Welcome to another edition of Critical Diagnosis, fellow General Hospital viewers! After treading water for a spell, the show went into action mode last week, shifting several storylines into a higher gear before concluding with a couple of honest-to-goodness cliffhangers. Let's dive in, break it down, and take a look back at the week that was!
Generally Offensive
I usually lead off with the major storyline I liked the most last week, but this time, I'm going to get started with a few storylines that are giving me the icks for similar reasons — specifically Gregory's ALS diagnosis, Curtis' paralysis, and Cody's harebrained plan to rescue Sasha from Ferncliff. None of them are directly related to one another, but they're all cut from the same raggedy-ass cloth, and they deserve nothing more than to be lumped together and scolded before we get to talking about the good stuff.
I will acknowledge up front that this show is called General Hospital for a reason, and I'm definitely part of the older audience segment that complains when the show devotes too much focus to what Queen Wubs calls mobular stuff. I grew up with a version of the show that found ways of weaving its action/adventure stories into the hospital, which always remained unquestionably the center of the canvas. When GH revolves around GH, it tends to be its best self.
But! But. There are good medical stories and there are not-so-good medical stories, and the latter end of the spectrum includes stories that indulge in disease-of-the-week drama as well as those that touch the third rail of real-life conditions that are often incurable — or at least require much more time, patience, and sensitivity than daytime has to offer. The three storylines I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago are all failing badly in ways that would probably enrage me if I had personal emotional stakes in the conditions they're using to generate drama, and what makes it worse is that they all give off glimmers of genuine potential. There's sometimes nothing worse than something that could be great and settles for merely adequate, especially when that thing has an elevated responsibility to the audience.
As I've said before, Gregory's ALS storyline is offensive because the character doesn't matter. I wasn't a huge fan of Mike's Alzheimer's story, but at least it involved a character who'd been off and on the show for a really long time, and it took years to develop. Gregory was only introduced to fill out Finn's backstory, and he's stuck around for reasons that, as far as I can tell, have escaped much of the audience more or less completely. This whole thing reeks of a story that was dreamed up simply to give a character and actor stuff to do. If the writers really wanted to address the brutality of this disease, they should have waited until an actor with a lot of tenure decided to opt out. This story will have little to no long-term impact, and given the subject matter, that's a narrative crime.
And again, what's doubly frustrating is that — like pretty much everyone in the GH cast — Gregory Harrison is a talented actor, and he's playing this material with subtlety and grace. There have been moments of genuine power in the scenes depicting him telling Finn about his diagnosis, struggling with the thought of telling Chase, and unburdening himself to Alexis. The dialogue has been emotionally affecting overall, with the exception of the super gross scenes in which Gregory took brutal advantage of his illness to ask Elizabeth to be there for his son and granddaughter after he's gone. But to what end? For people who actually have ALS, or those who've watched loved ones face the disease, the inevitably glib treatment this storyline will receive is just another indignity — while they remain haunted by a cruel sickness, this will be nothing more than a brief interlude for the show, one that'll wring a few cheap tears out of a situation that deserves to be handled with far greater care.
I feel similarly regarding Curtis' situation. We all know there's no way in hell the show will keep this character in that wheelchair for very long, and good lord, anyone who's been a daytime viewer for any significant length of time has already seen more "miracle paralysis cure" storylines than they ever asked for. Why the writers decided to go there with Curtis, a character who was a terminal self-pitying bore for months even before he ended up with a bullet near his spine, is a mystery to me.
As with Gregory's storyline, I'm compelled to add that part of what pisses me off about all this is the fact that the writers are dealing with it in generally intelligent fashion. We've seen Curtis react to his diagnosis by lashing out at his loved ones and walling himself off from them; we've seen him ignore the advice of his doctors and therapists; we've seen him eventually come to terms with his feelings and start reaching out to his family again. The problem is that Curtis was shot less than two months ago; even for daytime's habitually herky-jerky approach to timing, this is ridiculous.
