The sun has set on another week in Port Charles, and you know what that means: I'm back to bring you another batch of recaps and unfiltered opinions about all the major stuff that just happened. This little show of ours is still sputtering along in second gear most days, but there are signs of progress — chief among them a recent emphasis on involving more characters in fewer storylines, which helps cut down on spastic editing AND has the added benefit of preventing chunks of the canvas from feeling walled off.
Oh, also? We got to watch Drew being pummeled. All in all, not a bad week.
Here's Looking at You, Kid
Before we relive the Rumble in the Jungle Foyer, we need to deal with Holly's latest departure — which, as I think many of us suspected would be the case, sent her off into the sunset with Robert. This leaves Port Charles without a DA for the foreseeable future, but let's be honest — no one is ever convicted of any important crimes in this town anyway, so the city's residents probably won't notice any difference. Plus, it's a solid opportunity for ADA Molly Lansing-Davis to step up and put some people away instead of hanging out at Bobbie's and making goo-goo eyes at Isaiah between chapters of Little Women.
I digress. The week started with Sasha right back to work in the Quartermaine kitchen, but not before a stop at GH, where she skipped out on a post-kidnapping exam because she didn't want to face the possibility that her one-night stand with Michael left her pregnant. While she was there, she also bumped into Felicia, who urged her to reconcile with Holly — but when Sasha tried taking her advice, she discovered that Holly had already checked out of the Metro Court.
We discovered the reason for this when Holly went to Brennan's office and demanded money from the WSB, explaining that she'd incurred a major debt to a crime syndicate while freelancing for the Bureau. This debt is apparently the entire reason she cozied up to Sidwell, hoping her cut of the $100 million she stood to make from selling his stolen diamonds would clear her accounts while setting her up for a comfortable retirement. Unfortunately for her, Brennan was unable or unwilling to help her tap the WSB's coffers; instead, he offered her a seat on a Bureau jet headed to Lisbon that night.
From there, Holly headed to Anna's office, where she explained she needed to hightail it out of Port Charles before the syndicate came after her — but first, she wanted to fence a single diamond she'd palmed before giving Sidwell his stash, use the cash to buy into a high-stakes poker game, and put her winnings toward her debt to the syndicate. Anna, to her credit, wanted no part of helping Holly — and we can't take smart decisions from the commissioner for granted these days, given the deeply strange way she's being written — so rather than finding a jewelry fence and playing cards, Holly just scooted off to the WSB airfield, where she called Robert, was sent to voicemail, and left him what she thought would be a farewell message… only to be surprised when he stepped out of the shadows, told her he'd gotten the note she left on his desk, and tracked her down with an assist from Brennan. Insisting that they'd wasted enough time, he told her he was coming with her, and they strolled off-camera as the scene faded to black and white in an extremely obvious homage to Casablanca.
This raises all sorts of questions, including what sort of insane arrangement the WSB has with its freelancers that they're just casually hanging spies out to dry like this. I get that the show feels like it's obligated to paint the Bureau as a total viper's nest, but this is a toddler's vision of the way the intelligence community functions. No one in the world would be willing to risk their lives for an agency that expects its operatives to personally settle debts incurred in the line of duty, and even if they did, the easiest way for Holly to save herself would be to sell WSB secrets to the highest bidder; the Bureau has an extremely vested interest in keeping her safe.
Also, how dumb would Holly have to be to think her best move is to fence a stolen diamond and then play cards with that money? Wait, don't answer that.
The bottom line is that Holly is gone, and Robert went with her — after being dumped by Diane, who nursed her sorrows by heading to the Brown Dog and asking Anna to join her. (Line of the Week honors go to Finola Hughes, who must have chuckled when she got the script that had her answering the question "How does one get over losing Robert Scorpio" by quipping, "I've never really lost him. He's been a continual pain in the neck for most of my life.") Reports suggest Robert and Holly will be back in Port Charles early next year; in the meantime, Anna's new focus is on finding Valentin and Charlotte, with an assist from Jason and Spinelli.
