Howdy, folks! I’m writing you from the air again this week, so this column may not be as in-depth as I try to be — but I think it’ll also be the last one I have to put together while traveling for a while, so hopefully you can bear with me if this Critical Diagnosis fails to do justice to what was a pretty pivotal week for the 2024 edition of General Hospital. You’re all already well aware of why I’m saying that, so… let’s just jump right in.
This Is All Too Familiar
The week kicked off with Sonny, Ava, and Selina bickering about the logistics of their staged meeting at the warehouse — an argument that proved moot when Anna, Dante, Chase, and Jagger burst in with a handful of cops and a bunch of guns drawn. While that group stood around shouting at each other, Jason and his partner were on the roof, where they had a sniper rifle aimed at Sonny’s head. Insisting he could still get the shot, Jason’s partner settled in to fire — but Jason touched his arm at the last second, sending the bullet off target and making everyone below duck and run for cover.
Their opportunity lost, Jason and his partner exited the roof, leaving the gun behind; moments later, Dante told Chase to help secure the scene, opting to head out alone in pursuit of whoever had fired. He found them pretty quickly — not hard to do given that Jason and his partner were just sort of strolling across the pier — although at first he only saw Jason, and from behind at that. He told him to stop, put his hands over his head, and turn around, and Jason obliged, leaving a befuddled Dante to murmur “What the hell?”
Dante’s shock made him a sitting duck for Jason’s partner, who popped out from behind a corner and shot him. Jason immediately dropped down to tend to Dante, reaching for his gun as he did so; his partner, noticing this, said “Watch your six” and fired at Jason — but Jason fired at the same time, killing him in the process. Perhaps sensing that he was in a part of Port Charles where it would take the police and paramedics longer to reach the docks than they would to fly to Sonny’s island, Jason stuck around to tend to Dante, wrapping his chest in a sweatshirt to stanch the bleeding, elevating his legs, and calling 911 before skedaddling into the night.
Joss, meanwhile, was headed back to Port Charles with Dex, and used the handy police scanner app on her phone(?!?) to suss out that there’d been gunfire near the water. The two of them were the first ones on the scene, and helped revive Dante after his heart stopped beating while they and Chase were waiting impatiently for the EMTs to arrive.
Back at the warehouse, a certain segment of GH viewers happily held out their veins for a blissful injection of Sonny being righteously read for filth courtesy of Jagger, who loudly recounted Sonny’s litany of sins — specifically those involving Karen Wexler — while Anna and an appalled/aroused Ava looked on. As many viewers have already pointed out, there really was a point in time when other characters could, and regularly did, get in Sonny’s face about what a dirtbag he is, but those days ended long ago; for the show to give Jagger such a lengthy forum to air his grievances was as unexpected as it was satisfying. And it all made sense, too — right down to Jagger accusing Anna of supporting Sonny mainly because of her own guilt over missing so much of Robin’s childhood. Unfortunately, the fun had to end after Anna got the call letting her know Dante had been shot, leaving everyone to disperse for GH.
Well, almost everyone. Before leaving, Sonny told Ava that Jagger was bound to find Spinelli’s equipment in the building, and would confiscate the footage as soon as that happened; trying to head Jagger off at the pass, he asked her to go to Spinelli’s place and secure a copy. Ava obliged, ending up side by side with Spinelli at his desk as they both watched the drone footage proving Jason was on the roof at the time of the shooting. They were both shocked, of course, but they didn’t have much time to react; as Ava scurried out, tablet in tow, Maxie walked in, intent on hashing things out with Spinelli.
Jagger, living up to Sonny’s expectations, quickly found the equipment and enlisted one of his G-men to hightail it over to Spinelli’s place, where he found Maxie and Spinelli and put them in handcuffs, announcing his intention to have them arrested for obstruction of justice despite being happy to see Mac Scorpio’s stepdaughter. They were let go, however, after Maxie let it slip that they’d seen someone on the footage before it conveniently disappeared from Spinelli’s computer; Spinelli, not wanting to see Maxie arrested, called up the backup and handed it over to Jagger.