But again, there's also sensitivity at play. Curtis went on one hell of an emotional journey last week — on Monday, he was visited at the rehab facility by Stella, who gave him permission to feel sorry for himself and reinforced the hard truth that he'll need to readjust mentally before he can confront the next chapter of his life; the following day, he came home and confronted Portia with the new physical reality of their relationship. This is all good stuff, and if I had any faith whatsoever in the show's willingness to explore the reality of paralysis through Curtis' experience for any significant length of time, I'd feel differently about it. As it is, I feel the same way I do when I'm watching Gregory talk about ALS — like I'm watching a particularly obvious Afterschool Special. I'm sure these scenes will end up on Emmy reels; I just wish they existed for a more compelling reason.
This brings us to Cody, who went through with his idiotic plan to have himself committed to Ferncliff last week. After giving power of attorney to Sam, he sat in a doctor's office and pretended he'd been having "suicidal impulses" — which, again, is a real issue that impacts actual human beings, many of whom I imagine would likely be more than a little angered by the idea of this affliction being used as low-calorie grist for a deeply stupid story.
Prior to last week, I'd held out futile hope that Cody busting into Ferncliff would be the prelude to a mercifully quick end for this godawful arc, but it doesn't seem like the writers are headed in that direction. While Cody's been working his way in, a growing number of other people have started to notice Sasha's inexplicably awful condition — including Nurse Janice, who went to gross Doctor Montague on Tuesday and said she was starting to think they weren't the best facility for this particular patient. Understanding that his time is growing short, Montague then called Gladys to demand $50,000 in exchange for Sasha's freedom, and told her she had 48 hours to deliver it.
Of course, because of the lawsuit against Deception — more on that in a bit — Gladys' access to Sasha's assets has been largely diminished, so in desperation, she went to Nina and hit her up for a loan. Nina, suddenly the smartest goddamn person in Port Charles, took all of two seconds to smell a rat; before you knew it, she had Gladys coming clean and admitting that she'd racked up hefty gambling debts and was being blackmailed by Sasha's doctor. This was all deeply satisfying! Unfortunately, it was just a prelude to Nina giving in and agreeing to give Gladys the money instead of going to Sonny because he's "dealing with so much right now" or whatever. While all this was going on, Sasha begged Janice to keep Montague away from her and said he'd been drugging her against her will, which Janice stupidly then told Montague — who said it's now time for "drastic measures."
In a perfect world, Cody would get himself out of his room with a lock pick he'd hidden under his tongue or something, hustle over to Sasha's room, give Montague a solid kick in the nuts, and carry her out of the building like that one scene in An Officer and a Gentleman. Unfortunately, what with all of Sam's foreshadowing about it being difficult to get yourself uncommitted from an institution and Montague's "drastic measures," I suspect we're going to be stuck with this gross BS for a while longer — up to and including Cody ending up getting drugged too, and then being rescued by Mac or something.
This is my absolute least favorite of the three storylines I'm bagging on in this section. I like Josh Kelly and Sofia Mattsson together, but beyond that, there are no redeeming qualities to any of this; the story has absolutely wrecked Gladys beyond salvaging, Doctor Montague's actions make next to no sense, and whoever dreamed up the idea of Cody smuggling himself into Ferncliff by pretending to wish he was dead deserves a good shaking. Real people deal with suicidal ideation in the real world every day! If this type of thing is going to play out on television, then those people deserve to see all of this handled with sensitivity and grace, not played off as a cheap gimmick within a fundamentally unsound soap storyline. I hate it.
(Also, have we all just forgotten about Cody's rock stupid lawsuit against the WSB? I'm not complaining if we have. Just a question.)
Tracy vs. Lucy
Okay, now that I've devoted 1500+ words to the stuff that isn't working, let's move on to the major storylines that are working (for the most part, anyway). After no shortage of dilly-dallying, the "Deception goes to court" storyline took a major step last week when the intellectual property lawsuit finally made its way before a judge.
