For the third week in a row, most of the action on the show centered around the fallout from Sam's death and the brewing war between Michael and Drew. It wasn't a boring week by any means, but not a lot happened in terms of major events you wouldn't want to miss — and anyway, getting you caught up on anything you might have missed is part of what I'm here for. This should be a pretty quick one, so let's jump in.
Fair Samantha
The week started off with Sam being laid to rest, and if you've been watching this show — or any daytime drama, really — for any length of time, you know pretty much how this went. I'm not a huge fan of soap weddings or funerals, because they tend to be used as an excuse to trot out a lot of hackneyed dialogue while actors load up their Emmy reels by crying a lot. There was a lot of that going on during Sam's funeral (I went into it waiting to hear Carly say Sam was "strong" and "a fighter," and she did not disappoint), but for the most part, as these things go, it was pretty well done — up to and including a bunch of flashbacks to scenes from throughout Kelly Monaco's tenure on the show. They even included Sam's brief relationship with Sonny, which I thought had been permanently memory holed; points for that, I guess, although I have to dock them for failing to include Sam judo-kicking Sonny into that construction pit when she was suffering from cat litter-induced psychosis.
As always, there were things to quibble with if you were in the mood to do so. The church is half as big as it should be, the list of speakers was strange (Lucky? Really?), and there were some curious faces missing in the audience. But by and large, it was a fairly moving sendoff — at least until the end, when Gio closed out the service by playing violin and we cut to Lulu's room at the long-term care facility, where she abruptly woke up.
This was an unpopular move for a number of reasons. For starters, there's already a widespread perception that Sam was wiped off the board in order to make room for Lulu, so showing Lulu regaining consciousness as people are leaving Sam's funeral is an insensitive look. There's also the not-insignificant matter of having Lulu unencumbered by any of the machinery that a coma patient would be connected to, which seems to be a decision that was made so the writers could have her wake up, peel off her surgical bandage and check out a remarkably well-healed incision site, and then fall on her face after trying to get up and walk around. Why was this the move? I have no idea. By all rights, Lulu should have been hooked up to so many sensors that alarms would have started going off the minute she opened her eyes — and by the way, that would have been a hell of a lot more dramatic than lingering shots of her socks as she tried to get herself out of bed.
The only sign of any forethought in this direction came prior to Lulu's comically brief escape attempt, when she heard Cyrus talking to a doctor in the hall outside her room and flashed back to an antagonistic conversation they had before her coma. It's pretty clear that Lulu's recovery is being handled this way so she can figure out whatever he's up to, but just because something is clear doesn't mean it makes sense. Cyrus' religious conversion has been allowed to cool on the back burner for so long that it no longer makes sense for him to be anything other than genuinely pious; on the other hand, there isn't a lot of narrative utility for a soap character who goes around reading the Bible to hospital patients because he feels bad about his life of crime. I suppose the answer, then, is to make Cyrus responsible for Sam's murder, a crime I'm guessing he will have committed in order to clear the way for a Dante/Lulu reunion and restore the life he stole from her by engineering the explosion at the Floating Rib.
Of course, we don't know that's what's about to happen — and I'll be happy if it doesn't, because it really doesn't make any sense. If Cyrus is carrying guilt over his role in Lulu's coma, wouldn't he feel even guiltier for murdering a mother of two children who wasn't even involved in any of it? Will he have to murder someone else now so he can be okay with murdering Sam?
We'll have to wait and see, and so far, the show doesn't seem to be in any hurry to let us know what's going on with Lulu — she fell out of bed and dragged herself back in on Wednesday, and we haven't seen her since. I think we're probably all familiar with the way soaps try to drum up a little extra anticipation by cutting away from in-progress storyline developments for a day or two, but that trick is typically pulled on a Friday; more importantly, the Lulu story has been going on for what seems like forever already, so it's hard to see the wisdom behind finally putting a long-discussed recast onscreen and then forgetting about her for two straight days.
And it isn't like the show needed to table Lulu's return in order to deal with more pressing matters. There was some momentary drama over Sam's will, which gave Drew legal guardianship of Danny and Scout — but that's just because it hadn't been updated since Jason's most recent return from the dead, and after grumbling for a couple of days about how he wanted to honor Sam's wishes and doesn't want to separate Danny and Scout but can't stomach the thought of letting Drew raise his son, Jason spoke with Dante, and they came up with the frankly rather heartwarming solution of having everyone move into the Quartermaine mansion together.
