In my last column, I spent some time talking about how General Hospital always seems to follow an action-packed week with one in which nothing much seems to happen — and then the show turned around and gave us one of the most impactful weeks I can remember in Port Charles. I guess this means the week we're about to watch might be dull in comparison, but honestly, after this run of episodes, maybe we could all use a bit of a breather. Let's dive in…
Dude, I Don't Care About Bread
We opened the week with Jason at the PCPD, cooling his heels in the interrogation room after turning himself in. Chase naturally called Anna to let her know what was going on, but before she arrived, Jagger showed up — and Jason waived his right to counsel so the two of them could talk alone, which plainly shocked the hell out of Chase.
The ensuing conversation made it clear that Jason has been working for Jagger — but Jagger isn't really the bad guy here, which means I thankfully wasn't tempted to make good on my threat to send my laptop sailing through the nearest window. It turns out Jagger had the goods on Jason, and used that leverage to make him an asset in the FBI's investigation into Pikeman — specifically by sending him undercover and making him a Pikeman employee. Unfortunately, all those years of work went down the drain when Jason's return from the dead became public knowledge, leading to a stern warning from Jagger that if Dante were either to die or implicate Jason in his shooting, he'd face steep charges and the Bureau would leave him twisting in the wind and/or send him up on the same RICO charges they used to force his cooperation in the first place.
After Jagger left, Anna arrived, and wasted no time asking Jason straight up if he shot Dante. He told her he didn't and she told him she believed him — but she added that she did want to know why he was talking to Jagger without the presence of counsel, making an offhand comment about the two of them possibly bonding over "the good old days." Confused, Jason asked her what she was talking about; when Anna pointed out that he and Jagger went to high school together — something Jason wouldn't have been able to remember thanks to his head injury — something clicked for him. He pounded the table, stood up, motioned for Anna to sit across from him, and unloaded.
If you read this column regularly, you know I'm not a big fan of most characters in the Corinthos/Morgan axis, partly because I resent how much GH changed to rebuild itself around them in the early aughts. Jason in particular has been, for me, virtually a non-character — just a guy who stands around blinking until his programming kicks in and he saves the day. I don't understand the appeal, and I took it with an enormous grain of salt when Steve Burton made some public comment about getting into different layers of Jason during this stint. I mention all this here because I want to make it clear that it's no small thing when I say I was invested in the Jason I saw last week. Not only did Burton have more dialogue in five episodes than he's probably had in entire months during his GH tenure, but Jason's finally in an unfamiliar position — forced to actually explain himself for once, and in a way that makes it clear he's genuinely conflicted about his actions and where they've led him.
Which explains why he held nothing back when he unburdened himself to Anna, telling her how he'd been pressed into service by the FBI and worked his way up the Pikeman ranks before finally being asked to kill Sonny at Selina's warehouse. He told her he wasn't there for the Metro Court shooting or the attack on Sonny's island; in fact, he only knew about them at all because he and Hamish had to review the details in order to understand what went wrong before they took their own shot. Jason also explained that he had no idea there was a drone filming him when he was on the roof, and he also had no idea why Pikeman was targeting Sonny in the first place — he was only there to take orders and carry them out. Both of them were furious at Jagger for using his foreknowledge of Jason to semi-bamboozle him into all this, but it's a lot more nuanced than simply "Cates = bad guy," which I appreciate.
This was, once again, the most animated Jason has been in years, possibly ever, and I got a kick out of seeing it. The sole bum note for me was Jason finding out about Britt's death, which moved him to say something like "She just had such a great smile"; if that's all the writers could think of, they'd have been better off having him say nothing at all.
But Jason wasn't done receiving guests at the PCPD interrogation room — far from it. Next on the list was Sam, who also led off by asking him if he shot Dante; like Anna, she said she believed him when he told her he wasn't responsible. Unfortunately for Jason, she was still pissed about a laundry list of other things, including his admission that he took help from Danny and told him not to tell Sam they'd seen each other. Justifiably livid that he'd put their son in danger of being charged as an accessory to Jason's crimes, she told him he was a danger to their son and warned him to stay away. I know there are viewers who think this makes Sam a hypocrite, but I think it just makes her a responsible mother; she and Jason have been apart for many years at this point, and she's in a steady, committed relationship with someone who hasn't spent most of his life breaking the law for money. It only stands to reason that she'd take a strongly jaundiced view of Jason's whole deal right now.
