On the positive side, it feels like almost anything could happen right now. On the negative side, the pacing is all over the place, it feels like stuff is being dropped and forgotten at random, and the show's lead storyline has spent over a year coming across as though it's being made up on the fly. Some of this is par for the course when new writers come in. Some of it is… annoying. In addition to all of that, I'm jetlagged and all kinds of out of sorts right now. Let's see how cranky I get in this Critical Diagnosis column.
The Room with No Windows
Okay, so Jason's back. Where has he been, and what the hell is he doing? The short answer to those questions is still "we have no idea," although there are some less than encouraging signs.
Stone Cold started the week on his bridge, which I guess was the natural choice for the writers, but it really just made him look like an idiot — for a guy who's spent decades professionally evading the law, he certainly wasn't super smart about next destinations after leaving Dante bleeding out on the pier. I mean, where would you look if you couldn't find him at Carly's place? Jagger and Anna evidently reached the same quick conclusion, because they caught him there — and then watched helplessly as he jumped into the water.
Jagger immediately assumed the jump killed Jason, but Anna knew better. Unfortunately, neither of them had the presence of mind to check the next most likely place he'd hide out — namely, the goddamn Quartermaine grounds, where he staggered into the boathouse and spent a night passed out on the floor before being found by a vape-craving Danny the next day. Like a lot of what happens on this show, what went down next was half sweet, half shitty: After greeting his son with the same warmth you'd expect for a waiter bringing an overdue order of fries to the table, Jason sent Danny back to the mansion for a first aid kit, at which point Danny took a detour to the gatehouse and got Michael. (There was also time for some fatherly wisdom from Jason regarding how to handle a gun and keep secrets from one's mother.)
Long story short, Michael ran straight to Willow, who of course agreed to dress Jason's wound while Michael took Danny back to the mansion. When she was done, Michael returned and had a brief conversation with Jason, who told him that he hadn't been injured in the tunnel collapse on Cassadine Island — he'd just been cut off from the rest of the group, and by the time he emerged from another exit, he was accosted by men with guns who took him to "a room with no windows" where a man used some major leverage to convince him to do a job as "a military contractor… a mercenary." What that job is, Jason wouldn't say; he only told Michael that it hasn't been completed yet, and if it isn't completed, something will happen that Jason can't live with.
Oh, and also? After everyone left him to spend another night in the boathouse — which STILL hadn't been scoped out by the cops — Jason flashed back to an encounter with Jagger at FBI headquarters, where Jagger told Jason that he had evidence of RICO violations that carried a prison sentence of at least 20 years.
Despite the fact that the Quantico set had a window, the obvious implication here is that Jagger is the one pulling the strings, and that his vendetta against Sonny has led him to… kidnap an aging mob enforcer from a private island and force him to do his bidding? It would be an understatement to say that this feels awfully messy to me; even if I wasn't the type of anti-Sonny viewer who'd be predisposed to hurl my laptop out a window if one more cop turns out to be the secret bad guy in a Corinthos story, I would object to this apparent twist on narrative grounds. I really want to believe GH was fucking with us when it aired that scene.
I mean, what makes the most sense? What's the most interesting option? Up 'til now, we've seen Jagger openly admitting to hating Sonny, but insisting — even in a private conversation with his former father-in-law, who hates Sonny more than anyone — that he has a duty to uphold as an FBI agent and he can't just stand idly by while murders are being committed. This, to me, is the type of internal conflict that soaps are built on, and it also sets up Jagger as a long-term antagonist for Sonny with a legitimate axe to grind — the type of character this show could use a hell of a lot more of. It's a hell of a lot more interesting than abruptly giving Jagger a mustache he can twirl while forcing Jason to do his bidding.
It's also very sloppy. Ten minutes ago, we had O'Neil telling Cyrus that the guy behind the shootings was a dead man who went by Stone, but if Jagger's in charge, then Jason is but a pawn, and why would the show go to the trouble of giving us "Stone" and then showing Jason going by Jacobs or Jameson or whatever Hamish called him before they shot each other? Like I said, this story has felt for a long time like it's being made up as it goes along, and now that we're moving into what had better be the last few chapters, all this squishy uncertainty verges on unforgivable.
We'll see where all this goes. If I wrote the show, then the Jagger scene would be a red herring, Jason would be under Pikeman's thumb, and the leverage would be something wild like, I dunno, the fate of AJ's secret lovechild with Faith Rosco. I'd make it super soapy instead of making Sonny the hero of every story he's involved in.
[Rubs face wearily] That's about it for this story as of last Friday, although I suppose I should briefly mention that the writers have wasted no time pitting Carly against the rest of the town when it comes to believing Jason didn't shoot Dante, who remains hovering between life and death. Selina showed up at the Savoy to tell Curtis that it looks like Jason's responsible for his partial paralysis. Sam is super pissed at the idea of Jason letting his family think he's dead so he can go around shooting people, and Sonny is surprisingly willing to entertain the notion that his old pal has turned against him; aside from Anna — who has the nagging feeling that there's something she isn't seeing in this investigation — it's all down to Carly when it comes to angrily shouting about her best friend's innocence.