This was actually a pretty busy week for Lucy, which is almost always a good thing. On Monday, she met Martin at the Metro Court pool, where she promptly threw a drink in his face before confronting him with the stuff she'd been able to dig up in Pine Valley — first and foremost the $50,000 a month he's been getting from his third ex-wife. Secrets are such an overplayed trope in daytime that it tends to feel like a refreshing change of pace whenever a character just comes and out and says what they want to say, and that was the case for me here — not least because Lynn Herring and Michael E. Knight are fairly delightful as scene partners.
The following day was when the hearing started and the fun really began. Although these scenes bore more than a faint whiff of chaos — Lucy initially told Maxie and Brook Lynn that she'd fired their lawyer and replaced her with Martin, only to say later that it didn't look like Scott was coming — they delivered in terms of giving us a long-awaited confrontation between Lucy and Tracy, who strolled into the courtroom after the arrival of Jackson Montgomery and dismissed everyone's thanks for her presumed show of support before revealing she was really there to defend her legal claim to the Deceptor.
What followed was a small but savory dose of the type of scene you can really only get from a show that's been on for decades. Lucy and Tracy have a lot of history between them, most of it deeply antagonistic, and that dirty laundry was aired with glee, including Lucy's brief marriage to Alan and Tracy's series of mobster husbands. The week didn't give us a clear picture of whatever the hell is going on here or whoever Tracy might be working with or for, but at this point, I'm not sure how much I care; if this storyline is going to come down to a battle between Tracy and Lucy, I can confidently predict I'll be here for it every step of the way.
Anyway, here's where we are as of right now: The judge scheduled the start of the trial for six months hence, Tracy offered to drop her suit in exchange for 75 percent of Deception, and Martin swore to Lucy that he didn't steal the concept for it from Tracy. There are all sorts of holes here — Deception remains the most comically understaffed organization on any sort of stock exchange, they have one lawyer when they ought to have a team of them, and the idea that a company that was doing just fine for itself before the Deceptor was introduced would be bankrupted by six months of the gadget being held off the market is rather silly — but all of that and more can be handily outweighed by scene after scene of Tracy and Lucy sniping at each other. Bring it on, writers.
Cleansing Vengeance
Last but not least, let's discuss the rapidly unfurling umbrella that is the Sonny/Cyrus/Pikeman storyline, which included all sorts of motion last week. There's so much going on here that I don't know if I'll be able to give everything the attention it deserves, but I'll do my best.
On Monday, Carly asked Diane to try and find some loophole to get Drew out of Pentonville, starting with leveraging her relationship with Robert. On Tuesday, Carly told Michael that she thought she could find out who Austin was visiting at Pentonville by asking Drew to investigate — and while those two were talking, Drew went to the prison library and bumped into Cyrus, who passive-aggressively gloated about the fact that because Drew is under Sonny's protection, and Drew saved Cyrus' life, thereby bonding the two of them in the eyes of the prison population, Cyrus is now also under Sonny's protection by extension. Meanwhile, thanks to a conversation between Sonny and Brick, we learned that Betty had left town and flown off to Mexico — although Sonny insisted she's still well within his reach if he has any questions for her.
On Thursday, Ava demanded that Mason give her Nikolas' body in exchange for her yielding to his demand that she hire Betty and give her access to Sonny's penthouse — a demand he shrugged off by telling her that "the powers that be" had decided there would be no corpse exchange until the "situation was resolved" later that night. Ava, unamused, tossed Mason and Austin out of Wyndemere; we next saw Austin coming home, presumably to Pautauk, and asking an unseen guest how they were feeling. That guest? A beer-swilling Nikolas, who told Austin he was feeling great and thanked him for asking.