Anyway, Sam left and Diane entered, pleading futilely for Jason to give her something she could use in his case; after he sent her away empty-handed, Brook Lynn showed up, semi-sheepishly explaining that her relationship with Chase gave her special privileges at the station, up to and including waltzing into the interrogation room to deliver a note from Monica that read "I believe in you. Love, Mom." Tears were shed, Jason asked Brook Lynn to tell Monica that he loves her and he's sorry, and his very busy day of seeing visitors while handcuffed came to a close.
But while people weren't talking to Jason, they were talking about him. On Monday, we got our first real glimpse of how this is affecting Elizabeth, who told Willow that she really wanted to believe in Jason's innocence, then came home to find Jake telling Aiden he's sure Jason shot Dante and he's only looking forward to the time when they can all go back to thinking Jason's dead again. Later in the week, Danny and Jake got into it at the boathouse, eventually coming to blows over Jason's guilt or innocence while Aiden haplessly pleaded with them to stop.
And in the midst of all that, we also saw Jagger go to Bobbie's, where he ran into a very hostile Carly and told her Jason was in custody. Carly being Carly, she dropped everything and ran to the PCPD, only to be forced to watch from outside the interrogation room while Jason talked to Anna. (Yes, the look on her face was delicious. No, I will not apologize for saying that.)
Carly and her bestie didn't spend a ton of time together last week, but the writers made their scenes count. Naturally, a lot of it centered around the Big Arraignment, which was handled by Molly — which is utterly ridiculous, even taking into consideration the sweet-ish scenes that saw Robert confessing to Anna that he'd fobbed it off on Molly because he was afraid of making Robin angry. Everyone converged on the courthouse, which created ample opportunity for a list of people to argue about Jason's guilt: Molly argued with Kristina, Carly argued with Olivia, and Kristina argued with Joss, who made her mom proud by loudly insisting that Jason had to be innocent. This tracks for Joss and Carly, but also, I just have to say that Josslyn is really suffering at the hands of this new regime. She's been less than likable for some time now, but the new writers have turned her into a complete idiot — just last week, she was beyond appalled by the sudden realization that Jason murdered people for Sonny, but now she's ready to go to war against anyone who could even entertain the idea that he might have shot Dante.
Speaking of war! While everyone else in town was debating whether Jason might be guilty, Sonny was already firmly convinced that his longtime capo had absolutely turned against him, and he spent basically the entire week skulking around in his penthouse and telling various people that he didn't owe Jason nothin'. Ava stood by his side, ready to make him a drink or caress his face and tell him he could depend on her, and although the show is being way less than subtle with the way it's laying track for a Sonny/Ava redux, these scenes still managed to be much better than they had to be, including some nice, atypically quiet work from Maurice Benard. It all came to a head late in the week, after Jason was released on $5 million bail (paid for by Michael, natch) and he headed to Sonny's penthouse, where he found Carly shrieking at Sonny for not showing up to the arraignment.
I kinda want to hand it to the writers, actually; under most circumstances, Sonny and Jason's reunion would have been way overblown, but this just lasted a few minutes, and included maybe a couple of lines between the two. For the most part, it was just Carly screaming at Sonny about how "Jason had his reasons" for doing whatever he did, Jason admitting he became an FBI informant to save his own skin, and Sonny accusing them both of being traitors before ordering them out of his home.
In the aftermath of that confrontation, Sonny left the room — which meant that when Olivia texted him to let him know Dante was awake, no one was there to see Ava move Sonny's phone across the room, and no one was any the wiser when Ava lied and told Sonny she'd called the hospital and gotten the good word. The two of them ended up sitting next to each other, the perfect situation for Sonny to lean over and plant a long kiss on Ava before whispering goodnight and going to bed.
