Figuring out the right way to start these columns is always a struggle for me, but this week's is particularly difficult. I don't want to get into politics here — not because I'm worried about offending any MAGA, but because no one watches a show like General Hospital in order to feel closer to the real world, and I want to honor that by focusing on what's happening in Port Charles. Still, I think it'd be an act of denial to write this without at least pausing to acknowledge that a lot of people are struggling with a lot of very difficult and frightening feelings right now, and to let you know that I'm right there with you. As an old history major as well as someone whose family situation means I have a huge vested interest in how this country decides it wants to treat its most vulnerable residents, I'm watching the clouds roll in and sending every ounce of positive energy I can muster to everyone who's hurting in the wake of this disaster.
I think we're going to need an extra helping of great stories over the next few years, and very possibly well beyond. Here's hoping our favorite creators are ready, willing, and able to step up.
What Are We Gonna Do Without Her?
The fallout from Sam's sudden (and still unexplained) death continued last week, which didn't do a lot to move story but did give a handful of actors — led by Nancy Lee Grahn and Dominic Zamprogna — an opportunity to deliver heartbreaking displays of grief. Grahn in particular is really operating on a higher level right now; everything, from her physical choices to her line delivery, feels agonizingly on point for the horror Alexis is dealing with. I also have to give Steve Burton a lot of credit for embracing the rare chance to play Jason as something other than annoyed and mildly confused by everything happening around him — although a lot of his week was taken up with Sidwell shenanigans, it fell to Jason to tell Maxie and Spinelli that Sam is gone, and those scenes were every bit as tender as they should have been, thanks to all three of the actors involved.
As I said, nothing much has happened yet in terms of story. Last week was mainly a week for depicting various characters either finding out about Sam or continuing to grapple with the reality of her absence; the biggest new developments are basically that the hospital is investigating her death and that Alexis wants Danny and Scout to come live with her once they're ready to leave the Quartermaine mansion. Where the investigation is concerned, while we still don't have any clues as to what caused Sam's fatal heart attack, we do know that Portia is taking a close look at Lucas' handling of the surgery, up to and including pulling Isaiah aside to ask him whether he saw Lucas screw it up in any way. (Isaiah essentially told her to go to hell.) We also know that Lucas is beating himself up over Sam's death, Brad is trying his hardest to be there for Lucas, and they were actually sharing an embrace when Carly came barrelling into the hospital locker room to pry them apart and chase Brad off with the power of her mighty screech.
As far as Scout and Danny go, it seems pretty likely that they'll end up with Alexis. When Alexis told Olivia about her plan, she encountered no resistance; when she told Dante, the news obviously hit him hard, but more because it meant he needed to think about another aspect of life without Sam. As he told Alexis, he hadn't been able to see far enough ahead to think about a plan for them that went past holing up at the Quartermaines' and letting their heartbreak heal a little bit. It's pretty clear that this is being done chiefly so Dante can be fully freed up for a Lulu reunion while Jason and Drew remain unencumbered by full-time parental duties, but it isn't the worst idea — there are certainly narrative possibilities waiting to be explored in a house that contains Alexis and two grandchildren.
The big loser in the Grief Tour Sweepstakes is Kate Mansi, who has been handed a big pile of doodoo and isn't doing a lot to eliminate the stench. Her big scenes of the week found her loudly insisting that the hospital would absolutely not be performing an autopsy on Sam, then stomping off to the chapel so she could shout at the heavens about how messed up it is that she lost her big sister after losing "her" daughter. This is not to say that Kristina shouldn't be sad and angry, just that she continues to be written as someone who can't or won't see past her own nose, and Mansi doesn't seem to have the ability to layer dumb dialogue with enough nuance to elevate the material.
Actually, you know what? I take that back. The big loser here isn't Mansi, it's Cameron Mathison, whose version of Drew just keeps getting worse and worse.
Why Don't We Do It on the Floor?
