Maintaining narrative momentum is such a tricky thing for a soap. Unlike your average television series, there's no season-defining arc, so you can't set up a story and then parcel out the drama in evenly distributed doses over the course of 10-20 episodes; instead, even under the best of circumstances, everything is always flowing into everything else. When you factor in episode guarantees, shooting schedules, and budget limitations, it's a minor miracle that a show like General Hospital even manages to exist.
That being said, what we're currently watching is an example of a writing staff trying to do way too many things all at once, and not really getting anything done as a result. We're back in "incident disguised as story" mode, and although I'm willing to chalk some of this up to the series of baseball-induced interruptions that have recently plagued the show, it still isn't top-tier soap. I'm not saying the last couple of weeks have been bad, but they've definitely been full of things that feel like they're happening because the show needs something to happen while we're waiting for something more important to happen.
All of which is to say that even though this column will cover the last seven episodes instead of our usual five, I think it might be a short one. Let's find out together.
It's My House. Monica Gave It to Me
The big story right now is obviously the series of aftershocks emanating from Monica's death — the largest of which is the double whammy reveal that not only did she have a sister she never talked about, but that she left her the house in her will.
So far, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. It's great seeing Erika Slezak back onscreen, and I'm looking forward to the possibility of some truly meaty scenes between her and Jane Elliot. I'm also very glad that there's at least some sort of story spinning out from the passing of such a central character. On the other hand, the timing is pretty bad; for the first time in a long time, GH has too many major storylines going on to really make room for something like this. The arrival of Ronnie Bard has left the WSB debacle twisting in the wind and wiped out most of the impact of Nathan's return from the dead, and for what? So we could watch Tracy sniping at another person she considers an interloper?
I'll say it again, for the sake of clarity: I'm not unhappy that this storyline exists, and I don't really have any major beef with the way it's being told, at least not in a vacuum. But the fact that it's happening now is preventing the show from spending enough time on anything to make anything feel like it really matters.
Anyway, long story short: Ronnie is Monica's long-lost sister, separated from her when they were in the foster care system, and later estranged when Ronnie's attempt to reestablish contact was rejected by a disinterested Monica at some point in the '70s. She hails from Durham, where she waits tables — and now, thanks to a will that Tracy intends to vigorously contest, she's the new owner of the Quartermaine mansion.
I've seen a lot of people hypothesizing that this is all a ruse that Monica set up with Ronnie's help before she died, as a sort of final good-natured poke in Tracy's eye, and I'd love it if that turned out to be true. We know Ronnie's only around for a little while, so wherever this story ends up going over the long term, it'll have to get there without her help; my hunch is that it's really just meant to be an interlude that'll begin and end with Slezak's short-term run.
My favorite theory is that the riddle of Ronnie's inheritance can be solved by something in the jar of Pickle-Lila that Monica left Tracy. It's the kind of thing that could easily come off as silly or contrived, but then again, an awful lot of the Qs' best moments were borderline silly and/or contrived, so that would really only be fitting. Ultimately, I think it'd be sweet if Tracy ended up getting the house after all.
Gun Control
Tracy has had an axe to grind with Ronnie since she laid eyes on her, but as far as the rest of the family is concerned, she's a welcome arrival — not least because when Anna and Chase showed up during the reading of the will with a search warrant, it was Ronnie who pointed out that it was for the wrong address. (This was the fault of ADA Turner, who bungled an easy detail for reasons that remain unclear to me. Was she trying to do Sonny a favor by helping Michael? Was she distracted by his stupid dimples? I don't know.)
Why did Anna have a warrant for the Quartermaine mansion in the first place? Because the ballistics report from the bullets that ended up lodged inside Drew said they were a match for a gun owned by Edward — specifically, the one Jack Boland stole and used to murder Bradley Ward, a crime that was pinned on Edward before he was belatedly exonerated. By the time Anna returned with a correctly addressed warrant and was able to search the study where Edward's gun collection is kept, the one in question was nowhere to be found.
Naturally, numerous characters spent much of the week trying to make viewers nervous about Michael's risk of arrest. Rory Gibson has been great about playing Michael as so cagy that he's often impossible to read regardless of the situation, and under different circumstances, I think we could definitely be made to see him as a legitimate suspect, but all the noise about Michael and/or Curtis being prime candidates for conviction has never felt like anything more than a would-be distraction. I still think Willow did it, and I think Michael saw her.
