Welcome back, friends! We begin this week's edition of Critical Diagnosis with a public service announcement: I'll have family in town next weekend, so it's probably pretty unlikely that I'll be able to get a column together. As for this column, I seem to be fighting a cold, so we'll see how much sense I make over the next 2,900 words or so.
The short version is that the show is still cooking at fairly high heat — and for the first time in quite some time, I feel confident that it'll be able to maintain momentum for at least another couple of weeks. The WSB story is still a non-starter, but between the attempt on Drew's life and Ric being tied up in Alexis' basement, the General Hospital writing staff would have to try pretty hard to mess this up… and most of the time, it doesn't feel like they're trying hard at all.
I kid, I kid. Let's jump in!
Schatzi und Mutter
The mystery of who shot Drew got plenty of airtime last week, but the top story was still Britt, Jason, Joss, and Vaughn escaping from the Five Poppies, so we'll deal with that stuff first. It was a lot dumber than anything that happened with Drew, but on the plus side, we were treated to a Zoom call with a mustachioed Valentin, so let's stay grateful for small favors.
The week started with Brennan in a very bad mood. After extraditing Colette offscreen, he got on the phone and started screaming at underlings about making sure Joss and Vaughn were extracted safely from Croatia — and then set about setting up a call with Valentin, who he suspected would be able to give him the identity of whoever Colette was really working for.
Brennan's hunch proved correct, but Valentin's no dummy, and he also loves screwing with people, so before agreeing to give up any information, he started making demands, starting with a transfer to an American supermax prison. When that didn't work, he held out for an in-person visit with Charlotte, which Brennan shortly set about trying to secure.
For his part, Valentin did offer a few morsels of information — the most interesting of which being that even though Faison's brain has been sitting in a jar on Kevin's increasingly unoccupied desk for the past several years, he might not actually be dead. At least not figuratively, anyway; as Valentin pointed out, just because Faison's gone, that doesn't mean his organization has folded. The idea that Brennan wouldn't know this is ridiculous, but whatever; this conversation was the first step to get us where we're going post-Five Poppies, which — if the rumors are to be believed — is the arrival of an inexplicably alive Nathan who's been implanted with his father's memories.
I have no idea if that's really what the show has planned, but it's completely insane and I like to root for chaos, so I hope it happens. While I've never had any issue with Ryan Paevey as an actor, I sincerely doubt he has it in him to act or speak anything like Anders Hove, which is exactly why I'd love to see him try.
Anyway, Brennan spent much of the rest of the week trying to convince Lulu — or to convince others to convince Lulu — that it'd be awesome if Charlotte could jet across an ocean to visit her papa. (This is why we have a new Charlotte all of a sudden, and so far, Bluesy Burke seems fine; I miss Scarlett Fernandez in the role, but time marches on.) Lulu resisted loudly at first, as she so often does, but her stance eventually softened — and then she ended the week by being thrown for a total loop, so who knows how she feels now.
More on that in a minute. First, we must note that our heroes did indeed escape from the Five Poppies, and just in the nick of time. I could recount the details of how Joss and Vaughn got away from Pascal's henchmen, and how Britt was safely separated from Pascal's ankle bomb, but it would be a waste of time; you've seen all this stuff before, and in pretty much the same order. We'll just skip ahead to the part where, moments after the bomb went off, Britt assured Jason that he was very brave, but she needed him to get off her — and then told him she didn't like his tattoos.
This was followed by a plane ride filled with Britt rebuffing all of Jason's attempts to be nice to her, vowing to have nothing to do with him when they landed, hitting him up for cab money… and then strolling into GH, where she found an astonished crowd that included Elizabeth, Nina, Dante, Lulu, and a fainting Liesl. Given that Britt has just escaped the employ of a very bad man, and given that she swore up and down that she didn't want or need to be anywhere near Jason, and given that she said she couldn't or wouldn't go back to Port Charles, why is she here? Well, because this is where the show wants her, of course.
I wish the setup made more sense, but so far, I'm provisionally fine with Britt's return. I tend to like Kelly Thiebaud as an actor, at least partly because I feel like her character brings out the funny/sassy side of the writing staff more often than a lot of others; I get why some folks are pissed about her getting a ticket back home after explicitly arguing for Britt to die a couple of years ago, but she's historically been a narratively dynamic character, especially during her last couple of stints. Also, I'd sure as hell rather see Jason with Britt than Anna.