"But wait," I can hear you asking. "This version of Drew is already all-around awful. How could he get even worse?" Friend, I am here to give you the answer to your question, which is this: By having sex with Willow… on the floor of Scout's playroom… moments after getting down on the same floor with Scout to try and comfort her. (Drew: "I'll always be here for you." Scout: "That's what Mom said.")
This is where we talk about how two things can be true. Yes, it's absolutely true that all the sobbing and hyperventilating over Willow kissing Drew was silly, because all they did was kiss. Yes, it's 100 percent true that any soap adultery story worth its salt should include, you know, actual adultery. However, the adultery in question should be character-driven, supported by a story that slides the adulterers between the sheets for reasons that not only make sense, but feel something close to unavoidable; the viewer should be just as torn as the characters, or at least they should hate the marriage-wrecker as much as they love the spouse who's being cheated on.
None of that is happening here. On one side, we have Drew and Willow, who have so little chemistry that every time they tell each other they've made a horrible mistake and it can never happen again, they come across more like people with severe memory issues rather than people with an undeniable attraction to one another. On the other side, we have ol' Sphincter Lips Corinthos Quartermaine Corinthos Quartermaine, who reacted to the news that his wife smooched his uncle one time by going to the local dive bar, getting plastered, and schtupping the ex-girlfriend he dumped in order to be with his faithless spouse. What it all adds up to is the destruction of a marriage that's every bit as dumb and hard to watch as the marriage itself, which is kind of a neat trick for the writers to pull off, but only if you're the type of viewer who likes to hate-watch while seeing just how bad things can get.
And yet there's still a certain amount of fun to be had here, if only because GH doesn't indulge this kind of bonkers soapiness very often these days. Even if the foundation for the whole thing is shoddy, I have to give the writers at least a little credit for going nuts enough to decide it'd be great if Michael had sex with Sasha, came home and had sex with Willow, and then Willow scampered off to have sex with Drew. And then — then! — it'd also be great if Michael picked up his phone, noticed a motion alert from the nannycam in the playroom, and found himself watching footage of his wife riding his uncle while Scout's stuffed animals looked on. This is all extraordinarily soapy, and the fallout will be much more entertaining than watching Wiley dress up as Sherlock Holmes or hearing Michael and Willow mew at each other about their perfect marriage, so again, credit where credit's due. I only wish it didn't involve three sanctimonious assholes and the Quartermaine cook.
So here's where we are: Michael knows that his uncle has breached his wife's love canal, Willow knows that Cody found out about her illicit kissin' through Sasha, and Tracy knows that Drew gave Cody $50,000 to keep his square jaw shut about the whole thing. (Her perfectly and delightfully Tracy response was to tell Cody he should have held out for a hundred grand, decree that the whole gross mess proves Drew is really a Q, and enlist Cody to help her bring Drew down.) Willow and Drew don't know that Michael saw them humping, Willow doesn't know that Drew has also been doing it with Nina, and all of us are now waiting to see how many pregnancies will occur as a result of all this sneaking around. And as for Sasha? Well, she's got problems of her own.
Diamonds Aren't Forever
This past week was crummy for a bunch of us, but hey — at least we weren't confronted by our best friend for blabbing about her affair to our boyfriend/cousin, abruptly informed of an acquaintance's death, and then kidnapped out of our kitchen/office in broad daylight with only Carly Spencer's vocal cords there to help us. But that's just life for Sasha, who can't go more than a couple of days without having something awful happen to her; this time, the silver lining is that her latest ordeal ended up being mercifully brief.
Sasha's kidnapper was, of course, Sidwell, who yoinked her to try and get Holly to hand over his diamonds. It proved to be a pretty effective way to deal with the situation — once Anna found out about Sasha's abduction, she hightailed it to Robert's office, where she found him and Holly together; from there, Anna headed to Brennan's office, where she was hilariously unsurprised to see that Carly was already on the scene, asking her favorite spy to fix the situation. Because WSB station chiefs apparently have unlimited discretion and the WSB's general purpose is even foggier than it was in the '80s, he agreed.
