Apologies for missing last week, folks! All the work involved with our big move caught up with me. I'm not out of those woods yet — my life is 80 percent home improvement projects right now — but the light at the end of the tunnel keeps getting brighter.
Can we say the same about General Hospital? I suspect not, although last week was more entertaining than the show has been of late, if only because the writers blessed us with some EXTREMELY soapy chaos, mixed in with some typically powerhouse acting from Ms. Jane Elliot. There's still a lot of aimless folderol taking up far too much of any given episode, but at least we got to see a few flashes of how much fun GH can be under this frequently witless regime.
Mom, How Could You?
A lot of things about GH annoy me, but the biggest one is probably the show's tendency to commit unforced errors. Here's an example: The writers decided Alexis should contemplate having Kristina committed in order to save her from Ava and Ric, which is super soapy, and then they had Molly end up in possession of the commitment papers, which she took straight to Kristina. And then the writers decided they weren't going to make us wait for the big confrontation — Kristina and Molly marched into Alexis' office and read her the riot act, and Alexis had to just sit there and take it, because she couldn't let Molly know Kristina almost accidentally killed Ric. Also super soapy!
And then what did they do with all this? Nothing. Nothing at all. After Alexis caught fire from her daughters, she received a package from Sidwell, containing the dagger Helena used to murder her mother. That was all on Monday. We didn't see her again until Wednesday, when her only order of business was packing a bag for Scout; Molly and Kristina were totally absent for the rest of the week.
I get that a show like GH is always spinning a bunch of narrative plates at any given moment, but pacing and follow-through are a huge issue right now, and it isn't something that can be wholly blamed on the massive cast. Stuff like this is just clumsy, and it happens all the time — significant storyline developments occur, and then they're left to cool on the back burner for multiple days. This is occasionally necessary in order to free up focus for major moments in bigger stories… but very little of what's happening on GH these days feels big or major.
WSB + PCU = 0
Speaking of small and minor, I remain beyond annoyed with this preposterous storyline about Joss working for the WSB. Fortunately, it looks like the writers aren't trying to turn her into a WSB agent in the classic '80s mold; instead, they appear to have dreamed up an ungodly mashup of spy shenanigans and hot twentysomething summer action.
Joss' first mission, for some damn reason, involves getting close to Professor Dalton, up to and including working as his summer research assistant — a position that has already been all but claimed by Emma. What this means for Joss is that she has to use her newly acquired secret agent skills to sabotage Emma's work in order to gain the inside track with Dalton, and… I'm sorry, who really cares about any of this? Who buys Joss as the type of person who'd be even a little bit good at any of it? And given that we know absolutely nothing about Dalton or why the WSB cares about him, why should we care about him?
Again: This storyline makes me grumpy. But we're coming up on summer, which means it's time for the show's young adults to step into the spotlight while minimally attired, and that's exactly what went down last week. There was a big beach bonfire party, you see, and (almost) everyone was there — Gio and Emma went together, which meant that Joss had to go too, because she knew that supposedly super-smart Emma committed the colossal cardinal sin of putting together a giant data model and then saving the only copy to a thumb drive that she tucked into the pocket of her shorts. Here's what passes for espionage in Joss' world: Waiting for Vaughn to lure Emma and Gio into the water so she can steal the aforementioned thumb drive, "corrupt it," and then hustle back to replace the drive. She got back too late, though! Whatever shall she do?
Reader, I do not care. This is all so dumb. It's so dumb that I'm preemptively angry about Anna ending up next to Dalton at the Savoy bar, because I don't want to see her drawn into this foolishness. I suspect she will be, however, because during her brief chat with Dalton, Anna realized that he and Emma both transferred to PCU at pretty much the same time. I'm guessing he's mixed up in some sort of high-tech weapons manufacturing that involves animal testing; beyond that, I'm guessing we'll learn that Emma and Joss are both going after Dalton, albeit with the caveat that Emma knows more about Dalton's deal than Joss does, which only reinforces the argument that this should have been Emma's storyline all the way. As the granddaughter of WSB agents, Emma makes total sense as a secret junior recruit. Joss should be doing Joss things, like… I don't know. Getting a manicure or something.
We Gotta Get Outta This Business
Sonny made it through his heart surgery! Are you surprised? Also, someone tried to kill him in his hospital room, but he was saved at the last second. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, WOW.
