Well, it's a good thing so many of you seem to look forward to the bullets at the end of each column, because boy oh boy, was General Hospital dull last week. This was one of those weeks that felt like at least 80 percent of the time was spent on characters standing around talking about something major that was about to happen, or some big thing they were going to do, without ever actually doing anything at all. Toss in the show's ever-present issues with herky-jerky momentum, as well as the writers' continual penchant for having characters do weird stuff in order to push the plot along, and you've got yourself a pretty skippable handful of episodes.
I always turn out to be wrong when I say this, but I feel like this will be a pretty short column — in fact, getting back to those bullets, I'm pretty sure I could sum up the whole week with a series of them instead. Let's get through this together, shall we?
Good Lord, Just Leave Already
If there was any kind of point to last week, I suppose it was to (slightly) move forward with Jason's looming departure. I have no idea what's really going to happen here, but what the show wants us to believe right now is that Jason and Britt are going to go on the run in order to protect her from Cullum and Sidwell while Brick (ugh) reverse-engineers her top-secret proprietary meds. I sort of doubt that's what's actually going to happen — I suspect Britt will end up sticking around somehow, if only so Frank can get his money's worth out of Kelly Thiebaud while Steve Burton takes time off — but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
The show also wants us to believe that Jason and Britt are an endgame-worthy love affair, and while I really don't mind the two of them together, that isn't working at all. I do think they really had something going before Jason ditched her to marry Carly, but that spark was extinguished the last time Burton left, and it hasn't returned; I don't know what all has changed behind the scenes, but the chemistry between Burton and Thiebaud has cooled considerably.
We're also being absolutely hammered with the idea that Britt is some sort of hero. This would be awkward no matter who she was — you can't really be a hero and a damsel in distress at the exact same time — but it's especially galling given that Britt's off-the-charts selfishness and callous disregard have always been a big part of what makes her interesting. Furthermore, she's in this mess because she agreed to develop dangerous technology in exchange for her own life, and no one has ever called her out for that. For years, she was perfectly happy to glug cocktails at the Five Poppies while finishing her psycho father's final project, and apparently never thought about reverse-engineering those meds herself, but now her life has to be saved at all costs?
I mean, okay, it's inhuman to just let someone die. And it makes total sense for the good guys to want to take Britt off the board in order to thwart Cullum and Sidwell's plans. But that's all baseline obvious stuff, and none of it necessitates other characters — including our perfect boy Lucas — propping her up as a noble victim. It's a gross violation of the "show, don't tell" rule, and it's also wholly unnecessary. We don't need (or even really want) to see Britt as a good person here; we just need to see her as better than Cullum or Sidwell.
If I had to guess, I'd say we're seeing all these annoying conversations because the writers were left scrambling to fill an awkward amount of airtime when Burton said he was taking a break from the show. I'd be willing to bet something else was supposed to be happening right now, but there's no longer time for it, so instead we have to sit through 100 conversations about how Jason has to leave town, and Lucas and/or Marco need to steal a dose before that can happen, and blah blah blah.
Jason's long goodbye was thrown for a momentary loop last week when he caught Carly and Valentin in a morning-after smooch, which led to a lot of hot air about how she's risking her life by throwing in with Valentin, and then a lot of tears from Carly, who thinks this is all her fault for hooking up with Sonny, and a few more tears from Jason, who sees his own culpability. (I didn't mind these moments at all, but they didn't lead anywhere.) Jason also told Michael he'd be leaving town, and asked him to keep an eye on Danny while he's away, but not as his guardian; whoever he's chosen for that legal status, it's still a mystery to us.
Jason also said goodbye to Valentin, but only after lumbering into Carly's attic with his gun drawn and threatening him with death. Valentin looked as bored as I felt when he saw the gun, but this moment eventually led to a semi-meeting of the minds, with Jason agreeing that this is the safest way to get Joss out of the WSB. (As Jason reluctantly told Carly, Valentin "knows the players. He knows the stakes.")
But here's a great question: Is Joss even in the WSB anymore? Brennan has purged her file and told her to return to life as a college student, and he openly regrets recruiting her in the first place. It's still easy to see Carly deciding he needs to be taken down anyway for putting Joss in danger, but it's impossible to ignore the growing hole in this corner of the plot. The best thing I have to say about this right now is that it was funny to see Joss emerge from the shower last week, see Valentin lounging on her couch, and go for her gun, only to see that he already had it. I still don't forgive the writers for letting Joss get the drop on Valentin the week before, but I'm grateful for every reminder that she has no business doing secret agent stuff.
