Dearest readers, I know it's been a few weeks since you have seen me. My husband and I went on a bucket list cruise that started here in Florida, went through the Panama Canal, and then went on to our beloved San Diego, with stops everywhere in between. It was an absolute delight... right up until we got COVID.
I allowed myself to forget about COVID. Can you imagine? I was just jaunting around the world, having a blast like it was the pre-COVID days, without a care in the world and then, COVID reminded me it was still out there.
At any rate, I am home, safe and sound, and have few regrets. I am convinced I got it either from a tequila factory tasting in Mexico on my last port stop, or at my own home church in San Diego on Easter. The odds are 50/50 either way. I'm thankful we are both vaccinated and only had mild cases.
But back to Port Charles. Without streaming access for weeks, I had to binge the two soaps I write about, General Hospital and The Young and the Restless. I mentioned in my Y&R column from last week that when you sit and watch multiple episodes at once, patterns emerge. On Y&R, the pattern was that all the women in Genoa City are unstable and on the edge of mental breakdown.
Thankfully, GH is just the opposite. The women on GH are strong, passionate, and full of fire; they can hold their own and can kick your ass if you mess with them. I much prefer that to the fragile damsel in distress vibes over in Genoa City.
Think about the powerhouse females in Port Charles -- Carly, Nina, Sam, Ava, Jordan, Lois, Brook Lynn, Maxie, Lucy, Tracy, Laura, Liz, Anna, Alexis, Stella, Josslyn, Trina, Portia, Diane, even gentle Willow, and the formerly fragile Sasha are all women who can hold their own and are in control of their lives. No one puts any of them in a corner.
I can love them or hate them on any given date, time, or plot, but I never doubt their ability to be a hero when the situation calls for it. They are fierce and fabulous, and I am thankful to the GH writers who see their power and give them opportunities to use it.
The other pattern that has emerged is that things are topsy-turvy right now, and I think that's by design. The new writers are flexing their muscles and doing unexpected things.
Like Drew and Nina. Nina had the audacity to approach Drew to help her get back into good graces with Michael and Willow. What? The woman who got him sent to prison asked for a favor. And what did she want? She asked Drew to put her on the Aurora board so Michael would have to deal with her. So dumb. Why would Drew ever consider helping someone who had him put in prison? Why would he hire her back at Crimson? Why would he have anything at all to do with her? Even though he is discouraged that Carly loves Jason more than him, why would he partner with a sworn enemy? He's all over the place right now.
Readers, I don't know which bargain basement place Drew is buying his clothes, but I think he needs to buy a Buttoneer to reinforce his shirt buttons. If you think they don't exist anymore, you are wrong, I just bought one. Nina's gentle tug caused all Drew's buttons to pop off, and he was shirtless in an instant. And when his shirt came off, of course that meant Nina and Drew had to have desk sex immediately.
Why on earth would Drew sleep with the woman who blew the whistle to the SEC and landed him in prison? Is that a turn-on? I don't know, but this pretty much just assured that she and Sonny are never, ever, ever getting back together. I would rather see Drew with Liz, or for him to be there for Sam and Scout when Lulu wakes up (assuming she ever will), or for Kim to come back to town and tell him he has another kid. (Yeah, I know it was supposedly Julian's kid, but he's dead, so I will pretend to forget.)
Drew and Nina's sex can't really be categorized as revenge sex because what are they getting revenge for? Carly did not sleep with Jason nor cheat on Drew. Drew preemptively broke up with her because he knew somewhere in the future, Carly would choose Jason over him. It was insecurity, and Drew's choice wasn't Carly's fault. Nina asked Drew if he'd been fantasizing about her all along. He said yes; he'd been fantasizing about her going to prison and losing everything she had, like she'd done to him. But he slept with her, anyway. Gross.
