As has been discussed in this space on more than one occasion, the General Hospital writers are scared to death of excitement and storyline momentum. Whenever they generate a little of it, they go running in the opposite direction, bringing everything screeching to a halt for days so they can focus on anything other than the stuff we're waiting for. In my most recent column, we covered a flurry of action that included Brennan getting injected with Drew's locked-in medication, Cassius kidnapping Joss, and Dante realizing that Rocco shot Cullum, so I went into last week's episodes expecting an abrupt cooldown — and that's what we got, more or less.
It wasn't a bad week, necessarily — we've certainly seen worse in recent months — and there were definitely some enjoyable moments. In general, though, these were episodes most viewers could safely skip without worrying about missing any major developments. The Sidwell/Cullum storyline mostly just gave us a bunch of Talking About Things That Must Be Done, and the other storylines… well, let's just start with the worst and build up from there.
Take Your Hands Off My Child
It was so long ago that it seems like a dream at this point, but I seem to remember a point in time when Curtis was actually enjoyable — a charismatic guy who had an interesting past, chemistry with characters across the canvas, and the ability to stir up story wherever he went. There was no reason, in other words, for us to ever reach a point where I actively dread seeing Donnell Turner on my screen, but here we are.
For the last several years, Curtis has been a tight-assed, judgmental scold with pretty much everyone around him, and that was bad enough. Now, though, he's soured even further, becoming the type of guy who'll not only rush to judgment against someone he suspects of a crime, but will openly set out to frame that suspect if he can't find any evidence of their alleged misdeeds. Like pretty much everything else that's led Curtis to this point, this is purely the result of narrative malpractice.
Nothing we know about Curtis has ever suggested that he was a shitty cop, but that's exactly what he's acting like here, and to make matters worse, he's infected Jordan as well. Both of them seem downright baffled by Isaiah's unwillingness to cooperate with the PCPD without a warrant, which is not only ridiculous, but insulting. They've both worked in law enforcement — in Baltimore, no less — and should be 100 percent aware of the fact that it's just good common sense to exercise your rights whenever you brush up against the legal system, especially if you're a person of color. Instead, they both think he's trying to cover something up, but while Jordan is willing to accept their lack of leads and move on, Curtis has reached the point where he wholeheartedly believes Isaiah was the other driver in their accident.
This reached a head last week when Curtis entered the Metro Court Gardens for an Aurora meeting, saw Isaiah with his hands on Portia's stomach, and barked "Take your hands off my child!" Isaiah and Portia, who'd just been talking about how they hoped Curtis would eventually see reason and stop going after Isaiah, went to leave, at which point Curtis accused him of doing the same thing he'd done the night of the accident. Isaiah, having had enough, smirked at Curtis and announced his intentions to be a better father to Portia's baby than Curtis could ever be, which was followed by Curtis socking him in the jaw and sending him flying into a table.
This is all so stupid. It was stupid when the writers decided to spike Jordan and Isaiah because of her undercover work against Sidwell, it was stupid when they decided to blow up Curtis and Portia's marriage in order to create this lame quadrangle, and it's very, very stupid to tear up Curtis' backstory and turn him into a violent fool simply for the sake of moving a plot that never should have existed in the first place. It's character destruction across the board, and it isn't even like you can say the writers needed to do it because they'd run out of things for these folks to do; every single one of them joined the canvas brimming with vibrant possibilities, at least 95 percent of which have been left to gather dust while all four of them have been sent spinning off into dumber and dumber directions.
If the writers really wanted to have Curtis and Isaiah at odds, they didn't have to try this hard to make it happen, and they also didn't need to lobotomize Curtis to do it. This could have just been a case of garden-variety bad feelings between onetime romantic rivals. As much as I dislike the fact that it exists, these four characters are in a messy situation, and it wouldn't have been difficult to find character-driven sources of drama there. All this, though? It feels like it's being written by people who've never watched the show and don't care. I think it's bleeding into the performances, too — while it always feels like Sawandi Wilson is giving 100 percent, and Brook Kerr is doing fine, I sense a growing void of commitment where Turner and Tanisha Harper are concerned. I don't blame either of them at all, because both of those characters have been abused and/or ignored forever, but it doesn't help sell the rampant foolishness they're being asked to bring to life.
In short, I hate all of this, and I don't know how some of these characters can ever come back from the way they're currently being written. Just a total failure of imagination on the part of this writing staff.
