Hello and welcome to a very belated edition of Critical Diagnosis! I apologize for making you wait this time around, but there's been a lot of turmoil (and extra meetings) at the day job, so I haven't had a spare moment to get this damn thing finished — which is too bad, because last week was relatively interesting as far as these things go.
Let's dive in before someone messages me from the office!
FBI: Federal Bureau of Idiots
Last week got off to a pretty slow start, including the extremely anticlimactic courtroom showdown between Sonny and the FBI. In an absolutely unstunning twist that makes zero sense, the feds strolled into court and told the judge… that they were withdrawing all the charges because their evidence wasn't what they thought it was. They were withdrawn without prejudice, so they can be refiled at any point, but for now, Sonny's a free man — all because the "Pikeman" crates that were seized on the docks contained nothing more than coffee beans.
This is a completely unstunning twist that everyone saw coming, but the real question here is how in the hell the writers thought it made any kind of sense for the FBI to wait until the day of the hearing to figure out they had no case. This Agent Moss guy who's been glowering around town had pictures of the opened crates! He said they had Sonny dead to rights! This is absurd! In any fictional world grounded in any sort of sanity, Sonny's switcheroo would have been sussed out the night he was arrested. Maybe they would have held him for 72 hours just for fun, but would they have embarrassed themselves in front of a judge? I think not. I can only assume that the writers thought they were ramping up the dramatic tension by writing a hearing, but the whole thing is so ridiculous that it's hard to take any of it seriously. The one intriguing wrinkle is Moss' suggestion that perhaps Dante tipped Sonny off, which is something you think we'd hear more often given the bond between them, but who knows if it'll go anywhere.
Anyway, Sonny's back on the street and more determined than ever to learn the identity of his enemy — and because he knows Austin visited Pentonville recently, he figures that enemy is a prisoner there. This, as we know, is a solid guess; unfortunately, his first move was to ask Carly for her help in enlisting Drew as a spy, and because Drew is the dumbest Navy SEAL who ever lived, he was on the case for all of two minutes before he started trying to get information out of a guard while Cyrus lurked around the corner, unseen and hearing it all.
Speaking of Cyrus, last week we learned that he and Warden Garten have a special relationship — which is to say that he's more or less responsible for her becoming warden in the first place, and he's basically calling the shots even as an inmate. Cyrus pulling dirty tricks is entertaining for all of us, so I don't have any problem with this; it was legitimately entertaining to watch those two trying to one-up each other, including Cyrus asking the warden if she was "taking a tone" with him at one point. The short version: He's tasked her with finding out how their supposedly ironclad evidence against Sonny ended up being a bust — and he might be just about ready to have Mason murdered as well.
Mason, meanwhile, brought a lollipop to Ava's gallery and accused her of setting them up; she, in turn, played it off as only Ava can, and then headed to Austin to tell him that she's sick of everybody's shit and she's ready to sic Sonny on everyone with the last name Gatlin and/or Gatlin-Holt if they don't deliver Nikolas' body to her pronto.
You Don't Think Much of Your Son, Do You?
Nikolas, much to the chagrin of a significant portion of the GH audience, is unavailable for delivery — not just because he's alive and well, but because on Friday, Austin discovered that the Cassadine prince was packed and ready to head off to Europe in order to "tie up loose ends." These loose ends mostly seem to be centered around Nikolas meeting with Cassadine lawyers so they know he's alive and will therefore be far less inclined to transfer control of the family's holdings to Spencer, which is important in Nikolas' eyes because he's confident that once Spencer is holding the purse strings, he'll refuse to give them back to his father.
Is this petty? Is this dumb? Well, yes, and full credit to Austin for calling bullshit on the whole thing by pointing out that Nikolas must not think a whole lot of his son if he's willing to stay "dead" longer purely in order to maintain his control of the family business empire. This is a crappy exit for Nikolas — just the latest in a lengthening line of them — and it raises the question of what the showrunners intend to do in terms of Adam Huss sticking around in the role. I personally think Huss is doing just fine — definitely an improvement over Marcus Coloma, and although I know this will be heresy to a lot of people, also a step up from Tyler Christopher's last 2-3 years playing the character. The real issue is that the writers keep painting Nikolas into a series of painfully limited corners; at some point, he'll have burned so many bridges and committed so many blatantly self-serving crimes that there's no longer sufficient utility in keeping him on the canvas at all. Chalk all this up to an ongoing failure of imagination.
$50,000 a Month Buys a Lot of Hummingbird Cake
Let me get this out of the way up front: I don't have any issue with characters from One Life to Live or All My Children or any other ABC soap showing up on General Hospital. Yes, the GH canvas is already beyond overcrowded; yes, I suppose characters from canceled shows showing up in Port Charles means reduced screentime for actors who are actually on contract. But by the same token, no matter how well-populated a soap's canvas might be, these little worlds can feel awfully restrictive after a while, and I'm generally in favor of anything that opens them up. Also, and not for nothing, this particular storyline involves Tracy, Lucy, Felicia, and Martin, all of whom are nowhere near the oversaturation point. If GH was bringing on extracurricular characters in order to prop Sonny or Carly, then I'd probably be annoyed, but I've got nothing against anything that gives fun, lesser-seen characters more to do.