After leaving Sonny's, Carly and Jason ended up at Bobbie's, where they had a chat over a couple of bottles of beer; eventually, talk turned to where Jason would be staying, and given that he didn't have immediate access to money, Carly insisted that he take a room over the restaurant. As luck would have it, the room where Carly herself stayed many years ago was recently vacated, so in traditionally soapy fashion, things get to come full circle yet again. Meanwhile, across town, Brennan was in a prison transport van… which suddenly and suspiciously came to a halt by the side of the road.
Who should be there to greet the van but Valentin, who handed the driver a wad of cash before hopping in to have a quick and not terribly friendly debrief session with the ex-WSB boss. A lot of things were said, but I've already typed a bunch of words and it's getting late, so I'll cut to the chase: Valentin basically is Pikeman, at least as long as Brennan is behind bars, and he's making plans to unseat Sonny by monkeying with his bipolar meds and waiting for him to behave so erratically that he brings his empire down all by himself.
This is an Extremely Soapy Twist, and I can appreciate it on that level, although I'm admittedly conflicted on many others. For starters, I'm not sure I like the idea of sacrificing Valentin on a narrative altar by making him the big bad in a Sonny story. Yes, it's true that these two have never liked each other, and it's also true that Valentin was the one who hooked Sonny up with Pikeman in the first place, so it makes a certain amount of sense that he'd be the one pulling the strings. On the other hand, making Valentin into Mr. Pikeman knocks a few of the legs out from the heartrending breakup he had with Anna, and it also turns Sonny into that much more of a victim in this storyline, which is something I don't think we need. As the show has taken great pains to remind us lately, Sonny is a fucking asshole — the person trying to take him down can be good or bad or anything in between, and there are plenty of off-canvas characters who might have fit the mold and also given viewers just as much of a surprise as Valentin, without all the post-fallout implications that Valentin will have to deal with.
To put it another way, we can all be fairly certain that Valentin's gambit will fail, and everyone will find out he's been gunning for Sonny, and he'll have to take it on the nuts from Anna and Nina and a list of other people who will tell him what a jerk he is. It's twice as annoying because there are countless legitimate reasons for trying to wipe Sonny off the board — the only reason to put Valentin in this spot is to make it so a character we know and love is guilty of doing it purely for profit, and ill-gotten profit at that. It's three times as annoying because GH has pretended to care about the shitty side of Sonny's business lately, and the Valentin development makes it clear that even if Sonny's bad, the show is intent on making his enemies worse. Again.
Anyway, it's pretty obvious that this wasn't the plan from the beginning, and I'd wager that James Patrick Stuart is probably on his way out after this story's finished, but I enjoy watching Valentin in glibly rotten mode, so I'll just enjoy whatever we get to see between now and Sonny's inevitable triumph. You can bet I'll bitch about that part, though. And as for Ava? She's clearly up to something. Is she in cahoots with Valentin? I guess we'll find out soon.
Welcome Back, Detective
Ever since the shootout on the pier, Dante's health has been the biggest sword hanging over Jason's neck — a point that was reinforced repeatedly throughout last week's episodes. As long as Dante remained unconscious and unable to corroborate Jason's version of events, Jason was not only in increased legal jeopardy, he was also vulnerable to all sorts of rumors — including the one spread by Selina when she went to Curtis and told him she suspected Jason and Sonny of secretly working together in the years since Jason's disappearance on Cassadine Island. It's a theory that proved difficult for Curtis to ignore; as he told Laura early last week, what could be more perfect for Sonny than having a hitman everyone thought was dead? Of course, that doesn't do the slightest thing to explain why Sonny would want to go to the trouble of having Curtis killed, let alone in a very public place, but still.
