Critical Diagnosis: Week of JuLY 7, 2025 - July 11, 2025 by Jeff Giles

Remember the days when summer meant exciting, fast-paced, high-stakes stories, primarily for the younger characters? I'm sure you do. I do. The current crop of General Hospital writers, alas, do not. Or if they do, they think the cold rice pudding they're currently serving us is preferable, which would be even worse. In this case, I feel like accusing them of ignorance is the most charitable explanation.

It's mid-July, and General Hospital is in the midst of some serious doldrums. The characters who aren't guilty of rank hypocrisy are mired in stories that require them to make inexplicable and/or stupid decisions in order to advance writerly agendas that don't make any sense. Last week, we had Lulu hypocritically shrieking about Brook Lynn digging up Rocco's past, and Laura and Sonny hypocritically whining about Boyle making a big deal out of their friendship; on the inexplicable side, we had Sasha making some seriously weird decisions about parenting Daisy, along with whatever the hell is happening with Joss' mission to infiltrate Dalton's lab.

There were some sweet scenes in the mix, and I'll do my best to remember them while I'm writing this column, but by and large, this is a pretty pitiful summer season for our show. I don't know if external factors are getting in the way or if this is really TPTB's idea of great TV; either way, very little of what's happening here seems likely to attract viewers. And again, it's such a frustrating state of affairs because all the pieces are there: vibrant characters, terrific actors, and decades of history to draw on. For whatever reason, GH just stubbornly refuses to live up to its potential.

Two Brothers, Four Mothers

Last week brought us the latest series of battles in the war between Lulu and Brook Lynn. After discovering that Brook Lynn went digging into the story of Rocco's birth, and then left her findings lying around the Quartermaine mansion where Danny could find them, Lulu hurried over to the Q boathouse, where she found her nemesis, called her a hateful bitch, and punched her in the face.

This is the type of setup soap fans live for, at least in theory. In practice, the conflict between these characters is rapidly losing its ability to entertain. The details have changed (some), but really, they've been arguing about the same stuff for months, and watching them argue over who's the bigger asshole in this situation is getting old. All you really need to know right now is that Lulu still hates Brook Lynn, Brook Lynn still hates Lulu, Dante is still exasperated by it all, Gio heard about the whole thing from Lulu and now wants even less to do with Brook Lynn, and Rocco's in the middle, chock full of questions.

After talking with his parents, Rocco reached out to Jason, who admitted that Britt did some awful things, but argued that in the years leading up to her death, she'd grown as a person. After their conversation — which, of course, Lulu was unhappy about — Rocco dashed off an email to Liesl Obrecht, saying something along the lines of "I don't remember meeting you, but I used to be your grandson."

Obrecht's imminent return — which I'm very happy about, for the record — could lead us in some goofy sci-fi directions regarding Britt. If anyone in the GH universe is capable of bringing her daughter back from the grave, it's Faison's former accomplice, and although there's a long list of characters I'd rather see come back to life, the vague outline this story has taken thus far is so messy and strange that I can't help but be at least a little interested.

As for Gio? When he wasn't making Brook Lynn weepy, he was skulking around town on a mission to find out whether Sonny's really the dangerous mobster Tracy claims he is, or if he's actually the kindly benefactor Gio always believed him to be. Cue a series of endless conversations about how COMPLICATED Sonny is and how he's done things he isn't proud of, but he's loyal and honorable and a;ldkjfa;ldkjfa;dlkrpoqutmzzzz. You've heard all of this countless times before; at this point, Sonny is a character incapable of surprising us, and this is no exception.

Also part of the formula: Gio overhearing Sidwell tell Jordan that Sonny was planning to fly Natalia to Belize, and urging her to work her connections with the PCPD to dig up the flight plan (or something; I'm honestly unclear as to what difference this is supposed to make). Wanting to protect his grandfather, Gio rushed over to Sonny's to warn him, only to be told that he needs to stay out of it and keep his distance "until things settle down." Admitting that Tracy was right about him, Sonny said Gio getting hurt would be the worst thing that could happen, and you know what that means. Again, we've seen all this before.

What remains frustrating is that there are real dramatic possibilities in Gio getting caught in the crossfire between Sidwell and Sonny. It'd put Sonny at odds with Dante and Brook Lynn, two of his most passionate defenders, which adds enough extra weight to conceivably make this the thing that finally drives Sonny out of the mob. But Sonny's already been through this type of story before, and as with everything else involving the character, it never matters; after a few months, it always snaps back to the status quo. We obviously don't know that Gio will be endangered, and it's all just conjecture right now, but even if that doesn't happen, this entire storyline is a waste of time.

