In my last column, I complained about the writers trying to tackle so many stories at once that they weren't giving anything enough room to breathe. Well, consider those prayers to the soap gods answered — last week's General Hospital was a lot more balanced, and much more satisfying as a result. The one drawback is that we didn't see much of Ronnie, but we all know that's because the show is trying to make the most of Erika Slezak's brief time on the set; her storyline is the only one we don't have to worry about dragging on indefinitely.
Of course, if you aren't a fan of the Secret Agent Joss and "Who Shot Drew?" storylines, that means you had to spend more time with characters you don't like doing things you don't care about, but I would argue that at least for the moment, both of those storylines are at least in a place where it feels like things are moving to some sort of significant pivot, if not a conclusion. And the real highlight of the week was Ric's rescue, which made me laugh out loud several times — but more on that in a minute. Let's dive in.
A Bad Week for Willow
Well, we knew this was going to happen. After agreeing to Michael's offer for supervised visitation, Willow showed up to play with Wiley and Amelia — and found herself hauled down to the station by Dante and Anna, who showed up mid-session to inform her she was being arrested for the attempted murder of her former fiancé/ex-husband's uncle. And as it turns out, she has even bigger issues than the weapon being found in her bedroom: Footage from outside Nina's apartment, which apparently only has one entrance and exit in violation of every safety code known to man, proves that Nina was nowhere near Willow when Drew was shot.
Oh yeah, this means Nina was arrested too.
The difference where Nina's concerned is that no one at the PCPD seems all that interested in seeing her go to prison for conspiracy to commit murder. Even Turner, who never met a case she couldn't work herself into a froth of righteous anger over, really just sees Nina as a tool to use against Willow; to that end, she's offered to cut Nina a deal if she agrees to recant her statement about being with Willow when Drew was shot.
This is, of course, the last thing Nina wants to do, which she expressed loudly after Marco tried talking her into it. She was more receptive, though, when Nathan — who can apparently still go wherever he wants at the station despite not having a badge or any account of where he's been for the last seven years — entered Turner's office to try and patiently outline the facts. As he told her, the longer she clings to her statement, the worse things get for both of them: Willow's alibi has already been blown, and Nina's continued insistence that the footage has to be a fake is a non-starter. Really, the only way to give Willow a fighting chance is for Nina to recant.
While that conversation was going on, Willow was in the middle of a conversation with Martin, who Drew hired to represent her. Not content with proving her innocence, Willow insisted that they needed to shift the blame to Michael — and then when Drew barged in, ignoring Chase's insistence that a shooting victim needs to keep their distance from the chief suspect in their shooting, she openly admitted that she has no alibi at all.
Martin, at this point, reminded both of them that he's unable to represent Willow past the arraignment, because he's on retainer as Drew's lawyer. Drew, as he always does when Martin says something he doesn't want to hear, threw him out — at which point Willow straight up asked Drew to lie about remembering Michael shooting him. This is a request that most people would be reluctant to honor, given that it's a lie that'd lead to certain perjury, but Drew's face lit up as soon as he heard it.
I know we're still at the stage of the game when the writers are chucking out misdirections on a regular basis, and rewrites to whatever's currently planned are not only possible, but probable. Still, I feel pretty confident that Willow's the shooter, and she's using Drew's feelings for her to trap him into doing something incredibly stupid to defend her. It's such a deliciously devious move that even though I'm confident it's the right answer, I'm also afraid it's too much fun for these writers to ever let us have.
Drew ended Friday's episode with a shit-eating grin, but it wasn't all sunshine and roses for him last week. In fact, he was forced to come to the extremely unpleasant realization that Sidwell — someone he's long seen as an ally in his quest for vengeance against all things Corinthos — has actually been lulling him into a false sense of complacency while he compiled various bits of evidence connecting Drew to various crimes. When Drew summoned Sidwell to his home and tried to get him to make it look like Michael bribed Judge Heran, Sidwell calmly informed him that Drew works for him, not the other way around — and if he steps out of line again, he'll be the worst kind of sorry. During the course of this conversation, Drew realized that Sonny's the one who made it look like he bribed the judge, but there isn't anything he can do about it now.
This was a really satisfying scene, partly because it's always fun to see Drew sputter in impotent fury, but also because this is the kind of thing Carlo Rota excels at. While it's understandable that the focus has had to shift away from Sidwell while the writers outline the fallout from Jason finding out Joss is in the WSB, I still think he's been poorly used lately. If you're even slightly compelling as a character, any involvement in this silly cold fusion story feels like an instant ticket to narrative prison.
Father and Child Reunion
Speaking of prison, last week also took us to Steinmauer — which we now know has a logo that looks like it was slapped together by a first-year web designer in 1998 — so we could bear witness to Valentin's reunion with Charlotte. It was all very heartwarming or whatever, but the major takeaways had more to do with espionage than parenthood. To wit: In their last few moments together, Valentin warned Charlotte not to trust Britt, and told her to tell Rocco he can't trust her either — and then after she left, he had a sitdown with Brennan, and although he was typically cagey, he did reveal that Faison wasn't working alone when he died, and whoever his partner was is making huge strides in their final project.
