Well, after a few weeks of inconsistent pacing and general dawdling that seemed like it might be a purposeful way of keeping things steady before the union writers returned, General Hospital welcomed back Chris Van Etten and Dan O'Connor last week, and sure enough — all KINDS of stuff went down in Port Charles between December 18-22.
We know these guys well enough to already be wondering how soon they'll start running out of gas again, but for the moment, I have few meaningful complaints. One of their strongest characteristics remains an inability or outright refusal to tap the full potential of any given character or storyline, but soaps are so set in their ways that it's always refreshing and a little exciting when a regime changes; however briefly, you have no idea what's going to happen, but you can be fairly certain that whatever does happen will happen pretty quickly.
That's where we are with GH right now. Let's dig in.
Brennan Gets Busted
I'm not making any serious predictions based on a few days of plot developments, but at least on the surface, it definitely feels like Van Etten and O'Connor punched back in, looked at everything that was happening with Brennan and Hume, and let out a hearty "nope." Last week's developments in the Anna vs. WSB storyline felt like the storytelling equivalent of someone extending their arm and sweeping everything off a table in one fell swoop. I tend to doubt that's actually what it was — I suspect none of this is as "done" as it appears — but it was still pretty fun to watch.
The ball got rolling on Monday, when Brennan paid Carly another visit at Kelly's and told her that "opportunity abounds in Port Charles, and I intend to jump on every single one of them." Meanwhile, Anna was with Dante in the GH morgue, where he'd summoned her in order to give her the copy of the WSB report Forsythe had stolen from her. Again, she tried to shove him off the case in the name of his own safety; again, he reminded her that she's never turned his back on him, and he isn't about to start hanging her out to dry. With that out of the way, he showed her the three photos from the locker package, and after briefly giving him the whole "I could tell you but then someone else would want to kill you" routine, she caved and IDed Brennan as the director of the WSB.
With that, everything clicked into place: Anna speedily deduced that when he took over the Bureau, Brennan gained access to his own records, and decided to start tying up loose ends. This is where I say one more time that I don't think any of this makes any real sense — wouldn't Brennan think his past screwups were less worrisome once he took control? — but whatever, it is what it is, and what it is is a prelude to Brennan's speedy demise.
The dominos started falling when Anna recognized the 21-digit string of numbers in the wallet from the Forsythe package as belonging to a Swiss bank account, specifically the account where the missing money from the botched WSB op must have ended up. She called a contact at Interpol to arrange for a handoff; while that was going on, Dante called Sam to let her know their target was John Brennan. Sam, conveniently, wanted a caffeine fix, so she took her laptop to Kelly's and ordered some coffee — and Carly, seeing Brennan's face on the screen, told Sam he was her newest regular.
Brennan, meanwhile, was off with Hume, who told him he'd tracked Dante to his meeting with Anna at the morgue — and before that, they'd observed his journey from the train station to the bank where he opened Forsythe's package. Understanding that his jig was just about up, Brennan told Hume to "neutralize the cop and retrieve the report" and then headed back to Kelly's, where he ordered some meatloaf before noticing his face in a news article on Carly's phone. Confirming that she'd figured out his "secret," Brennan started getting threatening with Carly, making it clear he'd sought her out because of her proximity to Sonny.
Back at the docks, Anna's Interpol contact still hadn't arrived — but Hume had, and he opened fire on them just as they managed to duck behind some crates. Anna raised her hands in surrender and was just about to hand over the key to Forsythe's locker when Dante sneaked up behind Hume and incapacitated him, slapping cuffs on him just in time for Hume to regain consciousness and try to bargain his way out of custody. As all this was happening, Sam arrived and told Dante and Anna that she thought she might know how to find Brennan.
This was fortunate for Carly, who found herself in a dangerous situation when Brennan made a move to try and grab her — and true to form for Carly, she reacted by hauling off and hitting him in the face. Before Brennan could retaliate, Anna, Dante, and Sam burst into the diner with guns drawn and the authorities close behind.
And… that's it! The show obviously reserves the right to bring Brennan back at any point, but for now, he's in custody, Interpol has Forsythe's package, and it seems at least a little like Frisco could be asked to return as the completely offscreen director of the WSB. It also seems like Curtis' investigation into the identity of the Metro Court shooter might actually be a thread the show's actively interested in pulling; after Brennan's arrest, Dante told Sonny that Brennan was denying involvement in the shooting, and he was inclined to believe him, which means whoever fired on the pool that day is still at large.
After Brennan's arrest, in other words, it was all over but the crying — and the show took care of that too, when Anna summoned Valentin to her suite at the Metro Court. Although her reason for doing so was ostensibly so she could tell him that Forsythe, and not Charlotte, was responsible for burning her house down, they couldn't help but relitigate the end of their relationship all over again, trading I love yous and goodbyes one more time.