Dueling "Importers"

In spite of the fact that Sonny has absolutely zero proof that Sidwell is behind the firebombing at Charlie's, he spent the week plotting against him anyway — specifically planning to hit back in a way that would harm Marco. Sonny's logic here is an eye for an eye, but involving children of enemies goes against everything he's supposed to stand for; more importantly, Marco saved Kristina's stupid life during the fire, so he should be twice as off-limits. This, yet again, is the problem with Sonny: GH needs him to be treated as a protagonist, but the show also wants him to be treated as a dangerous man, so you get weeks when he's lauded for being "complicated" and for "living by a code," while at the same time he's plotting to strike against innocent bystanders.

I guess, in some small way, we're meant to think of Marco as less than innocent, because in the days since Natalia's death, he's been seen willingly joining with Sidwell to make Sonny pay. But we don't know what form that revenge will take, or even whether it'll be illegal, so as far as I'm concerned, Sonny going after Marco is indefensible. 

In fact, I've reached the point where I don't even know what the writers think they're showing us where he's concerned. When he was being held for questioning after Natalia's death, and Laura came to visit him in the interrogation room so they could plot against Sidwell together and congratulate themselves for being unwilling to pretend not to be friends in public, were we supposed to enjoy that? Were we supposed to root for them with Boyle burst into the room, livestreaming from his phone? Were we supposed to see it as some sort of victory for truth and justice when Boyle got in trouble for making an unauthorized recording in the station? Boyle is dumb and annoying, and also in bed with Sidwell, but he isn't wrong about the impropriety of a cozy friendship between the mayor and the local mob boss.

Advantage: Drew

Boyle's status as Sidwell's errand boy meant he was the one who had the privilege of secretly meeting with Drew (at the Metro Court pool after dark, of course) and handing him Natalia's autopsy report. I'm unclear as to how the autopsy is supposed to hurt Sonny — she had no defensive wounds, so the official conclusion is that she either died by suicide or OD'd accidentally — but either way, Drew soon made his way to Aurora, where he told Curtis he had to publish an in-depth expose with the headline "Did Sonny Corinthos End Natalia Ramirez?"

Unfortunately for Curtis, he was in no position to refuse. When Drew arrived, Curtis was in the middle of laying into Kai, who'd just admitted that he was the one who told Drew that Curtis was looking for Jacinda; it was the perfect opening for Drew to ladle on more of his smug superiority, taunting Curtis and asking him whether sacrificing his journalistic integrity was worth his wife's freedom.

Curtis agreed to go along with Drew's demands, but Portia wasn't the slightest bit grateful; in fact, she complained that he was doing it to protect Trina instead of her. When he admitted that was true, she told him not to wait up and headed out to the Brown Dog, where she chatted up Isaiah. Kai, meanwhile, confessed what he'd done to Trina, who immediately and unequivocally told him to get the hell out. Good riddance! (Although we know he'll be back.)

After Drew left Curtis' office, Curtis summoned Michael so he could warn him about the story, which he said was due to be published in an hour. This is preposterous, but whatever; Michael reaffirmed his support for Curtis, telling him to do whatever he had to in order to protect his family, and adding that he was about to do the same by warning Sonny that the article was on its way. 

I Can't Let You Leave… Alone

Michael had plenty of his own drama to deal with last week, specifically the fallout from Daisy's brief disappearance during the Fourth of July fireworks. When Sasha heard her crying via the baby monitor, she went into the nursery to soothe her, but the crib was empty; freaking out, she searched the house with Michael, Chase, Ned, and Olivia, the latter of whom quickly found her in one of the sitting rooms, happily chilling in a bassinet. Ned, Olivia, and Chase seemed to suspect that Sasha might be losing it, but Michael believed her unequivocally — to the point that he agreed to let her take Daisy and go into hiding in another town.

Now, I'm glad Michael doesn't think Sasha's suffering from any mental health issues, because that poor woman has seen the inside of enough institutions to last a lifetime. On the other hand, her actions since getting pregnant have made so little sense that I don't think it'd be hard to get a judge to sign off on commitment papers. First, she spouted off with all this convoluted nonsense about needing to protect her baby from the Corinthos and Quartermaine clans, then she encouraged people to believe that Jason was the father, and now her response to danger is to… go off on her own somewhere? Jason has agreed to get her safely settled, but still. If only Robert were around to talk some sense into his long-lost doofus of a daughter.

The silver lining here? We now know that Daisy's nursery doesn't have a camera installed because Michael had it removed, ostensibly due to the fact that the first thing it showed him was his wife having sex with his uncle. This makes it seem like Michael blames the camera for the end of his marriage to Willow, which amuses me greatly.

