It's been a long time since I felt like the General Hospital writing staff was consistently capable of or interested in coming up with creative stories and/or dialogue, let alone doing the bare minimum in terms of honoring the show's rich history, but there is one area in which they always excel — namely, their ability to first upset me with a decision that I hate, and then quickly do something even worse to remind me that no matter how disappointed I might be, there is always farther to fall.
Why do I bring this up now? Well, because after I spent most of last week's column complaining about the decision to have Sonny murder Jagger in cold blood, the writers went and doubled down on it by making Carly pretend to have sex with Sonny as a means of offering him an alibi, and then had the two of them spend the bulk of the week talking about how it'd probably be a good idea if they pretended they're back together for an extended period of time.
Will pretending they're lovers again lead to yet another reconciliation and remarriage for daytime's most horribly played out couple? I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know we can't eliminate the possibility — and I also know that if it happens, I will throw up all over the place.
You Appear to Be Missing a Gun
After Sonny shot Jagger twice outside the Quartermaine boathouse, he looked up to find Michael, who barked "Enough!" when Sonny tried to justify the murder by saying "He was going after your sister." Because this show will never let Michael be meaningfully angry with Sonny in any way that ever really matters, all it took was a commercial break for him to get over his disgust and start helping with the cover-up. After sending Sonny slithering into the Quartermaine mansion, Michael called Chase to tell him he'd discovered Jagger's body; while Chase started trying to figure out what the hell was going on, Sonny found Carly and told her that if anyone asked, she needed to say the two of them had been together for the last 30 minutes.
She agreed, of course, even going to far as to go along with leaving Tracy's bed messed up and standing next to Sonny as he, ever the disgusting creep, tucked in his shirt in front of the Quartermaines to ensure that everyone in the house would assume they'd been rutting like middle-aged pigs. (Tracy's bed? Tracy's bed? For so much as touching her sheets, Sonny should get the chair.)
It's cold comfort, but everyone in Port Charles seems to be about as happy about this as I am. When Joss found out — courtesy of Gio, who has so little to do that he's become a delivery boy for gossip about the sex lives of the town's senior citizens — she went nuclear, unloading on Carly about how colossally stupid and irresponsible she'd have to be to fall back in bed with Sonny again. Moments later, she put two and two together and realized that Carly was only pretending so she could give Sonny an alibi, but only made her more upset; as she rightly pointed out, Carly only wriggled out from under the threat of RICO charges days before, so there's really no excuse for her impulsive decision to risk her family and freedom all over again.
Of course, Joss isn't exactly Nancy Drew, so the fact that she figured out Sonny and Carly's scheme says more about how hare-brained it is than it does about her powers of deduction. It took even less time for the lightbulb to go on over Diane's head; after walking into Sonny's penthouse, seeing Carly in yesterday's clothes, and groaning "Oh, no," she quickly pivoted to poking holes in Sonny's shitty alibi, warning him that it'd be a lot more believable if he and Carly tried to make people believe it was more than just a one-night stand.
This is all so incredibly stupid. For starters, why in the hell would an experienced murderer like Sonny not only kill a federal agent, but do it himself, in the middle of a dinner party, and without any kind of plan for what to do after he pulled the trigger? Those are the moves of a panicked rookie. Also, why drop dumb Michael in the middle of this nonsense? Not that I want any of this to be happening at all, but it would have made things much more interesting if Sonny had looked up and seen almost anyone else. Like, say, Brennan, for instance — we know he wants Jason to work for him, so why not get that process started by making him a witness to Jagger's murder and then having him offer to trade his silence for Jason's services?
The answer is as depressing as it is obvious: GH is in ratings freefall, and the best solution the powers that be can come up with is to run headlong into the past by falling back on stuff that worked years ago. Lucky's return, the looming revival of Dante and Lulu, this disgusting Sonny/Carly business — it's like watching a dementia-addled magician do the last handful of tricks he can still remember, unaware that the audience is far more focused on the holes in his shabby tuxedo.
What I will give the writers credit for is the way this story now impacts a bunch of different characters. Part of this is simply by virtue of the fact that it's related to the Pikeman mess, which has gone on for a millennium and wiped its greasy fingers all over the canvas, but there's some imagination involved as well. We've already covered how Isaiah became part of the story when Agent Boyle put him in the hospital, but remember how Kristina took one of Sonny's guns? Well, Alexis found it in Kristina's purse, and she handled it in a classically Alexis way last week. Understanding that gun possession is a bail violation and would really mess up Kristina's chances of staying out of prison, Alexis went into full neurotic mode, drove out to the bridge, and tossed it in the river — and then looked up to see Ric and Elizabeth, out for an evening stroll and some ice cream. She tried playing it off by telling them she'd just tossed a defective phone into the water, but they both knew she was full of shit, and in a matter of days, Ric managed to convince Elizabeth that they should go to the PCPD and report what they'd seen.
Sonny, meanwhile, discovered the missing gun and told Jason they needed to figure out who took it — but first, he needed Jason to dispose of the gun he'd used to murder Jagger. Before Jason could do that, however, Anna showed up at the penthouse with Dex and a search warrant — and quickly discovered that Sonny was missing a 9mm gun, conveniently matching the type involved in the shooting. So while the missing gun implicates Sonny, we also have Alexis on the list of suspects, all while Kristina continues to ping-pong around town telling anyone who asks that she won't rest until she gets vengeance for "her" dead baby; as she coldly told Alexis when Alexis shared the news of Jagger's murder, "One down, one to go."