I pity Cynthia Watros. She is so lovely and such a fantastic actress, but the writers write for Nina as if they hate her. Let's compare Nina to Ava. Ava is a flawed character, she has both darkness and light inside of her. Sometimes Ava makes terrible decisions, but we always root for her and feel for her because she's conflicted. We see Ava wrestle with the bad things she does. We see Ava's conscience.
But Nina is written as a bulldozer, wrecking everything for no reason. She never has any remorse for her behavior until she is caught. We never see those quiet moments of reflection where Nina wrestles with the fallout of what she has done. We've never seen Nina weep over the fact that Sonny's kids grieved for him -- Kristina is so nice to her, and I want Nina to say, "I am so sorry that I let you think your daddy was dead for a year, that must have been awful for you." But I'm not holding my breath.
Again, this week, Nina happened to see Carly in a hotel room with a shirtless Jagger (who I know is going by John now, but for the sake of my column, I shall call him Jagger) and immediately jumped to the worst conclusion and blabbed to everyone she saw that Carly was sleeping with Agent Cates. Didn't she not notice the black eye and bruises all over him? Did she think Carly was that wild in bed that she injured Jagger so badly? She didn't care if it was true. She didn't care who it hurt. She's just mean.
Nina is written to be so vindictive and petty -- she wants everyone to keep her secrets, but she can't wait to blab everything she knows about others to try to blow up their lives. Remember Willow and T.J.?
I hoped the new writers would fix Nina, but I have seen zero evidence of that so far. Her constant fighting with Alexis, going to a man she put in prison and demanding that he help her get her daughter back, and her never-ending war with Carly where she's always screeching make her unbearable to me.
I am rooting against her. I want nothing good for Nina. I know some of you are Team Nina. I don't really understand why, but we can agree to disagree, because, after all, this is a soap. If you have any reason to like Nina other than you hate Carly, I'd love to hear it. I don't care what happened to Nina 30 years ago. I do not subscribe to the belief that if bad things happened to you when you were young that it gives you a free pass to be an ass the rest of your life.
Lack of compassion? Not at all. It's because I know people who have suffered enormous tragedies, abuse, grief, accidents, illnesses, etc., in life and then turned their life around and become wonderful people who don't exist to make everyone else miserable. I want to love Nina again, the way I loved old Nina with Valentin. I want to adore her. Please write her in such a way that I can see the shiny part of her again.
For a while, I was hopeful that Valentin and Charlotte were going to come back into Nina's life, but that was dropped, and instead, we discovered that our precious love Valentin, apple of my eye, is heading up Pikeman and switching out Sonny's meds. I'm crushed. Oh, please, don't make me hate my soap crush, dear writers, I am begging you.
While the writers try to make Valentin a villain, they are working to make Willow into a true angelic heroine and placing her in the old Lila role. I can appreciate this idea in theory, but I have a few problems with the execution. First, Willow is far too young to become the wise matriarch of the Q family. Tracy is rightly in that role and should stay there until Jane Elliot wants to retire. Now, if Tracy takes Willow under her wing and shows her how to be a Lila, that's a storyline I would wholeheartedly embrace. Second, Lila was effortlessly kind and forgiving of everyone, and Willow has a bit of her mother's vindictive streak and can be cruel when she's backed into a corner. If they want to Lila-fy Willow, they need to erase that part of her character and make her always be a kind and gentle lady, no matter what.
Dear readers, this is my first opportunity to say how happy I am to have Steve Burton back on GH and to see Jason Morgan on my TV again. Oh, how I love him. He is such a welcome sight to me. When Jason asked Sonny, "Are you on your meds?" I realized how much I missed someone who speaks hard truths to Sonny.
Of course, Sonny thinks he is on his meds and is unaware that his dosage has been altered. Many people speculated that Ava was the one who switched his meds, but this week, we discovered that was not the case. As Ava rifled through Sonny's drugs, looking for something to help her sleep, she popped some of his pills, only to realize they did nothing. First off, since when doesn't vodka work for Ava anymore? A stuff martini has always been her medicine of choice.
