Sleigh bells are ringing in Port Charles, and so are ambulance sirens. Happy holidays, General Hospital fans — it's time to look back on a week full of family acrimony and hot stabbin' action!
My Daughter Deserves Justice
So. Ava's been absolved of any legal blame for Kristina's fall and Irene's death, which means we can put the whole surrogacy storyline behind us, right? Ha ha ha, suckers! That's a big fat "nope" from the writers, who still seem determined to try and squeeze drama out of the exhausting, never-ending conflict between the two surviving "Davis girls." Molly, having moved out of her and TJ's apartment, is now living with Alexis, who's still trying to stay neutral; Kristina, meanwhile, has accepted Sonny's gift of Charlie's, which was apparently closed down when Phyllis — who hasn't been seen or mentioned in like a year — "went back to Nixon Falls."
(Can we just pause for a moment on that? Did Phyllis not have an assistant manager to fill in? You know, the way Kristina did all those months when she was "managing" Charlie's and Phyllis was offscreen? What kind of shitty business owner just lets a place board up and puts people abruptly out of work like that? Also, in what universe would Charlie's be able to avoid scrutiny from the feds just because Sonny didn't take "an active interest" in the joint — but gave it to his daughter?)
Kristina is still insisting that "Adela" was "her baby," and says she doesn't regret the horrible things she said to Molly after the trial. She's still hyper-focused on getting "justice" by making Ava pay. And now she's planning a "reinvention" for Charlie's, whatever the hell that means. Is anyone invested in any of this? In order for a soap conflict to truly be worth a damn, it helps if both sides have a relatable point of view, but Kristina is simply awful, and none of her grievances are based in reality. It's hard for me to see where they're going with this, and even harder to care.
The worst part might be the way TJ has been sidelined throughout all of it. Throughout the pregnancy, rather than being allowed to have a true point of view, he just morphed into an angry, judgmental jerk — and since Irene's death, his grief has taken a back seat to this asinine little war between Molly, who really did nothing wrong, and Kristina, who just sucks. We've gotten some powerful performances out of it, but for a television drama, wringing tears out of a baby's death is like getting bubbles from boiling water — it's simply what happens. You don't get extra credit for it.
Speaking of credit, Ava is suddenly short on funds — as she discovered, to her horror, when she and Ric went out for a preposterously expensive dinner at the Port Charles Grill. (They originally planned on eating at Cafe Cherie, but left after trading insults with Sonny and Natalia. It was an upgrade anyway — who wants to eat at a place where the name and logo have been put on the doors and windows so they read correctly for the people inside the joint, but are backwards for everyone outside? That's exactly the kind of bad business sense that leads a person to make a dumb decision like hiring Cyrus Renault.)
So what happened to Ava's money? Well, according to a notification she received after the fact (and well outside business hours), her divorce settlement from her marriage to Nikolas has apparently been "taken back" by the Cassadines. How this could possibly happen without any notice or opportunity to appeal — and why in the world it would impact her ability to use her credit cards this quickly — is something we're not supposed to think about. We're also not supposed to think about the absurdity of Ric being out to dinner with Ava when he got a message from his bank letting him know her check bounced, AND him not being aware that the bouncing left him without enough funds to pay for dinner. (He said he "made some purchases," but come on. He's a lawyer. Are we supposed to believe he's living hand to mouth?)
It's off to a flimsy start, but I guess this is Ava's next storyline, and if you ignore all of its inherent silliness, it has a certain amount of appeal. GH has done reasonably well with reversal-of-fortune stories in the past, and Ava is definitely the type of character whose fondness for creature comforts makes her a potentially fun fit for something like this. I'm not sure I want to see her living above Bobbie's or regaining her fortune with a relish recipe, and I'm even less sure of why Ava would need to depend on her divorce settlement for anything when she's the owner of an art gallery, but whatever; on the list of the show's current problems, all of those rank fairly low.
Blonde Ambitions
Far more worrisome is the way Lulu has gone from sympathetic character to screeching pain in the ass in the space of two weeks. It's understandable that she'd be upset about Valentin going on the run with Charlotte; it's far less understandable that she'd react to the news by barging into Nina's office and insulting her, then threatening Brennan by promising to "burn the WSB to the ground" if he didn't help her. (Brennan, who really has a thing for abrasive blondes, obliged by dialing the number for Valentin's burner number — only to watch as Lulu took his phone and slammed it onto Carly's desk, shattering the screen.) The most sympathetic thing she did all week was break into Wyndemere, where she took time out of Dante's day by rummaging through a box of Charlotte's things while they waited for the ferry.
Between Ava losing her divorce settlement and the return of the Wyndemere set, there's obviously some Cassadine stuff brewing, which I'm not mad about — especially if it means we're getting James Patrick Stuart back as Valentin in glibly devious mode. But turning Lulu into a Carly clone is absolutely not what this show needs, and it also isn't necessary to tell this story; rather than showing her going around town picking fights with people, it'd be far more effective to highlight her concern for Charlotte.
