Critical Diagnosis: Week of July 13-17, 2026 by Jeff Giles

In a number of ways, daytime drama has evolved a fairly great deal over the decades. But no matter how far soaps stray from the days of black-and-white film and organ music, I doubt anything will ever change the fact that this is a fundamentally dialogue-driven medium. Modern viewers have been trained to expect a certain amount of flashy action, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing — as long as it's being used to heighten honestly developed dramatic stakes, anchored by characters dealing with situations and emotions that audiences care about.

Last week's General Hospital, to an unfortunately large degree, served as an example of how tricky it can be to balance all this. Daytime's desire for faster-paced action has contributed to a world where scenes are cut up into handfuls of bite-sized chunks, characters are often left with little time to react to anything, and actors are stuck delivering reams of exposition that strain for dramatic impact while trying to paper over those gaps. When this happens during the middle of a big storyline, it's just dull and frustrating, but when it happens after a big storyline's conclusion — as was the case last week — it risks fumbling solid setups for storylines to come.

The conclusion of the cold fusion saga came with major fallout that carries serious, painful consequences for numerous characters, and its umbrella was big enough to leave us with multiple weeks' worth of people trying to sift through the wreckage, process their feelings, and figure out what comes next. Vintage soap stuff, in other words! But to really take advantage, you need to slow down and actually give those characters time to work it out onscreen. To a large extent, we didn't get that last week, and when it did seem like the writers were at least thinking about it, the way they went about it risked making everything worse.

Cassius Is Dead, Long Live Cassius

Viewed objectively, the scam Cassius pulled is one of the darkest, most horrible things to happen on GH in a really long time. We ended up rooting for him due to his gradual change of heart, but that didn't change the fact that his deception detonated an emotional bomb for a long list of characters. Having gone to the trouble of setting it off, you'd hope the writers would be able to see the dramatic opportunities smoldering in its aftermath.

Unfortunately, at least so far, they seem to be willfully avoiding those opportunities. It's worth noting off the top that whatever's going on with Kirsten Storms off-camera has complicated things for the show, but we've had temporary Maxies before, often with solid results, and keeping the character offscreen at this crucial moment appears to be setting off an unfortunate chain reaction.

I'm talking, of course, about the painfully bad scenes that found Cody, of all people, tasked with telling James that the man he thought was his back-from-the-dead father was actually his uncle, and now not only is his father still dead, but so is the imposter who lied to him for months. Back in sad-but-noble mode, Cody understood that everyone else in the family thought it'd be best for him to do it, because they knew James would be pissed at whoever broke the news, and if he was going to cut ties with anyone, Cody would be the least damaging option.

I know how ridiculous this sounds, believe me. These are the sorts of thoughts and decisions that characters only ever have on soaps, and they're a big part of why non-viewers poke fun at these shows. The worst part is that there was no reason for any of it. What the writers have done to James is brutal, and they didn't need to twist him or the people around him into foolish contortions to get great drama out of it. It was made even worse because Gary James Fuller is also out right now, so we had to watch a temporary James freak out and tell Cody he didn't love him anymore.

As I said, there's a long list of characters whose lives have been turned upside down by Cassius' lies. We've gotten brief glimpses into Nina's grief, and slightly larger ones into Liesl's; in fact, Obrecht's confrontation with Joss was genuinely one of the week's highlights. But we barely know how Dante feels about it, and Anna's reaction is tied into whatever Peter-driven psychosis awaits her, rather than being forced to confront the loss of a friend all over again. Mac and Felicia, meanwhile, have barely been seen.

With Storms and Fuller out of commission, why not spend more time focusing on Nina and Liesl? Why not give Mac and Felicia any amount of time to try and come to terms with what happened? Why hurry into this, especially if it was going to end up being handled so poorly? Instead of centering on anyone with a truly personal stake in the situation, the writers decided to focus on Cody having a sad, followed by Molly making him s'mores. (I'm starting to hate s'mores.)

