I'm back! Apologies for missing last week's column — but decidedly not sorry for not tuning in while those episodes aired, because they were awful. I'm not saying that the week I'm about to write about was tons better, but there were at least a handful of satisfying moments. Whatever's going on behind the scenes at General Hospital right now, it's leading to a bunch of abrupt changes and a lot of subpar drama.
It feels like we're headed for a pretty substantial series of resets, which could definitely be a good thing in the long run; in the short term, however, GH has lately felt wobbly and confused, and those feelings are compounded by an influx of new characters who either aren't being used often enough for us to care about, or are being played by the wrong actor. (Or both!)
All of this is to say that I have returned from my vacation feeling that old familiar mix of optimism, trepidation, and occasional boredom that GH tends to inspire during its weaker stretches. The writers obviously have some ideas they're testing out, so I'm reserving real judgment about a lot of what we're seeing… but either way, these last couple of weeks have been pretty bumpy.
Let's get down to it!
Anna Fanna Fo Planna
Being haunted by Peter August's jive ass might be enough of an ordeal to convince anybody to commit murder. It's certainly driven Anna around the bend, and although we still don't have a particularly clear idea of whatever she's up to, now we definitely do know it entails murdering Britt.
This plan came fully to light last week, when Anna — at Peter's smarmy direction — told Britt she'd use her WSB contacts to try and find out more about Cassius' death. In reality, of course, she plans to do nothing of the sort; instead, the whole thing is a ruse designed to lead Britt to a secluded location where Anna can kill her. Per Peter's logic, neither Anna nor anyone in her extended family will ever be safe until every Faison is dead.
As always, Finola Hughes is doing a fine job of selling the silliness. While I doubt many people are interested in watching any of this play out, Hughes has been great at portraying Anna's inner conflict, her awareness of her own mentally compromised status, and her efforts to resist her own homicidal urges. That's the only nice thing I can say about this storyline. In every other respect, it's an act of aggression by the writers against the audience.
I've aired my grievances before, but again: Peter is forever unwelcome on my screen, Anna deserves an empowered storyline, and if they really intend to try and make something out of Britt's latest return, the writers desperately need to stop falling back on the Faison legacy. I mean, they need to do that in general, but if these people don't start laying track for her next actual storyline, she's going to end up with nothing to do pretty quickly.
There's some mild intrigue at the edges. Tristan has been a fat nothing of a character so far, but I don't mind the implication that he's in town to keep an eye on Anna for the WSB. I'm also not mad about Valentin noticing there's something off with Anna; much as she shouldn't need to be rescued by him or any other man, there was really never any way that Valentin and Carly were going to be a couple without Anna becoming a factor, and this is an organic enough way for the writers to sow the seeds of eventual trouble in paradise.
Port Charles Power Struggle
Early in the week, we were led to believe that Sidwell's arc had ended offscreen, with the character taking a plea deal that sent him to Pentonville for at least 26 years. For a lot of people, myself included, this seemed like a silly waste of potential, but never fear; as it turns out, we'll be seeing him again, and probably pretty soon.
More on that in a minute. For now, I want to talk about how Sidwell's sudden absence is being used as the catalyst for several potentially promising things.
In terms of utility, Sidwell's main purpose was to serve as a homicidal maniac bent on some sort of cold fusion-fueled world domination, but he was also a powerful businessman with vast global holdings — and one who apparently kept his legitimate enterprises very well insulated from his criminal activities. This is now important because those holdings are about to be auctioned off, and they're appealing to several local power players for very different reasons.
First in line is Sonny, who has followed Jason's lead and decided to go insta-legit. I can't be bothered to listen to any of his skin-crawling conversations with Turner, but from what I managed to internalize through the pain while they were talking about this, Sonny sees absorbing SRE as the perfect way to essentially launder his own assets. It's absolutely ridiculous, but I don't really care all that much; any story that extricated Sonny from the mob without killing him was always going to be at least a little hard to believe, and at least this option is one that makes sense on the surface if you don't think about it for more than a second.
Sonny's efforts to obtain SRE will be complicated by Drew, who's aware of Sonny's plan to quit organized crime, but thinks the idea is absurd for all the real-world reasons one might expect. More importantly, he hates Sonny as much as ever, and is determined to outbid him in order to deprive him of a post-mob seat of power.