Lulu isn't the only one being done dirty by this story. There's also Anna, who continues to be bent and twisted in all sorts of dumb directions by the writers; last week, they had her collude with Jason to kidnap Martin, drag him to the coffee warehouse, and threaten him with all sorts of ugly outcomes if he didn't tell them where Valentin is. Rightly annoyed, he handed over his phone to Jason, who gave it to Spinelli, who somehow used it to burrow into Valentin's bank accounts and discover that he'd made an in-person withdrawal in Zurich less than two days before. (Carly was also there, of course; naturally, in the moments leading up to Spinelli's discovery, she was screaming about how she refused to leave.)
So I guess it'll be off to Zurich for Jason and Anna, and this will apparently be just fine with Brennan, who told Colette he wants them to find Valentin — the reason being that as long as Valentin's in the wind, he remains a liability to the WSB and Brennan in particular. Again, I'm happy about the prospect of Valentin's return, but there was no real reason to write any of it like this; Lulu is being aggravating, not "Spencer" spunky, and Anna should not be using Jason as her muscle, particularly when the target is poor Martin, who's about as tough as your average Don Knotts character.
On the other hand, if this leads anywhere interesting, all can be forgiven. Now that Wyndemere's back on the canvas, the odds of people being pushed off parapets has skyrocketed, which is always a good thing.
So Much for Willow's Hero
Now for the truly soapy stuff. If you missed last week's episodes and you still have access to them, you'll definitely want to go back and watch all the scenes that took place in the Quartermaine living room. The family gathered together for their big holiday party, and almost all of the 45 people currently staying in the mansion or on the grounds were invited; the only omissions were Monica, who was presumably "resting upstairs," and Cody and Yuri, who I have now decided are part of a throuple with Terry.
Whenever one of these shows gets more than a small handful of people together, you know shit's about to go down — and go down it did, when Michael attempted to circumvent a cable outage by streaming the big PCU/Llanview game from his phone to the TV. (There's no way the Quartermaines would have a television that small, or that they'd situate it so you have to crane your neck from the couch to watch, but we aren't thinking about that.) Tracy, who had no interest in seeing or hearing the game, caused a kerfuffle that messed up the stream; in an attempt to fix it, she ended up streaming the nannycam footage of Drew and Willow humping in the nursery, and the fallout was delightful.
Chase and Brook Lynn quickly scurried off to the kitchen with Sasha, where Chase wondered whether he and Sasha were to blame for the way they conspired to bring Michael and Willow together in the first place. Joss, declaring her inability to look at Drew's "stupid, smug face" a minute longer, headed off to GH; Trina took the all-access pass that Gio got for performing the national anthem before the game and went to the stadium, where she congratulated Kai for winning. (Gio's sole contribution to the whole thing? Muttering "Wait 'til Uncle Sonny hears about this.")
That left Drew, Michael, Willow, Ned, Tracy, Nina, and Carly in the living room, where everyone except Willow took turns shitting on Drew; Willow, meanwhile, did the predictable GH thing and blamed Michael for having the footage in the first place. (She paid for it by getting yelled at by Carly, who actually had a reason to be rude for the first time in many months.) Drew's repeated attempts to deal with the situation privately were laughed off by Ned and Tracy, who pointed out that he made it everyone's business by having sex with his nephew's wife in the mansion — an act of infidelity so brazen that Tracy said it would have been too low even for the philandering Alan. After those two were done with Drew, Michael started in, blaming him for taking advantage of Willow's feelings and mockingly declaring "So much for Willow's hero." Drew, who just keeps getting grosser by the second, actually fought back, telling Michael he doesn't know the first thing about his relationship with Willow, prompting Michael to snap "Well, why don't you tell me."
Willow and Nina, meanwhile, ran off to the gatehouse, where Nina pointed out that Michael is a wealthy man with contacts on both sides of the law, and urged her to grab the kids and get the hell out before she was barred from the premises and prevented from seeing her children at all. But before they could get Wiley and Amelia in the car and head over to Nina's place, they were confronted by Carly (of course), who barged in and demanded to know what was going on.
This is, to put it simply, the type of mess soap fans love, and we've still really only scratched the surface of the implications. For starters, we need to see how this will impact Drew's decision to hand Michael the Aurora CEO gig — he now knows it won't be enough to repair their relationship, so there's no reason to double-cross Curtis (or continue pressuring Nina to help him "soften the blow"). But Drew doesn't know that Curtis is well aware of Drew's plan to screw him out of the job, and is already planning to turn the tables. So will Drew reverse course and make Curtis permanent CEO after all? And will Curtis box him out of the company anyway?
