If you're the type of viewer who needs things to make sense, then last week's General Hospital was full of hair-pulling moments. If you're the type of viewer who doesn't really care as long as the interactions between the characters are entertaining, then… well, there were still some hair-pulling moments, but plenty of fun ones too.
Let's get into it. It was another short week without a ton of forward narrative momentum, so this may not take long!
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There was a lot of speculation online regarding the showrunners and/or the network being pissed at Chad Duell for deciding to leave GH. I'm not sure I believe it, given that Michael's face was somehow magically spared the effects of the explosion in Sonny's penthouse; the show seems to really be going out of its way to leave the door wide open for Duell to return.
On the other hand, his (presumably) final scene was such an unintentionally funny dud that I can see where the internet gossip might be true.
Here's how it went down. As we discussed last time, Sonny felt like Michael needed to be the one to decide whether he went to Johns Hopkins or the fancy German clinic, and Portia bizarrely agreed to bring him out of sedation long enough for him to cast his vote. When Michael awoke, Carly was at his bedside, ready to make a lightning-fast pitch that gave him zero information beyond "you can go to a regular hospital, or you can undergo an experimental protocol halfway around the world." He croaked "Germany" and then asked for Sasha, which no one seemed to think was super weird or anything; Portia agreed to keep him awake and writhing in pain long enough for Sasha to arrive, and in the meantime, Willow went in to say her piece. While she was talking to Michael, sort of apologizing but mostly justifying her behavior, he coded, and by the time Sasha showed up, he'd been stabilized and sedated again.
And… that was that. Brennan secured a private jet (of course), and off Michael went to Germany. The storyline didn't pick up again until later in the week, when we saw a weeping Carly contemplating smashing some barware in her German hotel room, only to be halted by an unexpected visit from Brennan (of course), who hopped over while he was in London "for a meeting." I will begrudgingly admit that the conversation that ensued between these two was actually well-written — it found Carly and Brennan talking about loss and how one copes with it, rather than continuing their aimless flirty banter — but as much as I like Charles Mesure, and as much potential as I see in his character, I'm very much over the writers treating him like a magic genie for Carly. This has got to go somewhere soon, or else Carly and Brennan are going to end up being an older version of Chase and Brook Lynn — a once-intriguing pairing rendered deadly dull by dawdling, inept writing.
With Michael and Carly in Germany, the focus back home remained on the battle for custody of Wiley and Amelia. In theory, this makes sense; in practice, it led to a bunch of scenes that were a lot of fun to watch, but only if you were able to ignore how top-to-bottom preposterous the situation was. To recap: Drew, who should have zero voice in this situation, had Tracy arrested for refusing to hand over the kids — and did so without even talking about it with Willow beforehand. She only found out when he went to GH, triggered an immediate fight with Michael's family, and followed her to the chapel, where he passed along that news as well as the fact that no one knew where the children were located.
Tracy, meanwhile, was holding court in the PCPD interrogation room, where she folded her arrest warrant into various origami shapes while sassing the hell out of anyone who dared try talking sense into her. There was some great stuff in here, honestly, but only because it's a joy to watch Jane Elliot, Finola Hughes, and Michael E. Knight riffing; there was absolutely no sense or substance to anything any of their characters were saying, and it felt like they not only all knew it, but had made a pact to have as much fun as possible with the nonsense they'd been handed.
It ended, as all things must, with Jason. Tired of seeing her station used as a mediating location for Quartermaine family squabbles, she called him away from the hospital; after showing up, he came up with a deal for a compromise that would bring Willow back to the gatehouse, where she'd live with the kids. Willow was sold on the deal over the objections of a hyperventilating Drew, who insisted she held all the power and she didn't need to compromise with the Quartermaines. (Where's Heather with a bone saw in the chapel when you really need her?) Tracy was sold after Jason pointed out that the cops would eventually find the kids either way, and at least with Willow and the kids on the grounds, Monica would still have her great-grandchildren nearby. With all parties on board, Jason went to the gatehouse, where the kids were stashed with Sasha and somehow no one bothered to look.
