One of the many things non-soap fans tend to ignore when they think about daytime drama is the sheer volume of stuff that happens on these shows, and as a result, how much easier it can be for audiences to forgive and forget when they're constantly being buried under a mountain of plot. For stories like the Pikeman debacle, which last for years and go through so many twists and turns that it can be hard to remember how the damn thing started or why, the memories left behind tend to be fragments sifted from the best and worst moments along the way. No story is going to be flawless on a five-days-a-week show, in other words, and sometimes, keeping things moving at a reasonably quick clip is enough to keep the audience engaged.
If you watched General Hospital last week, you know why I'm saying this now. The most recent episodes of GH had a number of flaws, but whatever they were, they weren't slow-paced — and given everything that's been going on with the show creatively lately, I tend to think that was a very deliberate choice. If we're in the middle of the umpteenth recent reset — and it certainly feels like we are — then it isn't hard to imagine the writers shoving things along so they can get us to wherever the hell it is they want to go.
The shorter version of all this? Last week's GH was pretty dumb. But it wasn't boring, and in the short term, that counts for something.
Zero Consequences for Carly
Over the last several decades, the Port Charles courthouse has been a frequent stop for Sonny Corinthos and every character in his miserable orbit, and given that 99 percent of those trials have ended with Sonny and his proxies walking free, it's understandable that the GH writers have long since run out of sensible plot devices to keep these jerks on the street. That said, I feel like the denouement of Carly's latest brush with the law has got to rank at or near the absolute bottom of the list. After being recorded saying she was the head of the Corinthos organization, unwittingly being used as leverage for the FBI to keep Jason "dead" for years, and finally daring an FBI officer to arrest her, she was finally allowed to walk because… the evidence disappeared. Poof. That's it.
Look, I'm aware that the story surrounding Jason's latest return was allegedly going to be even dumber than this before cooler heads prevailed, but that doesn't let the final product off the hook. Not only did this dumb bastard let his friends and family think he was dead in order to protect Carly, but in the end, when the FBI went back on its deal by charging her anyway, it amounted to absolutely nothing at all. There may well be more anticlimactic climaxes in GH history, but at the moment, I really can't think of any. You could feel the writers straining for drama by having the big reveal happen in open court, but all that did was give Carly and her snotty kids an opportunity to sneer at Jagger as he helplessly watched his case fall apart. When Carly turned to Jason and told him it was finally over and he was free, and he mutely blinked back tears, I felt my first and only connection with the character, because I felt like crying too. I watched all this? Why? What's wrong with me and what is happening to this show?
Anyway, Carly's life has officially returned to the status quo we always knew was waiting for her. She's still running the Metro Court, she's still an unrepentant asshole, she still eats half the show, and she has yet again escaped any and all meaningful consequences for a colossally stupid and quite illegal act. And who do we have to thank for all this? None other than Brennan, who — as Anna discovered during her trip to D.C., much to her dismay — has been scooped up by the WSB and is back in action, running a local department "in the hinterlands." Although he hasn't come out and said so yet, it's pretty clear that after he was freed from prison, Brennan managed to snake his way into the FBI database and purge the evidence against Carly.
Why did he do this? I guess the show's answer will be that he took a shine to her, but the real answer is either "who cares" or "it doesn't matter." I suppose it's at least somewhat likely that Brennan's definition of "hinterlands" includes upstate New York, and the local Bureau outpost he's been assigned to covers Port Charles, so he'll soon be back in town and free to flirt with my least favorite Spencer. Or maybe he's gone for good and this was his parting gift. At this point, I don't really care; as charming as Charles Mesure is, this damn show has more than enough morally ambiguous characters as it is, and where's the excitement in a relationship between two characters who've proven they can do whatever the hell they want and get away with it every time? What I might be interested in is a Slow Horses-style spinoff or subplot involving Brennan being forced to lead a motley crew of WSB castoffs and incompetents, but we aren't getting that.
Also annoying: Like just about everything else that's currently happening on GH, this storyline was ultimately used to carry out character assassination against Jagger, whose exceedingly legitimate gripes against Sonny are being trampled in the rush to portray him as the umpteenth officer of the court who has somehow "gone too far" and therefore become the real bad guy while Sonny is once again held up as a noble victim. At Carly's cursed arraignment, the prosecuting attorney not only apologized to her, he told her Jagger's conduct was being investigated. One way or another, this edition of the character is clearly on his way out, which is a stupid shame.
