Daytime drama has weathered a slew of slings and arrows over the last 30-plus years, but the biggest issue facing any soap writers' room existed long before showrunners had to worry about dwindling budgets and a visible decline in commitment from network execs. That issue? The riddle of how to smoothly maintain narrative momentum on a show that airs five days most weeks, 52 weeks a year. Even in a perfect world where General Hospital had access to an unlimited budget and actors were available whenever they were needed, it would still be tough to keep those plates spinning; under the constraints these shows actually do face on a daily basis, it's little wonder that the action tends to move in massive fits and starts.
I'm bringing this up now because last week's General Hospital was close to perfect — so good, in fact, that I don't know how much I really want to get into the details, because you should really watch it for yourself. While watching it, however, I felt something like fear starting to creep in, because weeks this compelling are almost always followed by a period of boredom and narrative confusion. On one hand, it really does feel like the writers have built such a big, sturdy umbrella with this story that it'll almost be able to write itself for the foreseeable future; on the other, it isn't like this show hasn't fumbled more than its share of easy layups.
That's a problem for another week, however, and I'm a big believer in not borrowing trouble when you can avoid it. Like I said, I'm going to try to avoid getting in too deep with the recap side of the column this week; if you're any kind of GH fan, I think you should set aside some time to watch it for yourself. Whatever last-minute changes they ended up making to accommodate the absences of Steve Burton and Finola Hughes, they appear to be working heavily in the show's favor.
Marco Chose Me
As soon as Lucas and Marco started talking about buying that house on the lake, we all knew someone's number was about to be up — and when Marco spent several days cooing "I love you" at the important men in his life, it seemed pretty clear who the icy finger of death was pointing at. Despite all that, as I said in the last column, I didn't think Cullum would actually end up stabbing Marco after letting himself into the Miller & Davis offices; to me, it made more sense for it to happen at Sidwell and Carly's big dinner party.
The writers disagreed. During a Monday episode that was packed with action, poor Marco spent a very long time bleeding out on the floor of his office — and he was ultimately only found because Alexis and Danny showed up to try and find information about the arrest warrant the WSB issued for Jason.
Marco's demise unraveled in classic GH fashion, which is to say the writers toyed with us for awhile, making us believe he might make it. Cullum was brought into the hospital first, and Lucas rushed into surgery to save him, which meant he wasn't on the floor when Marco arrived. Before the operation and after, he tried calling Marco — first just to hear his voice, then to try and warn him that something must have gone hinky with Britt and Jason's plan — only for Elizabeth to give him the crushing news that he'd succumbed to his injuries after being stabbed repeatedly in a vicious assault.
Nothing brings out the big acting guns like a character's death, and Marco's did not disappoint. Van Hansis has kicked absolute ass all over the canvas this year, and the way he played Lucas' reaction to Marco's death continued that hot streak. He didn't fall back on histrionics, which makes sense; as Dante later pointed out, he's a doctor, and he's dealt with a lot of death before. Instead, Hansis conveyed Lucas' overwhelming grief with small choices that hit harder — a look, a posture, a trembling lip; all the type of understated stuff we don't see often enough during deeply emotional soap moments.
Hansis was nicely offset by Carlo Rota, who filled Sidwell with a rage so volcanic that it was actually a little frightening. He's spent the past year or so mostly using a pretty light touch to get what he wants, but in those moments, Rota reminded us that Sidwell's supposed to be a really dangerous guy. We haven't felt that danger very often since Sidwell moved to Wyndemere; in fact, his cold-blooded murder of Dalton notwithstanding, he'd really started to seem somewhat effete. In the wake of Marco's death, it's clear he hasn't lost any of the savagery that was supposed to make him a formidable villain in the first place. Even when he sat sobbing on Ava's couch, you could feel him on the edge of violence; the first time he saw Lucas after getting the news, you weren't sure whether he'd blame him or hold him.
On the flip side, it's unfortunate and boring that the writers chose to have Sidwell immediately fixate on Sonny as the number one suspect, but that's a small quibble for now, especially since Sidwell doesn't seem to know that Cullum was shot, and he definitely doesn't know that Pascal ratted Marco out to Cullum after discovering that some of Britt's meds were missing from the safe. Sidwell clashing with Sonny is old news, but I'm actively interested in seeing what he'll do once he starts putting two and two together where his supposed partner is concerned.
Extraordinary Rendition
After stabbing Marco, Cullum looked at his phone and saw a text from Lucas, saying he was meeting Britt at Pier 55. Naturally, he skulked over there next, arriving just in time to catch her alone — or so it seemed at first, anyway. Correctly surmising that Lucas had already given her the missing vials, Cullum forced Britt to hand them over, and then crushed them under his heel while she watched. Before he could shoot her, though, she tried to kick his ass — and nearly succeeded before she tripped over her own suitcase, plonked her dumb melon on a shipping crate, and collapsed unconscious to the ground. But before Cullum could shoot her, Jason came flying in from out of nowhere, and they got into a fistfight.
As always, Jason is only as effective at this type of thing as the writers need him to be. After botching his assasination attempt on Cullum earlier in the day, Jason found himself evenly matched against him in hand-to-hand combat; in fact, after losing his gun in the scuffle, Cullum pulled out an expandable baton and was about to whoop Jason with it when a shot rang out. He collapsed, revealing a wide-eyed Rocco holding the smoking gun.
