Most people who know me through my writing have no idea I also write about soaps. It isn't something I've promoted heavily, either professionally or in my private life, for a couple of reasons. For one, even though I've been an off-and-on daytime viewer since the '80s, there are tons of people who know a lot more than I do about the history of any soap you could name; for another, when people know you primarily as a music critic or novelist or whatever the hell other thing they might have seen me do, it tends to come as a shock when they find out you spend time analyzing daytime dramas.
I had one of these conversations last week, and launched into my traditional spiel about my deep and endless fascination with the unique capabilities of longform serial drama, as well as the countless ways in which soaps have seeped into mainstream culture, often without being properly credited for it. People mock soaps for falling back on silly storyline devices, and for their chintzy production values, and both of those criticisms are fair — but at the same time, the stereotype surrounding these shows is that they're incredibly addictive, which is something I think a lot of non-fans acknowledge without ever really thinking about why it might be true.
We've talked about this before, but one of the biggest things that makes a long-running soap really special is the weight that the narrative accrues over time. Five days a week, month after month, year after year, viewers develop a sense of time and place with their favorite soaps. They know the sets, they know the camera angles, and in a weird way — sometimes in a very weird way — the towns where these shows take place start to feel like home.
Some of this is simple math; spend enough time in any fictional universe, and it'll start to feel like an extension of your personal reality. That's just the basest form of the magic these shows can work, though — when they really get into a character-driven flow and the stories start clicking, I defy anyone not to get wrapped up in them.
The magic I'm talking about here is pretty sturdy, as evidenced by the fact that millions of people continue to tune into their favorite soaps even during this era of diminished budgets, block taping, and increasingly plot-driven writing. It isn't invulnerable, though; every time a show makes a big, lazy move that diminishes established stakes or ignores what we know about a character, the viewer's willingness to really give themselves over can't help but be eroded a little bit. If we can't trust the writers to care deeply enough to honor those things, then how can we help but distance ourselves a little?
I thought about all this stuff after that conversation I had, primarily because last week's General Hospital included an epic — and hilariously lame — example of the writers being faced with a situation and simply not giving a shit whether their way of solving it made even a little bit of sense. I'm referring, of course, to the sudden news that Kristina Corinthos-Davis — a character who, to the best of our knowledge, never graduated from college — has been accepted to medical school. We didn't know she'd applied. We also didn't know she'd been studying for the entrance exams, or even that she had the slightest bit of interest in practicing medicine. We do know that her portrayer, Kate Mansi, is leaving the show, so… poof! Kristina's off to UCLA.
Historically, Kristina has only been relevant in short bursts, primarily because the writers have always been more interested in having things happen to her than they were in actually fleshing her out. Her latest run has been a little better, but that character growth has been consistently undermined by the many times she's been written as selfish, cruel, and downright dumb. The longer these writers hang around, the more I tend to think they feel like they need one character who's an inexplicable asshole at all times, and Kristina filled that role for them when she was plotting to steal Molly and TJ's baby and/or trying to murder Ava. The net result of all this is that while we know more about Kristina than we did the last time she left town, we don't like much of what we've learned.
On one hand, this makes her acceptance to medical school objectively funny. This shiftless idiot is the furthest thing from doctor material, and while watching her receive the good news from UCLA — via text message — part of me couldn't help but be delighted by the ridiculousness of it all. On the other hand, if the show needed Kristina to go away for a little while, there were a dozen other ways that would have made a hell of a lot more sense; this move feels like the work of people who either can't be bothered to think about anything or have decided they're going to move this character in that specific direction even though it doesn't make any sense.
Kristina is far from the first to get this treatment from the current regime; in fact, she also belongs on the list of characters who've suddenly turned into enormous assholes solely to drive a dumb storyline. (I think I've decided this crew feels like they can't operate without one of those characters on the canvas at all times — first they did it to Kristina, then Drew, and now Curtis.) She's unique, however, in terms of how ridiculously dumb this twist is, and how completely disconnected it is from the character's decades of history.