While Valentin was weeping softly in Anna's suite, Charlotte was back at home with Laura and Kevin — the latter of whom happened to catch her admiring her bullet wound in her bedroom mirror, murmuring "My first battle wound" with a satisfied smirk on her face. He was also alarmed to see Charlotte wearing a necklace with the Cassadine crest on the pendant, which she told him had once been Helena's and was left to her by Victor. Kevin quickly told Laura, who was understandably appalled.
There are lots of directions GH could go with this, and I find just about all of them intriguing. The canvas is so stacked with milquetoast weenies that any kind of true Cassadine — even a 15-year-old — could easily wreak havoc across Port Charles with little resistance. Jake is peripherally involved in all this; it'd be easy to reintroduce his own Cassadine programming. And of course, there's the Lulu angle as well. Color me cautiously intrigued.
Nina and Ava Can't Keep Secrets
The WSB storyline isn't the only one that received a rocket fuel injection last week — stuff really moved along on the Nina front too, starting with her going straight to Michael with the news of Ned's attempted blackmail. She wanted Michael to give her some made-up information she could take back to Ned and pretend she'd managed to dig up privileged dirt on Aurora; he briefly fought back, but when he threatened to leave her hanging and let Ned expose her, she threatened to reveal how long Michael had known about her involvement in Drew and Carly's SEC woes. This whole conversation took place in Rice Plaza, with an unseen Cyrus lurking just near enough to overhear everything.
Just smart enough to recognize a stalemate when he sees one, Michael went to Ned and handed over the voting proxy for half of his ELQ shares. Although Michael presented it as a truce, Ned immediately understood that he was really, as he put it, "doing Nina's dirty work," and he pressed him for a reason. After Michael explained that it'd hurt Willow and Sonny if the truth came out, Ned took the voting proxy and left with a warning: "I wouldn't trust Nina if I were you."
Michael then went to Nina and told her he'd "solved the Ned problem," but getting one blackmailer off her back wasn't enough to lighten her guilty load by much; when she and Sonny met up with Willow and Michael to light candles at church on Christmas Eve, Nina hung back to light her own candle for Nelle and pop into a confession booth for some quick absolution. Unfortunately for her, the priest wasn't in the adjoining booth — instead, Friday's closing shot revealed that it was actually Cyrus listening in.
In addition to blabbing to Michael about Ned's blackmail attempt, and inadvertently blabbing to Cyrus, Nina also blabbed to Sonny about Ava's harassment woes, blurting it out after he happened to catch the tail end of a conversation between them. Pressed for information, Ava caved instantly, telling Sonny all about the threatening notes, photos of Austin's corpse, and the gun left in her apartment. Just as quickly, Sonny demanded that she bring him the gun the following day so he could have Brick trace it.
It's All Coming Back to Esme Now
While Ava was busy trying to figure out who was stalking her at her new place, shenanigans were afoot at her old place — specifically in the form of a break-in from Esme, who started regaining her memory on Monday while she was decorating her tree. Troubled by the unexpected flashback, she somehow managed to make her way to Wyndemere late on Christmas Eve, letting herself in after breaking a window and eventually skulking all the way to the room where Nikolas held her captive while she was pregnant with Ace.
Clearly stunned (and not in a good way), Esme wandered out on the parapet, where a flood of memories continued to return — including the night she recorded Joss and Cam having sex as well as her decision to take a leap into the lake in order to escape. So where does she go from here?
Based on the way the show depicted Esme regaining her memory, it seems clear that she was never faking her amnesia and her ongoing Port Charles apology tour has been sincere — so we know she meant it when she reached out to Trina in the hopes they could be friends, and we know her resurgent feelings for Spencer are also sincere. But how does that jibe with the old Esme? Will she come clean and risk facing the consequences of her past actions, or will she start conniving again? Will she flee with Ace? I think we all know which answers to this question are the most interesting, but we're also very well aware that interesting isn't always GH's favorite direction to follow.
Kristina the Full-Service Surrogate
All abuzz with the news of Kristina's offer to birth their child, Molly and TJ saw their doctor on Monday, only to be crushed with the news that it'd be at least six months before the surrogacy procedure was at the stage where Kristina could even think about being pregnant. This seems like information they would have been given when they started talking about surrogacy as any kind of option, but they were shell-shocked anyway, with Molly left in tears over the news she'd have to be patient.
Fortunately for them, Kristina is all kinds of eager to have their baby, so when she heard the news about the timeline, she quickly countered with an offer to be their egg donor as well as their surrogate; after hemming and hawing for maybe ten minutes, Molly and TJ accepted. In the end, this would seem to mean we won't have to hear an extra six months of near-daily conversations about whether or not this is a good idea, so… good news, I guess?