ANYWAY. I say all this because the "Tracy vs. Deception" story introduced another non-GH character last week, in the form of Blair Cramer — who, in what I will argue is a satisfying twist, has turned out to be Martin's third ex-wife. She showed up at the Metro Court on Friday, complete with a from-the-neck-down opening shot designed to add to the intrigue — which would have been more effective if the show hadn't already leaked her pending arrival, but whatever. This is all fine with me. And to those who say Blair had remarried Todd the last time we saw her, I say THAT WAS TEN YEARS AGO. She could have had three husbands in that timespan. If you're going to cry foul over plot holes, there are far bigger ones to contend with.
We also learned more about Tracy's motivations last week. In addition to being generally unhappy with the very idea of Lucy Coe, she's laser-focused on clawing back Lucy's very small share of ELQ voting rights, which she'll be able to use to eject Valentin from the CEO chair — a plan that, in a refreshing change of pace, makes several licks of sense. This is 100 percent in line with what we know about Tracy, and honestly, it's a long time coming; Valentin has done a fine job with ELQ despite his protracted absences from the office, but this is a company that's always supposed to be run by members of the family, so we're long overdue for a final confrontation between Valentin and the Quartermaines.
As it stands right now, Lucy and Tracy are in open warfare, but Tracy has amended her earlier offer to Lucy — instead of demanding 75 percent of Deception, she's now willing to accept a 51/49 split, but only if it also includes Lucy's ELQ voting stock. So far, Lucy has refused to play ball, but I'm curious to see where all this leads; as far as I'm concerned, this is one of the more consistently engaging storylines at the moment, and I'm particularly happy with the collection of characters who've been involved. Like the Diff'rent Strokes theme song told us, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum, but if you're up in arms about Jackson Montgomery and Blair Cramer showing up in Port Charles, I'm afraid I really can't see where you're coming from. Let the good times roll.
Cody's Cabin Fever
I was worried that Cody and Sasha's escape from Ferncliff would be short-lived, but it really doesn't look like it'll be shaking out that way. After taking her to a cabin that appears to be the same place where Peter August peed in a bed for several months a few summers ago, Cody supervised Sasha's remarkably fast detox, after which they were joined by Sam and Dante, who arrived just in time to help convince Sasha that it was in fact Gladys who set in motion all the misery she's experienced over the last few months.
Gladys, meanwhile, is telling anyone within earshot that Cody kidnapped Sasha and suggesting that he could be working with Doctor Montague. At a moment like this, nine soaps out of ten would have people believe Gladys, sparking a manhunt and dragging out the story indefinitely, but the list of people who know Gladys is full of shit keeps growing — Sam and Dante are on the case together, Nina can't stand her, Mac doesn't believe for a minute that Sasha was kidnapped, and everyone's about five minutes away from telling Sonny what his cousin's been up to. I still think the writers intend to squeeze some last bits of drama-like substance out of all this, which makes me nervous — I'd rather just see it all end tomorrow than have Montague inject someone else with one of his mystery drugs — but it definitely feels like we're reaching the end of the road here, and thank goodness for that.
YOU THINK YOU'RE SAFE YOU'RE NOT
As I said earlier, the week got off to a pretty slow start; in fact, the bulk of Tuesday's episode revolved around a bunch of characters congregating at Charlie's after a softball game. But stuff picked up toward the end of the week, culminating in Friday's scenes between Anna and Valentin.
The episode picked up with the two of them eating at the Metro Court, where Anna was delivered a Pikeman plane manifest proving that Valentin was nowhere near ELQ the night her house burned down. I continue to be impressed with the mature way their relationship's being written — rather than do the typical daytime thing and hide the manifest from him, she confronted him over it, and even though his explanations were pretty weak and definitely pissed her off, she still sees him clearly through her anger. They had it out, but they're still together; she's fighting for them just as much as she's fighting for her life. It's a refreshing change of pace.
It's also a good thing for Anna, who needed a shoulder to lean on after she and Valentin returned to their Metro Court suite to find that the place had been tossed, with red ink splashed on various items of clothing and a threatening message scrawled on the bathroom mirror: YOU THINK YOU GOT AWAY WITH IT - YOU DIDN'T - YOU THINK YOU'RE SAFE - YOU'RE NOT.
Given that this column is so damn late, we're already at the point where we know who's responsible for the hotel damage, but I haven't actually seen those scenes yet, so I'm not going to get into it here — I'll just reiterate that as much as I think it's an odd and borderline creatively bankrupt idea to drag up Anna's shadowy past yet again, Finola Hughes has spun flimsier straw than this into gold, and it's also an interesting stress test for Anna and Valentin's relationship. I'd be lying if I said I understood the point of it all as it's been written thus far, but I'm not tempted to fast-forward through any of it.
Those were the biggest storyline beats from last week. Here's (most of) the rest:
Curtis went back to the Savoy, but he's still thinking about selling the place to Selina
Maxie moved into Lulu and Dante's old house, but she's anxious about her financial future
Spencer and Trina talked about her frustrations with his living situation and their relationship
Esme overheard Spencer inviting Trina on a weekend trip to New York City
Jake and Charlotte went on a date
Michael went to Sonny's penthouse in order to grovel and kiss his ass
Maxie fired Brook Lynn from Deception
Spencer gave Trina those turtle doves, which better be more than they appear to be
Esme asked Carly if there are any vacancies upstairs at Kelly's
Nina asked Olivia if she's "falling for Eddie Maine"
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