Between last year's writers' strike and the revolving door that's led into and out of the General Hospital writing team ever since, this show has felt so unstable for so long that I hesitate to say anything about its creative direction with any degree of confidence. And yet… for better and for worse, last week's episodes did feel like the work of an actual team with an actual plan. I don't agree with or like all of it, but at least it didn't feel like the work of a kindergartner making up a story as they go along.
Does this mean brighter days are ahead for GH? As always, I would dearly love to think so. In the meantime, however, we still have a dead baby to deal with, as well as a truly gross love triangle looming while Sonny gets to play the victim for the 10,000th time. Let's dive in, shall we?
Blaze of Glory
If we can afford to operate under the assumption that the show will stabilize at some point, then I suppose we can give ourselves enough hope to look forward to the day when characters and storylines will stop making abrupt 180-degree turns. For now, however, the current regime still seems to be ignoring and/or undoing previous decisions — and last week, Blaze was the one who paid for it.
After being sidelined by Natalia in the immediate aftermath of Kristina's swan dive into the Metro Court pool, Blaze finally made her way to Kristina's hospital room last Monday — but only after a conversation with Brook Lynn, who shared the exciting news that Miguel Morez had offered Blaze the opening act slot on his upcoming tour. Upon learning that it'd mean leaving town that night, she declined despite Brook Lynn's attempts to change her mind, explaining that she couldn't possibly leave Kristina at such a fraught moment.
That all changed before the end of Tuesday's episode. In yet another recent example of GH characters behaving like lunatics in order to serve the writers' agenda, Kristina was ice cold to Blaze, rebuffing all of her attempts at conversation and saying she was too tired for company. While Blaze was trying in vain to connect with Kristina, Natalia was in the GH lobby, learning about the tour from Brook Lynn — and after Blaze left Kristina's room, Natalia swooped in, begging Kristina to do everything she could to make sure Blaze took the gig.
You've seen this kind of thing go down on your favorite daytime shows before; you probably don't need me to break the rest of this down in too much detail. Kristina told Blaze she was too broken to love anyone; Blaze vowed to stay by her side; Kristina pushed her away; Blaze agreed to leave, but fired Natalia on her way out of town. The end. For a final dash of salt in the wound, Natalia went to Sonny to let him know she'd be heading back to Puerto Rico because there was nothing left for her in Port Charles, and in response, he decided he suddenly felt like investing in Deception, but only if they hired Natalia as CFO.
I'm going to pause here to say something obvious, but which bears saying anyway: This is yet another way in which the Molly/Kristina/TJ story has been fatally undermined by offensively horrible optics. It takes some real effort to use a single storyline to insult and demean POC and LGBTQIA+ viewers, but these writers have pulled it off by killing a mixed-race legacy baby mere days before they spun a formerly front-burner couple on a dime and broke them up for no good reason. Of course, we all know that ABC Daytime has always been chickenshit when it comes to same-sex couples, who historically receive the same "you'll get lots of attention for six months and then disappear without warning" treatment afforded characters of color. That doesn't make it right, however — and writing off Blaze while hanging onto Natalia, the teary yet unrepentant homophobe, makes it at least twice as lame.
It's 2024. If shows like GH are meant to survive, there really needs to be room for characters who aren't straight and/or white, and they need to be used in a way that doesn't simply offer lip service to those concerns. Soaps, at their core, are supposed to depend on history to inform change, and vice versa; longtime viewers bitch when veteran characters aren't used, but that doesn't mean we want to see them stay the same forever. There is a world in which GH can honor its history and continue to incorporate the faces and places we love while continuing to evolve. Decisions like the ones made in this storyline over the last couple of weeks highlight the ways in which daytime in general is still clinging to the past. Why invest in the future — a baby for TJ and Molly, a lasting queer relationship — when you can stick with the tried and true by shoving Maurice Benard and Eva LaRue's characters together and continue worshiping at the altar of the Q ratings gods?
Well. Long story short, Blaze and Kristina are no more, but we still have Natalia, who is now apparently somehow the first CFO that Deception has ever had. (Again: This company trades on the stock market? Fucking how?) When Tracy heard that Sonny wanted to invest, she sensibly rejected his offer, but she was quickly overruled by Brook Lynn and Lucy — as well as Lois, who was assured by Jason that the money was clean, despite the fact that Sonny seemed to take all of 30 seconds to decide he wanted to invest in the first place. I have nothing against Eva LaRue as an actor, and I'm in favor of any storyline that brings the possibility of rescuing Tracy from having tea parties with Violet or playing backgammon with Cody, but GH hasn't had any idea what to do with Deception since it was revived, and I'm not sure I have any faith in that changing now.
