It's been a long time since the writing on General Hospital was consistently excellent, but even during its best days, the show always had something silly, frustrating, and/or forgettable transpiring between its most gripping scenes. Looking back, we tend to forget that stuff, which is part of the magic of soaps — there's always so much happening, five days a week, that if there's anything for viewers to really latch onto, that's what we remember most.
What I'm saying is this: Sometimes, all you really need to paper over a show's sins is a wedding that spirals out of control when the mother of the bride is betrayed by a so-called friend who tattles on her for having hate sex with the groom. I wouldn't say last week's GH episodes were classics by any stretch, but the Drew/Willow affair has been festering like a boil for over a year, and watching it get lanced was a sweet relief. And we haven't even gotten to the fallout yet! Maybe I shouldn't, but I'm looking forward to next week. In the meantime…
Back to Dubrovnik
Before we dive into the delightful mess of Willow's wedding, let's wade through the sloppy silliness we had to watch first, starting with Joss and the WSB. As I noted last week, this story keeps tainting additional characters by the day; at this point, it's extremely clear that it'll be the show's next main priority once the wreckage from the chapel's been cleared. For weeks, we just had Joss and Vaughn doing their sub-Alias shtick while spying on a professor who was only on once or twice a month, but now this thing has spread out to absorb Emma, Anna, Dante, Sidwell, Jason, and the re-alived Britt — plus, presumably by extension, Sonny, Obrecht and the extremely low-key Carly/Brennan pairing.
Is there a chance that the writers have managed to come up with new directions for the story that will be more interesting and/or exciting than the stuff we've seen so far? Sure. But just using words like "courier" and "Dubrovnik" isn't enough, at least not when everything leading up to this point has been eye-rollingly lame. For the moment, here's what we know:
Last week, Brennan reserved the Metro Court pool for a "private party" that was really just him and Carly dangling their feet in the water while they chatted about what passes for their relationship. It was dull as hell, but it served a purpose of sorts — specifically, to try and create some stakes and make us care when Carly inevitably discovers that Brennan recruited Joss for the WSB. Meanwhile, Joss told Vaughn she doesn't think it's appropriate that her (secret) boss is dating her mom, which got Vaughn all kinds of freaked out; he ranted for half an episode about how powerful Brennan is, and how much she does not want to get on his bad side.
Chris McKenna seems like a delightful guy who's thrilled to be on GH, and I'm sure I'd enjoy him as any number of other characters, but none of this stuff flies with him playing Brennan. There's no heat between Brennan and Carly, and he seems about as dangerous as Sam the butcher on The Brady Bunch — a man with access to dangerous weapons, sure, but one who's so mild and good-natured that you sense it would never occur to him to use them in a nefarious way.
While all these conversations were going on, Anna was busy telling Dante that she thinks Joss is working for the WSB. "My little sister is not a spy," he insisted, making me laugh out loud, and Anna quickly set him straight, pointing out the many ways in which it makes sense — sorry, "makes sense" — that she'd be seen as Bureau material. She walked Dante back through Joss' single-minded focus on finding Dex's killer, told him Brennan is the WSB's top recruiter, and said she was even younger than Joss when she herself was lured into the fold. Having said all that, Anna added that if Brennan saw something in Joss, then she must be a real asset to the Bureau, which further leads her to believe that Dalton is up to something far deadlier than animal testing. Naturally, Dante was unamused by all this, including the realization that Brennan must have allowed Cyrus to get dangerously close to Joss while she was investigating him, but she insisted that they keep quiet about what they think they know.
While all that was going on, Jason was trying and failing to use his patented Anger Boy moves to force his way onto a plane bound for Dubrovnik so he could talk to the Britt doppelgänger he happened to spot while she was boarding. Although he was foiled, we still managed to catch a glimpse of her at her destination, where an unseen man welcomed her back to the city, and she told him it was good to be back. Jason spent the rest of the week in a bit of a daze, trying to understand how he'd seen someone who looked just like his murdered ex-girlfriend; hilariously, Carly tried to convince him that it couldn't have been Britt, because Britt is dead, to which he responded, "So was I."
Points for self-awareness there, GH writers. Bravo.
So what happens next? Well, while Carly and Jason were talking about Britt, they were at the Metro Court pool, where Liesl just happened to stop by for some bonding with Rocco. (It was thwarted by an angry Lulu and Dante, but not before they managed to take a selfie together.) When Jason asked Carly to tell him how Britt died, Carly recounted the story of Heather the Hook, ending with Britt expiring in Obrecht's arms; upon hearing this, Jason said he needed to talk to Obrecht. She was pretty busy with Willow's wedding last week, but I'm sure it'll happen soon.
