Fittingly for Labor Day weekend, this edition of Critical Diagnosis is late because, well, writing this column has become significantly more laborious over the last month or so. Last week's General Hospital wasn't the worst we've seen lately, but after finishing Friday's episode, I was left to wonder — as I so often am these days — "What is there to say about any of this?"
With that in mind and the holiday on the calendar, my thoughts turned to GH's relationship with labor, and how it's changed drastically over the last 25-30 years. The GH of my youth was a lot like television in general at the time, which is to say that its characters typically had jobs that shaped their narrative purpose. Doctors, lawyers, police officers, politicians, waitresses — what the residents of Port Charles did for a living had a lot to do with the plots they were part of, and the stories they helped to tell.
A lot of that has fallen by the wayside over the last several decades, and in some respects, it isn't hard to understand why. Most jobs are at least a little boring much of the time, for starters, and when you're looking for places to find high drama on a daily basis, having to worry about a character's nine to five can be an annoying hindrance. More importantly, though, if a character is anchored to a profession, it can be much more difficult to whip them around the canvas at a writer's whim. To put it another way: I believe jobs are no longer such a major part of characters' identities because the characters themselves aren't meant to have strong identities. Rather than creating and tending to full-fledged fictional beings whose three-dimensional selves propel story, the writers focus on plot to the virtual exclusion of all else, and the characters are little more than pawns meant to be pushed between predetermined points.
I've written a lot in this space about why I think that's a sorry state of affairs, but for today, I want to focus on the labor aspect of the problem. While I'm not holding up the GH of the past as any kind of realistic depiction of anything, I would absolutely argue that knowing what the characters did for work, and occasionally watching them do it, helped enrich the world of Port Charles. I would make the same strong argument for the blend of economic backgrounds that used to populate the show. If I were going to draw up a classic soap canvas, it'd include a handful of wealthy families — ideally, families that have plenty of reasons to dislike and/or plot against each other — surrounded by a mix of middle-class, upper middle-class, and blue-collar characters. Since the late '80s, however, there's been a steady push toward soaps populated by people who seem to do anything but work, and for whom money troubles are never anything more than temporary plot devices.
The Port Charles of today is a place crowded with overnight CEOs, glamorous business owners, and obscenely wealthy people who don't really seem to have what a sane person would consider a career. The last time anyone on this show had to worry about money, it was Ava, and she still wasn't exactly hurting for it. I can understand the impulse toward this type of storytelling, because that lifestyle is probably pretty aspirational for a lot of people, but it doesn't really do the narrative any favors. If everyone is just sort of floating around with enough ready cash to fly halfway around the world at a moment's notice, where do you find your actual stakes?
It's definitely possible to go too far in the other direction, as anybody who slogged through the Eckert era of GH can attest, but that just proves a great show needs balance to thrive. We're so far in the opposite direction now that we actually have an undercover CEO who's barely old enough to drink, and instead of rightly playing it for laughs, the show's treating it like the setup for some serious spy drama.
This Labor Day, as capital continues its long campaign of terror against labor, let's take a moment to consider how GH's perspective on what it means to be a working American has been warped and twisted — and how much richer the show's storylines might be if they were fueled by the actions of characters who live in a world that looks and feels at least a little more like our own. Escapism will always be a huge part of the draw for soaps, but in order for that to work, you need to feel some of what you're escaping from, and at this point, in a number of respects, GH might as well be fully science fiction.
Alas, Poor Brennan! I Knew Him, Horatio
The rumors were true, and there was no last-minute reprieve: After unknowingly downing a ground-up sleeping pill and staggering onto a Metro Court elevator, WSB Port Charles station chief Jack Brennan ended up bobbing facedown in the hotel pool. He was found by Danny and Charlotte, who freaked out and left his body in the water; moments later, he was discovered by Ava and Drew, who freaked out for different reasons, stuffed him in Drew's trunk, and then buried him in an impressively rectangular grave on the plot of land that Monica ceded to the city in exchange for keeping the Quartermaine crypt where it was.
So who killed Brennan? Ava is terrified that this has to do with the sleeping pill Drew had her slip into Brennan's drink, but this is GH, which means we have every reason to believe it'll eventually be revealed that he didn't just stumble into the water and drown. Drew, meanwhile, is already busy framing Nina — during the burial, he lifted Brennan's wallet, and later hid it in her car. He failed to notice Charlotte's bracelet stuck to Brennan's coat sleeve, but that won't stay hidden for long; twice now, Outback has run from the Quartermaine boathouse to Brennan's grave, and it's only a matter of time before she ends up exhuming him, circumstantial evidence and all.