As for Molly and TJ, they're lightly at odds over her unwillingness to fully reckon with the death of their baby — but they're also more on the same page than they realize. When Molly visited Kristina in her hospital room, Kristina shared the photos that Brick's people took of her confrontation with Ava, expecting Molly to immediately see that Ava was to blame. Molly didn't vocally disagree with Kristina, and she still hasn't told anyone what she thinks about the pictures, but she didn't need to — thanks to Kristen Vaganos, who has become arguably the definitive Molly over the last couple of weeks, we saw her confusion and concern without her having to say a word. TJ, meanwhile, made his way to the Jerome Gallery, where he told Ava he was only there as a grieving father who needed to know everything that happened — and even though Ava's version of events remains self-serving and overheated, you could tell he was willing to believe the worst where his former surrogate was concerned.
While those seeds of doubt were sown regarding Kristina's story, Jagger latched onto the idea that if he could say Ava was a witness in a federal investigation, then Kristina confronting her over the subpoena would amount to tampering. If it sounds like Jagger has resorted to clutching at straws, well, he sort of has — and he only clutched harder once he learned that his attempt to use Clement the pharmacist as bait for Sonny had predictably turned to shit.
If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand why this show feels the need to make Sonny the victor in every conflict — and specifically to do it in a way that makes every other person look like an ineffective idiot. When Jagger said he'd squirrel Clement away and lure Sonny into trying to get at him, we knew his plan probably wasn't going to work, but it could have, and it could have worked in a way that put these characters in a place where everyone knows enough about everyone else that they're all forced to co-exist in Port Charles without anyone pulling a trigger on anyone. You know, the basis of a solid, long-term soapy conflict. Instead, here's what happened: Scott suggested Wyndemere as an impromptu safe house, volunteered to ferry Clement to Spoon Island, and in doing so, unwittingly led Jason straight to the building where Jagger was keeping Clement.
Jason showed up while Scott was out getting glazed donuts and coffee. He banged on the door. Clement, who is very dumb, opened it. From there, the interrogation lasted maybe two minutes; all Jason had to do was glare at Clement before the pharmacist crumbled and told him everything — from Valentin initially paying him to dilute Sonny's meds, to Ava later figuring out what was going on and blackmailing him into going full placebo. What Jason didn't realize, though, was that Scott returned while he was there, and called Jagger to let him know Clement had been discovered.
Okay, so back to Jagger's straw-clutching. Alerted that Jason had gotten to Clement, Agent Cates improvised, high-tailing it out of Ava's gallery and heading to GH, where he arrived just in time to arrest Kristina as she was being wheeled out after being discharged.
Needless to say, this is all very silly. Jagger arresting Kristina because of what happened in Ava's suite is just as dumb as Anna arresting Ava after looking at a few surveillance photos. Jagger is being written as an insane person, but when he told Ava that those photos don't necessarily tell the same story the PCPD wants them to tell, he was right — and the show backed him up by letting us see Molly's mute horror when she saw the pictures for the first time. There is no case against Ava. There is also no case against Kristina. So why are the writers wasting our time with this?
This story has done horrible things to Ava for no good reason. It has all but destroyed Jagger as a viable character, also for no good reason. It has, for the millionth time, dismissed Scott's incredibly legitimate grievances against Sonny, and once again made him an utterly ineffective adversary (and a coward to boot). Once it's finally, blessedly over, this story deserves to be tossed into the same memory hole where Alicia Montenegro and Casey the Alien reside. It isn't fun, it isn't exciting, and it's long since stopped making any sense. I can't even bring myself to look forward to Sonny finding out that Valentin was the one who originally tampered with his meds — these things always end the same way.
All in the Family
Willow's overwhelming horniness toward her husband's uncle really ramped up last week. She couldn't even bump into Drew on his way to pick up some prescriptions for Monica without getting flustered, so it made a certain amount of sense when, after visiting Kristina in the hospital, Willow approached Elizabeth to say she'd realized that leaving GH was a terrible mistake and she wanted to return to the nursing staff. She described this decision as the result of an epiphany she had while adjusting Kristina's IV, but the viewers knew the truth — Willow was really just running away from her position at the New Tomorrow Institute because it forced her to work with Drew.
Of course, what Willow doesn't know is that her mom has a plan to save her from all this, one that specifically involves jumping Drew's bones on a regular basis so he has neither the time nor the stamina to go looking for sex with his nephew's wife. Nina put that plan into action early last week, turning a political strategy session over dinner into a sleepover — and when Drew did his walk of shame into the Quartermaine kitchen the following morning, he arrived just in time for Willow to tell him she was going back to nursing and quitting New Tomorrow.
This news naturally gave Drew a sad, so he followed Willow out to the Quartermaine boathouse, where she was gathering supplies for the fun day at the beach she and Michael had planned while Kristina was laid up in the hospital grieving for her baby and waiting to hear whether she'd need a hysterectomy. Drew asked Willow whether she was quitting because of him, which she confirmed by admitting "I can't stop thinking about you, and it's wrong."