James is obviously a huge part of this story, and his response to his uncle's gut-wrenching deceit needs to be explored. But it needs to be explored in a way that makes us feel what happened to James, rather than making us laugh as he throws a cowboy hat and storms out of the stable. I'd argue that James is really the crux of everything here, which would have been all the more reason for the writers to work their way toward his reaction a lot more carefully.

We did at least have the pleasure of watching Kathleen Gati go to town during the few minutes Liesl was given to confront Joss over a sworn statement she very much knows has to be a lie — and Eden McCoy met her moment to moment, letting us see just enough of Joss' inner conflict to make it hurt as she held the line, insisting to Obrecht that Cassius never had the change of heart he seemed to. Aside from being gripping, these scenes were also a reminder that GH never has to resort to the warped cartoon version of the WSB they've concocted in recent years. The people in charge of the Bureau shouldn't, and don't have to be, literal villains; instead, the very nature of their work, and the lies it forces its agents to tell, cause more than enough drama on their own.

Still, even having said that, last week was the type of tremendous letdown that shows you just enough to remind you of what you're missing. Nina's bond with Nathan was sweet and real, and we deserve to know more about how she's coping with this. Mac and Felicia loved Nathan, and their drive to protect James should be centered here. Maxie has her own feelings to consider as well as James. Lulu slept with Cassius believing he was Nathan, which has also barely been touched on. And Dante has lost the guy he once saw as a best friend all over again, plus he has to reckon with his inability to see through a giant con. This stuff is all right there for the writers to work with.

It comes back, at least in part, to that tension between modern soaps' need to always keep things moving and the medium's fundamentally dialogue-driven nature. One popular knock against daytime is how slow the storylines can move, and that's often fair — but there's a difference between dawdling and moving slowly in pursuit of a truly earned payoff. Soaps need to linger over moments like these, because the words spoken and feelings shown during those moments form the building blocks for the emotional payoffs to come.

Anna's Back with a Vengeance

Anna Devane is our last link to the glory days of the WSB. Although she was sidelined for a big chunk of the cold fusion story, her ties to the Bureau — and the Faison family — should make her an important part of whatever happens next. If I were in charge, I wouldn't hinge any of this around Anna being haunted by Peter August, but I'm not going to complain about that right now, because I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to weigh in once it really gets going.

For now, we're mostly left to discuss Anna's state of mind now that she's back in Port Charles. She promised Valentin that she has a firm grasp of reality, but we know that isn't the case — and I think we caught a glimpse of how much that isn't the case during her confrontation with Britt.

Since returning to town, Anna's had debriefing sessions with Liesl, Valentin, Joss, and Britt, and during each of those conversations, she's shown a lot of hostility toward Cassius in particular. This makes no small amount of sense, given that he fooled her into thinking he was Nathan and putting him back on the police force; just as importantly, she knows he was raised by Faison, which would be fair justification for her to view him through jaundiced eyes even if he hadn't been complicit in her abduction.

Of course, as far as Anna knows, Cassius is dead, which would make all of her Cassius-bashing seem kind of silly if we didn't know he's actually still alive and working for the WSB. I don't know how Peter figures into this and I'm really not looking forward to finding out, but I don't mind the idea of Anna being the one to figure out Cassius didn't die on Spoon Island, and/or pursuing a vendetta against him for his part in the plot that upended her life for the better part of a year.

That being said, I'm of two minds about what I think I see developing for Anna. While I would love a storyline predicated on Anna's instincts telling her something isn't quite right about the Bureau's cover story, I'm a lot less enthusiastic about her being haunted by anything or anyone, simply because I think she's been one of the more haunted characters Port Charles has had over the last 40 years. It makes sense that trauma from her kidnapping and gaslighting would linger, but I want a story that emphasizes her strength without making her cry all the time. 

Fortunately, the weeping hasn't reached peak levels yet, which leaves us enough room for scenes like the ones we saw between Anna and Britt in the GH stairwell last week. Britt spent most of the week being an unreasonable asshole to everybody around her, which is how you know the writers didn't have anything else for her to do; her few moments of reason came when she was cornered by Anna, who charged in loaded for bear against the memory of Cassius.