And then there's Valentin, whose primary interest is buying back Wyndemere, but he's also a businessman at heart, so he's interested in picking through Sidwell's wreckage to find appealing acquisitions. He's being aided in this pursuit by Jordan, who now knows Valentin helped save her life the night of the crash, and who is also interested in potentially leveraging a consultant gig for him into a future CEO-level role.
I'm not complaining about any of this. Sidwell going down very much needed to spark its own storyline, and this feels like a pretty great way of exploring the impact of his absence. I'm also not upset about the idea of Drew and Sonny locked in a business struggle for years to come; as I've said in this space many times, I think the only way corporate intrigue on the soaps really works is if it's used to drive personal grudges. We're never going to care about the inner workings of a company, and we're never really going to care whether this or that product ends up in the right hands. All that matters is people with power using it against each other, and this post-Sidwell stuff has the potential to give Sonny and Drew years of reasons to be all up in each other's business while going after each other's businesses.
To be clear, I'm probably never going to have any real use for Sonny, and I'm not a Drew fan either, but at the very least, this setup has the potential to put both characters to better use. Sonny's mob shtick was tired 20 years ago, and it desperately needed to end; Drew, meanwhile, had much of his reason to exist erased when it turned out he wasn't Jason, and the writers have been extremely slow to come up with a new one. This could be a solid start.
I know some viewers are upset that Drew didn't learn anything from his ordeal, but to me, that tracks; it isn't like he's experienced a miraculous reprieve over some disease. Things were done to him, and he wants his revenge. He's loathsome, but he was downright dull as a good guy, so this is still a net positive.
As for Valentin, if I were the one running the show, I wouldn't have him turn out to be much more than a fly in the ointment where the auction's concerned. I don't know if that's how this will turn out, but I do think he's at his most entertaining when he's given excuses to just sort of blithely bop in and infuriate other characters, and this could give him plenty of those.
Dudson and the Bikini CEO
Speaking of corporate storylines that aim for intrigue but fall woefully short: Joss is now the insta-CEO of Jasper Jax Enterprises, gifted the position by her father, who's off sailing around the world and delegated the task of sharing that information to his VP of operations, who also just so happens to be Phoebe's secret and allegedly very dangerous father.
Joss is purely annoyed by this move, which she's interpreted as Jax's attempt to get her to quit the WSB. Hudson, who hasn't logged a single minute of entertaining screentime since his arrival several weeks ago, is purely annoyed by Joss, who he sees as a spoiled rich girl who's loudly looking a gift horse in the mouth. Their arguments — the most recent of which took place while they were both barely clothed at the Metro Court pool, natch — are even more unbearable than the least inspired Quartermaine and/or Davis Girls bickering, which is truly saying something.
Clearly, someone somewhere is contemplating some sort of chem test between Joss and ol' Dudson, the prospect of which already has me wincing. The one silver lining I can spot right now is that Brennan has taken it upon himself to look into whatever's going on at JJE, and he's decided to do that by working Alexis for information about the company while dangling the possibility of sharing whatever information she can tell he's hanging over Drew.
I repeat: Brennan has found a new spark since being cucked by Carly, and I've really started to look forward to his appearances. It isn't just the easy chemistry he has with Nina, either; I actually laughed out loud a couple of times during the scenes when Brennan smirked at and insulted a petulant Drew, all while an intrigued Alexis looked on. Brennan's upcoming death is apparently part of the raft of changes we're currently in the middle of, which I think is a very funny mistake for the writers to make; leave it to GH to kill off a character just when they're finally figuring out how to use him.
The Verdict
Well, it's official: In Port Charles, it's still illegal to haul off and punch someone in the face in front of witnesses, no matter how confident you might be that the other party failed to render aid after you and your girlfriend caused a car accident by kissing when she should have been looking at the road. Curtis is off to Pentonville for ten years, with the possibility of parole after two!
Like many of you, I imagine, I'm breathing a sigh of relief at the thought that we won't have to listen to more hand-wringing over whether Curtis' preposterous legal strategy might actually work. Of course, now we'll have to listen to a lot of crap about how Curtis is being deprived from spending time with his daughter and infant son, and how Isaiah is partly to blame because he antagonized Curtis and has a face to punch, but I'm choosing positivity where I can.
Anyway, thus concludes the first phase of one of the dumbest GH storylines in recent memory. Now Curtis has to pack up for prison, where rumor has it he'll end up being cellmates with none other than Sidwell.