Dante's condition also exacerbated tensions between Jason's children, former romantic partners, and various friends/family members — all of which impacted Sam, who was in absolutely no mood to deal with hospital bureaucracy when she found out GH brass were planning to transfer Dante to a long-term care facility. After Sam got a little pissy with Portia about this, Stella stepped in to explain the benefits of the facility, but also to hear her when she explained her fears, particularly the ones surrounding Rocco and how she imagined he might feel if both of his parents ended up under similar long-term care. This was a little detour that could have amounted to very little, but Kelly Monaco has seemed re-energized lately and Vernee Watson is always outstanding, so it was a treat to see them trading lines — even if Dante ended up regaining consciousness mere moments after Stella left the room.
I think a lot of us were probably nervous that Dante wouldn't remember the shooting when he woke up, and his amnesia would end up dragging things out for months, but at least for the moment, the new writers aren't in the mood to mess around. Before the end of Friday's episode, Dante had already told Anna that Jason not only didn't shoot him, but that Jason is the reason he survived the shooting.
This all gets Jason off the hook for attempted murder or murder one, but his cover is fully blown; both Valentin and Brennan are now aware that he'd been working for Pikeman under an assumed identity. Jagger will presumably be eager to charge Jason for the RICO stuff that put him under the FBI's thumb, but I suspect Anna will talk and/or threaten him out of it. My guess is that we'll see Anna, Jagger, and Jason team up to take Pikeman down once and for all… with an assist from Dex.
Yep, that's right — as has been heavily hinted lately, Anna ended up offering Dex a job at the PCPD last week. Although he gave her a little guff, pretending he didn't need the gig, he seemed to be singing a different tune when he bumped into Joss later on, telling her he thought he might have been given a reason to stay in Port Charles.
Dex, as we have repeatedly seen, is barely qualified to carry Sonny's briefcase, let alone serve as an asset to any kind of police department. I also tend to doubt that the current version of GH will have enough patience to put him through the police academy; if anything, he's more likely to act as an informant before being awarded insta-cop status after this storyline is over. It's laughably unrealistic, but that's a meaningless complaint when it comes to job switching on a show like this, and it could open some interesting avenues for the character, starting with the likelihood that he'll be a pariah among the PCPD rank and file. If they insist on keeping Dex around, I think I'd rather see him like this.
Sorry About Spencer
Tabyana Ali hasn't had a ton to do lately, but she really had some time to shine last week courtesy of some long-overdue scenes that saw Trina finally reckoning with her grief over Spencer's apparent passing. The show really did Trina dirty after Spencer and Esme went overboard, and this is something Korte and Mulcahey have been working their way toward addressing; they put it out in the open last week, with Trina owning her feelings of jealousy and betrayal against everyone celebrating Jason's return — including Joss.
Despite how some folks reacted to these scenes, it wasn't like Trina tore into Joss; she was just honest about questioning whether Jason might have been the one who shot Curtis, and about being resentful because Jason got to return from the dead and Spencer didn't (yet). Of course, Joss isn't innocent in this — we've seen far more of her blubbering to Trina about Dex than asking her how she's doing — and that was addressed too, in realistically halting fashion. It all worked; death simply makes people uncomfortable, even people as self-absorbed as Carly's kids. (I laughed out loud at Michael bumbling into Bobbie's, seeing Trina, and muttering "Sorry about Spencer" — a full three months after his death.)
Trina also had a heart-to-heart with Stella, whose status as Port Charles' magical dispenser of good advice makes me uncomfortable, but is hard to fully quibble with since Vernee Watson plays this stuff so well. Urging Trina not to suffer in silence, Stella suggested a full-on memorial for Spencer, which led Trina to visit his grave and unload her pain. Ali always delivers, especially when she's handed some solid writing; here's hoping she gets some more of it despite the really unfortunate firing of Shannon Peace.
That's just about it for last week. I leave you with a small assortment of bullet points:
Fearing for Gregory's health, Brook Lynn and Chase agreed with Finn's suggestion that they move up their wedding, which will have to be downsized as a result
Drew told Alexis that Nina is back at Crimson, and will therefore be too busy to mess with her despite deciding to also hang onto her position as publisher of the Invader (you're very rich, Nina; leave some jobs for the rest of us)
Kristina gave Nina grace, telling her she hopes things work out between her and Sonny and lightly suggesting that perhaps she reach out to him
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