Britt turned soft during this argument, which I mean in the best way; rather than having it out with Anna, she tried pointing out the fact that they actually have a number of meaningful things in common, including, you know, both being conned by Cullum. In response, Anna cuttingly declared that there was only ever one good Faison, and he died eight years ago. I'm not sure this was a confrontation that needed to happen, but I think it might have done a fine job of hinting at Anna's current state of mind, and what appears to be a revenge plot with unpleasant implications for Britt (and presumably Cassius, eventually).

As I just said, now that Britt's free from Cullum and has a clean bill of health, it feels like the writers don't know what to do with her, so I guess the answer might as well be one more "legacy of Faison" storyline. The show has so badly bungled whatever spark Britt and Jason once had that I can't imagine anyone being all that invested in a serious redux for those two. Based on the stupid argument Britt had with Tristan after meeting the hospital's new surgeon, I assume there are plans for a chem test there, but who wants yet another "Britt bickers her way into love" storyline?

At this point, my assumption is that the show intends to use Cassius as a sometimes character who periodically swoops in to do spy stuff in a morally ambiguous way, and really, they could probably do the same thing with Britt. It feels like she was brought back to serve a specific purpose during a single storyline. Hopefully, whatever they're planning with Anna proves me wrong.

Sweet(?) 16,000

I can't make mention of Jason without talking about his return, which acted as the emotional anchor for GH's 16,000th episode on Monday. He seems smaller and sadder now; for the first time, I can look at Jason and believe this is a guy who's been through a truly horrible ordeal, rather than a trucker-cap bro who thinks staring into the middle distance makes him look deep.

Jason doesn't yet know that his freedom was secured by Joss' dishonest sworn statement — he only knows that he was bleeding on the floor of his cell in Jakarta when a guard threw the door open and yelled that he was being released. That release somehow included a plane escort from GH's new heart surgeon, Tristan Roberts.

After a long flight full of Jason having nightmares about Jakarta, Tristan headed over to GH, while Jason made his way to the Quartermaine boathouse, where he was staring meaningfully at the water when Danny returned home. Their reunion was about as messy as you'd imagine something like this might be in real life, which I appreciated; as he's been since Jason was taken away, Danny was a blur of emotions, including a lot of anger toward the father who sacrificed himself for someone else yet again. He ended up confessing to Jason that he'd gone to Brennan about Rocco shooting Cullum, which Jason barely had time to process before Tracy found them. Long story short: Jason told Tracy he was leaving town with Danny for a few days so they could work some things out.

Kind of a blip of a return, but it makes sense; clearly, Jason and Danny do have some things to work out, and it wasn't going to be easy to make that attempt in the post-Cullum chaos of Port Charles. After everything Jason's gone through, it does seem a little suspect that a few months in a WSB prison was what it took to finally change his outlook on life, but if we're really on the verge of actual change for this long-stagnant character, I'm not complaining at all. For now, I think it's telling that Jason didn't visit Sonny or Carly, and for the first time in possibly ever, I'm looking forward to finding out what he'll do next.

The rest of the 16,000th episode was actively awful, with much of the action revolving around Laura and Elizabeth giving Tracy a hard time because she was rightly appalled by Laura's suggestion that Sonny get a seat on the GH board. You've seen this crap before — Sonny is in line for some high honor, someone who sees him clearly points out that he sucks as a person, and then whichever legacy characters have been tapped in for duty line up to shovel a bunch of bullshit about how he's actually the most wonderful guy. I will never have the strength to make even an informal ranked list of the most offensive examples, but Episode 16,000 would have to be pretty high on that list, because it ended with Elizabeth talking about how her grandparents would be thrilled to see Sonny on the board.

To anyone who still defends Bob Guza's GH legacy, I say: Watch this crap and bear witness to the lingering effects of all the long-running characters Guza killed off or cast aside. If he hadn't hollowed out generations from the canvas, the writers wouldn't have to strain so desperately to try and honor the hospital. It wouldn't come down to Tracy being dumped on by two of the show's longest-tenured veterans so Sonny could have one more thing handed to him for no good reason at all.