There's also the matter of Sasha's pregnancy. Carly clomped into the Quartermaine kitchen last week and nosily commented on Sasha shopping for prenatal vitamins; Sasha played it off as a bad search result, but once she starts to show, Carly's going to curl her upper lip and remember their conversation, and nothing makes her happier than yelling at someone else for lying. And speaking of lying, Sasha told Maxie she couldn't find the father of her baby to tell him even if she wanted to, but that's obviously not the case; what's far less obvious is how Sasha intends to keep the baby, and continue working for the Quartermaines, without Michael figuring out he got her pregnant.
(That last thing is obviously a moot point for us, given that we know Michael's about to be written off, but Sasha doesn't know that.)
Dexit
He survived combat zones, private security duty, and working for and against Sonny Corinthos — but no one's luck lasts forever, especially in this era of dwindling daytime budgets, and Dex has finally met a foe he couldn't defeat. Yes, folks, that's right: We're firing off a 21-gun salute to Officer Heller, whose stellar police work came shining through when he was stabbed in the back and didn't even think to turn around so he could see who did it.
While it wouldn't be fair to say Dex's death was telegraphed that far in advance, it's been obvious for some time now that the writers didn't have any idea what to do with him; prior to being stuck like a pig, his most recent appearances tended to find him standing around doing nothing. It felt awfully fishy when he introduced Felicia to his new partner, and when he made a quick recovery from his stab wound and went into Full Noble Overdrive — telling Felicia he was proud to be injured doing a job he could be proud of; talking to Joss about going on a romantic vacation — it was pretty obvious he was done for. All that's left to sort out now is the "why" of it all — in terms of the killer's motive as well as the writers'.
For now, we're clearly meant to believe Cyrus did it, based on the conversation the two of them had in Rice Plaza minutes before the stabbing. Dex, who was on patrol, made it clear to Cyrus that he'd been watching him — specifically the night Sam died, when he spotted Cyrus on the tenth floor. Moments later, we saw Cyrus flashing back to murdering Sam by injecting digitalis in her IV bag, so as the audience, we know Dex spotting him on Sam's floor is damning information. For anyone else, though, that feels like a big so what; Cyrus and his Bible have been wandering the halls of the hospital for months, so it's hard to imagine caring too much either way. After all, Cyrus had no discernible motive for killing Sam. We still don't know why he did it. We can guess at things, but they're all pretty thin and/or insane.
So how would it really help Cyrus to murder Dex, especially since he was openly at the scene of the crime? Dex's quick recovery, followed by his sudden death, looks a lot like the way Sam went out — which Elizabeth noted as she peered over Dex's corpse, murmuring that something's seriously wrong at GH. So does that mean Cyrus is wandering all over town with a digitalis-soaked blade now? What the hell for?
Much as it surprises me to admit it, Dex's death also causes canvas issues, and given that Evan Hofer can't have been all that expensive, it's hard for me to imagine that those issues will be offset by significant savings. The show has done such a poor job of tending to the 18-to-25 character group that there isn't a single suitable pairing for Joss at this point — and since all she's done for the last 6-7 months is have sex with Dex and be judgy, she doesn't have much else to fall back on. It's really a shame; it wasn't that long ago that the Trina/Spencer/Joss/Cam quadrangle was one of the most dynamic sections of the show.
The show is already hinting that Joss will blame Sonny for Dex's death, since her first thought was to ask Dex if he thought Sonny was responsible for his stabbing, but no one in Sonny's extended family is ever allowed to cause him any real problems, so that's a dead end. I hope I'm wrong, but right now, this feels like a hasty decision; it was really only a few weeks ago that they were still hinting at some sort of storyline involving Dex's vague but unpleasant family history. What I really wish they'd do is reveal that Cam murdered him as an act of revenge for sleeping with Joss while they were still dating, and then let the case remain forever unsolved, but this show doesn't have the guts for that.
Ah well. For now, the best thing to come out of all this is Felicia's presence during the stabbing, which led to Kristina Wagner making comedy gold out of the ridiculous line "Who would take such a beautiful day and ruin it with violence?"
And that'll do it for last week's major events. Now for your bullet points!
- Lucky decorated Elizabeth's tree and then serenaded her; unfortunately, the ghost of John Belushi did not show up to smash Cam's guitar over Lucky's head
- Laura informed a curiously blasé Martin that she, like Lulu, spent years in a vegetative state
- Nina reminded Maxie that she was also in a coma for many years
- Brad told Lucas that he's going to Miami too, and suggested that they visit Little Havana together
- Curtis and Portia had a deeply weird exchange in which they talked about how much they trust each other, hugged, and each stared grimly into the middle distance
- Maxie and Lulu reunited, and spent most of their time talking about how Lulu feels like she needs to let Dante grieve for Sam before she jumps his bones
- Isaiah and Jordan continued aimlessly flirting
- Sonny and Natalia talked about her relationship with her children, offering further proof that each conversation these two have is more boring and pointless than the last
- Gio blurted out "Good things come in small packages" like a man hearing each of those words for the first time
Comments
Post a Comment