At any given moment on any given soap, the canvas should be balanced between stories that are building and stories that are actively moving. While viewers are often annoyed when a show teases major developments for months on end, that frustration can be mitigated by thoughtful planning — as long as something interesting is happening, we can tolerate a long, slow build.
That's gone right out the window at General Hospital, where absolutely nothing is really happening right now. The writers are spinning several plates, but none of them are revolving with much urgency; at the moment, every storyline is in the "characters talking about what they're going to do" stage, and it's really hurting the viewing experience.
Admittedly, I don't keep strict track of these things, but I'm not sure I can remember a time when GH was this clumsily dull across the board. There's usually something I can point to as a silver lining or a glimmer of hope that better days are on the horizon, but right now, this show really doesn't have much of anything going on. We know change can come abruptly on GH, so there's always a chance that things will pick up quickly; in the meantime, however, this column keeps getting harder to write.
What's really worth saying about current happenings in Port Charles? Let's find out together.
How Long Does It Take to Hold an Auction, Anyway?
Imagine, if you will, that you're reading a book about the rise and fall of a mafia kingpin — one who fell under the sway of organized crime while he sought refuge from an abusive home, consolidated his own power through a series of brutal moves against his enemies, and managed to hang onto his territory while suffering deep personal loss and narrowly cheating death or imprisonment for decades. When that character finally walks away from the mob, do you envision that happening easily, all at once, with absolutely no consequences? Or would you consider such an outcome the result of unbelievably inept storytelling?
We all knew that pretty much any storyline that dared to take Sonny and/or Jason out of the mob couldn't help but be underwhelming. After all these years of buildup, whatever the writers came up with was bound to disappoint somebody. That being said, I have a hard time imagining anyone at all being entertained by what we're watching right now.
In order to be truly satisfying, any Sonny exit story really had to come with a lot of pain and suffering for him. I don't say that because I loathe the character, although I do; I say it because GH spent a really long time building extremely high stakes for this type of story. For years, his status as a leading-man protagonist who's also a murderous criminal has twisted the show into a series of progressively more awkward knots, and a good storyline would have devoted time and effort into untying them. Instead, the writers simply cut them — as if by magic, Sonny is now just an ordinary businessman, ta da.
I'm grumbling about this, but I have to admit that we all knew it had to go something like this. The show has treated Sonny with kid gloves for a very long time, insisting that everyone around him treat him like the father and philanthropist of the century. He's never allowed to lose, and this was never going to be an exception; by all appearances, he's walking away from the organization with all of his assets, which he intends to rinse through Sidwell's about-to-be-auctioned-off holdings, easy peasy. The characters who are supposed to at least nominally be opposed to this type of thing — Dante, Anna, and Laura among them — are so relieved that Sonny's finally going straight, they don't even care how it happens.
To an extent, I share those feelings. Sonny and Jason leaving the mob is such a huge net positive for GH — at least in theory — that I can't be bothered to get upset about the writers pissing away a great story to get there. This is an absolute bungle on their part, but whatever; the important thing is that the moral rot at the heart of the show might finally stand a chance of being surgically removed.
What I'm having a harder time with is the absolute lack of drama surrounding any of this. Instead of being a homicidal criminal who now has to face whatever bad guy is waiting to step into the void following Sidwell's arrest, Sonny is now a businessman who has to face his competitors for Sidwell's assets. I think it's worth noting that this setup isn't without intriguing possibilities — I mean, what if Sonny entered the world of legitimate business, only to discover it's even more cutthroat than organized crime? — but they aren't being explored here, at least not yet. Instead, we're being led down the well-worn path toward yet another showdown between Port Charles' most infamous criminal and someone who we're supposed to think is even worse.
That someone is, of course, Drew Cain. In the immediate aftermath of Sidwell's arrest, we were led to believe that Sonny would have to outmaneuver Drew and Valentin to strip SRE Worldwide for parts, but it looks like Valentin has bigger plans, some of which include angling for a way back in at ELQ. For now, the focus is squarely on Sonny vs. Drew, which strikes me as the least interesting option.
A lot of this has to do with how plot-driven it all is. If you think about it, Sonny and Drew have never really had much of a relationship at all. There's animosity between them, but it mostly stems from Sonny's self-righteousness and Drew's habit of hurting people Sonny cares about. Not much of a trigger, in other words, for Drew to emerge from his locked-in state and declare that Sonny is Enemy No. 1.
As he told Martin last week, Drew's reason for this is that everyone who's ever "come after" him is connected to Sonny, so in order to get payback, he needs to "cut the head off the snake." This is very stupid, but not nearly as dumb as the machinations the writers have resorted to in order to put Sonny and Ava violently at odds again. Mere weeks after he paid Ethan to protect her from Sidwell, Sonny has declared Ava a "cancer" that needs to be cut out of Invisible Avery's life — a rather run-of-the-mill insult/threat between the two of them, and yet one that has thrown Ava into a dead panic and sent her running into an alliance with Drew.
I thought watching Sonny whisper at Turner was unpleasant, but I have to admit that I'd choose that over any of this.