On the negative side of the ledger, Britt's encounter with Dante and Lulu marked the immediate resumption of hostilities between them, starting with Britt hearing that Rocco was in the hospital and asking if "Ben" was okay. As Wubs noted in her column this week, Britt hasn't so much as mentioned Rocco since a week or two after handing him over to Dante and Lulu, so the idea that she'd be all aflutter over seeing him — or even that she'd be keeping tabs on him from Croatia — runs counter to history. This is what they need, though, and hey, conflict is juicy, so whatever.
Speaking of conflict, Nina was able to defuse the looming argument between Rocco/Ben's three parents by getting Britt and Liesl to come to her apartment, where Liesl spent a few minutes fawning over Britt before discovering that — at least according to whatever Britt's willing to share right now — she intentionally faked her death in order to spare her loved ones from the pain of watching her die of Huntington's. She was also invited to take part in a "research project," so it worked out nicely, at least for Britt. As Liesl reminded her before hauling off and slapping her across the face, she left people behind to grieve, and at least one of them is none too happy about being led to believe she watched her daughter die in her arms.
Like most of you, I imagine, I doubt this is the end of the story; if they want Britt to be a rootable character, then I assume we'll learn at some point that whoever she's working for forced her to leave, and if that's the case, then a Nathan/Faison hybrid would make a certain amount of sense, at least emotionally. Whatever's happening here, I'm interested in learning more, which we have to put in the W column.
On the other hand, Ls continually abound for the Joss and Vaughn plank on this teetering raft. After escaping from the Five Poppies, they jetted off to Australia for surfing and sex, only to be interrupted by a volcanically peeved Brennan. As he succinctly pointed out, they went on what was supposed to be a simple recon mission, disobeyed orders, risked their lives, and left with nothing to show for it — and on top of all that, they were rescued by Jason. This is not only comically embarrassing for Brennan, whose fancy new recruit sucks at her job, lols, but it puts him in the painful pickle of waiting to see how long it takes Jason to tell Carly that her boyfriend recruited her daughter into the WSB.
Also unhappy: Jason, who quickly realized Anna manipulated him into going to Croatia to save Joss without actually telling him what was really going on. As of right now, it appears that he no longer wants to be pals with her. (Insert GIF of Donald Glover opening his eyes real wide and saying "GOOD.")
Tangled Up in Drew
The rest of the week was basically spent setting up the investigation into Drew's shooting. We all know how things go at this stage — it looks like this person did it! Only here's why they actually didn't! Rinse, repeat — so I don't know how deeply I want or need to get into it, but there are at least a couple of things we should discuss.
First off, I hope last week reminded the writers that Curtis is WAY more fun as a soft-spoken badass than he is as a self-righteous stick in the mud. I loved the scenes when Curtis visited Drew in the hospital, calmly listened to his hissed threats while making a show of fiddling with his IV, and suavely exited while urging him to rest up so he's in tip-top shape just in case the shooter comes back to finish the job — and I have to think Donnell Turner did too, because half the time lately, he seems like he's physically struggling to connect with the words coming out of his character's mouth.
Anyway, Curtis is a top suspect. Nope, make that the top suspect, because there's a hole in his alibi where the shooting took place. But because this is only Week One, we know Curtis didn't pull the trigger — he's only being floated as a likely shooter because the cops need a momentary distraction from Michael.
Michael, you may recall, was at the Port Charles Grill having drinks with a blonde woman the night of the shooting — a blonde woman he soon discovered was Jacinda, the same escort who'd earned her sash and crown as Miss Body Shots Port Charles 2025 during Drew's ketamine-induced stupor. When we last saw Jacinda, she was blackmailing Portia and Nina for cash in exchange for her continued silence regarding the fact that they hired her to humiliate Drew; somewhat confusingly, that conversation ended without Nina or Portia saying a word, and last week, Portia found Jacinda in her office again, heels up on the desk, waiting for a payout. This time, Portia quickly pointed out that she couldn't tell the police what she knew without exposing herself to assault charges, which would be far more serious than anything Nina or Portia would face.
("So much for women helping women," sighed Jacinda on her way out. I did chuckle, I admit.)
The long and the short of it is that Michael found Jacinda and they made a quick pact to be each other's alibis, just in time for Dante to show up at Jacinda's hotel room and find Michael strolling out of the bathroom and buttoning his pants. Dante's a pretty good cop, so he quickly understood what was really happening, but he also knew there was nothing he could do about it.