Here is where I have to pause to note that Steve Burton has been doing a lot of atypically interesting work lately, which I can only attribute to the fact that the show has been giving him things to do that do not involve Jason committing murder or defeating random bad guys. I might just be projecting and/or hoping Burton's just as tired of Jason's regular shtick as I am, but either way, it's been fun watching Jason display an emotional palette that's broader than just standing around and glaring at people; while he'll never be daytime's most layered or nuanced actor, he's certainly capable of doing a lot more than GH has ever asked him to do.
If there's any cause for concern here, I guess it'd be the likely reasons for stuffing all these people into the same set, which are almost certainly budget-driven. The magical Quartermaine mansion is so big that entire weeks go by before we see people who live there interacting with each other, so it isn't like Jason and Dante moving in is guaranteed to lead to more crowded Q scenes. It will, however, allow the show to retire the long-running penthouse set as well as Jason's room above Bobbie's. I like the idea of having all these characters under one roof; on the other hand, the portions of Port Charles we're allowed to see have been shrinking for years, and that does have an impact on the types of stories the show is able to tell.
Before we stop talking about the "Sam" corner of the canvas, I have to mention that her autopsy report is in. The results are good news for Lucas, who has been officially absolved of committing any surgical errors — but they're bad news for Elizabeth, whose nursing team is provisionally on the hook for the overdose of digitalis that turned up in the toxicology report and is now the official cause of death. Portia isn't coming out and blaming Elizabeth yet, but she did kinda-sorta recommend that she might want a union rep, so I think we can count on a few weeks of GH's head nurse being scapegoated for a death she had nothing to do with. (They're also bad for Danny, who already feels guilty about throwing Lucas out of Sam's funeral even before it started, but he's young; he'll bounce back.)
Drew Q for You(r Wife)
Things aren't going great for Drew. Yeah, sure, he won his special election, and yeah, he had sex with his nephew's wife, who also happens to be the daughter of the woman he's been hate-schtupping for months, but all of his stupid games are about to end with stupid prizes — in fact, they're already being handed out, starting with Drew being forced to endure the indignity of attending a funeral with a face full of pancake makeup, thanks to the beating administered by his twin brother.
Drew was also the subject of some mildly concerned eye-rolling from Danny and Rocco, who were in the room when he told Scout that his face was all bashed up because he walked into a door. Shortly thereafter, Rocco overheard Drew and Nina talking while she was putting makeup on his face, and the poor kid was cartoonishly surprised to hear her say she hoped no one would ever know Jason laid a hand on Drew. (Another good thing about all these people living at the Quartermaine mansion: The odds of secrets being overheard are about to go WAY up.)
Later, Drew lost a game of "Am I the Asshole?" when he and Jason were summoned to Alexis' office to talk about Sam's will. Although neither man acted particularly mature, it was Drew who started whining about not wanting to be in the same room with Jason, prompting Alexis to sit both their asses down and deliver a stern lecture about honoring Sam's wishes; after Jason essentially told them both that he was going to put Danny first regardless of the will and left, Drew tried getting in Alexis' head about Jason being an unfit father, and vowed that Scout would never live with anyone but him (even though she's been living separately from him for her entire life and he's about to move to Washington).
But those were minor embarrassments compared to what happened later in the week, when Michael summoned Curtis to Sonny's "gym" so they could have a private talk. The subject of this talk? Well, Michael wanted to tell Curtis that Drew not only made moves on Willow, but tried to buy Michael's silence by offering him the Aurora CEO position, thereby screwing Curtis out of a job he earned by acting as Drew's proxy during the campaign. (Add this to the growing list of gross, dishonest things Drew never would have done when the character was being played by Billy Miller.)
As always, the show's lame attempts at business speak are the worst part of this — especially Michael saying Curtis has "no C-suite experience" like that's supposed to matter in a world where Michael had his first CEO stint when he was like nine — but the fundamentals are still strong. The writers have done a good job of showing us that Curtis actively wants to be Aurora's CEO for the long haul, so even though he rebuffed Michael's suggestion that they team up to push Drew out of Aurora, it's impossible not to see Curtis' motivation to eventually take Michael up on the offer. Also, Curtis hasn't had a single interesting storyline in ages, so I really like the idea of having him engage in some corporate backbiting. The only wild card here is the recent news that Chad Duell is leaving the show and there are no immediate plans to recast Michael, which tells me that whatever is about to happen between Michael, Drew, and Curtis, it's going to happen within the next couple of weeks. Nothing wrong with a quick storyline, but this is one I'd rather see unfold over a period of months.