If they felt like Kristina needed to go away for a bit and get a reset, hey, I couldn't agree more — but there were all sorts of other ways they could have done it that would have drawn from Kristina's history while setting up a potential storyline for the future. And if they want more doctors on the canvas, again, I agree — but they've got Tommy Hardy swinging a stethoscope off in parts unknown, and bringing him back would be a hell of a lot better for the show than whatever this nonsense is supposed to accomplish.
As is the case so often with GH, it doesn't have to be this way. The ingredients are always there to produce a show that delivers consistently engrossing drama, if only the folks in charge could commit to taking advantage of all that history while really leaning in and listening to the characters in order to figure out where they ought to go. I fully realize that making a show like GH is difficult… but it doesn't have to be this difficult.
A Short and Largely Inessential Week
As Wubs pointed out in her latest column, there always seems to be a major plot point being left to dangle these days, and last week, it was whatever's going on with Brennan. The previous week, we saw him speak to Nina, which was enough to convince her not to inject him with the locked-in drug; last week, we only heard he'd been transferred to Turning Woods. The implication is that he's pretending to still be locked in because he knows Cullum wants to kill him, but to simply end that scene at the hospital without any real follow-up for an entire week is just sloppy storytelling.
Along those same lines is Valentin's vow to shut down Sidwell and Cullum's project, which he made two Wednesdays ago. I guess he knows things are a little less urgent than they were when Britt was 24 hours away from delivering a prototype; with her and Rocco on the run, the clock isn't ticking quite as loudly. On the other hand, he has no way of knowing how long it'll be before she's found, and what better time to sneak into the lab than when Cullum and Sidwell are focused on finding her? Why is he still loafing around Carly's house, cycling between making out and arguing over whether they should have a relationship?
With Brennan and Cullum entirely offscreen, along with Britt and Rocco, and Valentin not appearing until Friday, the bulk of the week was devoted to Curtis insisting that Isaiah left him and Jordan on the side of the road to die. I complained about this in the last column, so I'm not willing to devote a lot of space to it here; I will only say that Curtis is so thoroughly in the wrong that it's impossible to enjoy any aspect of the story. If I were any of the actors tasked with bringing this crap to life, I'd be baffled, angry, or both. Come to think of it, I am both.
Anyway, Curtis is being charged with felony assault, which he simply cannot believe and refuses to take responsibility for. Isaiah may never operate again, but in the meantime, Derek has to be transferred to Chicago for his liver transplant, and Brook Lynn, consumed by guilt over her belief that it was actually her in the other car that night, immediately volunteered to cover the cost of transportation.
Speaking of Brook Lynn, she's going to have some pretty big bones to pick with her cousin Michael once she realizes what he's gotten himself up to. Not only is he trying to engineer an affair between Willow and Chase, but he's also come to the conclusion that Brook Lynn was the other driver in Curtis and Jordan's accident, and he's apparently also willing to use that in order to compromise Willow.
Why does Michael believe this? Uh, he overheard Tracy and Brook Lynn talking about a rattle in the passenger door of her car. This was all it took for him to decide that Brook Lynn set up a showcase for Trina because she was motivated by guilt. Because he sees Chase as a judgmental jerk with a white knight complex (sort of fair, TBH), he figures once Chase finds out his wife covered up her role in the accident, he'll go running to Willow — and that'll be a good thing for Brook Lynn anyway, because she's "made herself smaller" in order to make her marriage work.
In Port Charles, no one can have a plan that isn't as complicated as it is stupid.
The dumbest part of Michael's plan, though, is probably the idea that the scandal of having an affair with her ex-husband will destroy Willow's political career. I guess we're just supposed to forget that she's married to Drew, whose political career seemed completely impervious to any consequences of his own affair with Willow, not to mention his ketamine-fueled antics at the Savoy, or any of the other slimy antics he got up to while in office? I think this is probably one case where the ends justify the means as far as most viewers are concerned, because Chase and Brook Lynn are deadly dull, and the Drew/Willow marriage does need an exit strategy. I definitely don't trust these writers to fully or satisfyingly deal with the long-term implications of what it looks like they're getting ready to do, but that's a problem for another day.