Mavis Returns
I think Josh Swickard has ended up shirtless for three consecutive weeks, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about where Chase has ended up as a character. Whether he's cooing at a baby, fawning over his wife, or being manipulated into having an affair, he's basically just eye candy at this point, which is yet another thing that never needed to happen. I don't know if he was ever Daytime Emmy material, but Swickard's a capable actor, and Chase had plenty of possibilities before he was neutered and had his brain removed.
Alas. His big story now is that he and Brook Lynn want to adopt Phoebe, which Alexis has cautioned them will be a real uphill fight despite the fact that they live in a massive mansion and she has all the money in the world. There will be a — gasp! — background check, and all the stupid and/or illegal stuff they've ever done will come to light, and gosh, are they ready for it?
Well, it's a soap, so of course not. Like any longtime soap character worth her suds, Brook Lynn has plenty of skeletons in her closet, but the only one she's worried about right now is the scandal of her potential involvement in Curtis and Jordan's accident. Chase, meanwhile, knows he'll have to talk about being demoted at work, but what he doesn't know is that Michael has hired Elaine Stevens, apparently the town's sole PI, to tail him and take incriminating photos whenever he does something that might be misinterpreted — like, say, bumping into Willow at the park when they're both sweaty and wearing skimpy workout attire.
In the real world, it would be ludicrous to think you'd be able to wish your ex-wife into having an affair simply by gently nudging her into contact with her other ex-husband, but soap characters have a long, rich history of having sex whenever they're alone for longer than ten minutes, so it makes perfect sense that Michael would see Chase dopily bounding after Willow and get ideas. And as silly as the basis for all this might be, the ends may well justify the means; Chase and Brook Lynn have been painfully dull ever since they got married, and if this is what it takes for the two of them to regain some of their mojo — especially Brook Lynn, who should be one of the most active pot-stirrers on the canvas — then I'm all about it. Whatever it takes.
Willow, meanwhile, is going to need a new pairing at some point, and if Dark Willow can somehow lead to a Dark Chase who does cool stuff, then I have no objection to the two of them getting down — especially if they do it in front of a mute and immobile Drew, who has to sit there like furniture while the wife he drove to lunacy starts her new life.
Let Me Know If He Dies
Before Willow can think about wrecking Chase's marriage, she has to figure out how to clean up the mess Nina made when she flew into a blind panic and injected Brennan with Drew's Quiet Time medicine.
After watching his adversary crumple to the floor in a heap, an ever-so-slightly amused Valentin asked Nina what the hell was in that syringe, at which point she very unwisely shouted "It's Drew's medication, okay?" She convinced him to stick around long enough to get Brennan on his back and check for a pulse, but once sirens started up in the distance, he scooted out the door with a quickness, blithely telling her to let him know if Brennan died.
Brennan's admission to GH has so far yielded all the dividends you'd expect, as well as some you might not have dared to hope for. Elizabeth, who's having a great 2026 despite not really having any stories, took about 30 seconds to notice the extremely fishy vibes wafting off yet another "stroke" victim being wheeled in from Drew and Willow's house. Cullum, who is not as smart as Elizabeth, just sort of flicked Brennan on the forehead and told him he was lucky he had a stroke, because otherwise, he was probably about to have him killed. Carly and Nina hissed at each other up and down the hospital hall, both threatening to expose misdeeds they're pretty sure the other person is guilty of, but not sure enough to actually tip their hand by speaking them out loud.
And then there's Willow, who's caught in a real "if you want something done right" moment. Not only did she have to race back home after Nina told her she'd left Drew there alone — and rush in just in time to move the phone away from his fumbling hand — she also had to hoof it out to Wyndemere, where Sidwell was none too pleased to hear that Brennan had been injected. Her big plan is to stop dosing Drew — the idea being, I guess, that people will be too distracted by his sudden recovery to wonder about the real circumstances behind Brennan's collapse — but Sidwell doesn't like being told what to do. Unfortunately, he also doesn't like making plans onscreen where we can see them, or at least he didn't last week; we only saw him meeting with Cullum, who said the best way of ensuring Brennan's silence is to make sure he never wakes up. Hard to argue with that logic!
Speaking of logic, Cullum spent much of his week wandering around Port Charles, trying to intimidate people into giving him information and/or things. He popped up at Carly's place while an unseen Valentin hovered nearby with a gun, and made his usual assortment of vaguely threatening remarks while revealing to her that he knows Jason couldn't possibly have been the one to shoot him. Instead, he's become convinced that Jason's protecting someone, a conclusion he shared while looking pointedly at a picture of Jason and Danny.