Lucas the Hero
Lucas may be Julian Jerome's biological child, but he's a lot more like the guy who raised him — a fundamentally decent regular guy, albeit one with a tendency to get wrapped up in some of the more outlandish things that happen in Port Charles. Here's hoping that doesn't mean he'll end up committing adultery with someone's long-lost estranged child, shaving his head, kidnapping a family friend, and dying of a monkey virus. Either way, I'm happier and happier for Lucas' presence on the canvas right now; Van Hansis is finding a way to make him stick in ways that previous portrayers, through little fault of their own, were rarely afforded.
Last week, Lucas was more like Tony than ever. He marched down to the PCPD and openly accused Sonny of kidnapping Marco, and then when he went back to work, Isaiah told him someone had left something for him: A small envelope with a key and an address printed on a piece of paper inside. Surely understanding that he could be walking into a trap, he immediately decided it was worth it if there was a chance of saving Marco — and that's exactly what he did. Upon finding Marco cuffed and tied to the chair, he freed him from his restraints; we even got a sweet Sam mention when Lucas pointed out that he knew how to pick handcuffs thanks to his sister.
Like Tony, Lucas wasn't satisfied with simply saving the day. Instead, he was filled with righteous anger toward Sonny and his enablers, and determined to speak his truth. While Marco headed to the PCPD, ostensibly to file a report, Lucas went to the Metro Court and had Carly let him into Marco's room, where he'd agreed to wait. Before Carly left, they argued about Sonny's actions, with Carly basically — and offensively — telling him that Marco's kidnapping was his own fault for moving to Port Charles to be closer to his father. This was just the first round in an argument that lasted the rest of the week, culminating with Lucas returning the key to Carly's house and telling her he's moving out.
Much like Tony, Lucas loves hard and loves easy — and also has a tendency to fall for folks whose flexible morals end up driving him from the relationship. We watched it happen with Brad, and now we may be watching it happen with Marco, who lied to the police and made up some story about getting lost and falling down a ravine, but then went to Sidwell and told him he's "all in" on taking Sonny down.
Of course, Marco only did that after Sonny went to his hotel room and told the guy he'd just kidnapped that he just wanted him to stay out of his way — an absurd demand that was met with the sputtering incredulity it deserved, and served to further highlight how repugnant Sonny is. But if Marco is teaming up with his father on the down low, that's bound to upset Lucas when he finds out, and Jones men always find out; if Marco has any doubt, he can just ask Lucy.
Wedding Bell Blues
The big story of the week was Willow and Drew's nuptials, which finally gave the show an excuse to air a wedding that pulled out all the church/dress/flowers stops while still only being attended by like seven people. After all, when the entire town hates your guts, who's going to show up to watch you get hitched?
But days before the happy couple put on their formal wear, it started becoming obvious that things weren't going to go as planned. For starters, Portia snapped, drafting a letter of resignation and telling Isaiah that her doctoring days were probably finished — and then she really snapped, responding to Willow's in-person wedding invitation by straight up throwing it in the garbage and then telling Willow that Drew had been attempting to blackmail her into falsifying Michael's medical records. Willow's response? A big fat so what. "Michael didn't fight fair," she shrugged. "Why should I?"
After that, Portia summoned Nina, telling her she no longer recognized Willow and recounting her blasé reaction to Drew's latest scheme. This weighed extra heavily on Nina after seeing Willow smirk in response to the news that Sasha had taken Daisy out of town, so she went to Drew's, where she accused him of being the one behind the perceived threats to Daisy. He was so forcefully appalled in his reaction that she took him at his word — and reached the same conclusion that Drew silently did, which is that it had to be Willow.
Drew's response was one of mild concern; although he clearly didn't believe Willow when he asked her what she'd done on the 4th of July while he was out of town, he also didn't seem to be in any big hurry to rectify the situation. Instead, as he told Kai, he pinned his hopes on the restorative effects of their pending honeymoon, which he predicted would be just the thing to take her troubles away. Nina, on the other hand, was ready to burst by the time she got to the church. When Scout asked Willow if she wanted to be called Mom, Nina bolted for the chapel for a good cry, where she was found by Ava, who listened in open-mouthed horror as she ran down the list of reasons she suspected Willow of targeting Daisy.
During all of this, Curtis and Portia found themselves at a crossroads. When Portia told Curtis she was going to resign and face the consequences of tampering with Heather's test results, he (barely) convinced her to give him one more day — and then the real meaning behind all that stuff he's been saying about how sometimes you have to betray a friend for the greater good clicked into place. Feeling stuck for solutions, Curtis marched over to the church and threw Nina directly under the bus, interrupting Willow's wedding preparation by telling her that her fiancé started their relationship while secretly having sex with her mom.