Spinelli hasn't had any luck on that front yet, because his computer skills are only truly legendary when the plot requires them to be, but Jason has told him to focus on Brennan, because Brennan made the mistake of very unsubtly warning Jason to wave Anna off Valentin's trail. Jason's hypothesis is that Brennan is helping Valentin stay hidden, and Jason is never wrong, so we can pretty much guess where this is going to go.
Brennan, meanwhile, has been written as a roguishly charming panic button for the good guys lately, but there are signs that his moral ambiguity will be highlighted in the coming weeks — chief among them the deeply weird spat he had with Carly in the moments after Drew won the election. Suggesting that Drew only dated her in order to improve his social standing, Brennan sneeringly told Carly that "everyone uses everyone," and then got bent out of shape when she asked him if he was using her. While his response was factually correct — she's the one who's gone running to him for a series of favors, and all he's really ever asked her for is her company — the intent behind this strange exchange is glaringly obvious. Brennan has helped save the day more than once, but we aren't supposed to trust him, and I have no doubt that we'll be reminded of that in far more obvious fashion soon.
I guess it also bears mentioning that Anna seems jealous of Holly, but I'm hoping the writers forget about this by the time Robert returns. Fingers crossed.
Drew Got Everything He Deserved
Okay, now for the fun part. Remember how Drew and Willow's super-secret, super-gross tryst was captured on the nannycam, and Michael watched the footage in horror? Well, ol' Motherboy wasted no time in making the situation worse — or at least a lot more violent — last week.
At first, his response to finding out Drew and Willow had sex appeared to be just as weirdly muted as his reaction to the news that Drew and Willow had kissed. Rather than confronting them, or rushing off to get naked with Sasha again, he lurked outside the gatehouse, where he watched as his uncle and his wife embraced in the living room. Gathering all the adorably impotent rage he could muster, he called Diane and told her he needed to talk to a lawyer about his marriage.
What Michael didn't know was that Drew and Willow were hugging because he'd just creepily brushed aside her umpteenth insistence that he go away. Rather than leaving, he loomed over her and whispered "you're blushing" in her ear, which was every bit as hard to watch (and write) as I'm sure it is to read. Following that, he told her that when they cucked Michael on the nursery floor, it opened a window into another life for him, which… yeah, this just keeps getting grosser. Moving along.
Okay, so after he called Diane, Michael went back to the Brown Dog. Because that's the set that's apparently in rotation this month, half of Port Charles was there — including Jason, who expressed his version of surprise as Michael told him that Drew and Willow kissed, and then he went off and had sex with Sasha, and then Drew and Willow had sex. (He left out the part where he came home and boned Willow after sleeping with Sasha, which is what I suppose passes for decorum in this weird town right now.)
Because Jason only knows how to solve problems by punching them, he reacted to Michael's news by galumphing over to the Quartermaine mansion, where he stood in the foyer like a weirdo until Drew came home with Nina, who assumed Jason was there to congratulate his increasingly awful twin brother. Drew made the same assumption, and walked up to Jason with his hand outstretched — only to get clocked in his oversized melon, sparking a fight that absolutely did not go Drew's way. If I felt like quibbling, I'd quibble with this; yes, Jason is written as an all-powerful delivery mechanism for violence (except for when he dies), but Drew was a Navy SEAL, and he should have been capable of more than dropping into a corny boxing stance before having his face smashed into a drink tray. I do not feel like quibbling, however!
Not much, anyway. Tracy really should have been there to savor this, and it also highlighted how beneficial it'd be for the show to invest in a Monica recast. I love Leslie Charleson, and I would 100 percent support some sort of hybrid arrangement that allowed her to keep working — maybe use her voice anytime Monica calls someone over the phone? — but this character has been mostly offscreen for years, and that mansion is her house. (I'm not adding the next line; you can't make me.) Instead of those two, we got Lois yelling "holy cannoli" and Ned — Ned! — flying in with the strength of 10,000 Borgs to pull Jason off Drew, toss Jason out of the house, and pull Michael into the foy-AY so he could ask him what the hell he was thinking by telling his murderous uncle that his skeevy uncle did it with his wife.
