Hello again, fellow General Hospital viewers! Stuff is still moving at a pretty fast clip on this show of ours — last week had its frustrating moments, and it ended on a very sad note, but it wasn't boring. Let's dive in and look back together.
Ned's Ned Again
The week started off with Ned and Olivia in bed together, reconnecting as spouses again after all those weeks of him thinking he was Eddie Maine. Once Olivia mentioned needing to get to work for a meeting with Nina, Ned quickly remembered Nina's role in all that SEC nonsense, which he just as quickly shared with Olivia.
Determined to clear his name, Ned resolved to tell everyone that Nina is the one responsible for Carly and Drew ending up in the SEC's sights, but Olivia talked him out of it. Saying Sonny's as happy as she's ever seen him, she asked if he could forget that he remembered — and although Ned remains understandably determined to make sure everybody knows he had nothing to do with what happened to the alleged supercouple, he agreed to hold off for a little while.
In a nice touch, Yuri was the first one to notice that Ned shed Eddie, which led to a sweet little conversation in the Quartermaine kitchen between Ned, Olivia, Yuri, Lois, and Brook Lynn. (It definitely sucks that Tracy left the canvas before Eddie went away.) After Ned and Olivia went off to work, Lois and Brook Lynn continued sifting through potential songs for Blaze, ultimately settling on one Blaze wrote herself — and one that just happens to be all about how it feels to not be able to tell the object of your affection how you feel. Is there a Kristina/Blaze romance waiting in the wings? I'm sure you already know the answer to that question.
Corinthos Corner
We'll pivot from Ned's return to the latest developments with my least favorite clan, simply because they're so closely connected. While Ned bides his time with his Nina reveal, Nina's scrambling to placate stupid Michael — and last week, that took the form of Nina going to Kelly's and offering to sell Carly her half of the Metro Court.
I don't know what's going to happen here, but I do know that in years past, this would have been the prelude to a return to the status quo. This family has been through countless storylines that upended fundamental details of the characters' existences, only to put them right back where they were before, so it might be that PTSD speaking, but it's very easy for me to see Carly ending up back at the hotel again.
From a storytelling standpoint, it'd probably be a wash. Having Carly at the Metro Court serves functionally the same purpose as having her at Kelly's — either way, she's set up to be in the middle of countless conversations and storylines, simply by virtue of being anchored to a heavily trafficked location. And it isn't like having Nina give up her half of the hotel will exile her to some distant corner of the canvas, either. My annoyance (and yours too, I reckon) stems from the way this is being framed: Willow, in an attempt to get Carly to take Michael's money in order to pay for the transaction, deemed it a way to "balance the scales" after everything Carly has supposedly lost or whatever.
It's an ongoing failure of imagination on the part of the writers, or Frank Valentini, or whoever is responsible for the decision to continually present every Corinthos or Corinthos-affiliated character as a pillar of virtue who can do no wrong. There's no reason for it, and it actively undermines stories like this one, which — to make matters desperately worse — are actually blessed with a decently soapy foundation. Nina and Carly have both done awful things to each other; if the show could just shut up for a minute and let the audience watch their dynamic play out without continually telling us how we're supposed to feel, it'd be a lot more fun to watch. I actually tend to think the writers have done a pretty solid job of tangling Carly and Nina together, which makes it all the more frustrating that they're so blatant about taking sides.
I'm still holding out hope that Nina will somehow find out that Michael spent months trying to have Sonny sent to prison, giving her leverage to blackmail him right back. Hell, maybe he'd even be scared enough to protect her from Ned once Ned decides it's time to go public with what he knows. Whatever it takes to prevent GH from dragging another character through the mud for Carly's benefit will be fine with me.
Anyway, for the moment, we still have Nina running around wringing her hands over the fact that she had the audacity to report a crime. She confronted Martin over the fact that he confirmed her involvement to Michael, but Martin grew a pair all of a sudden, telling Nina that Michael's recording was just a confession of something he'd already independently confirmed — and that Michael is a (barf) "formidable enemy," something Nina hardly needs more of. He left her with some advice to make more friends, which is what she told Sonny she was trying to do by offering to sell Carly her half of the hotel.
We also, for the moment, still have Carly firmly ensconced at Kelly's despite Michael's offer to pay for half of the Metro Court. Although she was touched by her son's generosity, she insisted that it won't really feel like it's hers unless she gets it back herself. Michael, meanwhile, is back in cahoots with Drew, who returned to Aurora and made an ELQ takeover his first order of business. End result: All the characters who were involved in the SEC story and its fallout are still tied up together. Here we go again.
