After a pretty nice run of episodes that were fairly tightly focused, last week's General Hospital was much more of a mixed bag. Plenty of time was spent on Lulu's return and Ava's trial, but all the stuff around those scenes served to highlight the state of relative disarray that the canvas is in right now; from the investigation into Sam's death to whatever the hell they think they're doing with Lois and Deception, there are a lot of pots simmering below a full boil at the moment, and it'll be interesting to see how (or if) the writers try to wrangle order out of chaos.
We'll cross those bridges when we come to them. In the meantime, here's what went down last week:
If the System Fails You, I Won't
I'll cut right to the chase — mainly because I feel like most of us were only ever expecting this to go one way — and tell you that Ava left the courtroom a free woman after the verdict was handed down. It's really the only outcome that made sense, unless Maura West was leaving the show and they needed to come up with some sort of emergency Blackie Parrish-style exit — and it appears to have opened the door to the next story the writers want to tell with Kristina, but more on that in a minute.
The timing with all this is a little funky, as it so often seems to be in Port Charles, but I think last week's events took place over two days. Monday picked up after closing arguments in the trial, at which point Alexis confronted Ric in the now-empty courtroom to call him a horrible father and an unforgivable human being. She was being hysterical and largely unreasonable, as is her occasional wont, but this kicked off a pretty rough few hours for our favorite returning character of 2024, including a difficult visit with Molly.
Molly gives Ric more grace than anyone in town, and that's still the case, but she was in no mood to see anyone when her dad stopped by, seeing as how she and TJ had just had an immensely emotional argument over their divergent responses to the trial — and their grief over losing Irene in general — that ended with both of them deciding they'd grown too far apart, and wanted too many different things, for their relationship to continue. Mirroring his response to Irene's death, TJ put his back to the apartment door and slumped to the ground in tears… but this time, he was on the other side, weeping in the hallway of their building while Molly did the same on the other side.
Given how long these characters have been together, the decision to split them up — particularly on a show in which love has been in exceedingly short supply during recent years — and I'm happy to say that in spite of the rather dismissive treatment they've been given in general, Molly and TJ's breakup was at least handled better than it could have been. In a perfect world, these scenes would have been a lot longer, and they would have also been the centerpiece of the episode rather than just another thing, but the writing was nuanced enough to allow the characters to express their disappointment with each other as well as their love for one another, and the performances by both actors were superb. I think we can all agree that Kristen Vaganos has been an all-around excellent recast for Molly, to the extent that she owns the part now, but Tajh Bellow — much like TJ for pretty much the character's entire existence — has been so marginalized that it was actually something of a shock to see him opening up and explaining emotions that had previously been expressed only through mercurial responses that tended toward snarling rage. Like Tequan Richmond in the part before him, Bellow is a leading man in waiting; he just needs to be given the material. I hope this isn't the beginning of the end for his character.
Vaganos, meanwhile, just knocked it out of the park all week. Where Kristina is being written and portrayed as an obnoxious, deluded, self-righteous cipher, Molly has been emotionally available and articulate to an often heartbreaking degree. For Molly, two things can be and often are true — she loves TJ, but she can't bear the thought of trying to start a family again; she loves Ric, but she's struggling with the part he played in Ava's acquittal, if only because of the collateral damage; she's barely managing to cope with her grief over Irene's death, but she isn't blinded by a thirst for vengeance, and can accept it was a tragic accident that she hopes she'll one day heal from.
It's that last point that's proving particularly troublesome in the immediate aftermath of the trial. Not just because TJ is still furious — primarily at Kristina, it seems, for deciding to confront Ava in the first place — but because Kristina was so invested in a guilty verdict that when she heard the jury foreman say the words she didn't want to hear, she fully dissociated, to the extent that I briefly hoped she might spontaneously slip into a catatonic stupor the way Burt Ramsey did after he was revealed to be Mr. Big.