Also amusing: Willow. Having run out of ways to have her believably do bad things and then cry about them later, the writers have decided it's time for Dark Willow to make her debut. To that end, we learned last week that she's the one who tiptoed into Daisy's nursery and smuggled her into another part of the house. And she isn't even suffering from any kind of mental break — as she told Daisy, she's doing it because Sasha betrayed her and Michael is a meanie. This obviously runs the risk of dead-ending Willow's future utility as any kind of protagonist, but whatever; I was genuinely afraid that instead, we were going to get the 10,000th female character driven mad over something to do with her children or a man. Instead, she's gaslighting a former friend because she feels like it, which is refreshing in its own way.

(And yes, I know Sasha should have heard Willow talking in the nursery. Writing those scenes that way was a very stupid decision, because it could have been avoided if we just heard Willow thinking the things she said out loud. This writers' room is the kingdom of unforced errors.)

Play Stupid Spy Games, Win Stupid Spy Prizes

The writers have been treating this "Joss joins the WSB" storyline with all the urgency of Dan Rooney proposing to Ruby for the hundredth time. I think the story is insultingly dumb, so I'm not really complaining about that, but it really doesn't do anything at all to help us get invested. Like I said a week or two ago, Frisco's early arc from pop star to talk show host to undercover vigilante was also very stupid, but the show leaned into the whole thing so hard that you kinda couldn't help but get swept up. When we see Joss and Vaughn doing their silly spy dance once or twice a week, it just highlights the hollow absurdity of the entire exercise.

This was even more apparent last week. On Monday, Joss saw Vaughn at the Metro Court pool and dreamily recalled their kiss, but when she approached him and he said "that kiss never happened," she played it off like it was no big deal. They then staged a fight in front of Emma, the idea being that once Emma saw Joss "break up" with him, she'd instantly chat him up — which is, insultingly, exactly what happened. By Friday, Vaughn and Emma were enough of an item to go to the Brown Dog together, where they were spotted by Anna, who cheerfully inserted herself in their date and started grilling Vaughn for personal details while pointing out that he's obviously far too old for Emma.

This was all fun enough to watch, in its way, even if Finola Hughes is far too talented to be involved. It didn't last long, though — Joss barged in, told Vaughn he'd made his point by going out with Emma, and made him "choose between" them. He chose Joss, Emma pouted, and Anna consoled her while casting vaguely suspicious glances in Vaughn and Joss' direction. Meanwhile, we saw that Emma palmed Vaughn's master key at some point, thereby granting herself access to Dalton's mysterious lab — even though the first time we saw Dalton enter a lab, it was at General Hospital, which has nothing to do with Vaughn's position on the campus facilities crew. Perhaps we're supposed to forget about that.

To recap, this all happened because Joss and Vaughn wanted to make Emma an unwitting asset in their investigation, but knew they needed to avoid making Anna suspicious. It turned out exactly how they didn't want it to go, which is pretty much what you can expect when a spy agency recruits a college volleyball player to handle matters of international security, gives her a week of training, and assigns her a handler whose main talent is sweeping his hair out of his eyes.

And where's Dalton in all this? We've seen him maybe… what, five times since he was introduced? And he's had maybe 40 lines of dialogue? And now we're in mid-July, with Joss making absolutely no progress on the case in spite of her big summer internship? My dudes, this is absolutely not how you develop a story. It would have been a hard sell no matter what, but come on.

Nothing Left to Bury

Bubbling on the back burner, we have Kristina's big plan to split up Ric and Ava, which moved up a couple of degrees during Ava's big gallery showing last week. After whiffing in his attempt to seduce Ava with a kiss, Cody changed tactics by chatting up Elizabeth at the show — and then spilling a drink on her, thereby allowing Ric to swoop in with a napkin. Immediately green with envy, Ava latched on to Cody; later, Ric and Ava sniped at each other about having eyes for other people.

So far, so good for Kristina, but I see storm clouds on the horizon. As numerous people have noted, Josh Kelly is no longer a contract player, and there's been some conjecture regarding Cody possibly meeting an early demise at Ava's hands once she discovers what he and Kristina have been up to. Last week, when Molly complained to Kristina that there'd be "nothing left to bury" once Ava's finished with Cody, I thought I heard the unmistakable sound of an anvil dropping.

That'll do it for the big stuff. Here come your bullets!

• Kristina whined that Alexis only allowed herself to be blackmailed in order to protect Molly
• Mac tried playing matchmaker between Cody and Molly
• Jordan told Curtis she'd be keeping her distance from him, and although he didn't like it, he agreed
• Jordan also told Portia she'd be keeping her distance from Curtis, but Portia didn't believe it for a second
• Ric, who was lying, told Elizabeth he only wants her friendship
• Carly threatened to ban Willow from the Metro Court
• Stella's latest public service announcement: the headache of denied insurance claims
• Carly shouted Morgan's name 40 times, triggering the clang of an anvil each time
• Isaiah continues to be utterly wasted
• In response to Lulu whining about Rocco discovering his origin story, Laura danced around Lucky's response to learning that Luke raped her
• Chase went for a swim