Soaps air year-round, but there's something special about a summer storyline, isn't there? Such a rich history of beloved daytime characters embarking on the type of high-stakes adventures that can't help but keep viewers glued to the edge of their seats. Jesse and Jenny on the run! Luke and Laura on the run! Frisco's return from the dead! It's only natural that General Hospital would want to add to that finely woven tapestry by giving us a summer storyline for the ages in 2024 — one involving a ruthless arms dealer whose attempts to undermine a mobster with a heart of gold end up leading to a custody battle between middle-aged criminals, which in turn leads to a… dead baby and a suicide attempt that's thwarted by hallucination?
Happy summer, GH viewers! Hope you're enjoying your escapism!
I'm kidding, of course. Based on the ratings, I can only assume that fewer and fewer are enjoying what our show is putting out, and I can't blame them; GH is in a very bad way right now, and I'm not counting on the umpteenth "reset" in recent memory doing enough to fix it, especially since the showrunners are evidently still convinced that hitting the "return of a well-liked character" button over and over again will be enough to lure lapsed viewers back to the fold. I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but I really can't remember the last time I thought this show was consistently exciting, and the folks who are currently at the helm don't fill me with confidence — especially after the events of last week.
My Daughter Is Dead Because of You
Welp, they did it. I really didn't think they'd decide to kill the TJ/Kristina/Molly baby, but they did — and aside from hoping to pad out certain actors' Emmy reels, I really can't understand why.
As I alluded in last week's column, I am against the deaths of soap babies in general; most of the time, whatever minimal narrative utility it might serve is outweighed by the grim scar it leaves on the canvas. There's also rarely a good way to do it; far more often than not, the viewer ends up being subjected to misery porn in order for actors to exercise their tear ducts on cue. All this goes at least double when the baby in question is related to a core family, because soaps by their very nature depend on multi-generational drama, and you can't have that if you don't bother to create those characters and keep them around.
Anyone who's watched a soap knows that babies are bad for drama; they can't do much besides get sick or get kidnapped, and they often tend to have a dampening effect on the types of storylines their parents are able to be involved with, so on more than one level, I can understand the temptation to kill off an infant or two. But again, if you're talking about core families, I think you kinda have to tough it out — especially if the parents in question are characters who don't historically appear on a regular basis anyway.
All of which is to say that in my opinion, the death of the baby Kristina was carrying for Molly and TJ makes no goddamn sense. There was no shortage of long-term conflict waiting to be written out of that situation, and more often than not, Molly and TJ are largely invisible; it's hard for me to see how making them parents would fundamentally interfere with what they bring to the show.
Also senseless, in my opinion, is the way Ava is being shoehorned into the villain role here. Shortly after Dante dragged her into the station, Jason showed up with the surveillance photos that Brick's cameraman snapped during Ava and Kristina's argument — and based on a couple of pictures that showed Ava touching her and/or gesticulating in a way that might indicate pushing, Anna placed her under arrest for assault and manslaughter. The cops also found Jagger's luggage in Ava's closet, which led to some absurdly intense questioning, given that the cops have zero reason to believe the location of Jagger's bags has absolutely anything to do with Kristina or the baby. Just one more example of this show demanding that the viewer ignore rational human behavior in order to get us where it wants us to go — in this case, a place where every single thing Ava and Jagger do is bad and evil because they have sinned against Saint Sonny Corinthos.
Speaking of Sonny, he had a pretty rough go of it last week. No sooner did he learn that Kristina plopped in the Metro Court pool and lost the baby in the bargain, he was confronted by Molly, who blamed him for the entire situation. I'm always in favor of characters putting Sonny in his place, but in this case, it hardly seemed warranted; still, Molly's outburst was enough to send him moping up to the GH roof, where he stood on the edge and contemplated ending it all. The only thing that stopped him was his own internal monologue in the form of Morgan, who showed up just in time to absolve Sonny from every single bad decision he's ever made and wave away all the horrific consequences of his life of crime. At first, it didn't seem like this little pep talk would be enough, but after screaming at "Morgan" for half an hour that he'd made up his mind and he was going to jump off the roof to keep his children safe from himself, Sonny abruptly did a 180 and walked down to Kevin's office, where he said "I need help. There's something wrong with me, and I can't take it anymore."
This, of course, prompted Kevin to run a blood test on Sonny — and presumably pump him full of incredibly fast-acting medication, because by the next morning, he seemed much more like his old self, which is to say that he was still threatening vengeance against Ava, but not in a way that would hurt the feelings of anyone around him. And just in case you were worried that the blood test wouldn't be enough to let the whole world know that Sonny's meds had been tampered with, never fear, because Donna went and swallowed half a bottle of "Daddy's vitamins" and had to be rushed to GH so her stomach could be pumped free of what everyone thought was a dangerous amount of lithium. (It would seem reasonable to assume that Sonny and Carly would both have warned Donna about the dangers of ingesting this stuff, but whatever. They're totally both the best parents. The best!)