While I'm not generally in favor of having teenage soap protagonists commit murder, this was admittedly kind of a genius move on the writers' part. Once Jason realized what Rocco had done, he quickly took the gun from him — and when Nathan arrived on the scene, he and Jason immediately started working together to cover up Rocco's involvement, with Nathan spiriting him back home while Jason erased any evidence Rocco had touched the gun. This included Jason noticing that Rocco had mishandled it while firing it, injuring his hand in the process; when Jason fired the gun, he did the same thing, injuring his own hand and contaminating any DNA that Rocco's blood might have left behind.
At this point, Jason was already on the run from the WSB. When Dante showed up with a WSB warrant at Danny's basketball game, Jason pretended to cooperate just long enough to head-butt Dante and flee on foot, so when he got to the pier, he knew his goose was pretty well cooked no matter what he did. Being the saintly hitman he is, he decided to sacrifice himself in order to protect Rocco; with the cops moments away, he woke up Britt and told her she had to tell the police she saw him shoot Cullum. Later, after being checked out for her head injury at GH, she gave her statement to Nathan and did as Jason asked.
This is where it gets a little sloppy. Things were moving fast, so I might be getting the timeline wrong, but I'm pretty sure the WSB rolled in and said they were extraditing Jason even before Britt named him as the shooter. We still don't know what was on the warrant Cullum originally issued. All in all, I'm not sure how much sense it really makes for the WSB to lead Jason out of the PCPD in shackles before Cullum has even regained consciousness; that being said, it sure did lead to a lot of high drama in the parking lot, as a series of Jason's loved ones came running up and sobbing his name while he was being packed into the van.
The wild card in all this is Brennan, who definitely doesn't trust Cullum, and definitely wouldn't be above pocketing Jason while telling everyone else he was locked up in a WSB black site. Brennan claimed that the call to extradite Jason came from "the top," but that may not be true; Cullum had gone all sorts of rogue by the time he arranged to sweep Jason off the board, and we didn't see what Brennan did after he learned about the warrant. Whatever's really happening here, it won't be resolved for a few months, when Steve Burton makes his return.
I'm talking more about the plot than I want to, but it's only to establish the context for some outstanding performances. Like a lot of young soap actors, Finn Carr started out awkward, but he's really grown into the character over the last year, and the way he plays Rocco made him the perfect choice to get mixed up in all this. Finally able to speak about what happened the morning after, Rocco tearfully told Lulu he shot Cullum because he had to do something to protect Jason and Britt, and after all these months of watching that kid awkwardly attempt to do the right thing, you really believe he'd be driven to fire Cullum's gun for exactly that reason. On a soap, fundamentally good characters are often most interesting when they're being forced to do bad things for the right reasons, and this is a perfect case in point.
I don't think Asher Antonyzyn is quite on Carr's level, at least not when it comes to expressing Big Emotions, but he held his own while Jason was being hauled off in the WSB van. Whoever told him to pound on the window and scream didn't really do him any favors, but the situation was so affecting on its own that it didn't really matter — and more than anything, I love the way this story is leveraging GH's younger stars. They've needed to be a bigger part of the action for a long time, and it feels like the writers might be waking up to that.
Speaking of waking up, I'll leave off by urging everyone to watch the closing moments of Friday's show, which sent Joss to Cullum's room after an episode-long argument with Britt over which of them would be the one to sneak in and kill him. Britt went there first, but was interrupted by Lulu; while the two of them bickered at the nurses' station, Joss slipped in to take a whack at it, but was startled when Cullum's eyes suddenly popped wide open, staring straight at her. It was hilarious, and a delightfully campy cherry on top of the soapy sundae GH gave us last week.
It's all bullets from here on out — I've talked too much already. Just set aside 185 minutes and watch the damn episodes if you haven't yet! I'll meet you back here next week.
- Valentin made Carly some coq au vin, which led to them flirt-arguing some more about having sex
- Martin told Laura he got a great job offer in Reno; later, Sidwell told her it was all his doing
- Brennan told Nathan he'd done "some digging" into where he'd been for the last seven years and found nothing, suggesting that Nathan is either the unwitting beneficiary of a bad actor or he's willingly in on it
- Charlotte took Danny to see Valentin; later, Valentin promised Carly that after Jason's inevitably found guilty and sent to Steinmauer, he'll tap into his network and make sure he's "lost in transit"
- Turner and Dante squabbled with the WSB, with Dante ultimately locking up all the evidence from Cullum's shooting and vowing not to hand it over without a court order
- With Jason out of the picture, Sonny reached out to Ric for help taking down Sidwell and Cullum, and Ric eagerly accepted
- Tracy and Alexis argued over Danny, but united against a common enemy when Carly showed up and had the gall to warn Alexis not to make the same mistakes Alan and Monica did with Jason
- Olivia and Michael had another tired argument over Jacinda that culminated with Olivia yelling that Jacinda was "a hooker" loud enough for Wiley to hear
- Wiley interrupted Brook Lynn and Chase's interview with Phoebe's social worker to ask everyone "what's a hooker?"
- Gio checked on Dante at the PCPD, where they bonded over paper cups of police station coffee
- Turner and Fizz have more chemistry than Turner and Sonny
- Rocco was wracked with guilt after hearing about how devastated Danny was to watch Jason being carted off for Cullum's shooting
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