There are some weird holes in this where Jacinda's concerned. She told Portia she took $100,000 in hush money from Drew, but then spent it all in a matter of months, which raises the question of why Drew would give her that kind of money and just leave her in the wild; it also raises the question of why in the world Jacinda would return to Port Charles and expose herself to reprisals from Congressman Cutthroat. On the other hand, this is a soap and Michael's a younger male lead; he needs to be having sex with someone, even if it's fake sex, and these two actors bounce off each other reasonably well. There are worse ways to start a love story.
There are also questions where Michael's concerned. When all this started, it seemed like he was looking for the mystery blonde because he was actually with her when shots were fired, but now we know that isn't the case; the flashback of Michael getting into his car, seething and dripping wet, clearly took place closer to the crime. But on the other hand, Michael didn't seem like a guy covering for his complicity; if anything, he gave off the vibe of someone who was cleaning up a mess that he didn't create and didn't ask for.
Here's my guess: I think Michael went to Drew's that night in order to confront him, and happened to be there when the shooting took place. I don't think he did it, but I do think he's scrambling for an alibi because if he told the truth about where he was, it'd point the finger at the actual shooter, who he's trying to protect. And that shooter, in my opinion, is Willow — a woman he regards as too emotionally unstable to have custody of her kids, but also a woman whose arrest and conviction would deprive those kids of their mom for a whole lot longer than he intends to.
Drew, meanwhile, is fully fixated on Michael, to the point that he openly, gleefully told Curtis, Carly, and Willow that he intends to do whatever he can to have him convicted — up to and including framing him for the crime. The only other thing on Drew's mind is his safe, which he remembers leaving open in the moments before he was shot; his relief after Dante told him nothing was stolen was quickly replaced by panic over what the police might find if they searched it. To that end, he told Dante the police don't have his consent to examine the contents of the safe, which he said include confidential material — and then he told Kai that he needed him to sneak into the house, open the safe, and bring him everything in it.
Kai, of course, can do no such thing, for a variety of reasons. For starters, asking a young Black male to break into a home in an ostensibly wealthy neighborhood is a horrible, horrible idea, but more importantly, Kai knows he already stole what Drew wants to see: the proof that Portia doctored Heather's test results to keep her in prison.
Kai refused to let himself into Drew's house, but Brick — back in town for what is hopefully an extremely short visit — had no such qualms when Sonny asked him to do the same thing. Rather than removing anything from the safe, Brick went there to put something in: evidence that implicates Drew in the $1 million bribe that ended up in Judge Heran's account before she died. At first glance, this would seem to be a pretty shitty bribe; after all, the judge ruled against Willow after being bribed, and Drew has made all kinds of noise about how desperate he is to return Wiley and Amelia to her.
It might make sense, though, if you look at it from the point of view that takes into account how Drew is also keen to isolate Willow from everyone else around her. If she doesn't have her kids, as much as she might blame Drew, she might also see him as her best hope of getting them back — and since that's exactly what ended up happening, the idea of Drew bribing Judge Heran to rule in Michael's favor makes a certain crazy kind of sense. It looks like Drew will get his hands on his safe's contents during the week to come, and won't be happy about what he sees.
Speaking of seeing: Why doesn't Drew's house have security cameras? Just asking.
Bullet time!
- Lulu grounded Charlotte for a month after she took Scout out of Lila's Kids and drove her to the Quartermaines', where she left her with Cody
- Molly thanked Cody for the way he handled the Scout situation, but said she thinks it's for the best if they don't talk anymore except in case of emergency
- Anna assigned Dante and Chase to the shooting investigation even though Dante is one suspect's brother and Chase is another suspect's ex-husband
- Ava and Kristina concocted a "digital detox" as Ric's reason for abruptly leaving town, and emailed people on his behalf
- Willow freaked out when she heard about Ric's absence
- Lucas had one of the lines of the week when he heard that Carly threatened to kill Drew and scoffed, "She threatens to kill a lot of people"
- Portia told Isaiah that they can't have sex anymore because she's his boss
- Trina told Emma every last detail of how Portia ended up being blackmailed by Drew
- Outback darted out of the Bad Jen Café and still hasn't been found, even though Rocco bashed his head on a tree trying to find her
- Curtis asked Portia if she could pretend they still have "a strong marriage" while his innocence is in doubt
- Dalton, who still exists, likes sheep's milk in his lattes
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