Toward the end of the week, the PCPD turned its frequently myopic eye on Willow as well, thanks to recently unearthed camera footage from outside Nina's apartment that proves Nina wasn't with Willow at the time of Drew's shooting. This hilariously obliterates Willow's obnoxious insistence that Nina said she was with Willow in order to give herself an alibi, but more importantly, it gives Anna someone else to view with suspicion — all the more so because Dante just happened to mention that Michael thinks Willow was behind the suspicious incidents involving Daisy.
Is Willow a truly viable suspect? Well, we ended the week being made to think her ass might actually be headed for an arrest. Anna showed up at Elizabeth's house with a warrant, headed up to Willow's room, came back downstairs with something vaguely gun-shaped in an evidence bag, and asked "Where is your houseguest?"
I have no idea where all that's heading, but I'd be stunned if it turns out that the murder weapon is actually in that bag; I feel like the writers are still in feint mode at this point. But if she is arrested, it'll be a ton of fun watching Drew get upset about it — not just because he wants Willow home with him, but also because he's spent the last couple of weeks talking about his plans to frame Michael for the shooting. Even after Portia and Curtis played him into revealing he'd lost his evidence against her — and therefore made Drew believe Curtis absolutely had to have been the one who shot him — he remained undeterred in his quest to railroad his nephew into prison. Watching him react to the possibility that his beloved popped him in the back would be delightful.
I'm Trying to Arrange a Family Reunion
Deep in the background, while all this other stuff was going on, we had the immediate aftermath of Nathan's return from the dead. How did he end up in that truck? Where's he been for the last seven years? He says he has no idea, and although there have been moments when we've been made to think Britt is terrified of her suddenly re-alived brother, for the most part, he seems like the same old Nathan — just with a big memory gap.
It's hard to comment on how this story is going, just because it's been doled out in such tiny dribs and drabs. Nathan and Nina had a brief reunion, and Cynthia Watros knocked her stuff out of the park, as always; Liesl was just as happy to see her son as she is annoyed with her duplicitous daughter. A panicked-seeming Britt tried to stop James from meeting Nathan without a child therapist present, but James managed to sneak into Nathan's hospital room and share soda with him anyway. Britt also tried to thwart Spinelli's attempt to have a heart to heart about James with Nathan, but they ended up talking later on, with Nathan acknowledging that even though he and Maxie are still married in his mind, he's grateful for the way Spinelli stepped up for Maxie and James, and he's willing to follow his lead.
And that's… about it. Stem to stern, this has been one bizarrely handled return; so far, it really feels like the show is treating it as an afterthought. If there isn't enough room on the canvas to treat the discovery that Nathan's alive as anything more than a third-tier story, then it's hard to understand why it's happening right now.
Of course, the obvious answer to that question is that Nathan's return is tied into the boneless mess that is the Dalton/Sidwell/WSB/Britt/Five Poppies story, which is a hell of a way to welcome a guy back. Does anyone care about this storyline? Do the writers even know what's going on? We haven't seen a story this rudderless since the Pikeman debacle, which… actually, Pikeman wasn't even that long ago. These head writers of ours might not be very good at their jobs.
That's it for the big stuff. Time for bullets!
- James churned butter at school
- Ric escaped from Alexis' basement just long enough to have Ava throw scalding water in his eyes, clock him in the head with a board, and tie him back up again
- Michael introduced Molly and Kristina to Jacinda, and Molly immediately suspected a staged attempt to polish his alibi
- Britt tried blackmailing a Metro Court suite out of Joss in exchange for her silence about Joss being WSB; to neutralize her, Brennan threatened to have her sent to Steinmauer, and then used the same threat against Britt to ensure Jason's silence
- Martin told Tracy he's filing assault charges against her for throwing Drew out of Monica's memorial
- Olivia wants a pizza oven
- Directly after making plans for a secret dinner at Isaiah's cabin and an end to her marriage to Curtis, Portia found out she's seven weeks pregnant
- Gio and Emma spent a few days being awkward before realizing they're both into each other and kissing again
- Joss cried fake tears while telling Carly that Vaughn has secretly been a WSB agent this whole time, which sparked a brief fight between Carly and Brennan
- Dante and Chase are both working an investigation that directly involves the house where they both live
- Vaughn and Joss met on the docks, where she uttered the immortal line "My mom knows you're WSB"
- Lucas was on for 30 seconds and spent it asking Isaiah about his love life
Comments
Post a Comment