Alas, no such luck. Instead, it fully looks like Kristina is going full Corinthos, indulging dark thoughts of violent revenge rather than doing the difficult work of reflection and acceptance. I can understand why the writers find this idea appealing — GH loves nothing more than generational symmetry in its storylines, and honestly, there's plenty of drama to be mined from the idea of a mobster's amorality infecting his children — but in practice, it's really just incredibly tiresome. This is mainly because the way the show has centered Sonny as a protagonist is repulsive, but it's also because there's absolutely no depth to the way Kristina is being written or portrayed. We don't see her struggling with her descent into blind hatred; she's either hyperventilating or calmly threatening/insulting people, and in either situation, Kate Mansi is playing her as a blank wall. With her, you never get the sense she believes two things can be true; like her horrible, horribly boring father, she appears to see everything in black and white, and if you aren't with her, you're against her.
This played out in the moments after the verdict was announced, when Molly and Kristina got into an argument in the courthouse hallway that ended with Kristina coolly telling Molly that it made sense for her to move on from this, because "you were never really Adela's mother." This moment is an example of writing vs. portrayal, and how the gap or tension between the two can be informed by a nuanced performance; on paper, Molly just said "I'm done" and walked off, but onscreen, Vaganos let you see Molly absorb the shock and hurt of Kristina's words before collecting herself enough to leave the situation.
I don't really want to pile on Kate Mansi. I keep harping on this whole writing/performance issue mainly because I can feel the show pulling us toward a Dark Kristina storyline, and without the necessary depth, it's just going to be a gender-flipped flavor of the same Corinthos bullshit GH has been feeding us for 20 years. I'm resigned to this to an extent, but I'm also preemptively disappointed and angry about the missed potential — and with apologies to Ms. Mansi, pointing out stuff like that is part of why this column exists.
Anyway. Ava's free, Kristina has snapped, and Sonny is standing by. Historically, he's always been allergic to the idea of his kids following in his footsteps — which has never made much sense, given how rarely he expresses any iota of regret for any of the choices he's made — but prior to the verdict's announcement, he gave her a deeply odd speech encouraging her to draw strength from her anger, and while talking with the increasingly useless Natalia later on, he expressed repugnant pride over his and Kristina's shared need for "justice." (Give me a fucking break.) If the writers really intend to go there, the only thing that makes sense is for Kristina to either accidentally kill an innocent victim or be killed herself, and for Sonny to finally be confronted with the repercussions of the way violence spreads like a virus.
I do not see this happening.
Sam Died Because of Me?
The week's other big story was the return of Lulu, who spent every day in a state of gomper-jawed disbelief while hearing about — in no particular order — her four-year coma, her family connection to Cyrus, Luke's death, Nikolas' imprisonment, Spencer's death, Ace's existence, and the fact that Dante not only had a long-term committed relationship with Sam, but that Sam saved her life by serving as her liver donor and then promptly died.
It's a hell of a lot to take in, and I can't lie; it's been pretty amusing watching various characters struggle with how they're supposed to bring Lulu up to date. In some respects, it's undeniably silly that Lulu has been allowed to flit around town eating solid food like it's no big deal, and on paper, it's easy to wish they'd opted for more of a "Laura's alive!" 1983-style return, putting the character in a single location and bringing all of her friends and loved ones together to celebrate their good fortune and share various updates. But it's no longer 1983, and we're only allowed to see more than four characters together a few times a year, and also, Lulu really did miss out on a whole bunch of fairly impactful stuff, so it probably made the most sense for them to dribble it out over several days.
Aside from learning that Alexa Havins was an excellent choice for Lulu 3.0, we also found out that Cyrus was full of shit when he told the folks at Turning Woods that he was the family representative for Lulu's care — a discovery that Laura was particularly enraged to make, and one she responded to by having Cyrus marched into her office in cuffs, announcing she was placing a family-wide restraining order on him, and letting Anna dump him in a holding cell until a Turning Woods rep could make it to the PCPD and decide whether to press charges. I'm pretty meh on all this, honestly — rather than inexplicably making Cyrus the heavy here, it'd be more sensible (and interesting) to tie things into Spencer history somehow. Someone — I wish I could remember who — suggested the idea of making Victor the bad guy by having his latent programming resurface in Drew, forcing him to do bad stuff without him even being aware of it. Cheesy, yes, but at least the motivations would be clear; at this point, Cyrus has been Bible-thumping around town for so long that it doesn't make any sense for him to screw with people this way. He was going to transfer Lulu to South Carolina… and then what? And what for? I understand this stuff is only just now coming to light, so there's time for those answers to be made manifest, but I also understand we're dealing with a show that could needlepoint the side of a building with all the narrative threads it's dropped over the last few years.
