Daytime dramas have a reputation for being mindless entertainment — and to an extent, they often are — but one thing that's typically missed or ignored by detractors is the added power soap stories are given simply by virtue of the narrative weight accrued by the sheer amount of time these characters spend onscreen.
Even if you aren't actively emotionally invested in a storyline, it doesn't matter; when everything clicks into place, there's something undeniably moving about watching characters you've come to know over hundreds of hours — and the actors playing them — experiencing life-altering joy and heartbreak. For example, what's going on with Robert and Holly right now is very silly, and they haven't been an on-canvas couple for nearly 40 years, but their storyline can't help but take on added heft if you remember the days when they were married (and those nostalgic feelings are only amplified if and when enough budget is freed up for a few flashbacks).
Of course, Robert and Holly don't have anything to do with why this stuff is on my mind. I'm talking about the death of Sam McCall Morgan Cain, whose lengthy stay in Port Charles came to an abrupt, ungainly end last week — a character exit that was clumsily announced, infuriated a ton of fans, and seemed to happen for no good narrative reason, but still ended up producing several performances worthy of Emmy reels. And we haven't even gotten to the funeral waterworks yet!
As I've said numerous times in this space over the last several weeks, I've never really cared about Sam as a character; if anything, I tend to identify her as a key component of the Guza years, when a small handful of personalities dominated the show at the ongoing expense of others. Same deal goes for Jason — and then some. Given Sam's long history and who she is to a long list of Port Charles residents, I thought it was a dumb decision to kill her off, but I wasn't dreading her exit or anticipating getting caught up in any feels.
And yet. And yet, you guys. I know daytime isn't the only playground for serial drama that relentlessly hammers the heartstrings even when you intellectually understand you're being obviously played, but in my opinion, the afternoon soaps do it more effectively than anyone, and Sam's death is a prime example. It's given some of the show's best actors some great stuff to play, and challenged others to up their game; meanwhile, underneath it all, you know you're watching a work family say goodbye to one of their own. I was moved in spite of myself, reader, and that's something that hardly ever happens with all the other mindless entertainment we have to choose from. These shows are starved for resources, generally ignored and/or mocked by mainstream press outlets, and their cultural standing has been diminished over the last few decades — but everything that truly makes them special still remains, even when the people in charge are doing dumb stuff that makes us mad.
Oh My God, They Killed Sam! You Bastards!
I cannot count the number of times that I, particularly as a younger viewer, found myself watching a story unfold and wanting to believe the show as it tried to trick me into thinking something I knew was going to happen wouldn't actually happen after all. You know the type of thing I'm talking about — like when you know an actor's taking a hike, but the character's up there talking about sticking around, or when you know a character is about to die, but everything onscreen makes it look like they'll turn out fine. That's the exact move GH pulled last week with Sam, who made it through her liver donor surgery with flying colors, and looked for all the world like she was about to get her happily ever after. Lulu survived the transplant surgery, Dante proposed to Sam and she said yes, and the entire town cheered her on as a hero. And then… she was gone.
It happened just that abruptly. One minute, we were watching Alexis and Sam hugging and gushing over her engagement ring; the next, we saw Jason step off the elevator with Danny and Scout in tow, watched him register the beeping coming from Sam's room, and saw him lock eyes with a frantic Alexis. That wordless glance from across the room was all it took for Jason to know he needed to stuff a few bucks in Danny's palm, send him and Scout to Bobbie's, and find out what was wrong.
At first, no one had any answers. Alexis told Jason that Sam went white all of a sudden and couldn't breathe; meanwhile, we watched Lucas and Portia desperately try to save her, with Lucas angrily refusing to stop trying even after it was clear she wasn't coming back. When it was finally over, Lucas and Elizabeth, looking hollowed out and shattered, trudged out to the waiting room with Portia, where they shared the horrible news. After Alexis said an emotional goodbye to Sam's corpse, she returned to the nurses' desk, where she was in the middle of demanding answers when Dante and Rocco stepped off the elevator — and while Dante was in the middle of processing Sam's death, Sonny and Laura walked in.
I'm not going to turn this into a list of who's grieving over Sam and how; I outlined those scenes above as a way of illustrating how the writers staggered things while still making room for a series of connected characters to react. Alexis, Jason, and Dante got the big bedside farewells, which is only right, but Danny, Scout, Molly, and Kristina weren't shortchanged. The only scenes that really fell flat were the ones showing Drew coming to terms after finding out from Carly, and that has as much to do with the way Cameron Mathison played it as it does with the fact that Drew and Sam have barely interacted since Mathison was hired. (Runner-up in the "no one needed this" category goes to the lame, tired arguing that Kristina and Molly were doing when Alexis interrupted them to break the news, but those scenes were saved by the gut-punching look of bewildered misery that Kristen Vagnaros gave when Molly registered what happened.)
So how the hell did a seemingly healthy person up and die all of a sudden? For now, all we know is that Sam had a heart attack and the hospital is investigating. Given that we've been seeing Cyrus lurking around the hospital for no real narrative purpose, I feel like the smart money is on him being behind this for some reason, but really, I can't imagine that the answers will be satisfying — or even make much sense — once they're revealed. As I've said here before, I believe core characters like Sam should only be killed off if there's more story to be told through their death than their living, and I really don't think she had run out of narrative road. When this is all over, I think whatever riddles are answered and whichever mysteries are solved will end up being pretty disappointing. For the moment, though? I can't deny that this story is producing moving, memorable work.
