Apologies for missing last week's column, folks — as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I'm currently in the midst of moving my mother out of her home and into a new one, and she has ALL OF THE STUFF, so I'm constantly lugging things lately. It's already Sunday evening as I'm starting this, but I'm determined not to miss two columns in a row.
Also making things difficult is my growing lack of enthusiasm for most of what General Hospital has to offer lately. I could be forgetting something, but at the moment, I can't think of a single storyline that isn't fundamentally rooted in plot-driven nonsense. I know this has been a growing complaint with soaps across the board since the '90s, but it's everywhere in Port Charles right now, and — for me, at least — it's making the entire show feel hollow. I'm usually entertained enough in the moment, but I'm rarely invested, and that's the last thing someone like me should be saying. I've been tuning in, on and off, since the early '80s, and I think I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to silly plot twists and busted ships. If GH is losing me, then what does that say about the show's ability to appeal to a casual fan?
Again, GH should really be going lights out right now to compete with Beyond the Gates — and, more importantly, demonstrate how uniquely addictive daytime drama can be. Soaps don't need big budgets to work; they just need smart, character-driven writing, brought to life by talented actors against a backdrop woven by years of accrued history. GH has most of those pieces, but for years now, it's stubbornly refused to really get itself together. What's it going to take for that to change?
Them's the Brakes
The big story right now — although I guess you wouldn't really know it, given how little screentime it was afforded last week — is that Ric and Elizabeth are in the hospital thanks to Kristina, who went full psycho and cut the brake lines on what she thought was Ava's car. As she so often is, Kristina was tragically incorrect; instead, she tampered with Ric's car, because he arrived at Ava's place before she got there and took advantage of her absence by taking her parking spot.
Both of them are mostly fine, although Elizabeth has a broken leg and Ric spent most of the week unconscious. While the staff at GH worked to fix their injuries, Kristina wandered around Port Charles like a malfunctioning droid, spacing out during conversations while she flashed back to nearly killing her sister's dad. I recognize that the writing isn't doing Kate Mansi any favors, but she's really bringing nothing to his material; at no point does the viewer get a sense of whatever internal struggle Kristina might be going through. It's all vacant-eyed, slack-jawed staring, punctuated by panicked outbursts and bargaining with God and/or Lucky to keep her out of prison.
And Lucky! Oh, Lucky. I can only imagine how puzzled and annoyed Jonathan Jackson has to be with his character's recent "arc" in general, but his behavior last week was fully beyond the pale. He knows Kristina is responsible for the crash, and he's spent plenty of time simpering like a goon over Elizabeth's hospital bed. He's seen exactly how bad things are and how much worse they could have been, in other words, so why is he keeping his mouth shut? Whatever friendship or loyalty he feels he owes to Sonny and his lame kids, isn't he supposed to be over the moon in love with Elizabeth? How is he rationalizing staying silent? So far, it seems like his excuse is Ric, who he had the gall to blame for the crash during a conversation with her — but no matter how much he hates his ex-wife's ex-husband, that doesn't justify letting Kristina off the hook for what she did.
Fortunately, Ava's already on the case. After being snarked out of the hospital by Alexis, whose stellar legal instincts led her to absurdly threaten her with a restraining order for visiting Ric, Ava sashayed over to the impound lot, where she pretended to be the owner of the car and quickly found out that the brakes had been tampered with. While that was going on, Ric regained consciousness and remembered seeing Kristina at the crash site. I'm sure it's too much to hope that she'll finally end up facing some consequences for her awful choices, but the sooner we're done with ABC daytime's latest "woman driven mad by grief" storyline, the better.
The larger question is what comes next for Kristina, a character who's gone from "why don't we see more of her" to "she needs to die" with lightning speed. Between her and Drew, it's almost impressive how quickly and thoroughly this writing staff can engage in character assassination when they really want to. We could have had YEARS of story around Kristina having TJ and Molly's baby; instead, they decided to kill the baby, turn Kristina into a drooling psychopath, and make TJ disappear without a word. Who thought this was better for the show? And why?
If At First You Don't Succeed… Kai, Kai Again
Speaking of Drew, he spent last week doing basically the same thing as the 40 or so weeks that preceded it — namely, being selfish and rude and antagonizing almost everyone in his orbit. And much to his chagrin, a lot of what he's trying to do isn't panning out very well, which is only making him more insufferable.