Maxie's Place
It was shaping up to be a bit of a blue Christmas at Maxie's, thanks to her ongoing financial woes as well as the apparently mildly upsetting news that her ex-boyfriend Austin had been murdered. That all changed thanks to a surprise visit from Spinelli, who showed up sopping wet and explained that he'd temporarily lost his apartment due to a water leak. Maxie, naturally, insisted the he stay at her place until he could find a new one — and when she refused to accept rent from him, he pushed back, explaining that her electricity bill was about to spike. After she acquiesced and left the room, Spinelli and Felicia congratulated themselves on a job well done: Turns out there really wasn't any problem with Spinelli's apartment after all, and those two just hatched the scheme in order to come up with a new source of income for Maxie and surreptitiously help her pay down her debt.
Some holiday cheer also arrived in the form of Cody, who showed up before Spinelli and started handing out presents to everyone but Sasha, who he didn't realize would be there. Spinelli was unsurprisingly annoyed to see Cody at the house, coming right out and saying that Christmas is a time for family; after Cody gallantly excused himself, Sasha laid into Spinelli and Felicia gently convinced him that he'd be doing the right thing if he followed after Cody to apologize and/or ask him to return. Spinelli agreed, although on his way out, he told Felicia he feels like he's the only one who knows Cody "has something up his sleeve"; after he closed the door, however, Felicia muttered, "You're not the only one."
In fact, in keeping with the week's lightspeed approach to storyline development, Felicia unburdened herself to Maxie and Sasha after Spinelli left, telling them that she feels like there's something going on with Cody and adding that she hasn't been able to let go of the fact that she didn't actually see what was on the results of the DNA test he and Mac had done. Maxie dismissed it all by asking who wouldn't want to be Mac's son, but of course Sasha knows Cody absolutely lied about his paternity.
Spinelli, meanwhile, tracked Cody down at the stables, where he offered a truce before getting worked up about being the Jackal and yelling so aggressively that the horse bit him.
His Name Is Tobias
This last one isn't really about a storyline; instead, I'm setting aside a little space to honor the supremely well-written and -acted scenes featuring Elizabeth and Aiden last week. As they baked together in her kitchen, they talked about family stuff, including Cam's decision to go skiing with his new girlfriend instead of coming home for the holidays — which led to Elizabeth asking Aiden if he felt left out because both of his brothers are dating. Turns out he doesn't, because he's interested in someone too!
Elizabeth asked Aiden a couple of questions about this person, but for the most part, she just listened and let him talk — and when he told her that the object of his affection is a he and his name is Tobias, she simply thanked him for trusting her enough to tell her and they hugged. Orientation wasn't even part of the discussion. This makes nothing but sense given who Elizabeth is as a character, but it was still really delightful to witness. There really isn't much more for me to add, other than that if you only watch a few minutes of last week's GH, you should definitely tune in for these ones. Just perfect. Beautifully done.
That'll just about do it for last week, but before we go, here's a handful of bullet points running down the rest. See you next time!
Alexis agreed to go skydiving with Gregory
Chase told Brook Lynn that he needs this to be the "best Christmas ever" for his dad; later in the week, Gregory told her that his Christmas wish is to see their wedding while he's still in control of his facilities
Blaze let go of Kristina's hand when they ran into Brook Lynn at Rice Plaza, and although Kristina was clearly upset, she didn't say anything
Scott and Tracy had a delightful argument at the Port Charles Grill, which included a discussion of the time they "got hot and heavy" and were interrupted by Lee and Gail; eventually, he reminded her she was married to the "no-good criminal jackass" Luke, and she threw her drink in his face
Lois and Brook Lynn told Ned about the plan for Brook Lynn to gain control of Deception and give it to Maxie; Ned cautioned them not to take his mother lightly
Josslyn and Dex found Adam wandering the halls of her dorm and invited him to Carly's for Christmas Eve when he told them he wasn't going home for the holiday; he agreed, but stormed out before dinner when Joss offered to use money from her travel fund to send him home
Curtis told his family about the new procedure that could restore his ability to walk
Spencer showed up at the Robinsons' on Christmas Eve and tried smoothing things over with Portia while he helped them with their lights; after he left, Curtis asked Portia if she was moved by anything Spencer said
Stella and Marshall danced on the back patio and nearly shared a romantic moment
Monica hurt her ankle in the driveway, but was able to celebrate Christmas with the Quartermaines from a wheelchair
Tracy asked Olivia if she wasn't bothered by Lois staying at the mansion, and was shocked to discover that Olivia and Lois have never discussed their shared marital ties to Ned
Sam and Dante told Alexis about Drew enrolling Scout in Westwood without consulting anyone
Laura and Finn read "A Visit from St. Nicholas" at the annual GH Christmas party
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