Cullum also tried to strongarm Turner into handing over the evidence from the night he was shot, but she reminded him that the PCPD has custody of that, and when he accused her of impeding an investigation, she threatened to make a public stink about the WSB's extrajudicial tactics, musing that it might do her career some good to go after the Bureau. Slinking off while promising to talk to the WSB's legal team, he then went to Dante's office, and again demanded that the evidence be handed over.
Dante, who's owed Cullum some sass for weeks, gave him a patently false line about the evidence lockers being such a mess that he didn't know where to find what Cullum was looking for, but it was more than just jurisdictional woofing: Dante also had a mess to clean up last week, and crossed a line by moving to destroy any evidence that could implicate Rocco as Cullum's shooter.
Now, I love that Dante's a good cop, and I refuse to support anything that makes him a dirty one. You can't have a good soap, however, without putting good characters in situations where they do the wrong thing for the right reason, and this is a classic example. Dante has been perched on the fulcrum between right and wrong since the beginning — he's very much a good guy, but his family situation puts him in proximity to the mob on a regular basis, and he's repeatedly torn between various obligations. It makes perfect sense that he'd be trapped like this, and it also makes perfect sense that he'd prioritize Rocco, even if it means breaking the law.
For now, I think Rocco's safe from ending up in Cullum's sights. Danny is a far more obvious suspect, and last week, he rather conveniently declared his intention to boat out to Wyndemere for a little B&E in search of evidence against Sidwell. Rocco freaked out, pointing out that despite their protestations to the contrary, Danny and Charlotte are pretty bad at this kind of thing, but Danny's stubborn; I'm guessing he and Charlotte will go ahead with their plan despite Rocco threatening to turn them in.
And what might happen then? Well, this is purely conjecture, but last week, we also saw the writers really start to put their backs into the inevitable Cassius redemption, having him bring Joss a deck of cards and sit with her for a round of gin rummy. This all happened so we could watch Joss try to work Cassius, appealing to his sense of jealousy for Nathan after he admitted it's been emotionally rough for him to pretend to be a guy who was obviously loved in ways he himself has never experienced. As Joss spun it, if Cassius breaks with Sidwell and Cullum and helps bring them down, then people will really see him, and not his brother.
This is the type of soap conversation that always ends with the other person saying "Nope, nice try," and then spending weeks flashing back to those scenes before finally doing the right thing. Cassius has already risked his neck to protect Rocco, so he might as well run a trifecta by doing the same thing for Danny and Charlotte, right? And then he can die nobly after saving the day, thereby freeing us from a barely conceived character whose long-term prospects in Port Charles seem laughably bleak.
Circling back around to Willow as I close things out: I just want to note that the last time we saw her was on Wednesday, when she burst into Michael's office while he was canoodling with Jacinda, and said she needed to talk to him. The hook here is that they'd just had a meeting with Elaine, who'd left pictures of Chase and Willow in the park, which were sitting out on top of Michael's desk. The camera zoomed in, making us wonder if or how Michael would be able to cover them up, and then — nothing. It's far from the most egregious example of the haphazard way this show is often edited, but it's an example nonetheless. It's one thing to tell silly stories; the real crime is letting them dangle. Shows like GH benefit greatly from the suspension of disbelief that works best if you can maintain momentum; you need to get the audience wrapped up in this stuff, not give them time to really think about what they're watching.
That's enough out of me for now! Until we meet again, your bullets:
- Sonny didn't apologize for pulling a gun on Ric, even after finding out Ric was really just buying art from Ava as a gift for Elizabeth
- Ava and Ethan are probably going to have sex at some point
- After letting Lulu have it for hiding Rocco's involvement in the shooting from him, Dante told "Nathan" to stay away from his kid, hurling an anvil and a half by saying "it's like I don't even know you"
- Molly visited Jordan to apologize for being so distant after Irene died and TJ "moved away"
- Lulu and Britt had yet another argument about Britt's place in Rocco's life
- Isaiah warned Lulu that in order to save himself from prison, he might need to tell the police he was with her and Rocco the night of the accident
- Finn Carr is really coming into his own as an actor
- Curtis nagged Jordan into removing the bandage from her face
- In the WSB, it's apparently standard procedure to make your boss your health proxy
- Turner bought Jordan a new yoga mat
- Having screwed up his assignment to tail Ric, Ethan told Kristina he's worried that Ric is gunning for him
- Trina told Brook Lynn she wants to do the showcase
- Britt and Lucas had drinks in her room while having yet another conversation about whether they should tell Sidwell about Cullum killing Marco, and whether Britt should just wander off and die
- Ric and Alexis remain fun, and should be in more scenes together
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