Anyway, there you have it: A week of conversations about things that are allegedly about to happen. The low point occurred when Britt saw Rocco at GH and told him she needed to say goodbye… and then on the other side of the commercial break, she explained she needed to say goodbye on behalf of Liesl, only for Rocco to tell her they'd already texted. These temporary departures are nowhere near important enough for the writers to be able to get away with this type of chain-jerking. I suppose the big Britt drug heist will take place at Sidwell's dinner party, which I'm praying happens on Monday so we can finally get on with it.
It Wasn't a Miracle. It Was Me
While Jason, Britt, Lucas, and Marco work to pry Britt from Cullum and Sidwell's clutches, Brennan is (belatedly) busy trying to take the dastardly duo down on his own. Embarrassingly, his brightest idea at this point is to double down on Nina by threatening to resurface the traffic-cam footage of Willow unless Nina's able to squeeze Charlotte for information regarding Valentin's whereabouts.
This is a classically convoluted soap character idea — "I can only accomplish Goal X if I find Character Y, and I can only do that if I jump through Hoops A, B, and C!" — but in the short term, we can be grateful for it because it's led to a couple of long-overdue developments. First, it prompted Nina to go to Willow and confess her role in the footage's disappearance; while she didn't mention Brennan by name, she made it clear that she's now in debt to a dangerous man, and he's threatening her by forcing her to betray Charlotte, who she thinks of as another daughter. I'm so tired of angst between Nina and Willow that I welcome any heart-to-heart between them, and I also think this might be an opportunity for Willow to use some of her newfound power to exact her own agenda; the idea of Willow as a formidable adversary for Brennan is appealing.
Second, it's reactivated the Cassadine in Charlotte, who's all sorts of pissed at Nina for caving and agreeing to leverage their relationship in order to save "her precious Willow." Her initial idea was to feed Nina bad information in order to throw Brennan off Valentin's trail, but Valentin told her to stay out of it. I don't know if she'll ignore him or come up with a different way to exact her revenge, but either way, it's about time she started plotting against her enemies. After spending all that time on the run with Valentin — and, let us not forget, being groomed by Victor — she's a far more dangerous and capable secret agent than Joss, and I welcome any opportunity to explore this avenue for a character whose utility has never really been fully leveraged.
Of course, none of this absolves the writers from sending Brennan down such a dumb road in the first place. What happened to him teaming up with Dante? Why does this show continually tease interesting ideas, only to run screaming from them?
As for Cullum and Sidwell? We barely saw them last week. Sidwell popped up for a minute so he could twist Willow's arm into making Alexis return Scout, which makes no actual sense; he explained he wants Scout living with Willow and Drew because it would be bad political optics for her to stay with Alexis, but we all know this is really happening because the writers want to deepen the divide between Alexis and Willow. Mission accomplished, I suppose; Willow did as she was told, Alexis pushed back, Willow offered to fully lift the restraining orders in exchange, they bickered a bit, Willow said Alexis didn't have to like her decision, only respect it, and Alexis said "the hell I do" and walked out. Why isn't Alexis using the fact that she knows Willow shot Drew to bend Willow to her bidding? What's she waiting for? Maybe the writers know. Maybe.
Cullum, meanwhile, stopped by Bobbie's so he could catch some guff from Carly, threaten Britt, bump into Joss, and meet with Marco. Riveting stuff, by which I mean it was about as interesting as staring at one of the rivets on your jeans. My opinion of Cullum has improved since he was introduced — he's gone from disappointing to genuinely creepy in my eyes — but they really need to do a better job of finding things for him to do while we wait for this story to pop.
Nathan at the Bat
Speaking of characters blabbering endlessly without actually doing anything, let us pause here to do the math on Nathan and Lulu, who have kissed two (2) times and spent approximately 10,000 hours talking about whether it can or should happen again. The writers seem to believe the connection between these two is worthy of the type of chaste longing that fuels romantic epics, but The Thorn Birds, this ain't.
In spite of this, we were forced to watch another week of various people agonizing over the audacity of two grown, single adults deciding to date. Monday saw the "drama" spread to Dante, after Maxie showed up at his office and told him what was going on. (She thought he already knew, which is fair.) While those two were talking, Nathan and Lulu showed up so they could tell Dante; in the midst of all this, Dante himself was at a loss as to what he should say or even how he felt about the whole thing.
This is honestly also fair. As Dante told Cody and Elizabeth later in the week, he's fully aware of his role in the end of his marriage to Lulu, and he hasn't really changed his perspective on whether they're really over — he just wasn't expecting Nathan and Lulu to get together, and the fact that he was caught so flat-footed has caused him to reevaluate his feelings and wonder whether some part of him might actually want her back. It's an entirely reasonable reaction, which makes me worry that the writers will eventually decide it's too boring to stick, and have him pursue her all over again.