Case in point: Drew's attempt to have the Quartermaine crypt bulldozed, which ended in humiliating defeat when Monica brokered a deal with the Port Charles Land Trust to donate a portion of the family's lakefront property in exchange for keeping the Q corpses right where they are. The deal came too late to save Emma, however — after chaining herself to the door, and having her own grandmother call for the boltcutters, she was arrested. And because acting DA Turner has an axe to grind with Anna, Emma's under threat of continued legal trouble even though the fight over the crypt is over. This all seems a little silly to me — it's hard to imagine that whatever Emma did in California is enough to support a story — but Braedyn Bruner is coming into her own in the part, so I'm provisionally interested in seeing where this goes.
Anyway, Drew hasn't had much time to whine about taking one on the nuts from Monica, because he's identified a new target for his sleazy machinations: Kai Taylor, who he appears to be grooming for some sort of career in public speaking or politics. (Yawn.) As part of those efforts, Drew has not only dangled the possibility of a surgery that could allow Kai to play football again, but offered to pay for it. Kai, naturally, is all kinds of excited about this — but not too excited to tell Curtis, who cautioned him that Drew isn't to be trusted and further research into the surgery would be a very good idea. To that end, Kai approached Portia, who agreed to investigate. Unsurprisingly, Drew didn't take kindly to what he saw as Curtis interfering in his budding bromance with Kai; after the two of them had an extremely boring argument about it, he stormed into Portia's office and told her she needed to get her husband under control or risk having her secrets revealed and her life blown up.
I don't mind Drew locking horns with the Ashfords. Much as I dislike everything about Drew, I think Curtis and Portia are often most interesting when they have an enemy. The thing that annoys me about this storyline is that it's foregrounding Kai, a character we hardly know, while Trina — the character who basically onboarded him into Port Charles — continues spinning her wheels. Trina is dynamic, she has plenty of history, and a large segment of the audience loves her, so why has she spent the last year without much of anything to do while every other character in her social circle has a story? She's basically a younger Stella at this point, only Stella is given better dialogue.
To put it another way: I do not care whether Kai plays football again. I do not care whether he goes to work for Drew. I really don't even care whether he and Trina become a long-term couple. What I do care about is all the potential that's being left untapped where her character is concerned. I can't even count the number of Trina-centric storylines I've seen pitched on social media, but I can authoritatively state that none of them would be difficult to launch, and all of them would be more entertaining than what we've got now.
So Long, Soliski
Sonny and Jason started the week in Toronto, where they got the drop on Soliski in an apartment that looked an awful lot like Maxie's old place. For all the talk going in about how careful this guy supposedly was, he turned out to be extremely easy to corner — and when he tried making a run for it, he got into a 30-second fight with Jason that ended with Soliski falling, hitting his head gently on the floor, and dying. It was as anticlimactic as it was unintentionally funny.
Now, the bantam mob boss and his leathery sidekick are waiting to hear back from Brick, who's using his peerless tech skills to hack into Soliski's devices and figure out who hired him to blow up Sonny's penthouse. Of course, time is of the essence, because you never know when Sonny's going to clutch himself somewhere in the vague vicinity of his heart and fall down. Will he solve this deadly mystery before his ticker gives out? Friends, you know he will.
I guess if there's anything interesting about this storyline, it's the not-subtle-at-all suggestion that Morgan might be the culprit, which was made a couple of weeks ago when a scene in Sonny's office ended with a zoom in on a picture of him with Michael. I was never a major Morgan fan, especially once Bryan Craig and his mom started acting out on Twitter, but if the writers truly have the courage to go full-on "sins of the father" with this storyline, I suppose it could lead someplace worthwhile, particularly if they're serious about building an offramp out of the mob for Sonny. I'm not saying I really believe any of that will happen, but the possibility is there, and as long as there's possibility, there's hope.
The downside to this hypothetical storyline is that it'd turn two of Sonny's grown children into criminally violent maniacs, which is something that makes total sense if you think about their gross father, but presents a problem when the show never shuts up about what a great man and great philanthropist and wonderful parent he is. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that Morgan's ghost showed up to absolve Sonny of all his sins. What I really want to see is Sonny finally forced to confront the ripple effects from his history of violence, and I think having Morgan try to take him out could be a good way of doing that — but I really don't think the show will ever go there. It'd be way too satisfying.