Valentin Angst

Unlike Britt, Valentin has exited the cold fusion storyline with a renewed sense of purpose, and the first item on his ambitious agenda involves encouraging the WSB to free up his assets.

I'm admittedly unclear as to what exactly makes up those assets at this point. I think Valentin was running ELQ when he had to go on the run, so now that he's been exonerated, does that mean he still has a claim to the company? It's been quite some time since we had an ELQ tug of war, and even though those are always dumber than you'd hope, I'll never say no to the prospect of Valentin dropping one-liners all over the Quartermaine mansion.

Anyway, he wants his money back, whatever that might mean, and in order to speed up the process, he decided to sneak into Wyndemere and steal Brennan's black box.

At this point, Valentin doesn't know it's Brennan's. As he told Carly after she nearly tripped over it in her kitchen, he knows it's a WSB-issued safe, and he also knows it was stashed at Wyndemere, so he feels safe in assuming it's something the Bureau would be very interested in acquiring. Does it seem strange that Valentin would be willing to play keep-away with the WSB so soon after being exonerated? Sure it does, but for the moment, I'm mostly just appreciative of the fact that Valentin straight up told Carly what he'd done and why, continuing to make her an equal partner. For as long as they might last, I feel like this couple's biggest value is their ability to annoy everyone around them, and putting Valentin back at odds with Brennan is a good way to leverage that.

Valentin may not realize he's sitting on Brennan's black box, but Brennan is painfully well aware that Valentin is a threat. They bumped into one another at Wyndemere last week, when Valentin popped by to tell Dante he's interested in buying it back, shortly before Brennan and Nina showed up to try and toss the joint. Brennan used his WSB bona fides to have Valentin and Charlotte escorted out, but fretted to Nina afterwards that the encounter was all it'd take to let Valentin know there was something in the building that Brennan wanted, and they needed to find it fast.

Brennan and Nina are working together in order to try and help Willow put Drew in checkmate before those magic paralytic meds run out —  and they're wearing off faster than Willow knows, as we saw last week when Wiley and Amelia came by for a visit. Upon seeing his estranged wife's kids, Drew gave a small wave, followed by the universal shushing sign; this was fine for dramatic effect, even if it seems like a pretty stupid move on Drew's part. (Expecting a child to keep a secret is always a bad idea, especially when it's only been a few months since one of those children heard you saying his own father didn't want him.)

While Brennan and Nina race against the clock, though, they're still leaving time for a little romance, as we saw when they went to the Brown Dog to get a little liquored up after leaving Wyndemere. Their playful dynamic has been obvious since Brennan was at Turning Woods, and we all knew this was coming, so kudos to the writing staff for getting their first kiss out of the way quickly. No one will be surprised if Nina slaps him on Monday, or they have one of those "we can't be together right now" conversations, but either way, this pairing has officially begun, and… I'm kinda looking forward to seeing where it leads? There's a spark here.

We'll close out this section by looping back to Valentin and Carly's unique ability to piss people off — specifically Sonny, who invited Brick over to tell him that his new mission is to remove Valentin from Carly's life. He insisted that he isn't trying to control Carly, understand — it's just that Valentin's proximity to Donna makes him a danger or whatever. This is an unbelievably tired storyline that we've already watched play out dozens of times; the only difference right now is that Brick agreed to find incriminating evidence against Valentin, but said he would take it to Carly when he found it. I also have to acknowledge the unintentional humor of Sonny bellowing "The son of a bitch switched my BIPOLAR MEDS" before basically shrugging it off. Beyond that, though? Do not care about anything Sonny and/or Brick are up to.

Chase's Stasis, Drew's Moves

Now we must pause for a few quick words regarding the Brook Lynn vs. Willow drama, which fizzled out with a wet whimper last week.

Admittedly, we all should have known better than to think we were going to get a big explosion out of Brook Lynn's dramatic confession to Chase that she'd tampered with Willow's trip logs, but we also had every right to expect more than we did get — a conversation that amounted to little more than Chase shrugging it off, pointing out that she didn't even try to frame Willow for an actual crime, and suggesting that they just keep this between themselves.