So… that's it. A week and a half of people yelling at each other, a shocking arrest, and everyone ended up exactly where they were when they started. What was the point of any of this? The most charitable explanation I can come up with is that the writers knew it'd be a lot of fun to throw Tracy, Martin, and Anna into scenes together, but the writers so often appear allergic to fun that I don't know if that would be giving them too much credit. I guess the one new wrinkle in the situation is that Tracy has declared Drew banned from the grounds, and has warned Willow that a non-negotiable rule of her gatehouse residence is that her boyfriend isn't allowed to visit; I suppose we'll just see how long that lasts, and how much of a tempest is stirred up in a teapot when he ignores Tracy's rule and shows up anyway.
One last potential sign of something to come: After Willow went back home to the gatehouse, Drew met with Martin in the chapel, stressing he'll "do anything to protect Willow." Given that he had Tracy arrested without consulting her and she didn't even get upset with him for it, one suspects Drew will only grow more overbearing in the coming weeks.
Watching the Detectives
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when Isaiah urged Portia to tell the police that someone was clearly using digitalis to murder people at the hospital? Well, for some damn reason, that hasn't happened yet, which means no one from the PCPD appears to be spending any time trying to get to the bottom of Sam or Dex's death. I guess this makes a certain amount of sense, given that Chase is busy rubbing aloe on his chapped genitalia between bouts of attempted baby-making with Brook Lynn, and Dante has been hobbled by a Lulu-induced migraine. But still.
Anyway, what this means is that we've been reduced to watching amateur sleuths sniffing along Cyrus' trail. On one side, there's Lucky and Elizabeth, who are slowly resuming their dance of love while trying to find the connection between everything that happened to Lulu, Sam, Dex, and Michael; on the other, there's Joss, who ended the week by signing up to volunteer at Turning Woods in order to get closer to unraveling Cyrus' mystery.
We are, it likely goes without saying, meant to care a lot about what these characters are doing. So far, I really don't.
Where Lucky and Elizabeth are concerned, Lucky is the problem for me. I would much, much rather watch Elizabeth solving this mystery on her own rather than smiling adoringly at her deadbeat ex-husband while he goes around yelling at people and calls it detective work. I don't care about the L&L2 pairing, I don't care about the Luke and Sonny sequel they're trying to set up by having Lucky tend bar at Charlie's, and at this point, I've yet to see a single reason for his return in general. He's hardly spent any time with Laura or Lulu, and he's spent even less time with his son. He isn't developing new meaningful relationships; in fact, he's such a lame friend that he couldn't even handle having Isaiah at the Charlie's bar after Elizabeth showed up, and resorted to mean-mugging him so he'd go away and give Lucky a chance to flirt with his ex while he was supposed to be serving drinks. Lucky hasn't always been a total dud of a character, but that's what he's become.
Last week, Lucky and Elizabeth's investigation led them to Martin, who offered them our first glimpse of something like a possible motive for Cyrus. According to Martin, when Cyrus put their mother in long-term care, he was as bare-bones as possible, because he expected her to die quickly and peacefully. When that didn't happen, Martin believes Cyrus felt he was deprived of the opportunity to "release" her, and that could be why he's devoted so much time to visiting with terminally ill patients. This is exceedingly weak sauce for a murder motive, and it would only apply to Lulu anyway, but whatever. Let's get this over with.
As for Joss? I got into this in my last column, but I'll say it again: Having her take it upon herself to solve Dex's murder is not only very dumb, but it's a real bad look for the show. Sidelining Trina after Spencer's death never made any sense, but it's particularly lame now that Joss has morphed into Jessica Fletcher. The writers could have gone in all KINDS of intriguing directions after Spencer died — there was no shortage of opportunities for globe-trotting Cassadine adventure, and it would have helped the show capitalize on the most popular pairing it's had in recent memory. Joss and Dex never came close to that level of love from the fanbase.
Joss is also not particularly bright and frequently overbearing, which makes it awfully hard to feel anything other than annoyance while she stomps around town making a complete mess of her investigation. I think we're supposed to be worried about her ending up in Cyrus' crosshairs, but it isn't working — at least not on me. I think Eden McCoy can act, and there have definitely been times in the past when I've been invested in Joss, but those days are gone. Her current arc might be her worst, and most insulting, yet.
