.png)
For better or worse, it's starting to feel like the long period of utterly spastic writing that's made this one weird year for General Hospital is finally starting to settle down. Whether this is the version of GH most of the audience wants to watch is still very much an open question, but at least characters are following more or less the same trajectory from day to day, and at this point, that isn't something I'm going to take for granted from this show.
Even giving credit where credit's due, however, I'd still say GH is falling short where it really counts. If the writing has gotten more disciplined, for the most part, it's missing the spark of excitement. Most days, this doesn't feel like a show that's eager to entertain; we're getting a lot of conversations that don't do much to move the stories they're tied to, and much of what's on the front burner is either stale or borderline nonsensical. That said, I also feel like the show is still creeping toward whatever shape this regime has been trying to get it to take for the last however many months — there's a sort of gathering tension across the canvas. That feeling doesn't necessarily fill me with hope at this point, but I do want to see what'll happen. That has to count for something, right?
Just the Ex-Girlfriend
Our first item of business is of course the long-awaited breakup of Elizabeth and Finn, a.k.a. the least-loved GH couple since Peter and Maxie. When Elizabeth caught Finn drunk on tequila and making out with a random woman, we had every right to expect pyrotechnics — and the show more or less delivered, at least in terms of Finn acting like an absolute ass while Elizabeth calmly refused to have any of it.
Basically, Finn reacted to the situation by trying to make it about Elizabeth, accusing her of abandoning him in his hour of need because she couldn't stand being around him while he was grieving. When she pushed back, he did a 180 and started crying, telling her he hates himself and isn't right in the head, but it was too late — she told him they were over and turned to leave. When Finn grabbed her arm and started pleading with her to stay, in walked Jason, telling him to let her go.
Down but not out, Finn responded by actually sassing Jason and telling him he was in the wrong apartment. No one on this show ever does this, with the possible and very occasional exception of Tracy, so I was happy to see it happen even if the sass was coming from a tequila-addled doofus with no leg to stand on. When Elizabeth said she was leaving with Jason, Finn did another 180 and started getting nasty again, yelling about he stayed by her side when she was cracking up, so if she decided to walk out, then she could leave her keys and go — at which point she calmly dropped her keys in one of the tequila glasses and walked out, leaving Finn to sit and cry by himself while remembering key moments from their relationship.
Yes, the montage included the sap lick. No, I am not feeling well.
After leaving Finn's, Elizabeth and Jason made legions of Liason fans swoon by going to the Metro Court pool, where they dangled their feet in the water while talking about their past. These two characters do nothing for me as a couple, but they do have a ton of history together, and these scenes did a nice job of highlighting that while playing to the actors' complementary strengths; it was also good to see Jason copping to his deficiencies as a father and child-rearing partner, even if Elizabeth did let him completely off the hook.
Much of the rest of the week was devoted to characters talking about, worrying about, or arguing with Finn — chiefly Chase, who's convinced his brother is putting Violet at risk and needs to go to rehab.
I'm sure this storyline will give more than one actor some really good material to work with; hell, we've already seen it happen with Rebecca Herbst and Michael Easton. That said, I have to complain again about the speed with which it's being written. At this point, Finn has basically had a couple of drunken days — even if we're willing to accept that alcohol is suddenly a problem for him, it's still hard to understand the wisdom of confronting him this aggressively, especially given the extenuating circumstance of Gregory's death. He's behaving like an asshole, but everyone who's tried talking to him could have done it much more artfully, and it feels very premature for people to talk about carting him off to rehab and putting Violet in the Quartermaine mansion for the summer.
More than anything, this feels like the type of warp speed shift that tends to happen when an actor's about to leave a soap, which only adds weight to the rumors about Easton's time on GH coming to an end. I have no idea whether those rumors are true, but Finn would lift out of the canvas pretty easily, and it's definitely saying something that his current foolish state represents the most interesting he's been since he was sharing scenes with a lizard.
Anyway, here's where we are: Finn angrily rejected Brook Lynn and Chase's thinly disguised offer to have Violet stay at the mansion for a few weeks so she could hang out with the other kids, and he snapped "I know a wellness check when I see one" after Elizabeth returned to try and talk some sense into him again. Chase later went to Alexis, who refused to tell him whether Finn had been going to meetings, but she did agree to reach out to him. When we last saw Finn and Violet, they were about to head out to the Metro Court pool, which no doubt means there's some sort of watery disaster right around the corner. If only lifeguard Joss were on duty instead of off looking at apartments with Trina!
Drew or Don't
Nina started the week by pissing off poor Maxie, who kept desperately trying to keep their meeting on agenda but was continually thwarted by Nina's inability to do anything other than gaze dreamily off into the middle distance and blurt out stuff about Willow and Drew — the latter of whom arrived during the meeting to put Maxie out of her misery by allowing her to beat a hasty retreat. Once they were alone, Drew and Nina naturally started yelling at each other, which naturally led to another round of hate sex.