This brings us to Friday, when we saw Cyrus leading a worship service in the prison library, which he paused after the warden walked in. Assuring Cyrus she had no intention of stopping his service, she told him he seemed like a truly changed man, after which they had a heavily coded conversation that made it clear Cyrus has been feeding her information in exchange for something involving his "flock." After she left, he ramped up the fire and brimstone, hollering about the "unspoken adversary" they'd all been employed by one way or another, and the "cleansing vengeance" that was about to be exacted upon said adversary.
Meanwhile, at the Metro Court, Sonny was meeting Kristina for dinner while Nina worked the restaurant. Their meal was slightly interrupted by the arrival of Willow, Wiley, and Michael, which precipitated Wiley demanding a family barbecue, which led to Willow inviting Nina and Michael giving his blessing, which led to some extraordinarily clunky foreshadowing around Sonny smiling and talking about how he's got everything and his life is great.
While all this was going on, we saw Dex on the docks (try saying that ten times fast), where he was supervising the offloading of a Pikeman shipment — and we also saw Carly working the counter at Kelly's, where one of her regulars told her he'd seen what looked like a pack of federal agents discussing Sonny. She tried calling Sonny to warn him, but he declined the call; undaunted, she called Dex and told him to skedaddle, moments before the Coast Guard raided the dock. (Fortunately for Dex, he'd ducked into a stairwell to take the call and went undetected.) At the same time, the FBI came pouring out of the Metro Court elevator and arrested Sonny for violating the National Security Act.
This is a lot, and I'm at least mildly intrigued by most of it. As I said a few columns back, I don't really understand the utility of making Cyrus a born-again prison preacher — either he's truly changed his ways and is therefore now boring, or this story's taking a deeply, disappointingly predictable turn — but the way his conversion was played last week left me leaning in a little bit. Suppose Cyrus really has found religion, but it's some truly old-timey stuff, and he sees himself as a righteous instrument of vengeance against Sonny? Suppose the whole point has been to get Sonny behind bars and put him on an even playing field against Cyrus? I have no idea if any of that is close to what we're about to see, but it could at least be interesting.
But first, I think we're probably about to see some fakery. After all, Sonny did have Brick fill that drive with bogus information — there's no reason not to think the dock raid went down based on a phony tip generated by the stuff Cyrus and/or Warden Garten found on it. I'm betting there'll be nothing illegal in those Pikeman-stamped crates, Sonny will be released, Brick will tell him the data was accessed from within Pentonville, and Drew will find out that Austin was visiting Cyrus.
How this will tie into Nikolas, or Austin's servitude to Cyrus, or any of the rest of it, I have no clue. As with so many other things relating to this show at this point in its history, I'm not super confident that there's a real long-term plan behind all this — but we're currently at a moment loaded with multiple possibilities for plot developments that'll have significant impact when they land, and I'll savor it while it lasts.
That's all the big stuff! Here's much of the rest:
Robert bought a new car and wants to take Diane for a ride in it. I want to die
While Cody was busy pretending he should be committed, Sam bumped into Montague at the hospital and flirted with him while talking about playing cards, which is simultaneously a nice callback to her early days on the show AND offensively long overdue
Selina asked Sonny to intercede with Marshall on her behalf and ask him to reinstate her backroom card game at the Savoy; he flatly refused
Chase asked Brook Lynn to move in with him; after some back and forth, she agreed
Leo ate some fruit leather
Olivia took Eddie to the Metro Court pool in a vain attempt to get him to regain his Ned memories; they were interrupted by Nina, who later got all angsty about Ned discovering her role in the SEC investigation before he hit his head
Ava called Lucy to hire her to sell Wyndemere
Kristina has filled out the board for the Corinthos-Davis House
Maxie is now renting Dante and Lulu's old house; Georgie and James are thrilled, Charlotte slightly less so
Joss and Carly bonded over the difficulties of dating mobsters
Robert thinks the WSB might be behind Drew's three-year sentence as a means of retaliation for embarrassing the Bureau in Greenland
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