I'm Not Gonna Be Here to Watch
Speaking of people annoyed by Carly's relentless Jason boosterism, we need to spend a minute talking about Drew — specifically about the way he showed up at her house and knocked on the door instead of letting himself in because, as he put it, "I didn't want to interrupt in case my brother was here." This was just the prelude to a lightning-quick breakup speech in which Drew basically took himself off the board without really even giving Carly a chance to speak.
On one hand, we should all be celebrating the demise of one of the least successful pairings GH has tried to cram down viewers' throats in recent memory; on the other hand, the way this was written was deeply wack. Obviously, it's written in the stars for Drew to come in second to Jason, but for Drew to bow out the instant Jason returns to town just because Carly didn't think to call and tell him? That's the show's agenda speaking through the characters. But whatever, all's well that ends well, I suppose — Crew are no more, Carly has been relieved of duty at Crimson, and Drew is already being chem-tested with Jordan, who definitely deserves better.
The one semi-interesting wrinkle in all this is that after dumping Carly, Drew went to the Quartermaine gatehouse to tell Michael — but Michael wasn't home because he was off dealing with Jason. After he got back, Michael obviously didn't tell Drew he'd been with Jason, which is bound to start another disagreement between them once it all comes out.
Like Mother, Like Son
Hey, remember when GH turned Franco from a psychopathic maniac into a leading man by giving him a brain tumor that was responsible for all of his crimes? Well, it looks like his mom is getting the same storyline treatment. Evidently seeking a way to clear the hook murders off Heather's ledger, the writers started dropping anvils early last week, when they had Laura point out that while Heather has always been a royal pain in the ass, she was never homicidal before. That was followed by the revelation that Heather has metallosis, a rare condition that's basically heavy-duty metal poisoning. Turns out she has an artificial hip that's been degrading and flooding her system with nasty chemicals that, uh, made her kill a bunch of people? Laura, who is hilariously Heather's medical proxy, signed off on the surgery to replace the faulty implants.
Soaps gotta do what they gotta do to keep characters around, I guess. I'm not going to complain too much about this; for me, accepting mystery illnesses is just part of the suspension of disbelief that you agree to when you start watching these shows, and I've always found Heather to be pretty effective in limited doses. She's also been part of the show for nearly 50 years and never should have been turned into a serial killer in the first place.
All of that being as it may, the fallout from this diagnosis will inevitably be ridiculous, and I'm expecting much if not most of it to be difficult to watch. But after we swallow our medicine, we can get our old Heather back, and hopefully she'll use her new hips to kidnap Ace so they can both disappear for a few years.
Young, Poor, Angry, and Black
Like a lot of soap characters, Marshall Ashford was introduced with an air of mystery. Unfortunately, he's spent nearly three years suffering under a writing regime that could never seem to figure out how they wanted to solve that mystery — he showed up looking like a guy with mysterious connections and a surprising ability to beat the hell out of people (offscreen), then became a guy who'd abandoned his family because he found out he was schizophrenic, and then became a guy who actually wasn't schizophrenic after all, but had been misdiagnosed for whatever reason. Last week, just in time for the news that Robert Gossett is no longer on contract, we learned a series of things in rapid succession: First, Stella found the doctor who misdiagnosed Marshall; second, the doctor in question died late last year; third, Kevin just happens to be very familiar with that doctor, and was on shift so he could fill in a few of the blanks.
Long story short? The guy who "treated" Marshall was infamous in psychiatry circles for targeting patients who were, in Kevin's words, "young, poor, angry, and Black."
Where the show can possibly take any of this, I have no idea. We've seen how gutless ABC can be when it comes to allowing GH to display any kind of serious social conscience — remember how quickly the story of TJ's racial profiling disappeared? — so I'm not anticipating a real discussion regarding the history of Black patients being abused by the medical establishment. And now that his history has been quasi-cleared up, it would seem that Marshall has no real purpose on the canvas, at least on a day-to-day basis; I'm guessing he'll join Stella in the "appears infrequently, mainly to dispense advice" club. Maybe the two of them can go off and figure out what the hell happened to Taggert.
And that'll about do it for this column! I leave you with your customary smattering of bullet points:
Spinelli and Maxie talked things over in her car, which wouldn't start, and were last seen on Monday; they're presumably starving to death by now
It finally dawned on TJ that his kid will be related to Sonny, and he had a sad
Finn got to have the smoking cessation talk with Jake, and then told Liz that Aiden had confided in him about Tobias. WE GET IT, HE'S GREAT WITH ELIZABETH'S BOYS
Blaze met her mom at Kelly's, only to storm off after her mom attributed Blaze's relationship with Kristina to some sort of trauma-induced, post-Linc "experimenting"
Gregory realized he can't hack it as a columnist anymore and resigned from the Invader
Dex and Joss argued about him leaving, had sex, and then argued some more; eventually, Nina showed up and retaliated against snippy Joss by letting it slip that she'd seen Dex leaving Cyrus' hospital room dressed as an orderly
Diane, after suddenly deciding she could get Alexis' disbarment overturned, invited her to work at her firm
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