If you watch soaps long enough, you start to develop a feel for when one of these shows is trying to tell you something's about to happen. Daytime isn't exactly subtle, so I'm not saying you need to watch soaps for all that long in order to reach this point, but I do think it's often kind of amusing to watch it happen. For example, if characters you don't see very often start talking about how things are going perfectly and they've never been happier, then you can bet someone's about to die — and if you see soap characters behind the wheel of a car, you should just go ahead and start the countdown to a horrific accident.
Last week, while the big grand reopening at Charlie's was going on, we watched in growing amusement as one character after another hit the road to do some damn thing. Isaiah drove off into the night to make a house call on Rocco; Brook Lynn zipped off to Charlie's to watch Gio play with Trina; Curtis and Jordan smooched behind the wheel on their way to a romantic dinner; Charlotte and Danny zoomed down Highway 91 to try and take Danny's mind off Jason's arrest. We knew somebody was getting busted up before the end of the night.
Soaps are often derided for how formulaic they can be, but I think in a lot of cases, those formulas can still work pretty well, at least if they're executed properly. There's often something kind of satisfying about watching pieces snap into place the way you knew they would. Still, that criticism exists for good reason, and that's underscored by the moments when it feels like a soap is halfheartedly reaching into a well-worn bag of tricks for reasons that seem inorganic. We knew Marco was headed for trouble when he and Lucas started cooing over their house on the lake, but his death by stabbing made sense; while it isn't necessarily what I would have chosen, and there are reasons to argue it was a poor decision on the show's part, it was still one of those A + B = C moments.
This car accident business, on the other hand, feels pro forma at best — and on top of that, it isn't like the show has a shortage of things going on right now, so we're left with a flurry of incident that feels like a weird combination of creative drift and desperation. I say this while remaining fully open to the possibility that whatever the writers have planned will justify the dog's breakfast they served us last week, but in the moment, it was less than satisfying, and after taking a couple of days to reflect on these episodes, I'm still not any happier than I was while watching. This might be a pretty grumpy column, in other words. Let's find out together.
Sidwell vs. Sonny, Round Whatever
Speaking of soap tropes, one I've hammered on a lot around here is that characters on these shows are only ever as smart or capable as the writers need them to be at that particular moment. Sidwell is supposed to be a brilliant businessman and cunning adversary, and to a certain extent, we've seen this; the fact that he now owns Sonny's piers and is pulling the strings on Laura and Willow is proof. And yet we're also supposed to believe that in the wake of Marco's murder, Sidwell is fully, stubbornly convinced that Sonny — who he has already blackmailed into compliance — is responsible?
As Ric (all too briefly) pointed out during Sidwell's showdown with Sonny after the funeral, this doesn't make a great deal of sense. With that photo of him and Laura standing over Dalton's dead body keeping him in line, why would he risk exposure by mortally antagonizing Sidwell? Aside from "sending a message," what does he stand to gain?
Sidwell should be smarter than this, and yet he spent another week stomping around Port Charles, demanding that everyone under his thumb find evidence tying Sonny to Marco's murder. More annoyingly, we still don't know why Lucas hasn't told Sidwell that Cullum is the guilty party. "This would all be over if someone just told the damn truth" is yet another soap trope, and it's in full flower here.
In large part, these things tend to happen because soaps get a lot of mileage out of putting characters in check against each other. "I must do this thing! But I can't, because then Character X will do Thing Y" is another soap trope, and it's being heavily depended upon in this story — as we saw when Britt tried to tell Sidwell about Cullum, but was stopped by Cassius because, as he later explained, if Sidwell finds out about Cullum, he'll kill him, and then Britt will lose access to the medicine that's keeping her Huntington's at bay. Then again, it's been days since Britt got an injection, and aside from a little trembling last week, we haven't seen her experiencing any symptoms, so…
And about Britt. Last week, Cassius visited her in her office, sparking a conversation that filled in some of the backstory between these two. Turns out he's the one who convinced Cullum and Sidwell to bring her in, and when she woke up after "dying," he was the first person she saw — at which point she found out Nathan had a disappointing twin. This raises more questions than it answers. For starters, if Britt has known the whole time she's been back that "Nathan" is really Cassius, why didn't she ever mention it to Jason? Isn't he going to be sort of pissed when he finds out she kept it from him? Why did she keep Cassius' secret, aside from giving the writers time to hold off on the big reveal?