But after what happened with Morgan, I cannot imagine a scenario where Ava would mess with anyone's meds again. She and Sonny may not see eye to eye, but he's Avery's dad, and I can't envision her putting Sonny in danger for any reason. People keep mentioning the side eye Kristina gave Ava for giving Sonny booze, but Ava is a functioning alcoholic who drinks all day long, so I doubt she would see Sonny having a cocktail or two as a red flag. Does Ava even know Sonny shouldn't drink with his meds? I don't know. But I don't think she's trying to harm him. Seduce him? That's another story.
Ava told Nina she would help Nina get Sonny back, but I think either A) Ava has decided she wants Sonny for herself and Avery, or B) she's been playing the long con with Nina all this time and has never been her friend and is going to sleep with Sonny just to stick it to Nina, the woman who tried to steal her baby. I'd be happy with either of those.
If you consider the fact that Ava has basically been on her own since Julian died, I imagine that being at Sonny's with Avery and having a co-parent and some company, not to mention round-the-clock guards, might be a welcome change. I can see Ava wanting to keep the good situation she has landed herself in. But I do not believe she is messing with Sonny's meds, period.
How long will it be before Jason, Ava, or Carly realizes that Sonny isn't himself and discovers that he's about to go off the deep end? So, Valentin is willing to make Sonny lose his mind so he can ship weapons on Sonny's docks? I dislike this storyline for Valentin. I would prefer to see him as a dad trying to help Charlotte break free of Victor's brainwashing, even with Nina's help, than to be a full-on villain. Of course, it's possible that James Patrick Stuart is considering leaving GH, since he has a Disney show and other projects, but I hope not.
Seeing Anna and Valentin together this week and watching him lie to her face hurt me. Do you remember how perfect Vanna was for a minute? This storyline makes me question their entire relationship. Was Valentin always working behind her back?
Another wrong that I hope gets righted soon is the lack of Spencers. I hope that Laura gets some of her family back. Lulu is in an endless coma, Lucky went to Ireland and never comes home to visit, and Nikolas is in prison and his mom never visits him. Spencer is presumed dead -- why is the once strong Spencer family whittled away to nothingness? If you must recast, then recast. You have two Lulus to choose from and a plethora of Luckys and Nikolases to choose from.
I hate to think of recasting Spencer, but if Nicholas A Chavez is on the movie star path now and never coming back, recast him, too. Laura deserves more as the reigning queen of daytime than being Ace's caregiver and having Heather Webber as a bestie. Please give her back her family. I want to see Laura get the call that Lulu is awake from her coma. I want to see Lucky come home to visit. I want Nikolas' lawyer to find some loophole that gets him sprung from prison. Maybe he could free Liz from Finn.
But let's park on Heather for a minute. I love Alley Mills as Heather, but I don't know if I am down with the "She didn't mean to kill all of those people the last 30 years because of a hip implant." I was trying to recall her first evil deed, and it was decades ago, long before she had any joints replaced. To verify my suspicions, I dug out my GH history book and found that all the way back in 1980, prior to any aging joints, Heather was faking catatonia and slipping in and out of the psychiatric hospital to stalk her husband and his girlfriend. I'll say that date again...1980. So, any cobalt poisoning Heather has recently experienced can't erase her four decades of crazy behavior and various crimes. On this topic, I am on Team Portia. Heather needs to be locked up.
Readers, on Friday's episode, when Jason called Diane and said, "Do I have enough money to..." I was sure he was going to say, "buy Sonny out of his half of Corinthos Coffee." But alas, I was wrong. Instead, Jason wants to get the Metro Court back for Carly. Sweet. Diane got Nina down from 15 percent over market value to nine percent in about three minutes, but now Nina is probably going to make him beg for it or try to blackmail him into talking to Willow and Michael for her. If I were Willow and Michael, I would play this game every time and pretend to speak to Nina until my friends got what they wanted, and then stop talking to her again immediately after the transaction was final.