Michael's pending departure is also inconvenient with regards to Sasha, who is about to take a pregnancy test — and given that he's spent years living in close proximity to Sonny, who has the most active sperm known to man, it feels like the odds should be fairly high that the newest Scorpio will find herself in the family way. Ordinarily, we'd be perfectly poised for a whole bunch of mess between Michael, Sasha, Willow, Drew, and Nina; with Duell on his way out, though, it's really hard to see which direction the writers will decide to go. I wouldn't be surprised if Sasha, Willow, and Drew all ended up going off-canvas for a spell — Willow is a blown character who has no utility without Michael, Drew can disappear to Washington for months or years, and aside from her pregnancy scare, the biggest drama in Sasha's life currently revolves around what to cook for the Quartermaines and whether to accept Mac and Felicia's standing invitation for Sunday dinner.
Justice for Our Daughter
Speaking of blown characters, I cannot even begin to imagine what consistent purpose Kristina will possibly manage to serve once this heinous "make Ava pay" storyline has finally been allowed to run its course. She's selfish, self-absorbed, and self-righteous, and it's never any fun to watch her interact with any single character on the show. I'm dreading whatever is about to transpire during Ava's trial for "killing" "her" baby — either Ava will be acquitted, at which point we'll have to listen to all kinds of whining about justice being thwarted and it being all Ric's fault, or she'll be convicted, and we'll have to endure a few months of Ava skulking around Pentonville while Avery is raised by Sonny and "Mama Carly." I prefer the former, albeit just barely; I don't know how much more of Kristina's sanctimonious whining I can take.
The bitter kicker with all this from last week is that Kristina has finally convinced Molly that the two of them need to team up and get justice for "our daughter," and that the way to do that is for Molly to "finesse the truth" while she's on the stand as a witness for the defense. This is soapy enough; I just resent that a lot of the impetus stems from Ric having the audacity to subpoena Molly in the first place — and from Molly taking like half a day to go from "of course my father is calling me to testify" to "how dare you." Kristina can't even do something nice without being annoying, as she proved when Dante returned to the penthouse and discovered that she'd let herself in so she could start going through Sam's belongings "so you and the kids don't have to." Maybe call first?
Of course, Kristina has time to show up unannounced at other people's homes because she is apparently unemployed again — or at least that's the major takeaway from the conversation she had with Sonny last week, during which he offered her some kind of job at Corinthos Coffee based on his belief that she's "good with numbers." I guess this must mean Charlie's is officially a thing of the past, and I suppose it's also a sign that the Corinthos-Davis House will operate completely offscreen — and without Kristina's involvement — going forward.
If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that with Michael's exit on the horizon, Kristina is next in line to become the Corinthos kid who's closest to Sonny's inner orbit. If Ava goes free, and I'm guessing she will, then it'd be just like this show to have Kristina go dark and start burrowing into Sonny's mob in order to wield violence as revenge. I have absolutely no idea whether this will actually happen, but this show loves "sins of the father"-type stories, and Valentini-produced soaps love storylines about women driven mad by grief or jealousy, so it isn't hard to imagine it happening.
I have no interest in seeing any of that transpire, for the record, but on the other hand, Sonny will need to retire at some point; one of his silly kids will need to step up and take over the organization, and it might as well be Kristina. Let her take the reins of organized crime in Port Charles, fending off challengers with all the tired might that a 70-year-old Stone Cold can muster. Maybe her biggest nemesis will turn out to be one of the numerous pissed-off love children that I insist must have been scattered around the globe by AJ before his presumably final death.
That's it for the big stuff from last week — now for your bullet points!
- Kai convinced a skeptical Trina that he was willing to work harder and be a better study partner
- Elizabeth warned Aiden not to expect too much from his weeping wet noodle of a father, and Aiden told her not to worry
- Lucky spent another week moping and whining about his lack of purpose, even after Brennan tried to put the town out of its misery by offering him a job with the WSB somewhere in Africa
- Ric gave Molly tickets to see 12 Angry Men, inadvertently reminding TJ that he'd forgotten his domestic partner's birthday
- Lucas and Ava had a really sweet bonding moment at Julian's grave
- Dex, who must have been standing on an apple crate, sparred with Kai at Sonny's "gym"
- Completely ignoring and/or forgetting all the criminal dirtbags in their extended family, Kristina and Joss talked about how Ava needs to pay
- Jordan told TJ that she might have a new "friend" he'll approve of
- Sasha made cinnamon rolls
- Chase found the door to Dante and Sam's penthouse unlocked, so he entered with his gun drawn, thereby raising one million questions about PCPD training
- Continuing last week's theme of people letting themselves into other folks' homes, Gio barged in on Trina while she was dancing alone; instead of karate chopping him in the throat, she sat with him for an impressively pointless conversation
- After hearing that Molly told him not to come to the trial and he foolishly took her at her word, Stella taught poor, stupid TJ about the difference between what your domestic partner says and what she actually means
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