Ned and Drew don't agree on anything, but they immediately agreed that Drew needed to avoid going to the hospital and he definitely didn't want to call the cops. Instead, Willow tended to Drew while Michael lurked in the foyer, and after she was done, he summoned Ric, asking him to get Jason to sign an NDA in exchange for Drew agreeing not to press charges. Ric agreed despite arguing that it'd be better just to put Jason in jail, which ended up being a moot point, because Jason refused to sign anything — possibly because he's secretly functionally illiterate, but either way, the end result was the same: Ric left Jason's room above Bobbie's empty-handed, albeit only after daring Jason to hit him, and then hilariously flinching when Jason pretended he was about to do so.
(This is where I become the thousandth person to say Rick Hearst gets my vote for Return of the Year, and it isn't even close. The show could spend the rest of 2024 just having Ric wander around Port Charles talking to people, and I would be fine with that.)
Is Carly involved in this? Of course she is. Kristina happened to be at Bobbie's when Jason returned from kicking Drew's ass, and she happened to notice his bloody knuckles when he pulled his keys out of his pocket, and she happened to call Carly so she could tattle on Jason, so it was only a matter of moments before Carly barged into Jason's room and demanded to know why he "looked like he'd been in an accident." As chatty as ever, Jason spent 20 minutes slurping his off-brand beer and telling Carly he punched Drew, Drew deserved it, and that's all she needed to know; after storming out and saying she was off to clean up Jason's mess, she found herself being mocked by Drew, who pointed out that Carly always takes Jason's side in everything and that's exactly why he dumped her two minutes after Jason's latest resurrection. I'm just now realizing that Carly spent the entire week being denied, insulted, and demeaned by the men in her life. Here's hoping the women in her life get a turn next week.
When they weren't fighting in the foy-AY, Jason and Drew had plenty of other stuff to worry about last week. As he tends to do, Jason acted like a father in short bursts, playing paternal long enough to listen to Danny talk about how he'd like it if he and Scout got to stay in the same house with Rocco before heading back to the Brown Dog and telling Spinelli he's thinking it might be a good idea if he takes "a step back" from this single parent stuff. Drew, meanwhile, told Michael he wants him to take over as CEO of Aurora — which will be unwelcome news to Curtis, who assumes he'll be named permanent CEO, and is already planning to use his salary bump to start a music program at the rec center.
That's it for the big stuff! But before we part, I bring you bullet points:
- Kristina and Natalia had the least dramatic and most pointless car accident in the history of daytime drama
- Despite being the most expensive lawyer in Port Charles, Diane has a one-room office where she shares a desk with Alexis
- Trina hates Kai, possibly because he's so tall that it hurts her neck to look at him
- Lucky continued whining to whoever would listen about his glaringly lack of purpose in Port Charles; in response, Elizabeth read him for filth, while Sonny called someone to get him a job
- Diane is working on Sam's will, which hopefully leaves everything to the guys she married under false pretenses during her con artist days
- Laura yelled at her comatose daughter, demanding that she wake up immediately
- Ned and Brook Lynn accused Lois of not being able to keep a secret while Gio hovered awkwardly nearby
- Chase and Brook Lynn ordered a book about parenthood, and then felt awful because Sasha's baby died two years ago
- Kristina told Alexis that she now knows her entire purpose in life is getting revenge against Ava
- Ric and Ava are absolutely going to have sex
- Terry offered Isaiah a job at General Hospital, and appeared to be dumbfounded when Jordan pointed out that if he really wants to help people, the OR is probably the best place for him to do it
Comments
Post a Comment