I often talk about the writers as though they don't know their asses from their elbows. A lot of that criticism is (richly) deserved, but I want to start off this week's column, I want to acknowledge that I do occasionally feel as though I can see the outlines of a method emerging from their madness. More than anything, I think this regime is dedicated to the belief that in order to put together a good soap story, you have to try and shock the audience as often as possible. I don't necessarily mean "shock" as in "surprise," although that's certainly something they try to pull off when they can. I also mean they place a high value on drama derived from characters doing the messiest things they can imagine.
In and of itself, that isn't a bad thing at all. My beef, as is so often the case with modern General Hospital, comes down to execution: While it's definitely true that soaps thrive on outlandish behavior and/or situations, that gambit's a lot more effective when those choices are grounded in sensible narrative decisions. You're always going to get at least a few fun moments out of chaotically splashy storytelling, but like a sugar rush, it doesn't last long — and when you come down, the results often aren't pretty.
We've seen a lot of those shenanigans from this writing team, and last week's GH was more or less defined by them. On paper, the idea of a retired mafia don becoming the target of his former stepdaughter is appealing, and it isn't hard to understand why the show decided to pit Joss against Sonny. Onscreen, though, this story has never felt anything other than silly, and last week's action highlighted its fundamental issues.
Similarly, on paper, there are real possibilities in the idea of a congresswoman trying to bully a reporter into submission in order to spike a story that could derail her career. Willow and Lulu haven't interacted all that much in recent years, so pitting them against each other has the added benefit of novelty; on top of that, there's an undeniable timeliness to a story about an elected official trying to work the levers of power against a member of the press. Again, though, the way the writers have gone about getting us here is very silly — to the extent that the entire thing is dependent on characters only ever making the dumbest decisions they could possibly make.
In the previous edition of this column, I expressed amazement and optimism in response to the way Lulu's bombshell Sidwell report opened an umbrella over the canvas. I still think we could (and most likely will) get some decent drama out of this situation; it's just that right now, I should feel like I'm on a roller coaster that's inching its way up to the top of the track, and instead, I feel like I'm watching a toddler shake a snow globe because they want to see stuff fly around every few minutes. While things could be worse, they could — and should — also be better.
Going Once, Going Twice
The big development last week was the auction to sell off Sidwell's holdings. In the immediate aftermath of his arrest, there was a lot of chatter about various people eyeing various chunks of his business empire, but in the end, it all came down to the piers.
The auction was, in a word, weird. Ezra was in charge of handling the bids, but the format was unusual — instead of the bidders competing with each other in real time, they all submitted their bids in advance, so all anyone had to do was wait until it was time for the numbers to be read.
I don't know anything about how cities tend to handle selling off criminal assets; maybe this is the way these auctions go in the real world. My hunch is that the writers wanted to do it like this because it was the only way they could have Sonny lose without it looking like anyone in the world actually has more money than him, but regardless of the motivation, it led to one oddly anticlimactic auction.
What's annoying about this is that they set the table for something that could have been a ton of fun. Sonny, Drew, and Valentin were all there, ready to square off, and in a surprise development, Selina and Brad showed up to try and play spoiler. Of course, we all knew Joss was destined to win, but that could have been fun too — at least if everyone had been in the same room, glowering and/or smirking at each other as they ran up the purchase price, trying to rattle the competition along the way. Instead, we just waited most of the episode to watch Ezra tell us what we already knew: Joss, after using some of the dirty tricks she learned in WSB school, rigged the bidding and emerged victorious.
Even the way this was handled felt puzzlingly lame. Instead of making any attempt to ratchet up the tension by making us wonder what might happen or what was really going on, the writers decided to fully show us Joss in action as she sneaked into the Metro Court's super fancy and high-tech new server center and unplugged a single Ethernet cable in order to disable a security feature — only ever referred to as "the security feature," with zero explanation as to what it was actually supposed to do — in order to let Hudson view and beat all the other bids.
There was no suspense in any of this; at best, we felt a little light anticipation while waiting to see how Sonny and Drew would react to being outbid. (Valentin was amused to lose; Brad and Selina, who had a couple of lines each, vanished as soon as the auction was over. What a waste.) In the end, it came down to a little bit of woofing between Ric and Hudson — which was enough for Hudson to acquire an immediate and distractingly deep hatred for Ric — that Joss broke up when she sauntered into the room in her power miniskirt and thigh-high boots to announce herself as the real winning bidder.