You're Making Out with Your Nephew's Wife While You're Banging Her Mom
I doubt many people would have complained if the entire week had been spent focused on Sam's death and its immediate fallout, but GH has been Short Attention Span Theatre for decades, and not even the exit of a veteran with 20+ years of service was going to change that. To that end, we had to deal with a lot of awkward jumping between characters having their hearts ripped out and characters who were dealing with less… impactful news. Case in point: the sudden acceleration of the Drew/Willow "situationship" story, which quickly shifted into a higher gear after Cody went to the Brown Dog to drown his sorrows over finding out he and Sasha are first cousins, saw Drew mingling with the common people for a campaign stunt, and decided he needed to be punched in the face. And he didn't stop there, either — after socking Drew, Cody yelled "You're making out with your nephew's wife while you're banging her mom" loud enough for the entire room to hear, all while Ned's puppy-toting PI recorded the entire thing from her seat at the bar.
From there, things happened fast. Ned ended up with the video, which he shared with Tracy; she recommended taking it to Michael so they could be rid of Drew completely, but he argued that they could use it as blackmail fodder to keep him under their thumb forever, which could come in handy if he won the election. While they were talking about all this, Drew came home — and they immediately confronted him with the video, with Ned telling Drew that from now on, he'd have to go along with everything they told him to do. Drew tried to brush it off, saying he could handle Cody, at which point Ned dropped Bomb No. 2: James overheard Willow talking about kissing Drew, and he'd be a lot harder to silence than the stablehand.
While those three were arguing, Michael walked in, at which point Ned decided to press Drew to accept their terms. Meanwhile, Nina — who was there when Cody punched Drew — was in the gatehouse urging Willow to tell Michael about kissing Drew ASAP. The two of them hustled over to the main house so Willow could confess, arriving just in time to see Drew tell Michael "Last Fourth of July, I kissed your wife." After getting confirmation from Willow, Michael — who was being played for the day by the superior Robert Adamson — stormed off without telling anyone where he was going.
He ended up at the Brown Dog, where he found Sasha knocking back vodka as a means of self-medicating after enduring the trauma of having to tell Cody they could never be together because their fathers are brothers. Since GH characters tend to have the emotional depth of a goldfish, Michael's sad got stirred up with Sasha's sad, and after an untold number of drinks, they ended up having sex at the Metro Court, where they woke up with hangovers the next day and immediately agreed that no one ever had to know what they'd done. (Ha, ha, ha.)
Willow, meanwhile, found herself having to tell Drew to go away for the hundredth time when he showed up at the gatehouse to… talk about things, I guess? Ignoring her plea to go away, he convinced her there was no need for Michael to know about their second kiss; he also realized that Willow hadn't actually seen the video and remained unaware of the "banging her mom" part, which he neglected to tell her about. Unfortunately for both of these dummies, they were unaware that Sasha blabbed to Michael about the second kiss, so by the time he came home and found Willow, he was able to walk her straight into a lie about her extramarital smooch being an isolated incident. Then, instead of calling her on it, he asked how long the kids would be gone, and when she told him they had the place to themselves for a while, they started making out and fell to the couch, ripping off each other's clothes.
As others have pointed out, Michael — like oh so many soap characters — is more fun when he's being messy. I tend to agree, even if being messy has never stopped him from sanctimoniously pursing his lips and passing judgment on everyone else (except for Sonny and Carly, of course). This entire storyline is ridiculous top to bottom, from Willow and Drew's laughably passion-free spit-swapping to Michael figuring his wife kissing his uncle is reasonable justification for falling into bed with her best friend, but if I have to watch Michael do anything, I'd much rather watch him do something that'll end up making him look like a total jerk. Even though Willow and Drew really should have been having an actual affair in order to make any of this worth a damn, the potential for further dramatic fallout is still so high that I'm willing to roll with it for now.
So, for now, here's what we have: Drew and Willow have agreed (for the millionth time) that what happened between them can never happen again, and Michael never needs to know it happened more than once. Willow doesn't know that Drew has been schtupping Nina, and neither she nor Drew know that Michael is aware they kissed twice — but Willow has figured out that Cody must have heard about her and Drew from Sasha, and she's pretty pissed off about it.
Sasha, meanwhile, is very sad about having to break up with Cody, and Cody is indulging in some bitter self-pitying because he feels like whatever he really wants has always been out of reach; he has also helped himself to $50,000 of Drew's money as payment for keeping quiet about what he knows, an investment that seems pretty dumb on Drew's part given that Drew is well aware of their fight being recorded (and taking place in front of a bar full of people).
And then there's Holly, who endured a shakedown from Sonny before agreeing to his new terms, which include a 35 percent cut of the proceeds from the diamond sales. Even after losing an extra five percent of the haul, Holly can still count this as the most lucrative job of her life, and she went to Sasha to offer to cut her in on it. Sasha angrily rejected that offer, but as we've seen from the coming week's previews, that won't stop her from being kidnapped by Sidwell and his men; no doubt she will be rescued just in time to discover that her one-night stand with Michael has resulted in a pregnancy. I'd try to guess who'll pretend to be the father, but I think Drew and Ric are the only men on the canvas who are single and heterosexual, so maybe the show will be forced to forego that tired old plot device this time.
That's all the big stuff from last week. Time for the bullet points!
- Heather left for Sedona with Steven Lars, but only after visiting Ace and whispering "I'll be back"
- After being rebuffed by Brennan, Anna turned to Spinelli in her quest for Valentin and Charlotte, telling him "I need the Jackal"
- Lucky and Laura spent an afternoon talking about his man pain
- Trina asked Portia if she had anything to do with Heather leaving town; Portia said no, telling her nothing about Curtis' role in it
- Georgie dressed up for Halloween as Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century
- Robert told Holly that he could never hate her, but he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to forgive her
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