Some folks have taken issue with the way Dominic Zamprogna played Dante's response to Lulu's return, criticizing him for being too flat. I can see where they're coming from, but soaps need performers who tend toward the subtle in their work, and I can see how someone in Dante's position would spin his emotional wheels while absorbing the shock of this situation. It might look like nothing on the surface, but that's just how processing appears to other people sometimes, and for me, Dante's processing was visible — not to mention a nice counterpoint to the expected histrionics.
(One really nice touch: Lulu said she went to the Quartermaine mansion because she "knew Tracy would be honest" with her. Really looking forward to seeing that reunion.)
The main question hanging over all this is probably: How close are we to the inevitable Dante/Lulu reunion? Given that the woman Dante just proposed to is dead and so is the guy who proposed to Lulu just before she fell into a coma, there don't seem to be many meaningful obstacles there — other than, you know, grieving the dead and figuring out how the hell to parent the various children involved in this messy equation. Now that Cody knows his sweet hitchhiker was Lulu, there's no chance of those two getting involved. The main spanner in the works is probably… deep breath in, deep breath out… Gio.
Last week, we were presented with the insultingly preposterous revelation that Cody knows Brook Lynn from years ago — specifically, when he and Dante were rowdy teenagers getting up to no good at summer camp. As you may recall, Cody introduced himself to Brook Lynn after he arrived in town, but whatever; the writers have decided they're going to drop a ton of anvils around the idea that Dante and Brook Lynn have a mysterious shared past that they somehow never discussed or even alluded to prior to this year, and no amount of continuity errors will stop them. The latest is Cody's casual comment regarding how much Brook Lynn apparently wanted to jump Dante's bones when their summer camps were on opposite sides of the same lake; at this point, they might as well stop pussyfooting and just have these characters start carrying neon signs around.
Much like Gio himself, this pending development feels largely absent of drama and/or much of a reason to exist. It would be one thing if Dante and Brook Lynn conspired to hide Gio's existence from their spouses, and either of them were in a long-term relationship; GH has gotten a ton of mileage out of that kind of thing in the past. But that isn't what's happening here. Honestly, I don't really know what is happening, but it looks a lot like Dante and Brook Lynn hooked up, she got pregnant, and then Lois jumped in to handle a quickie adoption that ended up staying in the family. And I guess I can see Brook Lynn being upset that she never knew the dopey kid she thought was some sort of cousin is actually her own long-lost child, but… so what? What does this even accomplish? Is it supposed to be the seed of heartbreak that splits up Brook Lynn and Chase? If so, how many people are really going to be invested in that storyline?
I dislike complaining about this, because I fully understand and appreciate the need for characters like Brook Lynn to have children. Shows like GH are nothing without generational drama, and when that's neglected, you end up with the type of belated, retcon-dependent hogwash that hands Mac and Robert insta-children 30-plus years after the fact. But you'd have to have the emotional maturity of a walnut to end a relationship over something like this, so I have zero interest in watching any of the characters involved doing any yelling, crying, or hand-wringing.
There's also the problem of Brook Lynn, who has become utterly dull in a way that disrespects her family heritage. She should be a tough-as-nails schemer — and she's been that in the past — but these days, she feels like she's always 15 minutes away from churning butter while listening to old Andy Williams records. Soap couples are forever breaking up because soap writers have a hard time finding anything interesting in domestic bliss, and unfortunately, Brook Lynn and Chase have become an insomnia-curing case study in why these shows never met a divorce they didn't like. They can't even try to get pregnant in an interesting way — they approach baby-making with all the excitement of scratching off a lottery ticket. It's pretty damn grim. Chase, meanwhile, has hardly been seen in weeks; if he and Brook Lynn break up, they should just marry him off to Monica and have them live happily ever after upstairs.
All of that being said, the Gio drama is still infinitely more appealing than last week's reminder that Lois is still the spokesperson for Deception, and people in the world of GH still apparently give a shit about — and feel perfectly justified in commenting on — someone's accent. Out of nowhere, we were handed a completely unwelcome series of scenes in which Lois returned to Home & Heart, blissfully unaware that, per Maxie, she needed to sell a ton of product in order to make up for a soft sales quarter. And oh no, someone from the old neighborhood called in to criticize her new speaking voice! But not to worry, because that call was all the motivation Lois needed to go back to her old accent on live television — and sales skyrocketed! Who could have guessed that would happen?