Meanwhile, Nina was at the park to see James — but first, she had a conversation with Maxie about the night she'd just had with Drew, while just a few feet away, Felicia gave Mac a hard time about his refusal to forgive Cody. This left Spinelli as the only adult left to watch James, which of course meant it was extremely easy for James to simply scoot out of the park and head over to the Quartermaine mansion so he could see Cody. Felicia eventually succeeded in changing Mac's mind, but by the time Maxie heard the good news and went to share it with James, he was already long gone.
James had, in fact, made his way to the Quartertmaine dock, where he was busy trying to rescue his frisbee from the water when Nina and Willow came by looking for him. Smarter than half the adult population of Port Charles, he hid in the boathouse while Nina and Willow stood around on the dock talking about how Willow's ovaries burst for Drew because he "saved her life" in Greenland and also Michael doesn't rinse out the sink after he shaves. Because the door to the boathouse was wide freaking open, James heard the entire conversation, and while he seemed appropriately bored while it was going on, it still seems pretty obvious that we now know who's destined to spill the beans regarding Willow's hormonal cravings for Uncle Drew.
First, however, James had other important business to attend to — specifically falling in the lake while reaching for his frisbee, and then loudly splashing around just in time for Cody to come running up, jump in, and save him. Hot on Cody's heels was Mac, who arrived mere moments after Cody's thrilling rescue and was there to see James hugging Cody and saying "You saved me."
And just like that, the beef between Mac and Cody was over. Mac apologized to James for saying he couldn't take riding lessons from Cody, he told James that Cody is his uncle, and everyone hugged everything out. It was kind of a weird and anticlimactic way for the saga of Cody's paternity secret to end, but it was genuinely sweet, and at least the writers had the good sense to leave that loose thread with James holding Willow's secret. I'm not sure where this leaves Cody, though; I'm guessing that whole business with his mysterious bruise has been dropped and forgotten, and it's been so long since anyone mentioned his long-buried secret with Dante that I'm assuming that hint of a storyline has been abandoned as well. With Cody and Sasha now officially and happily embarking on a relationship, and Cody and Mac now openly, happily father and son, it feels like these characters are destined to be back-burnered for a bit. I would love to be wrong about that.
Jack's Back
Hey, remember when Brennan told Anna that he'd been demoted to desk duty at a WSB outpost in the hinterlands? Surprise, surprise — he was talking about Port Charles. And because no one in Port Charles has ever heard of an apartment, he's staying at the Metro Court, where he surprised Carly with what was supposed to be a romantic chat in his room before Anna came barging in and demanding to know what the hell was going on.
After Carly beat a hasty retreat, Anna accused Brennan of deleting the recording that exposed Carly to RICO charges, which he would neither confirm nor deny ("Do the legwork, I'm not going to be doing your job for you"). She also rightly pointed out that it's pretty strange for the WSB to open a station in Port Charles, although she didn't state the obvious, which is that it would have made a lot more sense for this to happen in the '80s, when the city was full of current/former agents and it seemed like every DVX plot for world domination ran right through town. In response, Brennan admitted that the Bureau certainly had an ulterior motive for making this move now, although he insisted he had no idea what that motive might be.
Anna then hypothesized that Valentin was happily chilling in the Alps, and Brennan pointed out that if he is, he's only able to do so because someone tipped him off before the FBI could get him. He also insisted that he doesn't have any nefarious intent where Carly's concerned, and only wants to woo her — which he did later when they saw each other at the bar, telling her that he had his pick between Port Charles and Bali, but picked the former because he wanted to be near her.
Carly's world, y'all.
Anna and Brennan faced off again later in the week when they were both summoned to the mayor's office by Laura, who told them she wanted them to team up and find Valentin. Anna pointed out that this would be beyond the scope of her jurisdiction as the police commissioner, and Brennan begged off by saying the WSB tries not to interfere with FBI business, but Laura seemed undeterred — at least until she got a call about Lulu.
So what's Brennan doing here, and what does the WSB want with Port Charles? I have no idea; I only pray it has nothing to do with Sonny. Prior to Ron Carlivati's run as head writer, GH spent years distancing itself from its WSB era; in fact, when Robert and Anna returned during the monkey virus storyline, I'm pretty sure neither of them were working for the Bureau. In recent years, WSB storylines have either focused on rehashing old stuff (e.g. Anna/Brennan/Valentin) or on how it's a really bad place to work (e.g. Dante's PTSD and Frisco's firing). I don't think it'd be such a bad thing if we had some new, younger agents come to town and save the world a few times, but I wouldn't bet on it; I think it's far more likely that this new WSB office will turn out to be a single-storyline deal at best, and instead of getting some good old-fashioned derring-do, we'll get another round of "all government agents are bad."
I repeat: I would love to be wrong about this. Make it happen, GH writers!
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