JS & Associates
Sidwell was busy last week. First, he welcomed Lucy to Wyndemere, where he listened to her sales pitch for the 2025 Nurses' Ball and responded by insisting that he bankroll the entire thing — which, I suppose, means we don't have to worry about any corporate sponsors being awkwardly shoehorned in. (Maybe GH got the necessary budget boost from the blatant "get checked for kidney disease" PSA they made room for the previous week.) Anyway, the Ball's a go again, and now Lucy and Jordan are running around town recruiting performers. (What does Tanisha Harper have to do to get a real storyline?)
With that business out of the way, Sidwell was free to host the ladies of Deception — minus Tracy, who rightly couldn't be bothered — so they could sign the deal giving him a chunk of the company in exchange for his zincite deposits. Take that, Erica Kane! After the meeting ended, Natalia stuck around, mainly so those two could jaw at each other again about how they used to be married and she'll be super embarrassed if anyone ever found out about whatever she did back then. The connection between these two has been so clumsily handled that I wouldn't blame anyone if they actually forgot that Natalia and Sidwell were once husband and wife, and I certainly wouldn't blame anybody for not caring. I'm somewhat ambivalent regarding Sidwell as a character, but I lean positive enough that I feel bad about the way he's been saddled with an anchor as deadly dull as Natalia. Of course, once their shared past was mentioned onscreen, we all knew a Sidwell insta-family was right around the corner, and last week, we got what we've been waiting for.
If you saw the ABC press shot of Marco when the character was announced, none of what went down last week will surprise you. This network can't keep a secret to save its life, and sending out a shot of Marco standing outside Wyndemere made it pretty clear where things were headed. Credit where credit's due, though: Marco was only in town for a few hours before he saw his mother and father, so at least the writers didn't drag it out. (Before going to Wyndemere, he interviewed for a job at Diane and Alexis' firm, where he name-dropped "JS & Associates" as a major client, and then he met up with Lucas at the Metro Court bar.)
The wrinkle here, if there is one, is that Marco went to Port Charles to do business with Sidwell, but wasn't expecting to see Natalia. Given that she's been lingering, fartlike, in town for many months, this suggests he's deeply estranged from her, and although I very much don't care why, I suppose I'm at least a little interested in finding out whether he changed his name or whether the writers simply forgot that Natalia always referred to her son as "Eloi" when Blaze was in town.
The other somewhat interesting thing? The way Sidwell abruptly screamed at Natalia while they were going back and forth in the moments before Marco's arrival. The show's been working overtime to make Sidwell seem like a reasonable and possibly even misunderstood fellow — a posture he maintained when Sonny stopped by Wyndemere toward the end of the week — but that outburst let us know he's still a homicidal maniac at heart.
Agent Jacks, Reporting for Duty
Last and very much least, we have Joss and Vaughn, who remain the opposite of scintillating. I've already gone on at length about how deeply this storyline offends me, so I'll spare you; if you didn't watch last week, all you really need to know is that Joss passed a "test" by narcing on Vaughn after she saw him palm a small package during the world's slowest and most obvious handoff. Just like that, Brennan made her a field agent, and assigned Vaughn to be her backup. Given that Joss ended the week back in Port Charles, we can only assume that her first mission has something to do with things happening in town — and given that Joss and Vaughn have been softening toward each other in recent days, we can also assume that they'll be hitting the sheets before too terribly long. I don't mind Eden McCoy, and the guy playing Vaughn seems perfectly fine in a blandly handsome sort of way, but this story has "dud" written all over it in bright red ink.
It's now past 8:30 on Monday night, and I'm late enough with the column. Here come your bullets!
- Cody is somehow still allowed to drink at Charlie's even after punching Lucky in the face, which I can respect
- Molly thanked Cody for talking Ric into making peace with Alexis
- Alexis told Drew that having Willow and her kids move in wouldn't be good for Scout, and he told her to butt out
- Yuri got to speak
- The 62nd anniversary episode was a largely flashback-free snoozer that's hardly worth mentioning, but at least Terry was there
- Kevin is at a seminar, where he will likely remain until Jon Lindstrom is off Beyond the Gates
- Kirsten Storms had a cold
- Ezra needled Laura over her friendship with Sonny; in return, she pointed out that her approval rating is twice as high as his
- Portia came close to firing Brad for selling her out to Drew, but changed her mind, instead telling him that she now owns his ass, and he'd better be ready to return the favor
- Jordan got Drew and Curtis to agree to perform at the Nurses' Ball, but struck out with Alexis
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