Is it way past time for the show to figure out what it wants to do with Portia and Curtis? You bet. But if the show has to spin its wheels, there are worse ways to do it.
Corinthos Corner
What were we saying about stuff blowing up during sweeps? Friday's show concluded with all sorts of characters in or around the Metro Court, which made it the perfect place for gunfire to suddenly erupt during the episode's closing moments. Given that Anna and Sonny had just been talking about the Pikeman deal — she passed along a message from Valentin, warning Sonny not to deal with any new contacts in Pikeman's crew — it seems fairly likely that whoever's shooting has Sonny in their sights. (It could also be Anna, but I don't believe the writers love us that much.)
Will he be killed or even injured? Absolutely not. Will someone else get shot, and later absolve Sonny of all responsibility even though it's all his fault for being a criminal dirtbag and making a greedy deal with even worse people? Odds are high, my friends. Odds are high.
Aside from being the likely focal point of last week's cliffhanger, Sonny didn't have a lot going on during this most recent batch of episodes; aside from housing Eddie Maine in an appalling retread of the Jason Morgan storyline, his biggest bit of action was asking Dante to serve as best man at his wedding to Nina. In fact, it was a pretty light week for the Corinthos clan in general — we just got a few minutes of TJ telling Willow she's in remission, and Willow telling Nina she'd like her to be part of her post-op recovery bubble…if Nina can let go of her feud with Carly.
That's the week that was on General Hospital! As always, please let me know if there's anything you thought I got particularly wrong or right, and I'll see you back here next week.
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