I'll set my sarcasm aside, but only after pointing out how goddamn ridiculous it was when Brick walked in, caught a fake nurse about to murder Sonny, coolly intoned "I'm gonna need to see some ID," and then shot her ass dead. The way the entire thing was framed made it look like a parody, right down to the camera angle on Brick and the look on Stephen A. Smith's face when he pulled the trigger.
It was not supposed to be a parody, of course, and we know this because when Sonny woke up, he was coming straight from a vision of Mike, who did what Sonny's loved ones always do when he's in a time of crisis — specifically, tell him that everything he's ever done has been great, and he's great, and he's going to be great. For whatever reason, Sonny interpreted all that happy horseshit to be Mike telling him he needs to get out of the mob, which he later shared with Jason.
If you've been reading this column for any length of time, you know how desperately I wish this show would allow Sonny to evolve in any direction, and because of this, there's a part of me that's always intrigued whenever the writers decide it's time for Sonny to think about retiring from his life of crime. But all signs indicate that the folks in charge think the audience is unwilling to see Sonny any differently than they saw him in 1993 — right down to the ridiculous dye job on Maurice Benard's hair — so I have no faith that there's any willpower to write him as anything other than a magical mob boss who's a dangerous criminal but mostly a philanthropist and marvelous father.
As I've said in this space more times than I can count: I will be thrilled to be wrong about this. I wholeheartedly encourage the writers to show me how off base I am. But in the meantime, all I can do is tell you what I've already told you, which is that it looks for all the world like the show is yanking our collective chain yet again.
All that grumbling aside, I do need to acknowledge that I enjoyed the scenes between Gio and Jason last week, and the conversation sparked when Tracy — still on her mission to prove that Gio's "Uncle Sonny" isn't the great guy he thinks he is — told Gio to ask Jason about what happened to AJ. These scenes weren't revelatory or anything, but GH has been so terrified of letting Jason evolve in any way that I never take it for granted when the writers choose to put him in a position where he has to reckon out loud with the last 30 years of his life. It's still appalling to hear Jason say Sonny had his reasons for murdering AJ, but at least Steve Burton didn't play it like a full-throated defense; when Jason said he can understand the Quartermaines' dim view of Sonny even though he doesn't share it, it felt true in a way it hasn't always before.
I Found You in Our Bedroom with a Hooker
Now we come to the storyline that's eating the show right now. The ick factor has been strong with Drew and Willow from the first moment they locked lips during last year's fireworks display, and they will always be super gross. That being said, part of this story's grossness has stemmed from the writers' extremely misguided decision to treat these two as a real, rootable couple rather than leaning into the lurid trashiness of it all. Last week, they finally decided to go nuts, and it was a hoot to watch.
The insanity came courtesy of Nina and Portia, who used their new alliance to cook up a plot designed to split up Drew and Willow and then send the congressman scurrying out of town. Like all good soap schemes, their plan was as absurd as it was overly complicated: They hired a sex worker named Jacinda to slip some ketamine into Drew's drink, hang with him as he lost his inhibitions, and then pretend to have sex with him so Willow would find them together and get the wrong idea.
It worked brilliantly, which is to say we got to see Drew in manic party mode, up to and including tossing Jacinda on the bar of the Savoy and doing body shots off of her exposed belly while half the town filmed the whole thing with their phones. As he tends to do, Cameron Mathison leaned hard into the madness, playing everything to the hilt; from whooping it up at the club to urgently expressing bug-eyed regret, he looked like a guy reading his lines while someone offscreen pointed a gun at his head.
And it worked, too — for Drew, anyway. Willow caught Jacinda in her bedroom, just as Nina and Portia had hoped, but after storming out and going to Nina's, she caved pretty quickly; ultimately, it just took a few minutes of pleading from ol' Raspy McJazzhands before she agreed to go with him to GH so he could undergo a blood test. From there, it wasn't long before Isaiah — who has officially gone from "exciting, dynamic new character" to "late-stage Larry Wolek" in just a couple of months — told Drew he'd been doped with ketamine.
Obviously, this puts Nina at extreme risk of blowing up the relationship she fought so hard to build with Willow. She'd deserve it for pulling a stunt like this, even though she's right about Drew, and on the surface, it looks like that's exactly where the show's going, given how quickly he found out he was drugged. I'm not so sure, though. For starters, the writers aren't interested in Nina unless she's agonizing over someone finding out she did a bad thing — and then there are Drew's medical records, which Portia blackmailed Brad into compiling. He told her he "didn't find anything scandalous" in there, but Portia had to have a reason for wanting them. What if "something scandalous" found its way into those files anyway? Like, I dunno, Drew having a history of ketamine abuse?
