Hello and welcome to another edition of Critical Diagnosis, fellow General Hospital viewers! We took a break from the business of recap and commentary last time in order to acknowledge the excellent job the show did while paying tribute to Bobbie, but now that it’s back to business as usual in Port Charles, it’s time to start thinking critically again.
At the moment, I’d say we’re back to the same sort of glass half-empty/glass half-full scenario that the show presents us with during its better moments. The storyline driving most of the action right now is one I actively hate… but it’s starting to take the shape of an umbrella, which I tend to appreciate and support. Certain characters still seem to be getting used as hollow plot drivers rather than human beings doing things that make sense… but the action is overall fairly interesting at the moment.
All of that being said, I would very much like to kick Friday’s cliffhanger in its smarmy little throat. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Cyrus in the Middle
If “Nina Called the SEC” is becoming an umbrella story, then Cyrus might be its handle. Although Nina set everything in motion — once again, by reporting an actual crime — it’s Cyrus who’s got his bruised and bloodied fingers in the middle of everything. For a guy who’s currently confined to a hospital bed, he fueled an awful lot of action last week, starting on Monday when Nina begged him to drop the assault charges against Sonny while Dex the dope lurked outside Cyrus’ hospital room, syringe full of fentanyl at the ready.
Here’s what we know about Nina’s conversation with Cyrus so far: After initially rebuffing her plea to drop the charges, he eventually agreed when Nina countered his call for justice by saying she could offer him something he wants even more. Though we’d later learn their deal has something to do with Cyrus going on television, all we initially heard was Nina on the phone with someone, saying something about a “brief negotiation.”
Anyway, as soon as Nina left Cyrus’ room, Dex made his way in — no small feat, considering his plan to assassinate Cyrus was nearly busted by a random nurse who happened to notice him walking around the hospital in scrubs with no ID badge. Finding Cyrus asleep, Dex was all set to inject his IV line with fentanyl when Sonny — who’d suffered something like a crisis of conscience following a visit from Kristina — popped up outside the door at the last second and told him to call it off.
Right at that moment, Cyrus’ eyes snapped open and he grabbed Dex by the wrist, saying “What are you trying to do to me?” Before Dex could answer, Sonny let himself in, asking if he and Cyrus could have a private conversation. Cyrus readily agreed, calling Sonny’s timing “positively providential” and adding that he had news that would lift his old adversary’s spirits. That news, of course, was that he’d be dropping the charges against Sonny — and Sonny, of course, was immediately suspicious rather than grateful or relieved; in fact, he demanded that Cyrus tell him who changed his mind, and Cyrus refused.
It didn’t matter much, though, because Nina caught Dex in scrubs and quickly deduced that he’d come to the hospital to kill Cyrus — and the way she freaked out, coupled with the fact that Dex had seen her in Cyrus’ room, led Dex to tell Sonny he was pretty sure it was Nina who changed Cyrus’ mind. Again, rather than showing any signs of gratitude, Sonny stalked over to Nina and told her to stay out of his business and stay out of his life completely. Later, Sonny told Dex he had a plan to make Cyrus wish Dex had killed him after all.
Cyrus’ busy bedside later welcomed a visit from Esme, who came to him in a desperate bid for help after she learned that Spencer had allowed Nikolas to abscond with Ace for parts unknown. As Esme saw it, Cyrus must still have solid links to the criminal underworld which he could use to find Nikolas and force him to return her baby — which she predicted Cyrus would be willing to do because Ace is Laura’s grandson and therefore part of Cyrus’ family.
Agreeing to help her but remaining vague as to exactly how, Cyrus placed a phone call to Laura, summoning her to his room so he could narc on Spencer, who he’d also invited for a visit. Laura, as she so often is these days, was loudly appalled that Spencer let Nikolas take Ace, and didn’t put a lot of stock in Spencer’s explanation that he was certain Esme had regained her memory, which in his mind meant that Ace would be safer on the run with a man he’d never met than he’d be with his conniving psycho of a mother. (Cyrus, for his part, did a masterful job of egging the whole thing on while appearing to try and be helpful.)
It was a fairly rough week overall when it came to Laura trying to get anyone to listen to her. Backing up a bit, Laura spent Monday at the courthouse, where she pulled Ava aside before Esme’s hearing and asked her to drop the charges for breaking and entering Wyndemere. Ava again refused, although it ended up being okay for Esme anyway; after Martin cut a deal with Molly, Ms. Prince only ended up with six months’ probation. Ava was livid and confronted Molly, who coolly pointed out that nothing was stolen and no one was hurt, so it wasn’t exactly in the city’s best interest to pursue a trial; after everyone else left, Trina stuck around to let Esme know she’d soon be leaving for Paris and taking Spencer with her.