These two bunking together makes no sense, of course. Having Sidwell in gen-pop makes no sense at all, but it's also very hard to see any logic behind the idea that a convict with Sidwell's rap sheet would end up in the same cell with someone who punched a guy. That being said… well, why not? Carlo Rota is delightful with anyone, and if there's an actor in the cast who has a prayer of helping undo Curtis' slow, irritating transformation into a self-righteous ass and full-time party pooper, it might be him.
You Drugged My Ex-Wife, I Love You, Goodbye
Willow started the week on the offensive, serving Jacinda a restraining order keeping her away from Wiley and Amelia. She ended the week fully under Michael's thumb, agreeing to move back into the gatehouse and surrender her passport so he can keep a close eye on her.
Things move fast in Port Charles. And sometimes, people move fast out of Port Charles — like Jacinda, who is suddenly no more, her once-promising run cut abruptly short in order to pave the way for inevitable sexytime between Michael and Serena.
How did all this happen? Well, Jacinda decided to drug Willow with MDMA in retaliation for the restraining order, which turned out to be a very poor decision when Willow unexpectedly ended up with Wiley and Amelia for the night. When Jacinda told Michael what she'd done, he hurried over to Nina's apartment, where he found a flush-faced Willow in the middle of a dance party with Amelia while Wiley watched and wondered when the hell they were going to the arcade like she promised.
Michael managed to get Willow to pass out on the couch, although not before she engaged in some flirtatious banter with him, raising the specter of some sort of redux for these two somewhere down the road. Of course, all those happy vibes wore off with a quickness when she woke up and realized what happened — at that point, she charged over to the Quartermaine kitchen and started threatening Michael while a quaking Gio did his best to turn invisible.
At this point, Michael was fully expecting Willow's threats, which is why he'd already arranged for Jacinda to disappear. He still wasn't feeling fully confident in his position, however, until Trina and Kai showed up to finally tell him Willow shot Drew. By the time Willow returned, Michael had a pair of signed affidavits in hand, along with some threats of his own — namely, that he'd obliterate her chances of seeing the kids at all if they went back to family court, double jeopardy or no double jeopardy. Seeing an opportunity to keep her in check without depriving the kids of their mother, he demanded that she move back into the gatehouse. After trying and failing to hit him with a rolling pin, she agreed.
I agree with Wubs that this was all a missed opportunity for the type of hate sex people used to have on the soaps all the time, although I can also understand why the writers don't want to go there yet, especially with Michael evidently fated for Serena and Willow still serving as a time bomb in Chase and Brook Lynn's marriage. Mostly, though, I'm having fun with this; good things often come from soap characters who hate each other being forced into close proximity, and it's been far too long since we got to see Dark Michael (or since Michael really had anything interesting to do).
Tracy wasn't happy about it, of course, because she sees the danger to Chase and Brook Lynn's wedded bliss, but Michael eventually talked her into it, and we can all be glad for that. The sooner those two are tossed on the rocks, the better.
That'll do it for the big stuff this time. See you next week — but first, your bullets!
- Felicia found a sublet for Britt
- Lulu told Charlotte she could live with Valentin, which made Rocco feel guilty, because everything makes Rocco feel guilty
- After Drew told Danny to stay away from Scout, Scout tearfully confessed to Rocco that her life was a lot easier when her dad was in a wheelchair
- Instead of having sex, Chase and Brook Lynn ate sandwiches
- Britt did laundry
- Emma was sad when Gio was too busy to go camping, or do anything else with her
- Chase mulled over the idea of investigating Curtis and Jordan's car accident, much to Brook Lynn's horror
- Serena and Cody met and had a two-second conversation
- Molly felt like a dope for canceling her book tour in order to prosecute Sidwell, only for him to take a deal
- After trying and failing to talk Willow out of going scorched earth on Michael, a panicked Nina called Brennan looking for help; when he showed up at her place, he asked her if she'd drowned anyone else
- Serena told Lucy she thinks Michael will act in Deception's best interests, and wondered whether they actually needed to conspire to take his shares
- Isaiah learned there's a chance he might be able to operate again
- Britt told Rocco she doesn't have Huntington's and never did
- Jordan indulged in a round of victim-blaming upon running into Isaiah after Curtis was pronounced guilty
- Trina is still being stalked
- Cody, who misses James, was bitten by a horse
- Charlotte told Danny that they should deal with Drew by framing him for a crime
- Jason told a dumbfounded Carly that he quit working for Sonny
- Molly invited Cody to a book promo event in Savannah
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