I've written a lot in this space about the difference between incident — in other words, stuff happening — and narrative momentum, and how even though incident isn't a viable long-term substitute for narrative, it can be entertaining enough in its own right to keep things watchable while pieces are being arranged. That's about how I'd describe last week's General Hospital — there was a lot of running around, and a lot of talking about stuff that's happening, about to happen, or needs to/needs not to happen, but not a whole bunch in terms of real plot development. It wasn't boring, and if you watched, you probably had some fun… but if you missed it, then you didn't miss a ton.
Arrested Development
If you read last week's column, you probably remember that when last we left Alexis, Ric and Elizabeth had reported her to the PCPD for tossing a gun off the St. Jaysus Bridge the night Jagger was murdered. Given that, it should come as no surprise to you that last week's episodes ended with Mac showing up at Alexis' house and arresting her, but we didn't necessarily follow a straight line to get there.
First, Alexis started the week by summoning Molly to her home so she could try and ambush her into hashing things out with Kristina, which went about as well as one might expect. The three of them ended up screaming and crying at each other, which is how Michael found them when he happened to bumble by; at Kristina's request, he scooped her up and took her away, which is how Molly ended up being the only Davis girl to be on the scene when Dex and Chase showed up to ask Alexis some questions about where she was and what she was doing the night of the murder.
Kristina and Michael, meanwhile, ended up at Sonny's, where they arrived just in time to catch the last few moments of Anna's ultimately fruitless attempt to find any meaningful clues. When she asked them if they knew anything about the missing gun, they both pleaded ignorance, but after she left, Kristina told Sonny everything — how she took the gun from his safe, and how Alexis ended up ditching it to try and protect her.
After leaving Sonny's, Michael and Kristina returned to Alexis' place, where they found Alexis gone and Molly just waiting to rip off their heads. In a very satisfying exchange, Molly took about two seconds to realize that Michael was trying to manage Kristina's responses to her questions, and she wasted no time in telling him to talk to the hand and demanding that Kristina only pay attention to her. After laying out the facts of Alexis' predicament and giving them both permission to panic, she headed over to see TJ at GH, where the two of them quickly concluded that Kristina is a far more sensible suspect than Alexis, and Molly vowed to protect her mother by any means necessary.
True to her word, Molly visited Alexis at the PCPD, where she brushed off Alexis' anger with Ric and insisted that whatever happened, it'd be Kristina's fault — and then she spent a few minutes with Ric, who rocked her world a little with the news that Ava had recanted her statement accusing Kristina of being the aggressor during their confrontation in Ava's suite. Rattled but mostly unmoved, she told her father that whoever's responsible for the death of her child, they need to pay; from there, she marched straight back to the police station, where she reported Kristina as a person of interest in Jagger's murder, saying she had plenty of motive and absolutely no alibi.
So how did Alexis end up getting arrested? Well, we don't really know yet, given that we only saw Mac get a phone call before he showed up at Alexis' house, but it seems pretty likely that the police dredged the water around the bridge and found the gun. I confess that I don't know a lot about how gun ballistics work, so while I strongly suspect it wouldn't take a lot of time to confirm that the one Kristina took isn't the one that killed Jagger, I'm also willing to believe this confluence of circumstantial evidence would at least be enough to lead to an arrest.
I'm also willing to believe that Alexis' time in the crosshairs will end up being relatively brief, although this is not to say Kristina appears to be in any danger of doing time. For starters, she has Michael on her side, and given that he's fully aware of Sonny's complicity in the crime, he's doubly invested in trying to guide suspicion away from every member of his gross family. So far, all he's really done is purse his lips a lot and urge everyone to keep quiet, but we know he's also given some thought to doing what he does best — namely, use his deep pockets to try and bribe someone into making things go his way. As he sees it, Jagger had a lot of enemies, so at least theoretically, it shouldn't be difficult to pay one of them enough to place themselves at the scene. This strikes me as a very stupid plan, but all things considered, I suppose it's no dumber than murdering a federal agent without giving any thought to an alibi, and that seems to be working out fine for Sonny so far.
In the short term, however, Kristina is a person of interest in the case, which she now knows because Chase brought her in for questioning (and stupidly allowed Michael to stay in the room for it). Afterwards, it took Kristina very little time to deduce that Molly must have been the one who reported her — and she also finally thought to mention to Michael that she actually drove to the Quartermaine mansion the night of the murder, where she sat in her car and thought about killing Jagger before driving away.