Where was Jason while all this hubbub was happening? Bleeding behind a dumpster and sporting the same facial expression he uses for every major event, happy or otherwise.
Over at GH, all hell broke loose. While Heather was chasing Cyrus with a bone saw — more on that in a bit — Chase filled Sonny and Anna in on the details of Dante’s shooting, including the fact that he’d been hit with armor-piercing rounds and that his life was likely saved by Joss and Dex, the latter of whom hovered guiltily on the fringes while Sonny took it all in. Moments later, Sam and Olivia showed up, with Olivia taking no time at all to ask Sonny if the whole thing was his fault and remarking that “this is all too familiar.” (Cue another flashback to the immediate aftermath of Sonny shooting Dante in the chest.)
Sonny headed to the chapel to pray, as he always does in these situations, while Joss and Dex told Anna that someone had given Dante first aid and left a cell phone on the line with 911 next to him. Anna quickly resolved to have the phone tested and the call traced, telling both of them that the city owes them a great debt — which sort of makes me wonder whether the incoming writers are thinking about turning ol’ Dex into a cop, but that’s a question for a later column. Over at the chapel, Olivia was in the middle of apologizing to Sonny when she got a call from Ned; as she exited, Ava walked in with the tablet, telling him “there’s something you need to see right away.”
Sonny was predictably stunned by the sight of Jason on the roof, and Ava walked him through the multiple stages of his denial, eventually pointing out that Jason absolutely fits the profile of the inside man he always suspected was behind the attempts on his life — and also pointing out that a “man who goes by Stone” could very well be the man Spinelli affectionately and annoyingly refers to as Stone Cold. The whole thing led to a rather charged moment between Sonny and Ava that seemed like it was about to lead to a kiss before it turned into a long embrace.
Before anything else could happen between those two, Olivia burst back in, telling them that Dante made it through surgery; as she and Sonny left to see their son, Nina arrived, hanging around the chapel with Ava to try and squeeze her for information about the shooting. Unhappy about being left in the dark — and unhappier still that Ava was clearly hanging onto information she wasn’t willing to share — Nina expressed her fears regarding the risk of Sonny moving on, either by forgetting his feelings for her or burying them by moving on with someone else. Ava quickly insisted that she’d help Nina save her marriage… but she also flashed back to that moment between Sonny and herself in the chapel.
And while all that was happening, Carly came home to what she thought was a dark and empty house, only to hear Jason’s voice calling her name as she started trudging up the stairs to her bedroom. The two of them had an emotional reunion, albeit one that was hampered by Jason’s obvious pain from his own gunshot wound. Carly cleaned the wound, but before she could really talk to him about where he’d been and what he was doing back in Port Charles, there was a knock at the door from Anna, who made a beeline for Carly’s place after Jagger showed her the still of Jason on the roof and asked her if she could think of anywhere he might go.
Feigning disbelief after they showed her the still, Carly quickly switched from stunned to enraged when Anna asked if they could search her house — but when she told them to get the hell out, Jagger told her they didn’t need her permission, because they had a warrant. Jason, bleeding on the stairs nearby, blinked in silence.
That’s all a lot, and I’m glossing over some stuff just to get it down to this unmanageable length, but the fact that I was able to break it down like this in spite of things taking place over a series of days and involving a bunch of different characters speaks, I think, to the punchy and admirably lean approach that’s currently being taken by whoever’s writing this stuff right now. The editing is a little less frenetic, and the narrative is more tightly woven. Whether this is highly deliberate, or simply a reflection of where this story is right now and how it has pretty much fully unfurled itself into an umbrella covering just about the entire canvas, only time will tell. For the moment, however, as much as I might be annoyed by Jason’s return and yet another mob storyline gobbling up the show, I can’t deny that the show is at least doing what it’s doing pretty well.