Anna's Ordeal
The aftershocks of Charlotte's shooting continued to reverberate last week, starting on Monday when Anna went to the PCPD in order to tell Dante and Jordan about Charlotte targeting her. There were two major takeaways from this conversation: One, Anna will do whatever she can to keep from Charlotte being investigated or charged for her actions; two, the cops now know that Sonny was definitely the target of the Metro Court shooting. Valentin is still high on Anna's shit list — she told them she wouldn't make the mistake of trusting him again — but she very much wants to talk to Charlotte, who's being presented as genuinely believing that Anna shot her on purpose.
While that was going down, Jake showed up at GH to visit Charlotte, and after he gave her flowers, they had a brief conversation during which she insisted to him that Anna knew it was her when she pulled the trigger. Like a lot of you, I feel like the only reason to involve Jake in this storyline is to take advantage of the fact that he was programmed by Helena years before Victor got his hooks into Charlotte. The idea of Anna Devane being hunted by a pair of teenagers with Cassadine-induced brain damage is just cuckoo enough to intrigue me, but it's pretty rare for the GH writers to really let it rip and let us have nice things.
Case in point: After Anna went to Sonny last week and warned him to beef up his security because he was definitely the target of the Metro Court shooting, she returned to her apartment and discovered that her Forsythe files were missing. Based on the number of times this guy's name has come up lately — including Sonny calling Brick and ordering a deep dive on him — it seems pretty clear to me that Jameson Forsythe is the person pulling the strings at Pikeman. This is annoying for a couple of reasons: First, as I argued in a previous column, it beggars belief that Anna has been on and off GH since the mid-'80s and this is the first we're hearing of a WSB agent who's this allegedly nefarious; and second, it takes what should by all rights be an Anna story and turns it into a Sonny/Anna/probably Cyrus story.
It's true that this is a lot of acting talent to bring to bear on anything, but it's also true that we've seen "Sonny protects his territory from a powerful enemy" play out over and over and over again. The story never changes — lots of tense faceoffs, lots of conversations about how this or that has to happen, a character or two ends up being murdered, and then everything goes back to the way it was before. I'm pretty sure even Maurice Benard would agree that at this point, Sonny has more utility as a non-mob character — he has deep ties to Port Charles, he's connected with just about everyone on canvas, he's rich and powerful, blah blah blah. There's absolutely nothing left for him to do in this area. It'd be much more interesting to see Selina go to war.
Well. For the moment, we're still waiting to see what happens as a result of Anna shooting Charlotte — and the biggest development on that front probably came on Tuesday, when Valentin tossed Charlotte's bedroom and found the letter from Victor, which he then shared with Laura and Nina. I feel like it's fairly rare for all this information to be out in the open at this stage of this type of storyline; it'll be interesting to see what these characters do with it.
Spencer Sees the Light
Spencer and Trina didn't see each other last week, but they did spend a bunch of time talking to their respective friends and loved ones about their argument over Spencer's obsession with co-parenting his baby brother. On Tuesday, Trina showed up at the gallery on her day off because she needed a distraction, which Ava happily gave her in the form of a pep talk. Spencer, meanwhile, showed up at the Invader to try and pressure Esme into abandoning her plans to move out; to her credit, she refused.
These conversations were followed up on Friday, when Spencer showed up at Joss and Trina's dorm room, where he found Joss and a bunch of flowers he'd had delivered, but no Trina. Across town, Trina stormed into her house and found Curtis and Grandpa Biddly Bebop. Our lovebirds then spent the rest of the episode hashing out their relationship problems with people other than their significant other — which is the type of thing I would generally regard as a waste of airtime, but didn't mind in this case because the conversations played out in the form of a relatively smart parallel. While Joss was busy trying (seemingly somewhat successfully) to make Spencer see there's no logical endgame for the situation he's trying so hard to preserve, Curtis and Marshall gently made Trina see that on an emotional level, Spencer is her first relationship priority… she just has to figure out whether he reciprocates that level of commitment.
Like I said, this was all fine for what it was. It was a fairly thoughtful way of outlining each character's perspective. On the other hand, I feel like even the most remedial GH viewer is perfectly aware of where Spencer and Trina are each coming from, and every day that passes with these characters chewing the same dumb cud is one day closer to whatever move they're going to have to pull when Spencer goes away for a bit. No matter how well-written or acted any of these individual scenes might be, they still add up to a perplexing and preposterous waste of time.
Alas, Poor Austin! We Hardly Knew Him
Speaking of wasting time, let us bow our heads together in a moment of silence for Doctor Austin Gatlin-Holt, who spent the last two and a half years wandering the canvas without developing a single meaningful connection or leaving much of a lasting impact on anything at all — and when you're talking about a character played by an actor as talented as Roger Howarth, that amounts to a truly impressive failure on the part of the writing staff.