Maxie, meanwhile, spent most of the week in a tizzy, which culminated with her and Nathan having a mild argument about whether he's allowed to move on with his life and how much of a say Maxie gets in who he does it with. They were interrupted by Lulu, who stayed behind after Nathan left so she and Maxie could work things out. The week ended with Lulu tearfully telling Maxie "you're my person," so I guess we can call it a wrap on this silly drama, and thank the writers for at least having the decency to resolve it fairly quickly.
I do want to acknowledge that the writers were in something of a no-win situation here. It would have seemed awfully strange if Maxie woke up and didn't even care that Nathan and Lulu were hooking up, so they needed to do something to stir the pot. I don't have any specific alternate scenarios that would have been more satisfying, which is partly because I find it all such a dreary tangle that I can't really be bothered to care. Nathan's return has been bungled, Maxie's return has been obviously undermined by her and Bradford Anderson's limited availability, and they're all being done no favors by the show's growing tendency to saddle middle-aged (or older) characters with teenage drama. It's rough going.
The one slight glimmer of interest that I spotted in this corner of the canvas last week came when Nathan and James visited the batting cages so James could work on his swing with Kai, who is now apparently a Little League coach as part of his commitment to Drew's pediatric sports initiative or whatever the hell it's called. James kept going on and on about how Nathan was a power hitter on the PCPD softball team, and bugging him to show everyone how it's done, but when Nathan finally, reluctantly took a swing, he looked like he'd never held a bat before.
So what happened here? The obvious implication is that this Nathan isn't our Nathan, but General Hospital is rarely subtle when something like this is about to happen. Under normal circumstances, this type of scene would include ominous music, or a lingering shot, or an anvil-weighted line of dialogue — some kind of something to remind the viewer that the show has no faith in their ability to pick up on anything that isn't loudly telegraphed.
On the other hand, Nathan's big whiff came shortly before his argument with Maxie, which included her admitting she's hurt that it only took him six months to move on from their relationship after returning from the dead. Again, the obvious implication is that there's something off about this Nathan. Maybe after all these months of showing no interest whatsoever in where he's been all this time, they're finally ready to tell us.
One Delilah Wilson
Speaking of obvious implications, I know many of you have pointed out that the renewed focus on Nathan's mysterious return has coincided with the abrupt arrival of the insta-dead Delilah and her baby. That story was allowed to lie dormant for most of the week, but it finally picked up again on Friday, when Dante got a call saying Delilah's luggage had been found at the train station, where she left it after arriving from Manhattan. Two seconds later, Nathan walked in with the suitcases, which he and Dante then opened — in the interrogation room, because budget — and found a couple of clues.
Clue one: a list of art museums. Clue two: Delilah's last name, Wilson.
"Wilson" feels like a missed opportunity to me — why not something that lands with a big kablam, like Quartermaine or Hardy or Baldwin? — but the museums are clearly a nod toward the tattoo we briefly glimpsed on Delilah's wrist. The art connection opens the door to Ava and Trina getting involved, which I like, so I'm ready to get this party started.
Also, and more importantly, I do not wish to see any more scenes of Brook Lynn talking to the baby for half an hour, followed by Chase singing a lullaby while Brook Lynn looks on with a single tear running down her cheek like the Native American in that old PSA about how it's bad to toss your trash any damn place you feel like. Let's dispense with this crap and make with the intrigue, please.
That'll do it for the "major" events of the week. Here's hoping the next one's more eventful — and until then, your bullets:
- Drew blinked at Scout
- Charlotte is Crimson's new intern
- Molly's endometriosis flared up just in time for Endometriosis Awareness Month, giving her and Cody another opportunity to act like they're 13
- Kristina looked at Jacinda with what Eric Carmen once called "hungry eyes," offering us the almost certainly futile hope that the writers might give us a Kristina/Jacinda/Michael love triangle
- Michael and Danny bonded over the pros and cons of life as a kid in the Quartermaine mansion
- Fizz bit Dante, leading to a hospital visit and some further chem-testing with Elizabeth
- Tracy wants Lulu to investigate Sidwell
- We still don't know where the hell Nathan is living
- Roughly a decade after playing guitar at the Nurses' Ball, Emma now apparently has zero knowledge of the instrument
- Turner spent half of her scenes staring off into the middle distance and thinking about Sonny
- Ric talked to Sonny about wanting to do better for Molly, Elizabeth, and him; ever humble, Sonny noticed that Ric put him last on the list
- TJ was mentioned
- After dropping by Jordan's place with a belated housewarming present, finding Curtis, and expressing her concern over him moving in, Stella found Jordan's pregnancy test
- After seeing Jordan dash out of the room to puke at the nail salon, Portia immediately knew Jordan's pregnant, and spoke for many of us when she said "You have got to be kidding"
- Sonny talked to Gio about figuring out what he wants to do with the rest of his life
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