Anna, meanwhile, isn't fooled by any of this. Although she spent most of her week running around trying to get a bead on Lucky, she still had enough time to tell Jason she knows Sonny's guilty; fortunately for Sonny, Jason had already destroyed the murder weapon at that point, dissolving it in an industrial drum full of bubbling goo that I'm pretty sure couldn't have been more than five feet from several shelves' worth of Corinthos Coffee beans. Chemical residue latte, anyone?
The Luckiest Man Alive
We didn't see a lot of Lucky last week — which I'm not complaining about, given that he spent it all in the same dingy cell where he's been playing cards with Sidwell forever — but almost everyone was talking about him, including Jordan, who saved Isaiah's ass when she caught Sidwell's goon mere moments away from administering a lethal injection of fentanyl. The goon got away, but Jordan wasn't finished; after spotting him running for the stairs, she gave chase, and even though he got the drop on her, she overpowered him and marched him off to jail. We didn't see the goon again, but we did see a lot of Isaiah, who woke up and started gabbing about who he is and why he's in Port Charles.
Isaiah's information was eagerly received — especially the part about coming at Lucky's request — but his story seemed suspiciously spotty to Anna, who had a hard time believing that Sidwell would pay someone to hunt a doctor halfway across the world and kill him simply because he had the audacity to escape confinement. Isaiah tried to wave her off the scent by saying it's just because he's a fantastic doctor, but she didn't buy it; these were fun scenes, both because of the light chemistry between Finola Hughes and Sawandi Wilson AND because the writers had the good sense to plant some seeds of interest in Isaiah's non-Lucky endeavors well ahead of time. (And speaking of chemistry, Wilson also has plenty of it with Tanisha Harper, meaning Jordan now has everything she needs to be rescued from go-nowhere scenes with Brick and Drew.)
Unfortunately, no one has what it takes to be rescued from Carly, whose sudden obsession with the cousin she hasn't mentioned by name in years prompted her to plop herself in the middle of yet another storyline. Carly spent the week dashing between Lulu's bedside, Isaiah's room, and Brennan's office, with the latter stop proving the most fruitful; despite having no official ability to track Lucky down and the Bureau having absolutely no active interest in his whereabouts, Brennan was eventually able to offer a goodish guesstimate for where he could be, all because he has "a hard time saying no" to Ms. Spencer. (I would be happy to teach him how, but so far, he hasn't asked.)
But while Carly was ping-ponging between GH and the WSB office, Anna was doing the same thing, and for the same reason — which meant that moments before Brennan passed Lucky's location along to Carly, he also shared it with Anna. This is important because Carly — and you had to know this was coming — asked Jason to go to Africa and bring Lucky home, which is how we ended the week with Anna sitting on a plane and looking up to see Jason saying "I think you're in my seat."
I groaned out loud when that happened, but whatever, I'm sure it's going to be fine. I do tend to think that Finola Hughes brings out the best in Steve Burton, and I appreciate the fact that Jason and Anna's friendship means he has to sit and listen every time she reminds him that he could be doing better things with his life than breaking laws for Sonny; I also think the writers have overestimated the appeal of this particular duo, and I am personally tired to death of Jason being the only one who can solve any serious problem. All of which is to say that I have very little interest in this little caper, particularly given the high likelihood that it'll be Jason who ends up coming to Lucky's rescue, but I don't think it'll be disastrous. Tiresome, perhaps, but not disastrous.
As for Lucky himself? Well, he wasted more time pleading with Holly to spring him, but she only offered to cut him in on the score she's anticipating after fleecing Sidwell with whatever con she's running. He kept up his winning streak against Sidwell, who finally got suspicious enough to order one of his goons to search Lucky for hidden cards — a search that was interrupted when Sidwell got bad news from the mine, which made him so upset that he shot the guy who gave it to him and then ordered Lucky to search the corpse. As it turned out, the poor dead fool was walking around with nuggets of some precious metal in his pocket, which Lucky dutifully handed over to Sidwell… minus the one he palmed and hid up his sleeve, of course.
So! Sidwell has shut down his camp and moved on to a new spot, taking Lucky with him. Anna and Jason are on their way to Africa to rescue Lucky, while Laura and Kevin are presumably already in the area. And Holly — who Isaiah referred to as Sidwell's girlfriend, and who he knows only as "English," which I guess is one more extremely unsubtle attempt to make us like this story more by making us think about Luke — is hovering in the margins.