When Holly went to get the diamonds back from Sonny, she found Jason, who not only agreed to hand them over, but insisted that he go with her to save Sasha — which is how Holly, Jason, Robert, and Anna all converged at Brennan's office, where Holly got a call from Sidwell, who warned that if his directions weren't followed "to the letter," Sasha would die. With lightning speed, Jason rushed to a nearby warehouse, where he and Sidwell yapped at each other for a few minutes before Sidwell convinced Jason that there was a bomb in the room where Sasha was being kept, and it'd go off in five minutes if the diamonds weren't handed over. Suitably convinced, Jason gave Sidwell the bag, rushed into the building, grabbed her, and got her out just as the bomb went off. But never fear! Even though we saw Brennan caught in the explosion, all three of them made it back to his office with no more than a couple of scrapes and a little dust on their clothes. Jason told Sasha that Holly gave up the diamonds to save her, and moments later, Robert and Holly arrived to proclaim their love and gratitude. The end.
This is the kind of thing that would have taken at least six months in the '80s, but I'm not really complaining, because most of the characters involved don't belong anywhere near an action scene — particularly Tristan Rogers and Emma Samms, neither of whom are capable of breaking into a realistic jog at this point. I love Robert and I'm perfectly happy to have Holly around, but it's well past time for the show to stop treating them like their reunions need to involve capers. The two-dimensional version of Holly we've had since she returned during the monkey virus era is particularly tiresome. If the writers insist on treating us like we're too dumb to handle character evolution where these two are concerned, then I'm at least happy that Samms' limited availability forces them to get their silliness over with quickly.
So Sasha is safe and Sidwell is gone, along with his diamonds. Where does this leave us? I don't know, but I assume Samms will probably be gone again within a month, and given how little interest the show typically has in Robert, I suspect whatever relationship he and Sasha come to have will be largely developed offscreen. This feels like an interlude to me — which, again, I'm okay with, partly because up until last week, I was afraid we were being set up for a long, drawn-out power struggle between Sidwell and Sonny, and the last thing we need is to be subjected to those two bantams crowing at each other from across the pier for months on end. (On that note, my pick for funniest line of the week came courtesy of Carly, who guessed Sidwell is "about six feet tall" when describing him to Brennan.)
There's also a hint of something potentially interesting happening with Sasha. Prior to Jason's arrival, she turned on the charm with Sidwell, telling him that there was no way Holly would ever part with the diamonds in order to save her; instead, she proposed that Sidwell let her go so she could swindle them from Holly herself. Now that she's been rescued, I can see Sasha going through a Lulu-style "now I love danger" transformation, following through on her threat to quit cooking for the Quartermaines, reconciling with Holly, and hitting the road with her so they can con their little hearts out together. In a year or two, she can return, bringing the baby Michael never knew he fathered with her.
I guess we'll have to wait and see. For now, all we really know is that Anna is on the scene at the warehouse explosion, where she's pissed off about being boxed out of Sasha's rescue and getting ready to take it out on Jason — and every time those two share a scene now, I'm terrified that it'll be the one that really starts trying to make an Anna/Jason pairing happen. DO NOT WANT.
Okay, I think that does it for the big stuff. Here come your bullet points!
- Diane almost walked in on Robert and Holly kissing, which was enough for her to tell Jason that she needs to break things off with Robert because she deserves to be with someone who loves her as much as he'll always love Holly
- Ava asked Nina if they could be friends again, and Nina said it'll take time and work, but she's willing if Ava is
- Nina told Ava that she's been having sex with Drew to (gagging sound) distract him from Willow; Ava told Nina that she needs to tell Willow before Willow finds out from someone else
- Anna called Robin and they talked about her new sister Sasha
- Curtis performed a sobriety check on Alexis, who assured him she won't fall off the wagon
- Sonny spent a lot of time trying to comfort Dante and Alexis about Sam, which is only appropriate, given that he's Port Charles' official merchant of death
- Ric confronted Anna about the photos used to justify Ava's arrest, correctly deducing that they came from Sonny and Jason
- Chase and Brook Lynn talked about making babies, which is probably how they believe babies are made
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