It was this conversation that gave Nikolas time to convince Spencer that Ace would be better off with him. These were some solid scenes, honestly; although I remain concerned that Nikolas has been hollowed out of most of his defining traits and now seems to exist mainly to goose the story a little bit before disappearing again, it wasn’t unpleasant to see Nikolas and Spencer approaching the wreckage of their relationship from a place of quiet reflection, with relatively little recrimination. This was some of the best stuff Nicholas Alexander Chavez has been handed in a long time, and he was terrific; Adam Huss, meanwhile, continues to make a case for himself as a viable long-term Nikolas if the show can ever figure out how to get him out of the series of weird corners he’s been written into.
Anyway, I digress. Nikolas is gone again and has Ace with him, Spencer let it happen and now he’s trying to convince anyone who will listen that Esme has her memory back, and Cyrus is deep in the mix, undoubtedly with a plan known only to him. Laura, meanwhile, after hearing that Spencer scared Esme into not calling the police by threatening to tell them she’d gotten her memory back, went ahead and called Dante over Spencer’s futile objections.
Nina’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
After leaving Cyrus’ room and being growled at by Sonny, Nina tried striking up a conversation with Willow, who was absolutely not having it. Making things even worse, Carly and Drew were also at the hospital, and after leaving the chapel following a conversation about what great parents they are — we’ll get to that later — they came upon Nina pleading with Willow to just talk to her. Carly butted in, because Carly, and before long, everyone was trading accusations. It was the perfect moment for Nina to let it slip that Michael had known about her involvement in the SEC affair long before the truth came out — a revelation that sent Carly and Drew storming out of the hospital and only further deepened Willow’s resolve never to speak to Nina again.
From the hospital, Drew and Carly went to the Quartermaine mansion, where they confronted Michael one at a time. Drew went first, and because he’s now Post-Pentonville Bestubbled Drew, who is supposed to be different and edgier and angry, he spent a lot of time opening his eyes real wide and yelling about how Michael prioritized Sonny’s happiness over their friendship. When he was done, he stalked off to Charlie’s, leaving Carly behind to tell her sweet Motherboy that of course she understands why he did what he did, because he’s his mother’s son, and she’s made all sorts of questionable decisions in the name of protecting her family.
Which is honestly somewhat evolved on Carly’s part. It’s too bad it came in the context of a gross moment and led to a scene that left the anti-Caroline crew tearing their hair out at the end of the week, but again, we’ll get to that in a minute. First, we need to talk about Carly meeting Drew at Charlie’s, where he brushed off her talk of moving on and told her Nina had to pay, and that he knew how to make it happen.
Turns out he wasn’t lying! Nina showed up to the Crimson offices on Friday and was shocked to find a moving crew packing up her stuff. When she insisted there had to have been a mistake and demanded to know who hired them, out strolled Drew, who reminded her that while she might be Crimson’s editor-in-chief, he owns half of Aurora, and Aurora owns Crimson, which gave him the power to fire her. Although she fought back for a bit, Drew ultimately handed her a severance agreement and told her that if she didn’t sign it, he’d shutter the whole magazine and everyone would lose their jobs. Thus cowed, Nina agreed to sign the paperwork, but insisted Drew was cutting off his nose to spite his face, because she’d made the magazine so thoroughly her own that she’d become irreplaceable.
Smiling smugly, Drew told Nina he’d already replaced her — and then in walked the new editor in chief: Carly, smiling twice as smugly as Drew.
Again: Glass half empty, glass half full. Because readers, this is a SUPER soapy twist, and on one hand, I really have to hand it to Van Etten and O’Connor for remembering Drew had any kind of power over Nina, let alone dreaming up a way to have him use it in order to further parallel and retrench the war between Nina and Carly. On the other hand, I find the war between Nina and Carly to be 31 flavors of tiresome, especially when — as is the case 99 times out of 100 — Carly’s written as the victor.
From a broader perspective, it is deeply silly to even think that Carly would be anything other than in way over her head when it came to running a magazine, but the same was true of Nina when she took over Crimson. Carly as an EIC is still at least 65 percent more believable than Michael as a CEO, so I’m not going to worry about that part of things. Honestly, if it weren’t for the way GH continually goes out of its way to give Carly so much time to berate her enemies and act superior while most of Port Charles kisses her butt, I don’t think I’d have much of a problem with any of this — but as things stand, I’m bracing myself for another endless wave of Carly, Drew, Michael, and Willow talking non-stop about how Nina is the worst. What I want to see happen now — what should happen now — is for Nina to evict Aurora and Crimson from the Metro Court. But that would mean building a new set, which costs money, so it probably won’t happen.