When not leaving sticky messes for the Aurora cleaning staff to wipe up, Drew spent last week focused on the question of whether to run for Congressman McConkey's soon-to-be-vacant seat. He asked Curtis for advice, and Curtis naturally told him he should do it; a few days later, when McConkey let himself into Drew's office unannounced and demanded that he either "fish or cut bait," Drew said he'd made a decision — he's running for office. He even seemed amenable to McConkey's suggestion that he change his last name from Cain to Quartermaine, but before they could really get into that, they were interrupted by Nina, who was blindsided by the news of Drew's pending candidacy but recovered beautifully, smarmily endorsing Drew as a solid candidate "despite his past legal troubles." After McConkey left, Drew growled at Nina for bringing up his recent imprisonment and she apologized, asking him to help her figure out whether it'd be "too much" for her to get a birthday present for Willow. In response, he told her Michael was throwing Willow a birthday party, and there might be something he — oh man, you guys, I'm so bored writing about this. Does anyone care? Anyone at all?
Cynthia Watros is fantastic — one of the best actors GH has. She's been handed meaty material in the not-so-distant past and reliably crushed it every time. How and why she's been exiled to this deadly dull corner of the canvas is totally beyond me. Nina and Willow have been around and around so many times that the question of whether they'll ever truly reconcile has lost whatever interest it ever had, and this whole thing with Drew running for Congress strikes me as an absolute non-story. If he wins, so what? If he loses, again, so what? The only way I can see this being interesting at all is if the campaign stirs up a secret from Drew's past, or maybe if some Cassadine decides to use his long-ago brainwashing to turn him into some sort of Manchurian candidate. At the moment, like everything else Drew has done since returning from the dead, it really just feels like a desperate attempt to come up with a compelling storyline for a character who stubbornly refuses to be interesting.
True Believer
I think I've reached the point where I don't want the Pikeman storyline to ever end. This damn thing has gone on for so long and tied itself in so many knots that I think its true purpose at this point might be for the show to turn it into some kind of performance art piece by having characters keep talking about it until GH is canceled or the sun burns out, whichever happens first.
Last week's tail-chasing involved Anna visiting Brennan at GH — a visit that was quickly interrupted by Jagger, whose blustery behavior gave Brennan the perfect setup to wait until he left before telling Anna that Jagger thinks she's the secret head of Pikeman.
Other than giving us another example of characters quickly revealing pieces of information for no apparent reason, this conversation didn't really go anywhere or amount to much; its main purpose seems to have been for Anna and Brennan to talk sexy spy circles around questions of good and bad, heroes and villains. While Anna needled Brennan about his shady past and tried getting him to explain why he broke bad, he talked about how Jagger is the dangerous one, because he's the type of law enforcement "true believer" for whom the ends always justify the means.
Jagger might be a true believer, but he isn't a particularly great FBI agent. Stymied by the FBI's firewalls, Spinelli and Sam put their heads together and devised a plan to part Jagger from his ID badge long enough for Spinelli to use it to get into the system — which is exactly what happened when Sam just so happened to bump into Jagger at the Metro Court pool. She pretended to slip, he caught her and called for ice from the attendant (Spinelli in "disguise"), and they chatted it up while Spinelli scurried into a hallway and gained entry to the FBI servers.
We're long past the point where any of this feels like it matters. I guess there's some amount of drama waiting to be mined from Sam's inevitable discovery that Jason abandoned his family in order to protect Carly from RICO charges, and I suppose there might be some way this discovery could be used to get Jason out from under the FBI. But as for why that even matters or how it'll improve the Pikeman storyline, I have no idea. Again: GH should just let Pikeman go on forever. The writers can stop torturing themselves with the question of how to bring this dumb old beast in for a landing and just use "Pikeman" as a never-ending excuse to have characters do things. Any characters, all things. Bring Stella into it! Adrian DeWitt! Dan Rooney's long-lost great-grandchildren! The deeply silly possibilities are endless.
Buyer's Remorse
Over the last 30 years or so, soaps have become a lot more willing to mess with a character's established characteristics if it means they can get a storyline from where it is to where they want it to go. It's an unfortunate devolution in the art of writing for the medium, but it has admittedly paid occasional dividends in terms of deriving drama from genuinely knotty situations.
I mention all this because the "Kristina's having Molly and TJ's baby" storyline is finally picking up some actual steam, albeit only because the writers have turned TJ into a raging asshole whose thoughts and motives seem to shift with the breeze. Last week, this took the form of an unbelievably childish tantrum in response to Molly telling him about Kristina witnessing Sonny's assault on Dex at Brook Lynn and Chase's wedding — one that included a number of atypically cutting remarks directed at Molly, saw him insisting he only went along with Kristina as their surrogate because Molly "had to have" it, and bellowing "Are you happy now?"
