Ah, nothing like a heartwarming holiday celebrated while your long-lost, barely-acknowledged cousin's undiscovered corpse is gathering flies a few miles away. Hope you had a swell Thanksgiving, fellow General Hospital viewers! Let's take a look back at the week that was.
Ned vs. Drew, Part Deux
Well, here we go again. On Monday, Drew was back in the Aurora offices, thanking Michael for steering the ship while he was in prison and praising him for the incredible business acumen that all reasonably intelligent GH viewers refuse to believe Michael actually has. Ned entered in the middle of this, and was mere moments away from spilling the beans to Drew about Nina's involvement in the SEC debacle, but then he heard Michael closing an ELQ business deal over the phone and he decided to fly off the handle instead.
I've talked a little about this before, but it bears repeating: Stories revolving around corporate intrigue are generally something of a double-edged blade for soaps, because while they're pretty great in terms of generating high-stakes conflict between characters, they're also tough to write in a way that makes sense to a lay viewer and is consistently interesting. Very often, the writers fall back on extremely general descriptions of "business stuff" while having the characters act like heightened (and dumber) versions of themselves in order to move things from A to B, and I feel like that's what's happening here.
I mean, look, it's been established that Ned is a fundamentally ambivalent businessman on his best day, but he isn't a dummy. He cares about the bottom line. If Michael stepped in to handle an ELQ deal while Ned was indisposed, any sane version of either of these characters would view it as a win for all parties involved — but because GH needs Ned to act like a jealous teenager in order to enlarge the wedge between him and Drewchael, instead we get a lot of silly yelling in Michael's comically small office, followed by our Aurora duo agreeing that this is irrefutable proof that Ned is unfit to lead ELQ.
We've all seen sillier stuff before, but as the base layer for whatever the show is cooking up for the Nina/SEC endgame, it's pretty weak. I mean, how is Ned punishing Drew by withholding the truth about Nina telling Martin to call the SEC? How does it help Ned to let those two boobs go on thinking he did it? I guess they're justifying it by making Ned feel like Drew doesn't deserve the truth, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If anything, they shouldn't have had Ned come close to spilling the beans at all — he did tell Olivia he'd keep his mouth shut, after all. If they wanted to write him as a possessive psycho, they could have done it without pasting that storyline strand onto whatever the hell this is.
You know what would have made a lot more sense? Maintaining Austin's integration into the Quartermaines. If the writers had been thinking ahead — stop laughing, I'm not finished yet — Austin's connection with Cyrus would have had a lot more narrative currency if he'd been mixed up with ELQ. Say he comes to town, sues the family, and secures himself a seat on the board; when Valentin and Ned are both different flavors of indisposed, he steps in, but Cyrus is pulling the strings. It'd make a heck of a lot more sense in terms of ROI for those college tuition payments, and it'd be more in line with Cyrus' craving for respect. Why be Mr. Mafia of the eastern seaboard when you can run a company strong enough to withstand 14 CEO changes a year?
Sonny vs. Cyrus, Part One Million
Instead we get this — and by "this" I mean Sonny barging in on Cyrus while he's scrubbing the floor of the Port Charles Grill so he can issue a series of meaningless threats. Gloating about "how the mighty have fallen," Sonny confronted his old adversary with what he knows about Cyrus being the guy behind Mason and Austin, which Cyrus shrugged off as "a hell of a story." If it looks like talking in circles, well, that's what it was; the only remotely new development came in the form of the look of fury that flashed across Cyrus' face when Sonny told him not to visit Laura at her apartment or her office unless she invited him.
I like the character of Cyrus, and I love the way Jeff Kober plays him. I think there's a lot of story waiting to be told around the idea of Laura's brother lashing out against a world he sees as having unjustly persecuted him. I just wish that was the angle GH really seemed interested in leveraging here, instead of shoving us back into the same damn cul-de-sac we've already visited countless times. You can see what's coming, right? We'll get a few more conversations between Laura and Martin about whether or not Cyrus is truly redeemable, and then Sonny will shoot Cyrus to death, and everyone will absolve him of any degree of blame or responsibility. Rinse and repeat. Again, the most frustrating thing is that Cyrus never needed to be mixed up in Sonny's business to be a viable character — all the ingredients are here for a rich, relatable family saga revolving around classically soapy stuff. This whole thing could have been about Laura discovering she has two brothers, and one of them is an asshole whose shitty behavior is rooted in trauma that all three siblings share to some degree. Cyrus still could have made life miserable for the residents of Port Charles, but he could have done it in relatively novel ways.