Given his warning to Charlotte, it was interesting that he was dismissive about Britt's potential involvement when Brennan asked. He said Faison never would have trusted Britt to run anything, which tracks with everything we ever saw between those characters, but then why would he be specifically worried about her proximity to Charlotte and Rocco? And where does Nathan — who was actually with Rocco, Britt, and Liesl while Charlotte and Valentin were talking — fit in?
There's still a chance that the answers to those questions will prove interesting. I admit that the "Faison's children" angle is an interesting way to frame Britt and Nathan's returns from the dead — it stands to reason, after all, that the work of a mad genius wouldn't simply come to a halt just because he died, and he was also exactly the type of maniac who'd use his own children as pawns in any game he decided to play. There are ways in which this thing, silly as it is, could be satisfyingly stapled onto Faison's legacy. But this story has been going on for so goddamn long already that whatever happens from now on really needs to happen with a quickness. We need to know how Britt really ended up in Croatia, where Nathan's been all these years, and who they're working for, because the way this whole thing has been framed out, we won't even know what the real story is until those questions have been answered.
For now, Brennan doesn't have much to go on, but he was still confident enough to wave Anna off when she came to his office, reminded him that she knows Faison's methods better than anyone, and offered to help. On her way out, she warned him that he's in over his head, and she was right — if not because of the whole Faison thing, then definitely because he's about to have his entire ass handed to him by Carly. While Brennan was at Steinmauer, Jason told her about Joss joining the WSB, and now — for the first time in as long as I can remember — Carly actually has a legitimate reason to be pissed off at someone. God have mercy on his soul.
You're All Nuts!
Okay, now we get to the good stuff. Finally, after a month of being barely seen and rarely mentioned while he was tied to a cot in Alexis' basement, Ric was rescued by Cody, who heard Outback's incessant barking, opened the bulkhead, wandered down the stairs, and wondered what the hell he'd stumbled into.
Josh Kelly hasn't been asked to do much during his tenure on GH, which is a shame; while I don't think Cody has amounted to much as a character, Kelly seems to really enjoy playing comedic beats, and he's pretty good at it. He was really in his glory during these scenes; even though he didn't have to do a lot more than stand in slack-jawed astonishment while Ric, Alexis, Ava, and Kristina told him how Ric ended up being kidnapped, his facial expressions elevated the whole thing immeasurably.
Things only got funnier once Molly arrived. After finally deciding something must be up with her dad, she went to Dante, who agreed to ping Ric's phone and discovered it had been most recently used that day within a five-mile radius of Alexis' house. Naturally, she headed straight for her mom's place, and arrived mere moments after Cody yelled "You're all nuts and I have no idea how any of you are related to Molly," and turned to leave.
Ric and Molly embraced; she asked him where he'd been and what happened to him, saying he looked terrible. ("That's true," agreed Ava. Maura West is so great with a quip.) After a few agonized moments of clearly wanting desperately to tell Molly exactly where he'd been and what happened to him, Ric invented a bizarre story about joining a cult while he was at his digital detox, taking ayahuasca, and wandering senselessly through the woods until he was rescued by Cody.
I can't do any of this justice by writing about it. If you care at all about GH, you really owe it to yourself to watch these scenes, because they're everything a soap should be — they feature enemies working together out of desperation, ridiculous lies being told for understandable albeit ridiculous reasons, and no shortage of laugh-out-loud lines. The fact that the whole thing put an end to Kristina's dumb grudge against Ava is just the cherry on top. The only drawback was how rarely we saw Ric or his captors while he was locked up, but from what I gather, that was unavoidable because Rick Hearst had to take time off for personal reasons.
Taken on its own, this could have been just a fun little diversion designed to get Kristina out of a dead end while forcing Ava and Alexis to mend fences. But as Alexis warned Ava and Kristina, they aren't out of the woods — Ric can be vindictive when he's angry, and after being tied up for a month and swindled out of his blackmail money, you know he's got to be pissed. I won't mind seeing where this leads.
And as for Cody? Well, he almost got a smooch from Molly, but they were interrupted by Elizabeth, if only temporarily. Those two are too adorable together to stay apart for long.
And that's pretty much it for now. Here come your bullets!
Brook Lynn spent the week packing and unpacking Lila's tea set
Curtis and Portia told Trina they're getting a divorce
Nathan told Anna he wants his badge back, and she sensibly pointed out that the PCPD can't rehire him until they know where the hell he's been
Nathan and Willow ended every fourth scene making facial expressions designed to make the viewer question their true motives
Britt and Lucas fought about the way he treated Brad
Tracy asked Marco to help her get rid of Ronnie, and he warned her it could take years
Vaughn warned Britt that she has no friends, no leverage, and the walls are closing in on her
Ronnie spent an hour threatening to take one bite of her BLT while reminding Gio of the importance of family
Nervous about Ronnie selling the mansion out from under them, Brook Lynn decided to throw her a tea party where she could meet Port Charles' high society
Felicia fretted about Nathan wanting James to live with him, despite the fact that he has no job and no home we're aware of
Jason agreed to co-sign a car loan for Britt
Chase got adorably angry about Willow's arrest
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