There was some drama in this. Like I said, there's potential in the premise powering the beef between Joss and Sonny. But it also highlighted the hole in the middle of the story, which is that no one seems to have any idea how or why Joss buying the piers will have any sort of truly negative impact on Sonny's business. When he gave up the piers to Sidwell, he bought new ones in Rochester, and that switch didn't seem to impact his business at all, so why does he need them now?
If Sonny just wanted the piers back because he was still angry about having to sell them to Sidwell, that would make enough sense on its own. But Joss didn't snipe the auction in order to piss Sonny off, she did it to drive him to financial ruin, and the show hasn't even bothered to try and get halfway to explaining how that's supposed to work. Instead, we got half an hour of people yelling and crying about how the piers are a magnet for crime, and only Sonny knows how to keep the wrong kind of criminal from breaking the law out there.
Now, does Joss know what the hell she's doing? Of course not. Does that mean we want or need to see months on end of people talking about how she needs to be saved from herself? Absolutely not. And it's all the more galling because we know that this is all just a prelude to Joss being forced to apologize to Sonny. I don't think this means all is lost for this storyline, but once again, I find myself perplexed and annoyed by the towering heaps of potential that are being left all over the table.
So Sue Me
The week's other dumb developments revolved around Willow suing Lulu for libel. Like all that business with the auction, it isn't hard to see how these ingredients could be combined to produce some solid soap; again, however, they've been sadly misappropriated to create a runny doofus stew.
The problem with Willow suing Lulu is one that's been pointed out in passing by a couple of characters: If this case goes to court, the discovery process will almost certainly make Willow's life miserable. Willow might be prone to making some pretty bad decisions, but I think she's probably smart enough to understand the risk of pursuing a libel case in response to a newspaper article she knows is true.
This goes back to what I was saying at the top of the column about the writers prioritizing shock over narrative fundamentals. It's fun and soapy to have Willow and Lulu duking it out, and I can understand the impulse to smash them against each other — but before you make that call, you need to lay the foundation for a story that really makes sense. While watching a soap means agreeing to suspend disbelief here and there, you really shouldn't have to ignore the entire basis for a story in order to enjoy it.
That complaining aside, I still think numerous aspects of this storyline are kind of fun. I like Drew deciding to deny the allegations in Lulu's article out of simple vanity and his endless need to spite the Quartermaines, and as I said last time, I also like Lucas and Elizabeth being pulled back into a story that they should have been a bigger part of all along. I like watching Dante grow more suspicious of Willow, while still acknowledging that his ex-wife is a horrendous pain in the ass. I'm even enjoying Fitzpatrick switching into detective mode as he grows ever more convinced that there's a lot more to the story of Brennan's disappearance. There are a lot of things that could pay dividends in here, and if/when that happens, it should be easier to look past some of these glaring flaws. For now, though, that's awfully hard to do.
That's all for the big stuff this week. 'Til we meet again, enjoy your bullets!
- Offscreen, the valet told Drew about Charlotte breaking into his car, thus completely wiping out any of the stakes surrounding Scout potentially tattling to Drew
- Ava savored the delicious irony of Joss, who hates her as much as she hates Drew, doing them both a solid by going after Sonny
- Trina mentioned Spencer while talking with Emma about Gio and Emma moving in together
- Joss sprayed Hudson with champagne, starting the countdown to their apparently inevitable and very unappealing hookup
- Everyone went to Volonino's
- Sonny assigned Ric to find out more about Hudson, a mission Ric got started by breaking into Hudson's gym locker and planting a listening device in his unlocked briefcase
- Mac tried counseling Joss about the cost of pursuing a vendetta against Sonny
- Tracy caught Ned eating a cheeseburger
- Michael flew to Baden Baden with Jordan, leaving Jason in charge of Aurora and Deception
- Brook Lynn cried about Chase and Phoebe
- After hearing about Jason being left in charge, Lucy switched plans, deciding that instead of using Serena to seduce Michael, she should instead use Serena to trick Jason into signing Michael's proxy over to her
- Portia swooned while watching Marshall and Isaiah bond over Coltrane
- Because Chase has no friends anymore, the writers had him unburden himself to Hudson at the gym after he dropped a five-pound weight
- Monet told Curtis she's lining up an interview that will make him look like a hero
- Emma spent a delightful half hour reading Joss for filth; later, Joss told Hudson that Emma made some good points
- After agreeing to represent Lulu, Ric suggested that she try and bluff Willow into backing down
- Lucas gave Fitzpatrick fashion advice and complimented his toned torso
- After Britt ruined the GH staff mixer at the Brown Dog with some absurdly awful behavior, a mystery man bought her a drink
- We ended the week being told to believe Quinn is Trina's stalker, which almost certainly means he is not
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