Last week’s Jason/Sonny stuff was a pretty even blend of action and exposition. It all did more or less what you’d expect it to, but there was room for a handful of nice little grace notes — for example, Carly and Drew ending up babysitting Rocco and Danny at the Quartermaine mansion while everyone else was at the hospital, and calling Laura after seeing Rocco acting out. Laura’s arrival at the mansion led to a sweet conversation between her and Rocco that included a Sly reference as well as the revelation that she’s good enough at playing Super Mario Bros. that she’s “actually been known to do a few speed runs.” There was also the moment when Carly told Jason she wished she could call her mother to help with his gunshot wound, and he immediately told her not to call Bobbie, at which point she had to tell him that Bobbie was dead.
It’s little stuff, but it means something in the overall picture, and it was especially nice to see these things given how speedily the writers are zipping through Return of a Major Character signposts that would ordinarily take weeks if not months to take place. I know it can’t last — if this is the GH I know, love, and sometimes also like, the coming week will be extra slow to make up for all this action — but I’ll take it for as long as we get it.
Also, Jagger can yell at Sonny forever as far as I’m concerned. I like this guy. A lot.
Granny Wars, Ace Edition
Almost everything else that went down last week can be dealt with in the bullet points, but the beginning of the week included a bizarre little interlude between Heather, Cyrus, and Laura that probably deserves its own paragraph or three. It all started on Monday, when Laura invited Cyrus over to her place so she could lightly interrogate him over what went down with his attempt to get information out of O’Neil; although she was openly suspicious of the way his mic conveniently “cut out” just as O’Neil was unburdening himself to Cyrus, they had to table the conversation when Laura realized Ace had a fever and decided to take him to GH.
Also at GH? Heather, who was being examined by Portia and Elizabeth after complaining of hip pain and a rash at Pentonville. Although neither of them seemed particularly eager to believe anything Heather said, Portia still ordered a scan, which turned out to be inconvenient for Laura and Cyrus; just as those two showed up to get Ace looked at, Heather was being walked past the nurses’ station, and she started shrieking at Cyrus to get away from her grandson.
Shortly thereafter, Heather was back in her hospital bed, cuffed to the railing — but she’d somehow finagled her way into possession of a paper clip, which she used to free herself, and then used the cuffs to choke out her guard. Hiding momentarily in her room to avoid being spotted by Amy Driscoll, whose presence onscreen can only mean that the Nurses’ Ball is almost here, Heather quickly made her way to the chapel, where she surprised Cyrus by waving around a bone saw and threatening to kill him before kidnapping Ace and living out the rest of her days as the mother Esme could never be to him.
Before she could do any of that stuff, however, Laura came in behind her and knocked her over the head with a vase or something, knocking her out long enough for the authorities to arrive and get her all cuffed up again. She didn’t go far, though — as she was being led out of the chapel, she started complaining that she couldn’t breathe, and collapsed in the hallway.
Where the hell is all this leading? I don’t have any idea, but if I wrote GH, I’d use it as the perfect opportunity to send Heather and Ace off the canvas for a few years. Unlike some of you, I’m not advocating for Cyrus’ departure/death; as far as I’m concerned, he can stick around at least long enough for the new writers to decide whether there’s anything interesting to be done with the idea of him as a preacher with a radio show. But Heather is definitely best in small doses, and we all know soaps have no use for infants who are neither sick nor kidnapped, so they may as well subject this kid to the latter fate, at least for now. Let him come back in two years as a 16-year-old or something.
I think that’s probably enough for now. On with the bullet points!
- Brook Lynn went to Tracy and narced on Lucy, prompting an ultimately sweet conversation between the two of them that led to Tracy admitting she wants Brook Lynn at Deception because she has fun with her, but she thinks work is the only thing they have in common; Brook Lynn agreed to stay at the company, but only if they agreed to get to know each other better
- Marshall told Curtis that his misdiagnosis is official, and Stella told them both that she’d been able to track down the signature of the doctor who originally gave it; although Marshall was initially adamant about not wanting to pursue it, Curtis convinced him that they should work together to find answers
- Alexis bristled when Nina brought gossip columnist Adrian DeWitt to the Invader for a visit, and later told Diane how much she misses being a lawyer
- Maxie confronted Sasha and Cody about playing Cupid for her and Spinelli, telling them “I am opting out of this pro bono love connection… look inward”
- Chase and Brook Lynn discussed her fears regarding being a cop’s wife
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