To put all this more succinctly: Core characters need kids, and the Quartermaine clan deserves stories. But lord, not like this.
Bugging Out
"Yes, but not like this" also applies to the mockery the show has made of the once-mighty Anna Devane, who has gone from saving the world to weeping softly while Jason tells her she needs to get a grip. Finola Hughes is a monster talent, I love Anna, and I'm glad for the decade or so she's been back on canvas, but ever since the sordid Peter August debacle, it's become increasingly clear that the show has lost all perspective on how she should be used. They're still dancing around the idea of an Anna/Jason coupling, which would be even grosser than Sonny and Emily — and last week, they had Anna relying on Spinelli and Carly (CARLY!) to bug Brennan's office so they could figure out whether he actually knows where Valentin's hiding.
This is so stupid. Anna is the police commissioner, for Pete's sake — she has been, on and off, for close to 40 years — and it beggars belief that anyone on the writing staff would think it makes sense for her to turn to Spinelli for a listening device, and then to Carly (%$@#% CARLY!) to plant the damn thing in Brennan's office. It fell to Jason to be the voice of reason, shouting that Brennan is a WSB station chief, so of course his office will be swept for bugs on a regular basis — information that never occurred to Carly, who whirled around to ask Anna, who casually confirmed it with a shrug.
Aside from the brief moments when I allow myself to imagine Anna deliberately having Carly screw everything up just so she's taken into WSB custody, none of it makes a single lick of sense. Sure, Brennan has taken an obvious shine to Carly, but big deal — any old jackass could have walked into his office, asked for a glass of water, and then stuck a bug to the underside of his desk when he turned his back to pour it. (Equally hard to believe: Carly proudly declaring that she put the bug in the perfect place. After all these years of lying, cheating, and stealing, there's no way in the world she wouldn't be aware of how lame that was.)
Well, whatever, it worked. While Jason, Carly, and Anna were standing around arguing about Anna's decision to enlist Carly, Spinelli yelped over from his laptop across the room to let everyone know Brennan was making a phone call — and of course it seemed very much to be a call to Valentin, with Brennan recounting Jason's recent offer to arrange for a simple handoff of Charlotte, no questions asked. Again, this is so stupid; the only plan that looked dumber was Lulu's, and the only thing she could think to do was lace up her shoes and announce her plan to… walk off into… wherever and keep going until she found her daughter? Fortunately, Laura was there to finally insist that Lulu go to the goddamn hospital.
The only character who came out of this looking like anything other than a total halfwit was Brennan's assistant Colette, who was very busy practicing her "French" accent (half Pepe le Pew, half chef from The Little Mermaid) but could still see that Brennan was making a big mistake by letting all these civilians go tromping in and out of his office. Spy games just aren't what they used to be, folks.
Once again, that's all the big stuff. Now for your bullet points!
- Carly shrieked at Jason and an inexplicably wetsuited Drew about how they needed to coexist for the sake of their kids; Jason tersely vowed that he wouldn't be "the one to break the peace"
- Danny struggled with his feelings of jealousy and grief after he learned about Lulu's recovery
- Dex is officially part of the furniture now
- Maxie was adorably pissed that she wasn't the first person to see Lulu after she woke up
- Ric and Ava are totally going to have sex
- Curtis suggested that TJ try to get over Molly moving out by redecorating the virtually empty apartment, which led to the hilarious sight of two of the most jacked guys on the show helping each other lift a ten-pound chair
- Remembering that Sonny has had 40 children with 39 different women, Dante approached the "king of blended families" for parenting advice
- Jordan looked over Isaiah's offer letter from GH, alternating between flirting with him and telling him he should negotiate for more money
- Kristina had a meaningless conversation with Natalia, who continues to have no meaningful place on this show
- Moments after her acquittal, Ava and Sonny resumed arguing over her access to Avery
- Brad resisted the urge to blackmail Portia into letting him going to a medical symposium in Miami that Lucas is attending; his restraint paid off when Stella shamed Portia into changing her mind and letting him go
- Rather than taking Wubs' excellent advice and getting involved in an exciting story involving an art forgery ring, Trina spent the week upset with Kai, who needs an extension on their assignment
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