This being a season of thanksgiving and all, I want to make it clear that I absolutely understand how creatively exhausting it must be to be responsible for dreaming up story for a show like General Hospital, and how tempting it must be to return to the same old shit — and I also understand that the head writers are under a lot of constant undue pressure in the form of network notes or whatever. I don't blame any one or two people entirely for stuff like this. Still, as a viewer, it's deeply frustrating, especially when you stop to consider that all the parts are already there if anybody wanted to try something remotely new. The actors are more than able, the history is more than there, and interpersonal conflicts are a hell of a lot cheaper to film than explosions and stuff.
Anna vs. Her Own Self-Loathing, Part Infinity
Once again, for the most part, the week belonged to Queen Finola Hughes, as Anna continued her latest aggravating yet never less than involving attempt to deal with the sins of her past bleeding into her present. It started with the conversation Vanna fans have been dreading — namely, the first extended face-to-face that Valentin and Anna have had since he told her Charlotte had been stalking her for months and he'd been covering it up.
This is a mature couple with a lot of history (mostly offscreen, but whatever) and plenty of storytelling potential left untapped, so I'm still holding out hope for a reunion, but for the moment, their flame has been doused with Anna's righteous (and completely understandable) fury. For shippers, I'm sure these scenes were painful; as I have explained before, I'm pretty much couple-agnostic, so I could appreciate them for what they are, which is a stellar example of the way good soap writing can anchor unbelievably stupid behavior in a solid kernel of emotional truth.
As Anna pointed out, Valentin didn't just cover up Charlotte's actions because he wanted to protect her — he did it because he himself can't be trusted, so it's impossible for him to trust anyone else. Valentin agreed, acknowledging that although he's been dreaming of a life with Anna for as long as he can remember, he's so emotionally warped that he's never been able to truly believe in it. In spite of all this, he went into the conversation assuming that once Charlotte was on the road to healing, they could be together again — a notion Anna shut down in no uncertain terms, telling Valentin she needs to see him as little as possible.
A noble goal, perhaps, but Port Charles is a suspiciously small town — especially when one sneaks into the hospital room occupied by the daughter of one's ex, as Anna did when she tried talking sense into Charlotte on Wednesday. Charlotte freaked out, of course, bringing the conversation to an abrupt conclusion when Liz and Valentin came rushing in. Both of them let Anna have it, and it wasn't hard to see where they were coming from; as Valentin told Elizabeth, he's starting to think Anna just can't handle it when anyone thinks she's wrong.
Of course, while Valentin might be more than willing to shield his daughter from Anna, he's in no way willing to absolve her of responsibility for her actions. Charlotte was grilled repeatedly last week — before Anna sneaked into her room, she was visited by Nina, who fell back on their shared trust with the troubled teen to gently pull back the curtain on her motivation for going after Anna. These scenes really brought out the best in Cynthia Watros and Scarlett Fernandez, the latter of whom seems to be getting better and more self-assured the more GH uses her in this storyline; ultimately, Charlotte admitted to being responsible for everything but the fire that burned down Anna's house.
Perplexingly, Nina apparently communicated little of this to Valentin, because later in the week, he point blank accused her of setting the fire, which didn't get him far with his daughter — and neither did his admission that he'd gone through her things and read the letter from Victor. Props to this kid, I guess, for having the balls to storm off to the patio after being confronted with the fact that she'd vandalized someone's hotel room and let herself into their apartment; Valentin's flustered reaction wasn't terribly Cassadine, but I suppose that's to his credit.
After having it out with Valentin and making a fool of herself with Charlotte, Anna got a call from Dante, who asked her to come down to the morgue and identify a corpse. He and Chase already knew who it was, thanks to the fact that the guy was holding three IDs when he ended up on the wrong end of a high-speed interaction with a vehicle, but they wanted to be sure, and she obliged: The dead body belonged to one Jameson Forsythe, a.k.a. the ex-WSB agent identified as a fuckup and a villain in the files that went missing from Anna's apartment the week before. I guess this wipes out my theory about Forsythe being the person behind the Pikeman Group; more annoyingly, it also leaves me wondering what in the world was the point of him being mentioned in the first place. Don't forget that the Metro Court shooting happened back in July, and Pikeman has barely been mentioned in months — this is really not the time for red herrings and multiple misdirections. Whatever the show intends to do with this storyline, if they intend to do anything at all, needs to get going with a quickness.