Oh, Baby
Jagger's latest sin, which is bound to bite him in the ass sooner than later, is hooking up with Ava, who's been batting her lashes at him in an effort to secure his support in winning custody of Avery and/or sending Sonny to prison, whichever comes first. In between makeout sessions in her Metro Court suite, Ava told Jagger that she found out — "completely by accident," mind you — that Sonny is "critically undermedicated" and therefore much more susceptible to being goaded into the type of public meltdown Ava wants him to have. Jagger quickly used that information to try and provoke Sonny into attacking him at the courthouse, only for stupid Michael to block Sonny's punch at the last minute; this was admittedly not super above board of Jagger, but when one is trying to take down a notorious mob boss who has made a laughingstock of law enforcement for decades, one does what one must.
Jagger's canoodling with Ava has also quickly become an issue all its own. After apparently deciding not to murder Jagger in cold blood, Sonny told Brick to put Ava's suite under 24-hour surveillance, which meant that one of Sonny's minions was on hand to snap photos of Ava and Jagger getting friendly in her suite. Trina also bore witness to their situationship when she was in Ava's suite for a meeting about gallery business just as Jagger came out of her bedroom in a towel. Why would Ava have this meeting in her room knowing that Jagger was in the shower? Why would Trina be so bothered by Jagger's presence that she'd feel compelled to run straight to Joss and share the news? There are no good reasons for any of this; we know it's only happening because the powers that be have decided that Ava and Jagger are the villains du jour.
Such is the depths of their scoundreldom that it's even seeped its way into the Molly/TJ/Kristina surrogacy story, which reached stunning new depths of idiocy before suddenly rebounding to finish the week with a soapy bang. Poor Kristina started the week in the throes of what Alexis referred to as a "hormone fog," and although that description was flippant, it wasn't far off the mark. After rejecting Molly's demand that she sign the previously agreed-upon papers terminating her parental rights to the child she agreed to have as a surrogate, Kristina ran to her mom with all sorts of jibber-jabber about how she felt like maybe she'd be a better parent due to Molly and TJ's recent alleged relationship instability. This is a textbook case of the show wanting to gin up drama so badly that the writers are forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel for splinters they can wedge between characters; hormones or no hormones, there's absolutely no way on earth that a functional adult could possibly feel justified in making the arguments Kristina made last week. It's true that TJ has been acting like a sanctimonious prick ever since Kristina got pregnant — and boy did he ramp that up last week, including calling Alexis a coward for her refusal to take sides between her daughters — but Kristina acting like it'd be irresponsible to hand the baby over without some sort of iron-clad guarantee that he and Molly will be together forever is just insane. Is anyone reading this stuff before it's sent to the actors?
In addition to the situation with Molly and TJ, Kristina spent the week worrying about the subpoena she was served to testify in Ava and Sonny's custody hearing. Despite the fact that every last character on the show is acting like this is some sort of scandalous rubicon for Ava to cross, it should surprise absolutely no one that Ava would want to compel every last person in Sonny's circle to testify. Put 'em under oath and ask inconvenient questions! Duh!
What Ava was hoping, of course, is that Kristina would be forced to admit she watched her father beat the hell out of a police cadet during a wedding reception — which, again, is just smart strategy on her part. Kristina recognized this, because she immediately resolved to give Ava a reason to change her mind about the subpoena. How, you ask? Why, by marching over to Ava's suite and threatening to tank her testimony by bringing up Ava murdering Connie and tampering with Morgan's meds, of course!
While Ava and Kristina argued in Ava's suite, the Metro Court pool was busy drawing the type of crowd you only see on soaps anymore if a major disaster is about to occur. Brook Lynn — resplendent in her brightly colored, long-sleeved, high-necked summer burqa — was there with Blaze for a meeting about the new label Sonny had agreed to fund; Natalia was there to beg for Blaze's forgiveness; Trina was there to gossip about Ava and Jagger with Joss; Gio was there folding towels and promising to deliver Brook Lynn some illicit pre-lunch guacamole.
Remember how Ava rushed down to the pool a week or two ago after looking out her window and seeing Sonny there with Natalia? Well, the writers definitely remembered, because the weird-yet-convenient architecture of a hotel with a rooftop pool that is still somehow below some of the hotel's rooms came in super handy during Ava and Kristina's argument. Kristina threatened Ava, Ava told her not to, Kristina went to leave, Ava grabbed her arm, Kristina tripped over one of Jagger's bags, fell backwards, and cannonballed right out the fucking window into the pool.