Joss, meanwhile, is in the same position she's been in since joining the WSB, which is to say she's grumpy about being ordered to stay out of a case she feels qualified to help solve. Baines, the new Bureau guy who jetted out to Port Charles after Joss called in Brennan's disappearance, told her that her first and only priority is to run Jasper Jacks Enterprises — specifically in order to gather intel that will somehow be useful to them.
There are plenty of things to dislike about this storyline. I'm not wild about the idea of Nina wailing her way through being framed for murder, first of all; second, I'm truly unhappy about Brennan being used as cheap glue for cementing Drew and Ava's abrupt, fundamentally nonsensical alliance against Sonny. Third, Joss remains impossible to take seriously as a spy. There are, as always, silver linings if you're looking for them: Charlotte's involvement could be an interesting wrinkle, especially now that Valentin suspects Brennan of concocting his own disappearance in order to make him look like a suspect, and I'm also not opposed to the idea of JJE ending up in the WSB's crosshairs for mysterious reasons. There might be something worth waiting for in there, especially if it has to do with Jerry.
For now, I'm mostly just bummed to lose Chris L. McKenna's Brennan, who'd flourished since breaking up with Carly toward the end of the cold fusion saga. I'd been looking forward to seeing where he and Nina went as a couple, and had been really enjoying the light touch McKenna had started bringing to his scenes, particularly when he got to be antagonistic toward Drew. This version of Brennan was such a dud for so much of his existence that it's incredibly frustrating to see the GH writers kill him off like this, just as McKenna was really making the role his own.
Anyway, Brennan is dead, Outback is on the case, and Ava picked up a Lone Star tick while digging the grave, which means that Isaiah has to call the CDC since one of those has never been seen in Port Charles. I wonder if anyone is actually excited about any of this?
On Mount Emerson, No One Can Hear You Scream
We ended the week with Anna aiming a gun at a wide-eyed Britt, who showed up at Anna's secret Mount Emerson hideaway believing she was there to get some information about Cassius. Instead, she found herself standing on a murder tarp, confronting her own mortality (again).
This isn't a threat we're meant to take seriously. Tristan overheard Britt say "Mount Emerson" when she was on the phone with Anna, and he's already shared this information with Jason; Jason, in turn, called Sonny, who confirmed that he'd sold a parcel of his property to Anna, and also shared that Anna didn't want anybody to know. Jason might be out of the mob — we saw Sonny signing the paperwork last week — but that doesn't mean he's given up his status as the town superman. One way or another, he's bound to foil Anna's plan.
My hunch is that this will mean something other than Anna being caught in the act, simply because it doesn't feel like this storyline's gone on long enough for that type of major reveal. I don't have any feel for what it will mean, but I'm still glad for Friday's developments, if only because it gets us that much closer to the day when we won't have Anna skulking murderously around town with Ghost Peter chirping in her ear.
What's most annoying for me about this storyline — aside from Peter, of course — is that it's obvious the writers are trying, in their way, to ask us to think about the human cost of the work done by an agency like the WSB. There's a lot of solid drama to be unpacked in there, especially if you're using a character like Anna to do it; she's been involved with the Bureau, on and off, for the better part of 50 years, and it's taken a tremendous toll on her.
This is, I think, what the writers were attempting to stab at when they wrote that weird, out-of-nowhere conversation between Isaiah and Tristan, with both of them acknowledging the negative aspects of the WSB, and Tristan offering a limited defense by pointing out the "moral relativism" that comes with making hard choices in order to save lives. I think this is also the point of Joss continually explaining her decision to join and stay with the Bureau; she wants to help people, and she believes that for all its flaws, this job gives her a way to accomplish that.
Again, this is a worthy story. The problem is that it requires degrees of patience, thought, and nuance that GH no longer has. A story like this should be told in order to illustrate — and make the audience think about — the long tail of violence, and how it's a thing that can't really be predicted or controlled once it's set in motion. It's a story that would be even more compelling given the fact that the people inflicting that violence are doing so as agents of the state. They aren't doing it for fun, or for personal gain; they're doing it because of a patriotic impulse, however deluded it might be.
How does a person reckon with being haunted by a past like that, especially when the haunting can take the form of enemies you may not have even known you had, seeking revenge for things you did when you were following orders?