But here we are, subjected to day after day of Sonny telling someone that he's gone legit, followed by Drew telling either Ava or Martin that he's going after Sonny. Rinse, repeat. We ended last week with Ava slipping Brennan a mickey so he'd be incapacitated while Drew searched his hotel room for the evidence Brennan's holding against him — but Drew's plans were waylaid when Laura approached him with Sonny, saying she wants to play peacekeeper between them.
Is this supposed to be exciting? Or interesting? Because it's neither.
Meanwhile, even if they refuse to put Sonny through the type of painful personal sacrifice that should go with his exit from the mafia, the writers have Jason standing right there, going through his own personal hell, and they're choosing to ignore it. Aside from a couple of bad dreams on the flight back from Jakarta, Jason's post-WSB PTSD has barely been glanced at, and it really ought to be a major component of this story. I get that the show can only focus on so many things at once, but this is just a really clumsy mistake. Pulling Jason out of the mob needs to be more than having him play softball and insist "I'm fine" every couple of weeks. The character deserves to really grow as a result of his trauma, and the audience deserves to see it happen.
"This Ends Now." If Only
I was kind of excited when Michael blackmailed Willow into moving back to the gatehouse, because of all the potential for head-butting and horn-locking created by putting the two of them back in close proximity. Leave it to GH to squander all that with weeks of characters standing around talking about the situation.
The animosity between these two is strong narrative fuel, but the writers have chosen to keep them mostly apart, and instead fill the tank with endless conversations involving other characters. Last week, Tracy showed up at the gatehouse to sass Willow, which was entertaining enough, but it mainly served as the prelude to several days of Willow plotting against Brennan and Michael while Nina tried in vain to get her to cool it. We closed things out with an episode partly devoted to Willow whining about being under Michael's thumb while Chase offered a shirtless shoulder for her to cry on.
As Nina pointed out, antagonizing Brennan is a very stupid thing for Willow to do — and to do it by recording him threatening to expose her for a crime she committed is stupider still. It's purely plot-driven and makes no sense at all; the only reason it's happening is to cast doubt around the identity of Brennan's killer as we're dragged unwillingly toward what appears to be his inevitable demise. (That sound you heard as Nina screamed at Brennan in front of a crowded Metro Court Gardens was the clang of an anvil dropping.)
The sole spark in the midst of all this — and really, the only significant source of entertainment for me throughout last week — is the suddenly open animosity between Alexis and Willow. After Kai went to Alexis to tattle on Willow for threatening to frame him for Drew's shooting, Alexis marched over to Willow's office and promised to expose her if anything happened to Kai or Trina. Badass Alexis is always more entertaining than neurotic Alexis, and that absolutely proved to be the case here: Willow tried to deflect, prevaricate, cajole, and make threats of her own, but Alexis wasn't having any of it. Of course, we have absolutely no reason to think Alexis will actually stick to her guns, but in the moment, it was still fun to watch her list the things she'd do to Willow — including taking away her kids and ruining her political career "for fun" in the bargain — if she didn't straighten up and fly right.
And that, dear reader, is basically all the news that's fit to print from last week. Like I said, things can turn on a dime with GH, so there's always the chance that our next five episodes will be full of all sorts of soapy treats. For now, though, I'm ready to fire off some bullets and forget last week ever happened. See you next time!
- Jason agreed to think about putting in a good word for Valentin at ELQ
- Laura appointed Ezra acting mayor during her trip to Ireland, and then yelled at him for having the audacity to suggest that he, Anna, and Turner could team up to take Sonny down
- Valentin tried to talk Anna down after watching her have a flashback-induced panic attack
- Lucas and Fitzpatrick realized they both signed the lease on the apartment and decided to move in together… "temporarily"
- The WSB assigned Joss to take the CEO position at JJE, and after Joss told Hudson she was accepting the job, he placed a call to a mystery individual, promising to make her change her mind
- Obrecht told Britt she's been asked not to visit James in Australia because Maxie sees her as a reminder of Cassius, which is supremely rude
- For no real reason, Ric and Lulu appear to actually be friends now
- Everyone played cornhole
- After volunteering together at one of Port Charles' free clinics and making me wistfully wonder whatever happened to the GH medical van, Isaiah and Tristan had a weird conversation about the "moral relativism" of the WSB
- The writers trolled us hard by having Emma tell Gio that being a WSB agent was her dream as a kid, and then having Gio tell her she would have been a great one
- Brennan tried talking to Felicia about Anna's mental state, but Felicia wasn't having any of it
- Sonny held a barbecue on his teeny tiny back porch, attended by Turner, who brought a crate of cupcakes even though she thought she'd been invited to a regular old dinner
- Drew dashed Scout's dreams of fish tacos; later, she made hungry eyes at Rocco
- Chase told Molly that he wants to dig into Curtis and Jordan's accident so the Ashfords can have closure
- Ric saw Elizabeth wiping ketchup off Dante's cheek, but refrained from giving in to his jealousy
- Pentonville's warden told Curtis that his past in law enforcement makes him a target in prison, so he's being transferred to a special area for high-risk inmates
- After getting Michael to take his shirt off at the pool and being accused by Nina of being a sex worker, Serena was officially hired as Deception's new, uh, creative director or something
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