If you somehow aren't already aware, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Howarth is now out at GH following the "storyline-dictated" decision to have Austin murdered in cold blood by an unseen assailant. Given that Howarth has already played three characters on the show, I suppose he can always come back as someone else, but this still strikes me as a tragic waste of a tremendous asset. Aside from his presumably potentially prohibitive cost, I can't see any reason to cut him loose; although I never watched him during any of his stints on non-ABC soaps, I feel like it's probably safe to assume that the stuff he was handed as Austin probably amounts to some of the least interesting material he's been asked to perform throughout his career, and he never once appeared to be dialing it in. If you're doing your job, you don't write actors like that into a corner — you hang onto them for dear life, especially at this particular juncture of daytime in general.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Austin spent most of last week trying to break free from Cyrus and/or make up for the years he spent as one of his henchmen, an effort predicated by an office visit from Dante, who warned him that the police knew Mason had been "inviting third parties" to GH for treatment at Austin's hands. It was a conversation that went from bad to worse for Austin, who responded to Dante saying "The more we know about your cousin, the easier it'll be to prove you were involved in the abduction of Ava" by blurting out "No, I saved her."
Austin tried to play that off by saying he was talking about the night he showed up at Wyndemere and "saved" Ava, but that only made Dante ask him what he'd been doing out there in the first place, and grilling him about the nature of his relationship with her.
Cyrus, meanwhile, was in Mason's room, where he let Mason pitch the idea of setting up Austin as the fall guy for Ava's kidnapping. Saying Mason was smarter than he'd thought, Cyrus nevertheless rejected that plan, telling Mason that Austin was still useful… although he'd "get everything that's coming to him." Cyrus and Austin then had a moment at the end of the show, when Austin stopped by the nurse's station for his messages and was handed a slip of paper that said DON'T BE FOOLISH. IT CAN BE DEADLY. Rattled, he looked up just in time to lock eyes with Cyrus, who was waiting for an elevator.
They met again the following day, when Austin was summoned to a GH stairwell for a conversation that started with Cyrus promising "tidings of great joy" and ended with him telling Austin that he was indeed "free" after helping get Cyrus released from prison — "free to live your life, free to practice medicine, unless and until I need your services." And if he refused? Well, there was always Ava's kidnapping to frame him for, not to mention the death of Gordon Stevens. Their confrontation ended with Cyrus calmly saying goodbye while Austin drilled a death stare into his back.
Later in the week, Austin went to Ava's gallery, where he tried to explain that he'd gone along with Cyrus blackmailing and kidnapping Ava because he was trying to protect her — an argument that Ava, unsurprisingly, was in no mood to hear. Insisting that if he really cared about her, he could have gone to Sonny or the police, Ava ended the conversation by screaming at the top of her lungs to get out.
This was, for the record, the only time I ever found Ava and Austin remotely interesting or believable as a couple. With Howarth digging deep to express Austin's guilt as well as his affection for Ava, and Maura West returning in kind with the type of captivating molten intensity only she can deliver, I found myself wondering for the first time whether those two really had a future together. Alas! The answer is "nope."
Austin finally closed out his horrible week by returning to the PCPD, where he met Dante in the interrogation room and supplicated himself, offering to give up the identity of his and Mason's boss in exchange for immunity and an agreement that he wouldn't have to testify. Dante balked at the offer, telling Austin he hadn't given the police enough evidence to justify that kind of deal; Austin, fully broken at this point, agreed to give Dante what he needed before acknowledging that he understood Dante didn't like him and he understood why. Blinking back tears, he thanked Dante for the opportunity to do the right thing, explaining that he wasn't a bad person, he'd just been coerced into doing some bad things.
It was, for my money, possibly Austin's best scene… so of course it led right into him coming home, finding someone waiting there, asking them what they were doing in his house, and being shot dead. Just as Robert and Dante were seen discussing Austin's offer to flip — and Robert was heard agreeing to it, provided Austin really had the goods — the camera lingered over Austin with a pair of gunshot wounds in his chest, bleeding out onto the floor.
We're obviously meant to believe Cyrus pulled the trigger, but I'm guessing he'll have an airtight alibi on account of his new job as a dishwasher at the Port Charles Grill. Instead, my assumption is that it'll turn out to be Forsythe. Again: What a stupid waste. Whatever the reasons for not re-upping Howarth's contract, or for saddling him with such a dud of a character in the first place, his exit leaves the show poorer for the loss. I look forward to seeing him wherever he turns up next.
Gregory's doctor wants him to start using a cane
Finn is being sued for malpractice, and Terry urged him to hire a lawyer (which is apparently extremely not the way this kind of thing happens in real life)
Cody and Sasha returned to Home & Heart for another Deceptor sales event
Andrea miscarried TJ and Molly's baby
Curtis has taken up meditation
Adam tried to pressure Joss into studying with him and Dex told him to bug off, after which we saw Adam having a tense phone conversation with his dad and swallowing some pills
Cody heard Sasha saying she has feelings for him; when he told her he feels the same way, she said she can't be in a relationship because she's still grieving, and he vowed to wait for her
Jordan accepted Laura's offer to remain deputy mayor
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