Meanwhile, Kevin went and visited Ava in jail — why, we have no idea — and told her she didn't need to worry about Avery's safety with Sonny because Sonny had started a new course of treatment. He smartly clammed up after stupidly offering that information, but suddenly turned into a moron again on his way out, answering a call and loudly asking "What kind of problem with Mr. Corinthos's medication?" Ava, who still apparently has a few of her wits about her despite suddenly being written as a slack-jawed idiot, immediately deduced that it would only be a matter of time before the pharmacist she blackmailed into further diluting Sonny's meds would be questioned — and to try and keep that from happening, she sent Jagger to get the pharmacist out of harm's way. How Jagger is supposed to do this I have no idea, but it looks like the pharmacist has been placed under some sort of protective custody — and none too soon, because now that Sonny's back in his right mind, he and Jason are best buds again, which means Jason eagerly agreed to visit Ava on Sonny's behalf, using his best intimidating stare to try and frighten her into confessing that she tampered with Sonny's meds.
Ava, naturally, passed up this opportunity, instead telling Jason that someone else is responsible and Sonny has a "very dangerous enemy" — albeit one whose identity she wasn't about to reveal, given that hanging on to this knowledge would prevent them from murdering her. Of course, we know Ava has no idea who originally screwed with Sonny's meds, so she is once again flirting with disaster by pretending she does; on the other hand, she can use all the help she can get, especially after Kristina loudly demanded that Sonny deliver vengeance, saying she won't be okay until she knows Ava is no longer breathing.
So, long story short, here's what we've got: Cops acting like buffoons, suicidal ideations, threats of violence against women, and a dead baby. Classic GH, right? I even forgot to include the scenes showing Molly reading the autopsy report to Ava after lying to TJ and saying she had to go to the office. Or the scenes showing Anna telling Jagger — without any real proof — that Ava was in custody because she pushed Kristina, and then allowing herself to be summoned to Carly's kitchen so she could hear Carly accuse Ava of being the one to tamper with Sonny's meds. Are you not entertained?
Heather's In
Estimating conservatively, I would say that the fallout from Kristina's accident took up about 80 percent of last week's show. This was painful to watch, but on the bright side, it prevented GH from devoting a ton of time to the Heather Webber storyline, which seems to still be moving full steam ahead despite Laura saying she'd be dropping her investigation into whether an appeal of Heather's sentence might be warranted. How, you ask? Well, that's easy: Scott Baldwin's on the case.
Off the top, I have to point out that Scott advocating for Heather makes a lot more sense than Laura doing it, and since everyone in town treats him like dirt anyway, at least this particular narrative agenda has stopped hurting one of the few characters with any degree of moral standing. I also tend to enjoy it when Scott gets mixed up in schemes; on the other hand, the last few times the writers have thought to involve him in a storyline, they've ended up dropping it abruptly just a few weeks later. His fake pursuit of Tracy went nowhere, Cody never sued the WSB, his latest affair with Lucy is happening entirely offscreen… you get the idea.
But aside from wanting to see more Kin Shriner, I would be just fine with Heather's release happening entirely offscreen as well. This type of trial is always painful to watch, for starters; more importantly, the only really important thing in all of this is getting Heather out of prison and back out in the world where she can start wreaking havoc again. The idea of her going free is bringing out the worst in pretty much every character who's affected by it, so if we don't see her for a few weeks and then all of a sudden she shows up at the Metro Court to book a suite with part of the multimillion-dollar settlement she won after Scott sued the company that made her hip implant, I think I'd be fine with that.
The big loser in all this last week was Portia, who has been stuck in Tiresome Scold mode for far too long, and who seems to keep getting worse. She lectured Trina about visiting Ava in jail, she yelled at Heather for trying to apologize to Trina, and she even snapped at Felicia for doing her job and trying to advocate on behalf of Heather. This is not a character who has historically been written as seeing everything in absolutes, nor is it necessary for her to lash out at everyone around her in order for GH to present an opposing view where Heather's possible release is concerned — and yet that's all she ever seems to do anymore, unable or unwilling to tolerate opposing points of view.
It also bears mentioning that the way Portia's being written only further damages the already horrible optics GH is currently dealing with where POC characters are concerned. Stella and Curtis should be in the middle of the fallout from the death of TJ's baby, but both of them had three or four lines last week; meanwhile, TJ is angry with Kristina and Sonny, Jordan is mad at Molly for not being around enough, and Trina is drifting around without much of an evident purpose. These are all vibrant characters with plenty of potential — they just need the show to care about them, their stories, and their points of view. I'm afraid they're only going to recede further into the background as GH focuses more on Sonny, Carly, and Jason in an attempt to goose the ratings; once again, I really hope I'm wrong.
- Joss and Dex humped out their grief and worry after Kristina's accident
- Natalia and Blaze had a heart to heart about Blaze being gay
- Laura got Kevin a cupcake and some Broadway tickets for his birthday
- We saw the return of the Broken Elevator Trope when Drew and Willow got stuck in one at the Metro Court, with made Willow all flustered and stuff
- Nina offered to help Drew get McConkey off his back about some sort of boring campaign detail
- Michael asked Willow if she'd talk to Kristina about how much it sucks to lose a baby
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