I'm not a doctor, but I do consider myself knowledgeable about birth and newborns, having created a couple of little monsters of my own, whom I've miraculously managed to raise to adulthood without damaging -- too much. Also, I regularly binge-watch various medical and crime shows, and I have an IQ above a raisin. For those reasons, I can say with complete confidence that in real life, Nelle and Brad's flimsy stories would have fallen apart like tissue paper in a tsunami the minute they opened their mouths.
Let's start with Brad and baby Wiley.
Brad spent some time celebrating and snapping pictures with Alexis and Julian before taking his son home and settling Wiley down in the crib. Brad stepped out of the nursery just long enough to fix a bottle for the baby, but when he returned minutes later, to his utter horror, Wiley had stopped breathing.
I truly did not expect that, but I barely had time to register that the poor baby had died before Brad put the baby in a basket -- a basket! -- and drove to the hospital. However, overcome with emotion along the way, he pulled over. Enter Nelle with her newborn son, Jonah, and the baby switch was on.
Nelle was motivated by a deep desire to stick it to Michael one last time by hiding his son in plain sight while making Michael believe that his son had died, and Brad was motivated by profound grief and desperation, not common sense and science.
That brings me to Nelle's natural woodsy birth.
After leaving Michael stuck in a car leaking gasoline and shooting sparks, Nelle wandered around the forest until she suddenly went into labor. Luckily for her, Liesl happened along and reluctantly agreed to deliver the baby. In the woods, with no medical equipment or a first-aid kit. I have no idea what happened to the afterbirth, but when Nelle walked up to Brad's car, it didn't appear to be wrapped in the bundle with the baby.
I can only presume that Nelle or wolves gnawed it off. I can't see Liesl doing it. I digress, though; it's time to get to the basic science part of this baby switch nonsense.
When Nelle arrived at the hospital, she implied that the baby had been stillborn. She claimed that it had never cried or shown signs of life. That means that the baby wouldn't have had a chance to clear its lungs of fluid before dying.
The baby that Nelle carried into the hospital was born the night before, and while it might have died of SIDS, it most definitely was breathing at one point. He was also fed, bathed, and examined by doctors before he was cleared to go home with Brad. Additionally, his umbilical cord had been cut with a medical instrument and properly clamped because, again, he was born in a hospital, not in the woods. True, Brad has medical experience, but I don't think he could have altered Wiley's umbilical cord enough to fool a medical examiner, and even if he had, there would still be the matter of clear lungs, formula in the baby's belly, fluid in his bladder, and the fact that he likely passed his meconium.
I was stunned when Kim informed Michael and Nelle the following morning that a coroner had listed the baby's cause of death as undetermined. What??? Please, explain to me how a coroner can't tell the difference between a one-day old baby born with medical intervention and a stillborn delivered in the woods by his crazy mama?
And don't even get me started on the odds that Wiley was circumcised.
I'm incredibly disappointed at the lack of attention to detail because this is an important storyline that is going to have far-reaching ramifications for a lot of people, especially Brad and Lucas.
At the Cooper/Jones residence, Brad arrived home with baby Jonah just as Lucas was wondering where his family had disappeared to. Still shell-shocked from his ordeal, Brad handed Lucas the baby, and Lucas gazed adoringly at his new son, oblivious to the fact that the newborn still had bits of amniotic fluid on his little face. I kid you not. I actually paused the scene just to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. They weren't, which made sense, since neither Brad nor Nelle would have had time to properly bathe the child before Brad returned home.
Sam showed up a short time later, and she, too, remained completely unaware that she was holding a child who was just mere hours old and likely in dire need of medical attention. I seriously could not stop thinking of his poor bellybutton. I'm also harping on this because Lucas is supposed to be a doctor, and, like a coroner, he should be able to recognize the difference between an umbilical cord that was cut in the woods or on the side of the road, and one done in the hospital. I don't care how good Brad's field dressings are, they aren't that good.
It quickly became clear to me, though, where this storyline is headed when Sam -- out of the blue -- asked how things were between Lucas and Brad. It was like an anvil dropping from the sky. My hope that Brad would come to his senses was dashed right then and there. Sure enough, Brad remained quiet, and the day ended with Brad and Lucas tucking their son in and going to bed.
Luckily for Brad, he still has one more opportunity to make things right. Friday's show ended with Lucas and Brad arriving at the police station with "Wiley" in tow then encountering a grief-stricken Michael in the squad room. Naturally, Michael's eyes zeroed in on his son.
What Brad does next will make or break his relationship with Lucas.
If Brad confesses that he took Jonah in a moment of weakness and desperation, people will be upset, but everyone will understand and forgive him, especially given Nelle's role in all of it. I doubt anyone would even be interested in pursuing charges against him, especially since he would make a perfect witness against Nelle if she decided to go to trial. Brad can make all of this go away and save his marriage as long as he speaks up, but if he walks out the door with Lucas and "Wiley," then he will have sealed his fate.
That will be the point of no return for Brad and the death knell for his marriage. Lucas will never be able to forgive being put in a position where he was complicit in Michael's pain, even if it's unwittingly. Michael is his nephew, and that baby is Lucas' great-nephew.
Despite the issues I had with the writing, I absolutely loved being vindicated in my harsh assessment of Nelle's character. Every rotten thing that I believed and suspected about her has now been confirmed to be true. She's a murderer and a liar, and her child is merely a pawn in her endless mind games. I can't wait to see where she ends up. My hope is Ferncliff. Maybe she'll get a room next to Mary Pat's.
That would be irony at its finest.