The silver lining to Anna's week came in Emma's surprise arrival — courtesy of Robert, who arranged for their granddaughter to pay a last-minute Thanksgiving visit. I remain perpetually flummoxed by Robert's general absence from Anna's orbit, as well as Emma's extended absence from the canvas in general, but for the moment, I'm just going to be thankful for the little bit of time we've been given with this side of the Scorpio clan.
Turkey Time
If you've been watching GH for any length of time, you know what happens on Thanksgiving: One, there's a Quartermaine-focused episode; and two, the meal prep ends with some sort of disaster that forces the family to order pizza. Last Thursday's episode didn't have enough time for the entire meal, but I'm not spoiling anything when I tell you that Thanksgiving 2023 followed this tradition.
Given the increasingly sad state of the Quartermaine clan, the show's gone to desperate lengths to pad out the family's holiday invitation list in recent years; this time around, those lengths included the return of Gloria Cerullo, mother of Lois and grandmother to Brook Lynn, last seen on the show more than 20 years ago. I wasn't watching at the time, so I have no emotional attachment to this character, but I thought her appearance was a nice touch (and it seems like it might lead into some sort of storyline, but that's for next week's column).
Ned and Olivia were there, of course. The family also let Cody come in from the stables, and he invited Sasha; Brook Lynn brought Chase; Yuri was on hand to help with kitchen prep (while calling Terry at her medical conference). Things appeared to be going so smoothly that Lois felt bold enough to predict that the family's Thanksgiving curse had finally been vanquished… right before the smoke alarm went off. It was all fairly silly and rather sweet, although as I sarcastically mentioned at the top of the column, I couldn't help thinking about the fact that poor Austin was neither seen nor mentioned all week after being unceremoniously shot to death in his own home the Friday before.
I'm being critical — it's right there in the name of the column — but before I close out the "major storylines" portion of this edition, I do want to pause to note that I'm thankful for a number of GH-related things, starting with the continued existence of this show I've watched on and off since at least the early '80s. We snipe and we grumble about the finished product, but I'd like to think we all do it in the same spirit: that of people who love and want the best for a series that, when it's really firing on all cylinders, exemplifies the unique and ever-potent possibilities that only exist within longform serial storytelling. And while I fully acknowledge that the current cast is way too large to allow for any kind of consistent coherent focus, I'm also thankful for the way GH has pivoted over the last decade, away from a show that always revolved around the same four damn people and toward a model that allows us to spend time with an array of supporting characters.
I could go on, but I'll stop with this: I'm thankful that you're reading this, and I'm also very thankful to Jenn for signing off on my out-of-the-blue request to start writing Critical Diagnosis for her site earlier this year. I'm having fun writing it; I hope you're having fun following along. And with that, let's move on to those column-concluding bullet points:
Trina and Spencer made up after he apologized profusely and said he needed to acknowledge he's Ace's brother and nothing more
Joss took Adam to GH after he took too many amphetamines and had a panic attack during a test
Alexis got Diane to say she'd represent Finn in his malpractice lawsuit… and then she realized she was already on retainer to the plaintiff's family
Kristina came to the recording studio to watch Blaze cut the vocals for a new song
Carly passed on Nina's offer to sell her half of the Metro Court, unknowingly complicating things for Nina
Alexis told Kristina about Andrea's miscarriage
Cody refused Maxie's offer to continue serving as the "male face of Deception," but Sasha overheard and interceded, saying she'd model with him
Curtis and Jordan decided to team up on his investigation of the Metro Court shooting
Jordan agreed to stay on as deputy mayor
Sonny offered to repay everything Gladys stole from Sasha; Sasha refused, asking him to donate it to charity instead
Gregory asked Alexis for another attorney referral for Finn; she brought in Martin, who agreed to take the case
Nina gave Curtis the Metro Court floor plans and access to the hotel mainframe to aid in his investigation
Blaze joined the Davis clan for Thanksgiving
The alpaca got more screentime
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