Molly, naturally, went to Kristina's apartment to vent, and because it's apparently the time of year for Port Charles residents to make mountains out of molehills, Kristina came away from the conversation wondering what her options for legal recourse might be if Molly and TJ broke up. She even went to Alexis to ask for her advice — advice Alexis refused to give, although she did pass along links to relevant statutes.
We've all seen something like this coming from the moment Kristina offered to serve as Molly and TJ's surrogate, and what they're doing to TJ is as disappointing as it is unnecessary, but it does include all sorts of possibilities for thorny conflict, which is the stuff soaps are made of. On the other hand, this story could very easily push one or more of these characters into a narrative hole so deep that the only way out is out of town. The idea of a Kristina vs. TJ custody battle is pretty juicy, at least on paper, but what then? Cynically speaking, if I had to guess, I'd guess that TJ will go away — the character goes through long periods of hardly ever being seen, and the Ashfords in general have really become an afterthought lately. They've been around long enough, and have been impactful enough, that this shouldn't be possible, but it happens to soap families all the time — soap families of color in particular.
I Have Only Myself to Blame
Speaking of characters being written like completely different people, let's close out by taking a look at Laura's quixotic quest to have Heather's conviction reappraised in the wake of her metallosis diagnosis. Now that word's out, a growing list of people are pretty pissed off at Mayor Collins for advocating on behalf of a convicted serial killer, and although she keeps telling anyone who'll listen that she doesn't want Heather released, that isn't holding a ton of water. Which makes sense, given that — as Alexis pointed out — once this thing ends up going before a judge, no one outside the court has any control over what'll happen, and Heather very well could end up going free.
This led to an uncomfortable conversation between Laura and Trina, who showed up at Laura's office to talk and ended up getting a little bit of an earful from Kevin, who followed her there after seeing a promo in the Invader promising that Trina would be "speaking out" about Laura's plans for Heather. This turned out not to be the case — just more of Adrian's clickbait — but it's still pretty clear that Trina and Laura are on opposite sides.
Far more entertaining was the Heather-related conversation between Diane and Alexis. Diane showed up at Alexis' Invader office with a full head of steam, righteously pissed off about the idea that her near-murderer might go free, but her anger turned to disbelief when Alexis pointed out that one of the legal precedents that could be used to spring Heather was set by Diane herself. Allegedly one of the finest lawyers of her generation, but also apparently too busy liking MAGA tweets to remember her own cases, Diane was chagrined to be reminded that her "tumor defense" in the Franco case isn't all that dissimilar from the metallosis defense that could be mounted on Heather's behalf. "If my would-be killer goes free," she moaned, "I have only myself to blame."
Heather, meanwhile, got a visit from Curtis last week, happily flirting with him until he introduced himself as Trina's father. This prompted a teary mea culpa from Heather — one that didn't work on Curtis, who asked her if she was working on her performance for the judge if her case is reopened. This, of course, was news to Heather, who put on a very convincing show of not even wanting to be released. Promising to tell Laura to call the whole thing off, Heather told Curtis that she's a rotten person and she's exactly where she belongs.
I've outlined my fairly negative feelings regarding this storyline before, but I'll say it again: It's fine to want Heather out of prison, because she's a great character in limited doses and the right context. She's been a marvelous pain in the ass for the residents of Port Charles for decades, and I hope she lives forever. I think we can all also agree that making her the hook killer was a terrible, stupid mistake; historically, Heather is a schemer with a bit of a psychotic edge, and that's how she should have stayed. But she's escaped from prison bunches of times; she's basically a magical gremlin at this point. It was never the slightest bit necessary to involve Laura in any of this. Heather should have just escaped, kidnapped Ace, and disappeared for a year or two.
On the bright side, I'm sure it'll be fun to watch Nancy Lee Grahn and Alley Mills play lawyer and client — and I'll stop there so I can end on a positive note. On to the bullets!
- Willow told Michael that seeing Drew "start fresh with Nina" has made her wonder if maybe she can do the same thing
- Dex and Joss are dating again
- Aiden and Elizabeth figured out that Jake wasn't where he said he was when he spotted Finn at the Brown Dog
- Sasha pointed out a nasty bruise on Cody, thus starting the countdown clock to whatever terminal diagnosis will eventually force him to get a transplant from Mac
- Sonny brought Kristina a stuffed animal to apologize for beating the hell out of Dex
- Stella told Tracy about her former fiancé Marcus, who recently died
- Speaking of Marcuses, Taggert remains missing and unmentioned
- Gio auditioned to play violin for Ava's upcoming gallery show; she gave him the job
- Gio also took Joss and Trina to tour the apartment above the Quartermaine garage, which they decided they want to rent
Comments
Post a Comment