I really think Michael and Willow need to find a new place to dine, or at least wait until Carly is the co-owner of the Metro Court again before they return.
Honestly, I am happy to see the new writers righting some wrongs. Alexis is going to be a lawyer again. Hallelujah. Carly is going to get her hotel back. Hallelujah. Both plot points make me happy. You know what would be fun? If Sasha told Carly, she wanted to run Bobbie's for Carly instead of being a model. Sasha and Cody could be our two down-to-earth people -- Cody working as a stable hand and Sasha running a diner and both happy as clams, living a quiet, low-key life together. I would genuinely love to see that.
Carly went to see Jason with the papers Diane dropped off for him and confessed that she had played nurse to Agent Cates. Since Nina is in blabbing mode, they realize that it won't be long until Sonny hears that Carly was seen with a shirtless Jagger, which will probably make him throw a glass decanter at the wall.
Readers, please don't hate me, but I liked the vibes that Carly and Jagger had together. I can't imagine Carly getting involved with the man who is forcing Jason to work undercover for him, but I can imagine her liking him enough to ensure that he doesn't get killed. I think Jagger, after experiencing Carly's kindness, will come to understand why Jason is so willing to put his life on hold to save Carly.
I love Laura Wright. She has chemistry with everyone. Every scene she is in is better for her presence there. And I know some of you think Carly is involved in too many plots, but if I was a writer and I had Laura Wright at my disposal, I would write her into everything, too. GH has several ladies on canvas like that; Maura West, Genie Francis, and Jane Elliot spring to mind. They make every scene they are in burst with life. I can't decide how the writers are going to play this. Will Carly end up with Jason, Drew, Jagger, Sonny, or no one?
Drew's partner Curtis is having a very good week. His surgery worked, and he is beginning to get out of his wheelchair and stroll around town again. Huzzah. But where is Trina for the family celebration? Two weeks ago, we got some powerful scenes of Trina at Spencer's grave and with Josslyn, but then she vanished again. I am afraid that with Nicholas Chavez off canvas, Trina will be relegated to the background, and I don't want that for her. I keep hoping that my favorite couple will get their reunion eventually and that they are just biding their time until Mr. Chavez is available again.
Across town, Laura and Kevin have a heart-to-heart about caring for Spencer's brother, Ace, and what it means to take on a baby at this stage in their lives. I am the same age as Laura, and I can say flat out I would not want to take care of a baby at my age. Or at any age. I have never wanted to take care of a baby ever in my life. Thankfully, I married a man who had two daughters who were past the baby stage, so now I get to have grandkids without ever having had kids. Yay for me.
Also, I am really looking forward to Chase and Brook Lynn's wedding. They are the sweetest couple, and I have loved them since they were co-parenting Bailey Lu together. I hope their wedding happens and doesn't turn into some mob shoot-out, but with this being GH, it's hard to imagine a normal, drama-free wedding.
And now, a disclaimer -- although I focused a lot on the ladies of GH, I love many GH men, too. But right now, I can't tell the heroes from the villains. Currently Dex, Sonny, Jason, Jagger, Valentin, Michael, and Drew are all in play. Finn, Chase, Dante, Curtis, T.J., Cody, and Gregory all seem solid. Who knows? By my next column, perhaps it will be clearer.
What will happen tomorrow, dear readers? Will Maura West give me her hairstylist's number so I can get that cute new hairdo of hers? Will Marshall and Stella have drinks to discuss their kiss and all the advice they are doling out to the young people of Port Charles? Will Brook Lynn and Chase really get to honeymoon in Florence on a location shoot like the old days, or will they just put a pizzeria set up at ABC studios? Will Lucy apologize for botching the Deception TV spot on Home & Heart? Will Tracy get her heart's desire and be Gregory's date for the wedding now that Alexis canceled on him?
Only tomorrow knows, dear readers, and I will tune in tomorrow as long as there are tomorrows.
Tamilu
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