That's the type of story I'd be interested in for Anna. She's the last agent standing from the '80s — a time when the Bureau's dark side wasn't exactly hidden from viewers, but the good its agents did was regularly emphasized. Rather than presenting a two-dimensional cartoon of the WSB as an easily and perpetually corrupted institution worthy only of derision and distrust, the show would have been better off sticking with the Bureau we always knew. It would mean that much more when, after investing decades in the success of its various peacekeeping missions, we were forced to confront the shattering weight carried by a character beloved by generations of viewers.
The real kicker for the scenario I'm imagining would have been Brennan recruiting Emma rather than Joss — and doing it out of desperation rather than expedience. Conflict upon conflict, all built on the type of long-running, generational story that only soaps can provide. If GH really feels the need to continue rehashing old WSB business, that would be the way to do it. Not… whatever this is.
Driving Me Crazy
It took a very long time to happen, but last week, a few of Chase's long-dormant brain cells finally flickered to life. A chance conversation with Emma taught him that Brook Lynn hadn't actually gotten to Charlie's in time for Trina and Gio's debut performance, at which point he realized that Brook Lynn was on the road at the time of the dumbest car accident in recent daytime history; fortunately for everyone who's dead tired of this storyline, he wasted no time in putting his new suspicions to the test.
This all went down during the big Quartermaine Labor Day party, which meant the mansion was packed with people — and whenever that happens, especially lately, you know something big is about to go down. Lucy showed up for the "social event of the season," only to be corralled by Chase, who took roughly four minutes to get her to crumble. Then he went straight to Brook Lynn, who promised to tell him everything about the night of the accident after everyone went home. What neither of them realized was that Trina was standing outside and could hear everything they said — and she also wasted no time in acting on what she'd heard. By the end of the episode, we found ourselves watching yet another shocking confrontation in the Q living room, as Trina stalked in and demanded to know whether Brook Lynn was driving the other car on the night of Curtis and Jordan's accident.
It goes without saying that this storyline is painfully stupid, and the accident itself remains an awfully thin excuse for all the major changes it's been used to catalyze. Having someone nearly die after taking their eyes off the road for a few seconds is the stuff of PSAs, not the basis for a soap's spiraling series of life-altering developments that includes disfigurement, violent assault, and imprisonment. Are we getting ready to add divorce and estrangement to that list?
I have no idea. Splitting up would be the most interesting thing Chase and Brook Lynn have ever done as a couple, but now that they've adopted Phoebe — and we're supposed to care whether Hudson has anything to say about it — it feels like a weird time for them to divorce. Brook Lynn and Gio have been so lovey-dovey with each other lately that I fully expect him to switch back into Mad at Mommy mode for weeks on end, but their relationship is so dull either way that I can't see this having any impact on the show at all.
What would be truly lovely is if Trina decided she wasn't interested in a singing career after all, and decided to take Ava up on her offer to be a partner in the gallery. (I realize I'm far from the only person who's wished for this.) I'm sure that won't happen, and instead, we'll be forced to go along with the writers as they try like hell to squeeze an ounce of drama out of any of this. Maybe Gio and Trina will fire Brook Lynn, putting themselves completely under Simon's control, which will end up making Emma more jealous and also put Trina at increased risk from the stalker?
Don't know, don't care. This whole story, every part of it, has been dead in the water since it started, and not even putting Curtis in the same jail cell as Sidwell will be enough to give it a pulse — especially since it looks like their pairing is destined to be all about Sonny, and how Sonny will send his goons after Sidwell at some point, and how Curtis will be collateral damage because they're cellmates.
That'll do it for this one, folks. Here's hoping the week to come leaves me in a more cheerful mood. Until then, bullets!
- The writers still remember Madeline Reeves
- Laura tried and failed to lecture Drew into abandoning his plan to outbid Sonny for the piers
- Willow and Britt failed the Bechdel test while bonding over drinks at the Metro Court bar
- After getting counsel from his inexplicable new BFF Lulu, a nervous Ric went on a double date with Elizabeth, Portia, and Isaiah
- Trina and Gio had their big showcase at the Cat's Eye, and we actually had some extras show up for the gig
- We are definitely supposed to believe Simon is Trina's stalker
- Danny borrowed Chase's truck without asking and put a ding in it, which meant we had to hear the word "ding" more than we heard "cornhole" the week before
- Gio booked a romantic getaway to Montreal for himself and Emma
- Joss, who remains a comically sloppy WSB agent, was tricked by Carly into admitting she's still on active duty for the Bureau
- Sonny summoned Turner to their sex pad so he could present her with a cornhole championship trophy, and no I am not making this up
- Oh no! Scout and Rocco kissed
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