Anyway, Brook Lynn went off on Willow last week. She was stirred into a jealous snit after Michael put a bug in her ear about Willow having designs on her husband, and when she went to Willow's to deliver a thank-you gift for her help with fostering Phoebe, she spotted — gasp! — Chase and Willow embracing in the living room. Now that she's been warned to keep her hands off Chase or risk being "destroyed" by Brook Lynn, whatever will Willow do?
For the moment, she's probably too distracted by Sidwell and Drew to give that a lot of thought. Last week, she and Sidwell fought again over whether to stop dosing Drew — in full view of Drew, too, which led to some genuine comedy when Sidwell compared Drew to a potted plant and suggested that Willow just enjoy the blessed silence from her annoying husband. When she wouldn't stop bugging him about it, he finally told her to go ahead and stop dosing Drew, because he'll be just as silent when he's dead.
As for Chase and Brook Lynn, they're both still focused on adopting Phoebe, and that quest inched forward last week when Ava and Alexis — who, again, should team up to do stuff like this all the time — visited the Hammett Gallery in order to try and dig up information about Delilah. At the Hammett, which looks almost exactly like the Jerome Gallery, they met Ava's contact Apollo, who:
- Is played by Grease 2 heartthrob Maxwell Caulfield
- Initially told them that he didn't know much about Delilah, who was his employee; he added that he also shared this with the police, who — last we heard — hadn't been able to find out anything about Delilah
- Called Ethan to tell him he'd dead-ended Ava and Alexis, and Ethan told him to continue doing that
- Then turned around and showed Ava and Alexis a picture of Delilah with Ethan, after Ava (ignoring Alexis' stern warnings) mentioned that the Quartermaines were behind their search
So… did Apollo betray Ethan? I have no idea, and to the extent that I even care, it's only because I've grown weary of listening to Brook Lynn and Chase coo at each other about how they're destined to be Phoebe's parents, and I need this storyline to get someplace more interesting, even if only marginally. I have also grown weary of Ethan, who is roughly 15 percent as charming as he seems to think he is. Between his incessant smirking and the non-stop parade of characters telling him he's just like Luke, I'm rapidly reaching the point where I want something bad to happen to him.
That'll do it for the big stuff. Until next time, your bullets:
- Sonny and Laura decided that their new best plan is to get Pascal to turn on Sidwell
- Ava and Sidwell talked about the theory that Marco knew his murderer; later, Sidwell remembered Cassius telling him about the gap in Lucas' timeline the night of the killing
- Liesl was happy to hear about "Nathan" and Lulu breaking up
- Rocco sent Charlotte a video; when Dante and Lulu watched it, Lulu realized Rocco was using their code phrase to let her know he's safe, and understood he went on the run with Britt willingly
- Dante lied to Chase and said Rocco got his fake passport from Britt
- After hearing about her assault on Elizabeth, Ric said he wanted to sue Britt; Elizabeth said she isn't interested
- Sonny told Lulu and Dante that he has someone working to find Rocco and Britt, and of course it's goddamn Brick
- In between bouts of preposterously defending Curtis, Trina wondered if maybe she should cancel her showcase, but Gio talked her out of it
- Chase spent a lot of time talking about Amelia's stuffed bunny Mr. Snuggles
- The cover art for Molly's book has apparently not been confirmed, even though it's coming out any minute
- After finding Ethan in the lake, Tracy agreed to hire him to manage her "more nuanced dealings," starting with making sure the Phoebe adoption goes through
- Upon hearing Willow say "I made a mistake marrying Drew. I never should have become his wife," Chase used his big police detective brain and asked, "Willow, are you saying you don't love Drew?"
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