Also, what does Cassius even bring to his partnership with Cullum and Sidwell? Cullum has his ties to the intelligence community, Sidwell has his money, and Cassius has… the same face and voice as a dead police officer in a midsize New York metropolis, whose sudden reappearance should have been a huge red flag to all who knew him, rather than any kind of asset to bad guys seeking to develop cold fusion for their own nefarious purposes.
These are nits that might not be worth picking. This entire storyline started with Sidwell's arrival in Port Charles, which you may recall only happened because Holly swindled him out of a bunch of diamonds in Africa. Plugging him into this Faison business feels like an idea that was hatched long after the fact, and he's far from the first character to end up having ties to other characters that don't make a lot of sense but fundamentally alter his trajectory anyway. At this point, maybe it's best to just roll with whatever remains of this story.
Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like this story is close to wrapping up. We didn't see Cullum at all last week, and currently, Sidwell is convinced that Sonny is not only responsible for Marco's murder, but he's also potentially the reason that Curtis and Jordan swerved into a guardrail — the idea being that because Jordan works for him, Sonny went after her to cripple Sidwell's organization.
TJ? It's Curtis. Your Mom Might Die
Curtis and Jordan were the big losers in the GH Car Accident Sweepstakes that happened last week, going off the road at mile marker 28 and crashing in hilarious only-on-TV fashion. Curtis woke up with a few light scratches, but his phone was somehow thrown about three feet away from the car, which was also somehow enough to completely brick it. Jordan, meanwhile, was far worse off — not only was her face heavily lacerated, but Curtis couldn't get her door open in order to get her out, even after grabbing a crowbar from the trunk and trying to pry it free.
Help was on the way, though, because up the road at mile marker 35, Danny and Charlotte were in a wreck of their own — albeit one that wasn't anywhere near as serious. Looking for help, Charlotte used Danny's phone to call Carly so she could… ask Valentin for help?
Here's another example of characters displaying wildly varying degrees of intelligence depending on the circumstances. The entire time Valentin's been hiding in Carly's attic, it's been treated like the most dangerous thing in the world whenever Charlotte sees him, but when she crashes her car, she turns to him for help? And Valentin immediately decides to venture out to a very public roadway in order to come to her rescue?
It makes no sense at all, but it still had to happen, because the writers needed Valentin to see Jordan's crashed car, assume it was Charlotte's even though they were still seven miles away from Danny and Charlotte's crash site, and tell Carly to pull over. They needed Valentin and Curtis to lock eyes in the misty darkness, they needed Valentin to tell Carly to drive on ahead and help Charlotte and Danny, and they needed Valentin to slink off into the shadows after helping Curtis get Jordan out of the car moments before it exploded.
(Later, Curtis mentioned that it took him about half an hour to get Jordan out of the car. Nobody else stopped during that entire time? And yet the accident caused a traffic backup that slowed Tracy's drive home? Is this road deserted, or a main thoroughfare? No one knows.)
Jordan is alive and out of surgery, at least for now, and Curtis is staying mum about Valentin's role in her rescue, also at least for now. This was all also enough for a token TJ mention from Curtis, who told Laura they spoke over the phone. Maybe he's at the same medical conference in New Zealand that's keeping Obrecht offscreen? Danny and Charlotte, meanwhile, escaped having to talk to the police about their accident, because Carly had one of Sonny's tow trucks take the car away. And then there's Valentin, who returned to Carly's house in time to have another flirt-fight about their increasingly sexual partnership, one that was interrupted when Brennan showed up to profess his love for her and go upstairs to Pound Town. Later, after moping around the woods in a hoodie, Valentin admitted he's jealous. Carly neglected to mention that she'd imagined seeing his face while she was humping Brennan. He stomped upstairs and slammed the attic door. That was our Friday cliffhanger.
As for the identity of the driver who caused all this? We have no idea, but the show is having a great old time trying to make us suspicious of a whole bunch of potential suspects. Brook Lynn is the main one, mostly because she was drinking wine with Lucy before she headed off to Charlie's, but the fraught face she makes whenever someone brings up the accident is the same one we saw on Isaiah's face when he found out there'd been a wreck — and also the same one Michael made when he heard the news. It could have been Danny and Charlotte as well. Hell, it might have been the vengeful spirit of Cole Thornhart, still wandering the Port Charles highways after his death in another car explosion all those years ago.
I don't really care who caused it. I'm mostly focused on the fact that — as Wubs pointed out in her column this week — this is one more big secret on a show that already has more of them than it knows what to do with. I have no clear picture of why it happened or where it might lead, either. Jordan has made zero progress in her undercover quest against Sidwell, there's zero drama in her relationship with Curtis, and all she ever seems to do lately is go to yoga class with Turner, so I can't see any real utility in sidelining her; as an event, this feels less impactful than Alice Gunderson's heart attack.
