Welcome back, friends! Another week of General Hospital — albeit a shortened one — is on the books, so you know what that means: It's time to dive in and discuss (most of) what happened on the show last week.
I Think Your Granddaughter Is in Some Serious Trouble
The week kicked off with Laura and Kevin getting ready to jet off to London for the next leg of their search for Nikolas — and with Kevin making the very sensible observation that as excited as they might be about the evidence suggesting Nikolas is still alive, it's also pretty clear that he really isn't interested in being found. This led to a fairly lengthy conversation that dredged up Laura's guilt regarding the way she fled Cassadine Island and left Nikolas behind when he was young — we even got a Stefan mention — but their debate over whether to follow the trail to London ended up being moot, because Laura got a phone call from Valentin, who urged her to hightail it back to Port Charles and help him with Charlotte.
Long accustomed to being pulled in different directions by her constantly fucked-up family, Laura quickly agreed to head home. Given the reports that accompanied the end of Adam Huss' last brief stint, I feel like it might be a minute before we see this thread picked up again; I suspect it'll shift back into gear whenever Spencer follows up with the Cassadine attorneys and attempts to take control of the family holdings. For the moment, though, the focus is squarely on Victor's fiendish plot to control Charlotte from beyond the grave.
We were given a much more detailed glimpse of that plan last week, courtesy of multiple flashbacks showing Charlotte reading the letter from Victor that accompanied his "gift" of the tarot cards. In essence, the letter warned Charlotte that Anna was manipulating Valentin and would somehow eventually be responsible for his death. Wryly noting that Cassadine women can be more formidable than Cassadine men, he promised her that the cards would help lead her toward a solution.
This is all well and good in terms of brewing up intrigue at this particular juncture of the story, but I have my doubts as far as its ability to stick the landing. I'm not sure anyone was enraptured by the last round of tarot-fueled hijinks, and there are only so many directions something like this can go — pretty much all of them bearing the strong aroma of particularly pungent cheese. If it turns out that Charlotte was somehow conditioned to be susceptible to the cards, well, we've been down that road lots of times over the last few years. If that isn't where the story ends up going, then I'm not sure I understand the point of incorporating tarot at all. I like the decision to incorporate Charlotte as some sort of "villain" here, but I suspect the writers may have put themselves in a corner.
For the moment, however, I don't have any serious complaints. Last week found Valentin sporting a near-constant look of grave concern as he scurried around trying to protect Charlotte from the inevitable fallout from her actions — first by asking Martin to be ready to defend her in court if it comes to that, and then by searching for a therapist for her. He also continued to confide in Nina, which is sure to be a point of contention between him and Anna when she finds out he left her twisting in the wind while she was wandering around Port Charles in a semi-panicked daze. There's some not-so-subtle foreshadowing here regarding Charlotte's love for Nina in contrast to her disdain for Anna, and how this all rests on Nina and Valentin's continued/renewed friendship in the wreckage of their romance. If I had to guess (and I guess I do), I'd say this feels like the writers nudging Valentin and Nina closer together so they're in place for a redux if and when those two end up splitting with their current partners. As I've said before, I'm generally agnostic when it comes to romantic pairings on daytime; that being said, I think Anna is a much more suitable match for Valentin, although I really tend to prefer him when he isn't romantically involved with anybody and he spends his time snarking around town with a toothpick in his mouth.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Anna, meanwhile, is doing her business while being shadowed by one of Sonny's men — something more than one character pointed out last week, starting with Jordan, who met her at that one coffee shop whose name I can never remember. Jordan expressed surprise that Anna would take help from Sonny, and Anna pointed out that desperate times call for desperate measures — and dealing with a mystery individual who's trying to dismantle her life and drive her insane definitely qualifies as "desperate." She added that it's past time for her to find out what Valentin's secrets are… and took a big step in that direction when she found him at the house he bought, which is also — as viewers who are more attentive than I am probably already noticed — the house she tailed him to a couple of weeks ago.
The resulting conversation highlighted a lot of what I like about these two together. Anna was justifiably incensed when she found out Valentin had gone and bought a whole-ass house without saying word one to her, but it wasn't the type of dealbreaker you tend to see with soap relationships that often end up hinging on the dumbest misunderstandings and disagreements. Valentin came clean — or as close as he gets, anyway — admitting that he wanted to be her white knight, and had dreams of surprising her with a house to replace the one that burned down, but has since come to realize that Charlotte needs his undivided attention and this isn't the right time for him to ask Anna to move in with him.
This was enough for Anna, but it also wasn't; as we saw later in the week when she met Robert at the Metro Court restaurant, she still knows Valentin has secrets on top of secrets. She's also deeply committed to figuring out what the hell is happening with her life, to the extent that she pleaded with Robert to leverage whatever remains of his contacts within the WSB to try and determine whether the fire and the vandalism to her hotel suite came from someone within or connected to the Bureau.