So while Lucky, Elizabeth, and Joss investigate Cyrus (who's still hardly ever on, by the way), what's the PCPD up to? Surprise, surprise — they're focused on Sonny!
I mock, but in this case, it actually makes sense, given that Sonny's penthouse just blew up. Early in the week, Anna gently accused Brennan of planting the bomb, but she didn't really mean it; moments before, she'd jokingly suggested that he might need to tase her in order to put her out of her Tracy-related misery. (Kristina also asked Ava if she planted it, but that was just because Ava openly said she hopes the next time someone takes a shot at Sonny, they actually hit their target.)
Sonny, of course, has other things to worry about — like the sudden onset of his heart condition, which keeps making him clutch his chest and fall down in inconvenient locations. His most recent episode occurred while he was in the midst of an argument with Ava, who — quite sensibly, I might add — loudly urged him to hand over Avery in light of the fact that his home is a crime scene, and also Avery shouldn't be staying at Carly's house since Carly is in freaking Germany. After struggling valiantly to hide his chest pain from her, he collapsed on the floor of his office with his medication dramatically strewn about — only to be saved in the nick of time by Natalia, who stuffed a couple of pills in his mouth, nursed him back to consciousness, and called Isaiah.
Isaiah's dutiful arrival — which interrupted a date with Jordan at Charlie's, leaving the door wide open for gross Brick to swoop in — led nowhere other than an argument with Sonny, who refused to go to a hospital for fear that his enemies might discover he's vulnerable. (Your penthouse is a smoking wreck, bud; I think they're already well aware.) As a compromise, Natalia volunteered to keep watch over Sonny all night, and then raised her hand to go with him when Brick booked an appointment with a leading cardiologist in Los Angeles.
As upsetting as it was to witness Brick putting his sloppy moves on Jordan, it still ended up being a good thing that she was at Charlie's for its grand reopening, because that's where she spotted Sidwell, who was out on the town with Lucy. Jordan made a beeline for Laura, telling her she'd spotted Lucky's abductor in town — and while they were talking, Laura received an email from Lucy asking her to meet with Sidwell. Laura quickly obliged, setting something up for the following day; when Sidwell arrived at her office, he found Anna there with her, ready to run down the list of rotten things he'd done since we met him back in Africa.
There wasn't much of anything they could do about those things, however. Laura had already discovered that Sidwell wasn't wanted by the FBI or the WSB, and was no more than a person of interest as far as Interpol was concerned, so all he had to do was point out that his business appeared to be threatened, and given that he was essentially operating in a lawless land, he couldn't be considered guilty of any crimes. As far as kidnapping Sasha and blowing up the warehouse? The writers have decided that there's no evidence against him, even though Sasha and Jason are both eyewitnesses. Oh well.
So Sidwell remains at large, free to swan about Port Charles and antagonize people in the most genteel way — but Anna and Laura haven't given up. In fact, Anna has already pointed out that Sidwell's arrival in town roughly coincides with the explosion at Sonny's penthouse, and she intends to match the burn signatures with that fire against the ones left behind at the warehouse Sidwell blew up.
That's it for the big stuff. Time to let the bullets fly!
- Alexis met Sidwell to complete paperwork for the sale of Wyndemere
- Cody put a damper on Charlie's grand re-opening by trying to blackmail Spinelli out of $75,000, and then punching Lucky
- Mac and Cody had yet another heart to heart, this one ending with Mac deciding Cody to spend the night in jail
- Laura told Ava she can't be a character witness for her during the custody trial anymore
- Ric found a new place for Ava, and after she got upset about it only being the size of a normal person's apartment, they finally made out
- Kai was told he'll never play football again
- Drew tried to convince Curtis to help him regain majority shareholder status at Aurora; when Curtis told him to get fucked, he threatened to use his congressman status to ruin the company
- Tracy overrode Maxie and Brook Lynn's concerns by not only hiring Lulu to be Brook Lynn's assistant, but doubling her salary
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