If I have to choose between soapy and smart while watching GH, I'll pretty much always pick the former. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to demand both, mind you, but soapiness can definitely be its own reward, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the sight of Kristina taking a header while half the town looked on in horror was anything other than entertaining. That said? It was also pretty dumb, and so were the first shockwaves after the accident.
First of all, to reiterate what basically everyone who's already seen it has been saying: The Metro Court's windows have got to be the thinnest in the world. Clearly, it never hails in Port Charles, and it must never get windy there either, because if it did, the carpet of every room in the hotel would be littered with broken glass on a daily basis. But fine! Fine. The show needed Kristina to fall in the pool, and this is the way they decided it would happen. Fine.
After falling three stories into a pool that's shallow enough for Wiley to stand in from end to end, poor Kristina had to lie face down in the water for a year while stupid Joss just stood there next to her. Once Kristina was finally loaded into an ambulance, Trina told Chase and Dante — offscreen! — that she'd seen Ava standing at the window after Kristina fell, at which time Dante went to Ava's room to question her by himself. Ava, meanwhile, was busy moving Jagger's bags out of her living room, staging evidence of a violent confrontation, and putting her shoes in front of the window to make it look like that's what Kristina tripped over. She also closed the curtains, which became a point of conflict between her and Dante when he caught her in a meaningless lie about whether they were open or closed when Kristina fell.
In addition to being pissed about the curtains, Dante was just plain enraged about Ava claiming that Kristina attacked her before she fell. After insisting that Kristina isn't a violent person, Dante slapped cuffs on Ava, immediately prompting what would have to be an open-and-shut case of wrongful arrest in any sane town. A woman falls out of a window and her brother arrests a suspect without any proof of wrongdoing? Come on. Even for the rat king of conflicted interests that is Port Charles on any given day, this is preposterous. If I'm being as charitable as possible, I'm guessing this was done so Scotty will be able to spring Ava immediately, but still. Try harder.
Anyway! Kristina and the baby she's been openly musing about keeping from her sister and its biological father are now in grave medical peril. As time ran out on Friday's show, we heard that she was being given an emergency C-section in order to save the life of the child. DUN DUN DUN BIG DRAMA.
Certain viewers joked after the fact that if Guza was still writing GH, Kristina probably would have taken out Wiley on her way down, and they aren't incorrect in stating that the show has become increasingly allergic to stakes over the last several years. Even when characters die, the impact is negligible — we've heard Gregory's name mentioned once since Finn was exiled to perma-rehab, and we are absolutely never going to find out who murdered poor Austin. Given all that, it's reasonable to assume that Kristina and the baby are both going to be just fine — which is, I have to say, as I think it should be; Kristina is a character with long-term utility, and this show has killed enough babies, thanks. But with that being the case, why go to the trouble of doing this at all? Kristina, Molly, and TJ were already on a collision course, and the show had plenty of conflict to choose from without hiring a stunt double so they could film a scene that would be replayed half a dozen times during Friday's episode alone.
It isn't just dramatic stakes that GH has a tendency to shy away from — it's any kind of real change whatsoever. Far, far, far too much of what transpires onscreen ends up being deposited in narrative cul-de-sacs that have no long-term impact on the show. Yeah, it's exciting when we're surprised by someone plopping into a pool from several stories up, just like it's exciting when someone is suddenly arrested in a hotel lobby in front of a crowd. But then what? What's the purpose? Are we watching an ongoing story, or just a series of loosely connected scenes? This is what happens when various factions behind the scenes of a show are at war, and it's really, really hurting General Hospital. The good news is that with all this history, all these characters, and a ton of acting talent at its disposal, GH could pull off a quick turnaround at any time. The bad news is that fundamental change would need to occur in order for that to happen, and for a long time, this has felt like a show that's too afraid to move.
- Willow thanked Nina for agreeing to introduce Michael to McConkey, which is of course meaningless now that Carly has gotten off scot free
- Wiley had a 100 percent drama-free birthday party
- The show briefly remembered that Jordan exists and she's TJ's mom
- Lois dared to ask Sonny whether he'd be funding Blaze's new label with clean money, which of course led to him accusing her of turning on him
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