All of this was handled strangely. Primarily from an editing standpoint — we never saw Willow's reaction to Curtis' bombshell — but also from a narrative standpoint. It's one thing for Curtis to willfully risk Nina's relationship with Willow this way; it's quite another for him to do it without even giving Nina a chance to do it herself. They're supposed to be good friends, after all, and since Curtis' entire reason for spilling this tea is the supposition that Drew won't have any use for Portia if he isn't with Willow, then it really didn't matter who Willow heard it from. I think this probably wouldn't stick in my craw quite as much if Curtis wasn't such a self-righteous dick to everyone else who pulls slimy moves like this, but either way, there wasn't much of a reason to handle it this way.
There was a slight reason, at least in the eyes of the writers. While Curtis was in Willow's dressing room, Nina was in the chapel with Ava, making her mind up to tell Willow the truth, come hell or high water, so the way the writers mapped it out produced another example of the hoary old daytime trope where a character FINALLY works up the nerve to share some secret, only to be beaten to the punch. I'm rarely a fan of this type of storytelling, and I really wasn't a fan of it here, because it undermines Curtis as a character and blows up his friendship with Nina for no good reason. Everything that happened next still could have happened if Curtis had pressured Nina into coming clean for the sake of his family.
As for what happened next… well, if you watch this show, you know Willow is never very far from blaming Nina for some damn thing, which is exactly why Nina's been chewing her lip with terror over the prospect of Willow finding out about her hate sex with Drew. I'm fairly tired of listening to Nina beg anyone for forgiveness, let alone her addled daughter, but there was never any doubt about which way this was going to go. Give Katelyn MacMullen and Cynthia Watros credit for going all in on the material, though — they well and truly had it out, with both actors emoting hard enough to shake the pillars of heaven. Willow saying hateful shit to Nina and then throwing her out of the dressing room was a foregone conclusion, but both of them really made you feel their pain.
That pain, it would seem, has only just begun. Nina scurried to the chapel, where she tried to convince Liesel (who hilariously wore black) to leave with her, but before she could really explain what was going on, Elizabeth announced that the bride was ready, the music started, and the doors flew open. Now, part of the reason Nina wanted to get the hell out in a hurry was that she was convinced there wasn't going to be a wedding — Willow told her she would have left Drew in a heartbeat if she'd known about their affair, and she seemed just as furious with Drew as she was with Nina. But the Willow we saw when the doors opened was a bit of a sphinx, staring at Drew with a mad flurry of emotions that could go in any direction come Monday.
Delightfully messy. Now let's fire off those bullets!
- Lucy tricked Lois into ambushing Brook Lynn during a Home & Heart taping, and after Brook Lynn fired Lois, she hung around the set for some spiked sweet tea and woefully unnecessary recapping with Flora
- Tracy called Martin a "janky jurist" and a barnacle, while he predicted that if she ever had to rely on her personality to survive, she'd starve
- Sonny and Laura had their thousandth conversation about whether or not she needs to publicly sever ties with him; afterwards, Jordan told Laura about Marco's kidnapping, and suggested that she needs to consider the possibility that Sonny is no longer the lesser evil
- Martin, who is apparently Drew's lawyer again after being fired following the press conference, charged him for his attendance at the wedding
- Sonny indulged in more disgusting flirting with Turner
- Drew, ever the ass, told Alexis that he doesn't consider Rocco to be Scout's real brother
- Isaiah told Elizabeth he was spending some time at his cabin, which is bound to mean something after the wedding
- Obrecht took James axe-throwing, and it was every bit as delightful as that sounds
- Rocco told Dante and Lulu that he's the reason Obrecht is in town, and stormed off in a huff when Dante badmouthed Obrecht
- Kai tried reconciling with Trina, who wasn't hearing it even for a minute
- Pressed into flower-related service at the wedding and already pissed about having to wait until the reception for the open bar, Obrecht had the line of the week when she retorted, "I'm a doctor, not a florist, and I will not be a party to baby's breath"
- Obrecht and Alexis briefly bonded over losing children and being "members of a terrible club"
- Cody and Molly's chem test continued with some sunscreen antics at the Metro Court pool
- Ava, wearying of Ric's "fawning" over Elizabeth, set up a private meeting with Alexis in her office next week
- Martin found a letter to Monica under a chair in Drew's house, and his jaw dropped when he read the contents
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