Before we leave this collection of characters behind, I should note that before Michael was confronted by Drew and Carly, he told Ned that he wanted his ELQ voting proxy back — a demand that Ned acceded to surprisingly quickly. Tracy happened to be in the room when all this went down, which led to some really entertaining Tracy moments, starting with her learning of Michael’s blackmailing and telling him she’d never been prouder of him; when Ned and Tracy scurried off to the kitchen so she could try and eavesdrop on whatever Drew and Carly were saying to Michael, she warned Ned that he needed to be ready to make his next move at ELQ before Michael stopped being preoccupied with Nina. As she put it, "The only way to come out on top is if you're standing on everyone else.”
All the ingredients are here for a good old-fashioned ELQ free-for-all, with Nina using her connection with Valentin to leverage his help using the company to get back at Michael, Ned taking advantage of the situation to continue trying to take the company back from Valentin, and Tracy whispering in Ned’s ear the entire time. Are we going to see it happen? I want to, so probably not, but at least the possibilities are rich; I’ve only thought about it for 30 seconds. I’m sure there are better ideas that could stir up even more drama. Just please, for the love of god, at least give Carly a paper cut or something.
Adam’s Afterschool Special
I feel like this whole Adam business is more of a cul-de-sac designed to try and educate the GH viewership about real-world issues, but it took up a lot of oxygen on the show last week, so let’s talk about it. On Monday, Joss went to Adam’s dorm room, where she found out he was gone — that he’d taken off with a bottle of vodka he’d pilfered from his roommate. She quickly found him in the park, plastered, sitting alone and noodling on his guitar. He rebuffed her attempts to get him to leave with her, but their argument abruptly ended when he passed out and she found a bottle of pills on him, at which point she had him taken to GH.
Once he got there, Finn took his case for some reason, acting quickly to resuscitate Adam despite a nurse pointing out that Finn is supposed to have someone else sign off on any course of action before he does anything. He and Liz rightly pointed out that there wasn’t any time to do so, but this just raises the question of why in the hell Finn was working anywhere near an emergency room under the current conditions of his employment. The plot gods giveth, the plot gods taketh away, and apparently the plot gods also sometimes getteth twice as drunk as Adam on a park bench.
Anyway, this set up a whole series of events: Adam getting his stomach pumped, Joss loudly telling everyone in earshot that they couldn’t call Adam’s parents because it was their fault he was there in the first place, Adam’s parents being called anyway, and finally, Adam’s dad showing up, demanding to see his son, and being a perfect dick to Portia before getting an earful from Joss and insisting that she be removed from the hospital. In between, Portia had some frank talk with Adam, telling him that if they determined that his overdose on “cold medicine” had been an honest mistake they could let him go, but if they felt that he was a danger to himself, he’d need to be placed under a psychiatric hold; meanwhile, in the chapel, Carly and Drew favorably compared themselves to Adam’s parents, and at the desk, there was the inevitable discussion of how teen anxiety and depression are an epidemic these days.
It’s all very well-intentioned and I’ve definitely disliked things more on this show, but I also tend to believe that anything that happens on a series like this one should come with threads that can be connected to other events, and I can’t for the life of me see any way in which Adam’s attempted suicide turns out to be anything other than a public service announcement about looking for warning signs and not being a jerk to your kids. Again, there are worse ways to eat up airtime, but the characters involved in this stuff could be used in better ways — particularly Dex, who’s saying just enough about the things he feels like he has in common with Adam to make me wish these cards had been shuffled in a different order. We know next to nothing about Dex, other than the fact that he had an unhappy childhood and he stinks at his job; if the show really wanted to give us a cautionary tale about emotional stressors on young people, they could have had Sonny give Dex a lil’ mafia deputy and written a tragic friendship between those characters. Doing it that way might have fleshed out Dex and given us a reason to really care about the character being used to teach us a valuable lesson.
Welp. Adam’s father is here now, he’s just as much of an asshole as you might expect, and that brings us to the end of the major plot developments on GH last week. Without further ado, here are your bullet points!
- Finn and Liz met with Muldoon’s other doctor, who played a game of “hypothetically” with them and more or less said she referred Muldoon to an oncologist, but he never followed up
- Jordan got her first lead in the Metro Court shooting, and was promptly abducted on the docks by two men who refused to identify themselves
- Blaze stopped by Kristina’s place for a wild evening that included finding out Kristina had been inseminated earlier that day, breaking up over Blaze’s fear of anyone finding out they were dating, and then getting back together
- Taggert remained unseen and unmentioned for another week; perhaps he’s off having drunken conversations with Harmony’s equally and just as suddenly forgotten ghost
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