We'll see what happens. For now, Nina's already all sorts of conflicted about her role in this situation, and Drew is already on the warpath, approaching Mac to talk about filing a report with the police. Nina's good news, at least for now, is that when Mac asked Drew if he could remember who he last spoke with before falling into his k-hole, Drew flashed back to a conversation with Tracy.
Of course, the conversation in question was one that saw Tracy proposing that she and Drew unite to shove Sonny off the piers and out of town — and included Tracy offering Drew the Quartermaine name again if he could manage to pull it off — but her hard-earned reputation for duplicity will work against her here. Drew will go after Tracy now; hopefully, Nina and Portia will use their temporary reprieve to hatch a new plan, one that hopefully ends in even more over-the-top debauchery.
We haven't even gotten into the fact that Drew paid off the secretary at Michael's clinic in Baden Baden to tell Willow he didn't want to see her! Another chicken that'll come home to roost eventually.
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Tracy will doubtless be surprised when the cops show up on her door asking questions about Drew's big night out — but that shock will be nothing compared to the one she got when Brook Lynn finally opened up about the saga of her long-ago love child. It was a conversation rooted in Brook Lynn's ongoing frustration with Tracy's fondness for Lulu, but the emphasis wasn't on Brook Lynn's hurt feelings; instead, it was a masterfully played unpacking of emotions, with Jane Elliot hitting every note perfectly while being ably supported by Amanda Setton. If I were Setton, I'd be awfully tired of weeping about the baby I gave up for adoption, but in this case, it was in service of a conversation that actually moved story.
So now Tracy knows about the baby. She also knows Lois and Gloria knew all along, which should lead to some juicy conflict when Tracy confronts Lois. A Quartermaine baby, handed off to an adoption agency? How dare those Bensonhurst broads!
That conversation is also bound to make a lot more sense than the gibberish that bounced between Chase and Dante last week, when Chase stormed up to Lulu's door, found his best friend there instead, and spent half an hour trying to talk him into making Lulu drop the adoption story she's writing for the Llanview Banner. Dante was confused, and rightly so — just because Chase and Brook Lynn are exploring adoption, that doesn't give them any right to act like Lulu's story is an act of cruelty or an invasion of privacy. Still, after Chase stormed out and Lulu returned home, Dante did his best to pull her off the story; Lulu, predictably, was having none of it, and it turned into an argument that ended with him blurting out that he knows she's still in love with him. Not only that, but he acknowledged that there's a part of him that's still in love with her, too.
There's a very short list of GH couples that I've ever actively cared about, and Lulu and Dante aren't on it. I'm also annoyed by the transparent Alleged Supercouple Reunion movement that's been afoot since Lucky and Lulu returned to the canvas; I'd much rather see Dante and Elizabeth with new people than be forced to return to the dried-up cud that's all that remains of those pairings. I'm sure plenty of folks are excited about a Lante redux, but for me, last week's silver lining for this story came from Lulu continuing her "let's talk about your adoption" tour, which led her to a long conversation with Laura about her time with the Vinings, her early relationship with Lesley, and her turbulent teenage years.
It would have been even nicer if they'd mentioned Laura's dearly departed sister Amy, but it was still an emotionally affecting series of scenes — at least until Laura realized Lulu has ulterior motives for pursuing the story, and they stopped talking about the Webbers so Lulu could tearfully admit she has knowledge of a funky adoption.
At this rate, Gio will have children of his own before the truth of his parentage comes out — which, come to think of it, wouldn't be the worst way for this storyline to end. What if he got Emma pregnant, they decided to give up the baby, and something happened that led to him finding out he was adopted?
A question for another day. In the meantime, here's your latest round of bullets! See you next time!
- Lucas and Marco had a long talk about their family backgrounds, including some nice conversation about Tony and Bobbie
- Curtis warned Jordan to be careful with Sidwell, but she told him Sidwell's the one who needs to worry
- Kai's surgery story continued to sap vital energy from every character it touched, including Curtis, Felicia, Portia, and especially Trina, who deserves so much better than this
- Rocco drank a few cups of grog and passed out on the beach
- Lucy was talked out of removing Drew from the Nurses' Ball guest list
- Brook Lynn told Maxie she has to choose between her and Lulu
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