I don't know how any of this is supposed to turn out, but it feels like Genie Francis and Finola Hughes might both be due for a vacation, so I won't be surprised if Jason ends up returning to Port Charles with Lucky and saying everyone else is being held hostage by Sidwell, who then becomes the focus of some caper or other after Lucky saves Lulu's life at the last minute. What I do know is that none of it has been all that interesting thus far, and my engagement level continues to drop the more Carly and Jason are involved. Trying to make Lucky the new Luke is a big mistake, and we've seen the rest of these characters do the things they're doing many, many, many times before — especially Holly, who's really getting long in the tooth to be flitting around seducing warlords in search of jewels and stuff. Here's hoping for a few genuine surprises before it's all said and done.
From One Black Sheep to Another
This is going to be quick, but there's too much to fit in a bullet: After some gentle (and actually downright flirty) pressure from Nina, Ric held firm in his refusal to represent Ava, but he was finally convinced to take the case after his visit from Molly. Not because she asked (or will even want) him to take the case, but because he wants her to get the truth behind the events leading up to Irene's death, and he knows he's a good enough lawyer to dig it up and bring it to her. Like everything else Ric does, taking on Ava as a client is only going to make the people who hate him hate him even more, but as Nina pointed out, he's very well acquainted with the feeling of being a Port Charles pariah.
Whatever ends up happening with the case, this pushes Ric deeper into the canvas, which is only ever a good thing. Despite the absurdity of a situation in which a lawyer would represent the woman accused of inadvertently killing his own granddaughter — in a case that also involves his niece, no less — there's so much potential for drama here that I can't be bothered to complain about suspension of disbelief. It's also quite clear that Cynthia Watros is selling the hell out of a potential Ric/Nina redux, the thought of which does not make me mad at all.
Before taking Ava as a client, Ric proved he's still capable of mounting a good defense when he was confronted by Curtis at the hilariously deserted and shabby-looking Aurora Wellness Center. Sulking as Ric complimented the gym and said nice things about the Ashford clan, Curtis pointedly asked him how he could represent Heather if he cared about them at all — and Ric smoothly assured Curtis that Heather's case is such a slam-dunk example of medical malpractice that she's bound to receive some sort of compensation, so it's actually better for them to have someone who knows and respects the family in there to try and guide a judge away from releasing her back into society.
Of course, before Heather gets anywhere near freedom, she still has to get past Portia, who's still taking a suspiciously active interest in the results of Heather's recent blood tests. Will Portia tamper with the results? Is this why we saw Brad for five minutes a few weeks ago? I don't know the answers to those questions, and like a lot of you, I'm not super interested in getting them either. Ric's involvement here is holding my interest; we'll see how long that lasts.
- In a series of events that could not have been any more obvious if one of the characters had simply drawn a triangle on the floor, Elizabeth and Jason shared a Look mere moments before Isaiah told her he'd heard about her from Lucky and she's even more beautiful in person
- Kristina asked Michael why he's so confident that she didn't kill Jagger, and instead of telling her it's because he knows Sonny did it, he weakly stammered that he knows she isn't capable of murder
- Drew tried to talk to Jordan about his upcoming special election, but she was distracted by thoughts of Isaiah
- Willow confessed her Drewlust to comatose, cirrhosis-stricken Lulu
- Sasha made brunch for Cody and the Scorpios, and in front of the entire table, he asked her to be his girlfriend
- Lucy heard Lois' new accent and was worried that she might be having a stroke
- Lois told the Deception crew that Sonny and Carly did "the boom boom" in Tracy's "room room"
- Tracy warned Natalia that Sonny had better read through the morality clause in his investor's agreement
- Despite Tracy urging her to "put breeding on hold," Brook Lynn told Chase she wants to start a family
- Chase mentioned that Finn gets out of rehab in a month
- When Joss went to Michael with her concerns regarding Carly giving Sonny an alibi, Michael told her that Jagger "was a garbage human" and insisted that "whoever killed him did this world a favor"
- Jason warned Carly against getting mixed up with Brennan, hypocritically bloviating that "there's no honor, no loyalty" at the WSB and "these people are just in it for themselves"
- Sonny had a tail placed on Ric
- Felicia offered to go to Africa with Anna, but was easily talked out of it
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