The "one to go" on Kristina's list is Ava, who escaped certain death at the hands of "Agent" Boyle when Jason showed up just in the nick of time, as he so often does. (He would have been there sooner, but he had to stop and call 911 on behalf of Isaiah, who was unconscious by the side of the road after being clipped by Boyle's car.) After Boyle dropped her gun, Ava decided not to kill her; instead, Jason called the cops, and then they all went down to the station, where Ava recanted the statement Jagger coerced her into making, Boyle corroborated Ava and Jason's stories, and Ava and Jason were released on their own recognizance. Now, Ava just needs a new defense attorney to take over for the suddenly absent Scott in the case being brought against her for Kristina's injury and the death of the baby; fortunately for her, Nina decided to extend an olive branch by asking Ric to defend her… not realizing, unfortunately, that Ric and Ava have a long and unhappy history. When Ric balked, Nina reminded him that he owed her a favor after trying to bilk her out of her fortune when they were married — and then he reminded her that Ava allegedly threw his niece out a window and killed his granddaughter, so there was still no way he'd be taking the case.
There are even more things we could get into here — the extremely gross and insensitive speech Kristina gave at Irene's grave, or Kristina asking Michael to help her find the missing gun, or Ric pretending to go back for his pen so he could tell Chase "Alexis has killed before" without Elizabeth hearing — but I think we've hit the major beats. The only other thing I really want to add is that Robert never smiles wider than he does when he realizes that Sonny is the main suspect in a murder investigation. The Port Charles DA is very happy right now, which makes me very happy as well.
The Heart Wants What It Wants
Last week's other major story belonged to Lucky, who spent the entire week playing poker with Jenz Sidwell, the big bad in charge of the camp he infiltrated in order to save Isaiah. The terms of the game seem to be that they'll continue playing until Lucky loses a hand, at which point he'll be killed, which is preposterous. Arguably even sillier was the way Sidwell spent the week moping about having insomnia because of a beautiful woman — and then that woman turned out to be Holly, who was just as surprised to see Lucky as he was to see her. Why was she there? Why, to run a con, of course. Asking Lucky not to blow her cover, she explained she just needed a little more time to get something out of Sidwell's safe, and… okay, look, I understand why the show is doing this; it's more of the "just play the hits" ethos that's driving every storyline right now. But they really could have involved Holly without hinging it all on some big, dumb coincidence — not to mention asking us to believe there's a single place on Earth where Holly could run any kind of con at this point without being immediately recognized. (I'm pretty sure Sidwell said he met her in Monte Carlo, where I'm pretty sure Holly would be ejected on sight.)
But we can't have nice things, so instead we get Lucky and Holly talking about how he's just like his dad or whatever. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Jordan, Dante, and Portia spent last week trying to figure out who Isaiah is, and one of Sidwell's goons skulked around the hospital waiting for an opportunity to kill him. Jordan got desperate enough to turn to Brick for assistance, but Detective of the Week honors ultimately went to Dante, who drove out to the scene of the accident and took all of five minutes to find Isaiah's cell phone, which landed in a pile of leaves after the good doctor was bonked by Boyle's car. After running the serial number, the PCPD determined that the phone was purchased in Nairobi, making it clear that their John Doe must have some connection to Lucky.
So far, this story is dumb, but not overly offensive as far as these things go. While I think the writers are off to a pretty poor start in terms of convincing viewers that Lucky has any real present-day utility, I'd still rather watch him play poker in a storage closet than contemplate even the slightest possibility that Sonny and Carly are getting back together. That being said, I sure hope they've given some thought to what they want out of this character after he saves Lulu's life, because so far, this feels like a return that's destined to fizzle out fast.
Heartbroken… and Horny
In the "too much for a bullet point, but not enough for a fat wad of text" department, we have the latest revolting developments in the saga of Willow and Drew. They started the week making out in his office because he had a sad about McConkey's death, which quickly led to Willow vowing that it could never happen again and Drew promising that no one would ever find out about it from him. The very next day, he blabbed about everything to Curtis, which is an appalling breach of trust — but I guess that's supposed to be okay, because Willow was seconds away from coming clean to Michael when Kristina called and said she needed him to come over immediately. (After Michael left, Willow went to bed and had an erotic dream about Drew. We are all forever unclean.)
- Tracy called Ace "Devil Baby," which should be his only name from now on
- Ric asked TJ how he and Molly were doing; TJ replied "Okay, I think"
- Sarah Sherman popped in as diction coach Robin Finch, who fixed Lois' Brooklyn accent in the space of like an hour; when Olivia got upset about this, Tracy offered to triple Robin's fee if she could "fix that one too"
- After gagging at the thought of Sonny and Carly humping in her bed, Tracy recovered long enough to call Natalia a "hoochie mama"
- Elizabeth stole Line of the Week honors from Tracy when she told Ric that Alexis "would never kill anyone"
- Big Boy Dex graduated from the academy and worked his first shift
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