I guess the main question for now is whether Charlotte burned down Anna's house, and I'm betting the answer will be no. Victor was a crafty old SOB, and it beggars disbelief to think he'd rest any kind of big plan on the actions of a teenage girl — and making Charlotte a full-on arsonist would really put her behind the 8-ball in terms of difficulty of redemption. Of course, now that the WGA contract has been ratified and the union writers are back to work, all bets are well and truly off — if the current regime doesn't like where the fi-core crew was going with this, we could see the whole damn thing turn on a dime before the end of the year.
Gladys and Montague Get Got
Heading into last week, we had Sasha back in Ferncliff, Montague ready to pounce on her, and Gladys getting ready to skip town before anyone could figure out all the shady stuff she'd done. In my last column I shared an earnest wish that what we were seeing would end up being a big fake-out leading to the bad guys in this story getting their just desserts… and that's exactly what went down last week, amen and hallelujah.
If you read this column with any kind of regularity, you know how much I've hated this storyline, and I think that's a pretty popular sentiment — but if you've been fast-forwarding through anything involving Sasha's torment, you may still owe it to yourself to watch what went down last week, because it was all deeply satisfying. I was even happy to see Sonny for once! Wonders truly never cease.
The week started with Gladys ignoring a knock at her door as she frantically stuffed her suitcases for an open-ended stay in Costa Rica — a knock that turned out to be Sam, who simply picked the lock and nonchalantly let herself in after Gladys refused to answer. When Gladys tried to throw her out by showing her the door, she received another unwelcome surprise in the form of Sonny, who played dumb for a few minutes before revealing he knows everything about how Gladys stole from Sasha. Vowing to make sure Gladys never lies again, Sonny asked Sam to leave — which she promptly did, over Gladys' panicked pleas — and ordered Gladys to tell him exactly what she'd done, "without whining or excuses."
As soon as he had Gladys' confession, Sonny called for Frank, who stood at the ready as Sonny told Gladys that she was heading back to Bridgeport with nothing more than the clothes on her back and the promise that if she ever stepped out of line again, it'd be the last mistake she ever made.
Meanwhile, over at Ferncliff, Sasha paced her room while Montague filled out paperwork recusing himself from her care. After pretending to leave, he called the front desk and told Janice he'd left a file behind; when she went to retrieve it, he slipped back into the clinic and let himself into Sasha's room, syringe in hand, and chucked her on the bed.
Who should come to the rescue at the very last minute but our boy Cody Bell? When Montague threatened to stab her with a fatal dose unless he was allowed to leave Ferncliff without interference, Cody agreed to let them go — but then Janice showed up, wanting to know what was going on. Taking advantage of the distraction, Sasha made a break for it, allowing Cody to grab Montague and wrestle him into the hall, forcing him to drop the syringe in the process. And then who should show up but Dante, gun at the ready — and then Mac with another cop in tow?
Montague saw this as his chance to try and trick Mac and Dante into believing that Cody was responsible for everything, but they didn't buy it — partly because Dante was the one who'd taken Cody to Ferncliff in the first place, but also because Janice corroborated Sasha's version of events. The whole thing ended with Montague handcuffed to Sasha's bed, where he was socked in the gut in front of Dante, who pretended not to see a thing.
I suppose there's a decent chance that we'll see some sort of lingering fallout from all this — that Gladys could turn up again, or we'll be forced to endure Montague's trial, etc. — but I think I speak for most of you when I say GH will be better off if this marks the absolute end of this horrible storyline. We could never speak of Montague or Gladys ever again and the show would be just fine. As ever, this is not a comment on the character of Gladys or the woman who played her! I think they were both done dirty by a senselessly painful story. But this is where we are now, and I would very much like to see Sasha do something other than suffer. For a good long time.
That's really pretty much it for last week, but here are a few bullet points to wrap everything up:
Alexis found out that Gregory has a bucket list
Tracy screwed up and told Chase that Gregory has ALS, making our adorable lil' PCPD detective all kinds of pissed off at Finn and his father
Trina and Spencer continued to do New York City and each other
Sonny and Nina are eloping to his island; Michael and Willow are conflicted as to whether they should attend
Sonny and Nina have both called Ava and gotten no response
Alexis found out that Gregory has a bucket list
Tracy screwed up and told Chase that Gregory has ALS, making our adorable lil' PCPD detective all kinds of pissed off at Finn and his father
Trina and Spencer continued to do New York City and each other
Sonny and Nina are eloping to his island; Michael and Willow are conflicted as to whether they should attend
Sonny and Nina have both called Ava and gotten no response
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