With Brook Lynn and Lucy's scheme amounting to precisely zero, Willow's back to worrying primarily about Drew. Aside from revealing his improving condition to the kids, Drew also made the potentially risky decision to knock over a bag while he and Kai were alone in the room. When Kai offered to get Willow, Drew blinked him into keeping quiet. Kind of bold for Drew to assume he could count on Kai's silence, but remember the last time Drew flashed back to the night of his shooting? I think we were supposed to understand that Drew had figured out Kai and Trina were also in the house that night.

Anyway, the point is that the walls are closing in on Willow, and although she's aware of many if not most of the dangers she currently faces, she doesn't know about all of them. I sincerely doubt any of this will amount to much — my firm expectation is that Drew and Willow will end up in a standoff when this is over — but for now, the list of people who could expose her misdeeds continues to grow.

Brook Lynn, meanwhile, is back to focusing on Phoebe. This gives her something in common with Ava, who — now that she knows Ethan isn't Phoebe's father — has taken it upon herself to try and solve the mystery of the kid's unknown parent. To try and help herself along, she visited Brook Lynn with a gift for Phoebe, which only ended up making Brook Lynn suspicious; aware that Ava had helped Alexis find the father, she asked if Ava knew his identity, and was acting as some sort of secret intermediary to try and blow up the adoption. We'll see where this leads, I guess, but shouldn't Brook Lynn be more worried about finding a new source of all-important zincite now that Sidwell's in jail?

The Littlest Ashford

Finally, we close out with a brief acknowledgement regarding the latest in the lives of the increasingly cloistered Ashfords, who welcomed the newest addition to their clan last week.

I devoted a lot of words in my previous column to the shabby treatment these characters are getting, so I'll give it a rest this time, and just say the circumstances surrounding the baby's birth were about as clichéd as you might expect. Jordan went to Portia's to try and talk her into convincing Isaiah to drop the charges against Curtis; Portia wasn't having any of it; Jordan lost her mind and said some hateful things. Because this is a soap and the slightest bit of stress always causes instant birth, Portia went into labor, and Jordan ended up having to deliver the baby.

Being up to the wrist in Portia's birth canal seems to have pushed the reset button on Jordan, who was all smiles after the delivery, but meeting his son did nothing to fix Curtis' mood — when Isaiah came in to congratulate Portia, Curtis stuffily noted that this was a "private moment" and asked him to go, leaving Isaiah to be the bigger man once again. Everything closed out for the week with Stella doing her Stella thing by ordering Curtis and Portia to straighten up and fly right for the sake of their baby. That'll definitely keep everyone in line.

And that'll also be it for the big stuff this week. Until next time, your bullets!

• Rocco is still pissed at Gio
• Charlotte told Dante she's going to live with Valentin, and Valentin got in Dante's head by suggesting he should be happy about that, since Charlotte might be a bad influence on Rocco
• To retaliate against Drew for lying to Fitzpatrick about her whereabouts the night of the accident, Willow sent Scout to live with Alexis
• Dante and Elizabeth continued their slow dance toward inevitable coupledom
• Curtis was finally able to thank Valentin for his role in pulling Jordan to safety after the accident
• While remembering Brennan's casual suggestion that they kill Drew, Willow tearfully warned Drew not to force her hand
• Britt told a skeptical Stella that she'd like to return to her job at GH
• Valentin told a disappointed Curtis that the other car in the accident was "long gone" by the time he arrived on the scene
• Joss, wanting Anna to know as much as possible about what really happened to her, told her the truth about Cullum's involvement
• Trina and Gio had their big showcase, which of course resulted in an immediate contract offer for the two of them as a duo
• Britt had one of the lines of the week when she told Anna "I'm sorry you ended up in a French nuthouse, I really am"
• We have no idea where the prototype for the cold fusion device ended up
• Tron is still the most popular video game in all of Port Charles
• Lulu asked Ethan if he likes likes Ava
• After assuring Cody that he is not a dumbass, Molly told him she loves him; he told her he loves her too
• Trina and Joss settled on "popcorn" for their code word whenever Joss can't talk about something top-secret