Unfortunately for Nelle, Carly once again escaped the snake pit, and this time, it's for good because Jason is determined to clear her name once and for all. He enlisted Sam and Curtis to help him find out who signed off on the order to give Carly electroconvulsive therapy, but I'm at a loss as to how that's going to help. All that will prove is that she needs to be in a better-run facility. It doesn't clear her name or suggest that she's suddenly cured.
Carly's legal woes aside, things are looking up for her at the safehouse in the woods. Sonny stopped by for a visit, followed by Josslyn, who spent the night with her mom -- eating pizza and chatting -- and even Michael managed to squeeze in a visit to get a hug from his mom. Clearly, Jordan and her crew weren't looking all that hard for Carly because there was enough foot traffic to the cabin that it was starting to look like a Build-A-Bear store on pay your age day.
Speaking of Carly's escape, I want to take a moment to gush about Franco.
I know Franco has his detractors, and that's cool. He's a controversial character who has one of the darkest histories I've ever known. He was a serial killer, and from all accounts, quite a twisted and prolific one. Like most, I was not thrilled with the brain tumor defense, but I was willing to overlook the absurdity of it for the sake of moving forward. It took awhile for me to warm up to Franco, especially with Liz, because she's always been one of my favorite characters.
However, the writing for Franco and Liz has been really good lately. I loved the scene when Franco admitted to Liz that he'd helped Jason rescue Carly because it showed me that he's truly trying to learn from his mistakes, and he's striving to be a better person. He's also learning the value of being honest with his partner and trusting in Liz's love for him.
The trust between Franco and Liz will only continue to grow and strengthen, which can't be said for Griffin and Ava.
Both Ava and Griffin are keeping secrets, and both secrets have the power to destroy their already fragile relationship. Watching them these days is just sad because it's so clear that their relationship is over. Let's face it, it was over the day Griffin was unable to return Ava's declaration of love. I figured if he didn't love her then, after all they'd been through, then it was never going to happen. It's downright tragic that neither is willing to admit the truth and just move on.
To be clear, Griffin doesn't get a free pass on sleeping with Kiki just because he never loved Ava. He doesn't. Griffin owes Ava the truth, and he needs to let go. It's as simple as that, but something tells me that Griffin rather enjoys these moral quandaries because he always seems to find himself stuck in one.
Folks, I'm trying very hard to keep an open mind about Margaux, but it's very hard to do that when she does things like hold onto something as important as that flash drive with Drew's memory mapping, in what appears to be an effort to blackmail Drew into helping her take down Jason and possibly Sonny.
Don't get me wrong, I fully understand her desire to rid Port Charles of the most infamous mob boss in history, but not at the cost of holding a man's past hostage. Why does the victim keep having to make the biggest sacrifices?
Finally, Robert and Finn agreed to team up to find Anna. It's about freaking time. It feels like she's been missing for six months.
As soon as the men shook hands, Robert jabbed Finn with a needle and injected him with a tracking device. And not a minute too soon, because suddenly a henchman was looming menacingly in the hospital corridors. As Robert had predicted, Finn was snatched on his way to the airport, so while Finn was playing his role as dutiful hostage, Robert was checking in on Peter to inform him that it was time for a trip to the Hague.
Except Peter has other ideas. He has information about Patient 1, Patient 2, and the other patients who came before Patient 6. Just as Robert was letting that little bombshell sink in, Finn found himself in a room with two lethal-looking goons informing him that he was there to treat a patient, and just like that, Anna's disappearance took a sinister turn.
I have no idea why, but my mind immediately jumped to Helena Cassadine.
It would not surprise me in the least if all of this memory mapping stuff is an elaborate way for Helena to have cheated death, and we're about to see her rise again in a younger form. Faison was her henchman, and both Drew and Jason had been kept on Cassadine Island throughout the years. As Russian nobility, Cassadines also have ties to Russia and likely to the clinic where Jason was found, and those ties extend beyond Valentin having received his treatment there.
I'm not sure how I feel about a Helena 3.0, because Elizabeth Taylor and Constance Towers are incredibly hard acts to follow. What do you think? Could the writers make it work, or is the storyline headed in a completely different direction?
Best line of the week goes to Liesl when she told Nelle to, "Spread those scrawny legs and push!" I laughed so loud, it startled my dog, Hazel, awake and nearly gave her a heart attack.
Frankly, Jordan is the one who should get fired for Nelle's escape. She should have personally handcuffed Nelle to that bed then made sure that officer understood just how dangerous Nelle was. There should have been two cops on Nelle's door -- she is a confessed-murderer -- and no one should have been allowed entry except under the direct supervision of a police officer.
As far as this Nelle story goes, it is a big joke. I remember when stories like this were [the] good guys vs bad guys. Nelle and Carly are like Bonnie Parker vs Ma Barker. They are both evil manipulative bitches who have ruined lives. Carly is just getting a taste of what she has done to other people. -- Eileen
Nina, a woman who is supposed to be wealthy on a Rockefeller level that even surpasses the Quartermaines, should have an ARMY of lawyers protecting both her interests, and defending her Aunt Liesl, who was CLEARLY not in her right mind when she kidnapped Heiny. -- Scrimmage
Drew was acting like a "Dummkopf" by refusing to go to his HS reunion where he could have gotten many ideas about his past by talking to teachers and fellow students, finding out where and with whom he lived and check it out, Who knows he may have found something or someone who could help him remember some things instead of still waiting for the stupid flash drive to be inserted into his brain which is now being held by DAMargaux. -- Dreyne Smythe
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I love hearing from readers, so please feel free to email me or leave a comment below.
Take care and happy viewing,
Liz Masters
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