Being in Congress Is Fun!
Naturally, the story I'm most interested in is the one GH has been ignoring for most of the past month. Having Willow turn (kitten) heel and stab Drew in the neck with a drug leaving him mute and paralyzed is a brilliantly cuckoo twist that could lead to all sorts of fun stuff, but instead of exploring that setup, the writers have left those characters largely offscreen.
When last we saw Willow, she was wide-eyed in surprise upon overhearing Trina and Kai talk about how they know she shot Drew. This is the type of scene that begs for a follow-up, but we didn't see her again for days, and when we did, she was doing her congressional thing at the Quartermaine estate, talking to Brook Lynn and Chase about fostering Phoebe. On her way out, she casually just happened to mention to Chase that her chief of staff wants to run fresh background checks on the staff, including Kai, and oh by the way, did he maybe know anything about whether Kai's name ever came up during the investigation into Drew's shooting?
My favorite thing about the current Willow/Drew dynamic is the way she talks to him when they're alone, which is roughly the same way a person might talk to a pet, albeit one they don't particularly care for. I'm delighted every time we get a scene featuring Willow sharing her thoughts and plans with Drew, but we don't have nearly enough of them — and last week, the first one we got was rudely interrupted by Nina, who was in a tizzy after being threatened (again) by Brennan.
This left Willow surprisingly rattled. Not because she shouldn't be worried about that traffic camera footage surfacing, but because she should be a lot more worried about Trina and Kai. Did she mention any of this to Drew after Nina left? She did not. Instead, she just went on and on about how she needed to make Nina see that satisfying Brennan's demands was more important than any loyalty she might feel to Charlotte. Chase is dumb as a post, so tricking him into suspecting Kai is a sensible thing for Willow to do, but it doesn't make any sense for her to stop there; she should be full-on panicked about those two.
Nina, meanwhile, met with Brennan and did something she should have done a long time ago — namely, she pointed out that if the Willow footage surfaced, he'd lose Carly, because she'd know he'd been sitting on something that could have exonerated Michael. Outfoxed once again by a civilian, all he could do was make the same disappointed dad face he makes whenever someone gets the best of him.
Unfortunately for Willow, Brennan has other possibilities for that video. Jacinda doesn't know it exists, but she does know Brennan has something Michael wants, and he's willing to share it if she can get Valentin's location out of Charlotte. Jacinda seems to have a good heart, and she also seems to be fond of Charlotte, but she's also insecure about her standing in Michael's world, so she's definitely down to do some snooping — and/or eavesdropping, as she did when Danny stopped by Crimson for a conversation with Charlotte that included her openly discussing the fact that the two of them had seen Valentin.
Of course, if Willow really wanted to nip Brennan in the bud, she'd just tell Sidwell what's going on. He's already aware of the footage, after all. With Sidwell, there's always the risk that he'll abruptly decide you're more trouble than you're worth and kill you, but I think Willow's position is pretty safe here; so far, Sidwell seems very happy with his new toy in Congress, and as an added bonus, this would help Willow keep Sidwell out of her hair, at least temporarily, by aiming him at a common foe. Alas, for now, it looks like this goes on the growing list of things that people should be sharing with Sidwell, but aren't.
I feel like that'll just about do it for last week's major developments — time to let the bullets fly. Until next time!
- After storming out of Sonny's house when Sonny refused to let him help exact mobular revenge for Jason's arrest, Danny overheard Ric theorizing that Sidwell might have been behind it
- Stella spent half an episode getting the Ashfords excited about decorating the nursery at Portia's place
- Willow told Chase and Brook Lynn that they've been conditionally approved to foster Phoebe
- Lucy told Brook Lynn about her absurdly complicated plan to distract Sidwell with a jealous Ava
- Isaiah treated Rocco for his infected wound, but warned Lulu and Rocco that if it gets more serious, he'll need the ER
- Joss, who barely even exists anymore, told Emma about The Crystalline Conspiracy
- Gio played guitar while Trina sang at open mic night, and was later pressed into service by Jacinda, who had him play while she sang (offscreen, which is a shame, because she's a real-life recording artist)
- Cody and Molly had yet another conversation about her goddamn book
- Sonny expressed genuine brotherly love for Ric, making all of us afraid that Ric is about to die
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