General Hospital Turns Thirteen (Thousand)

When 2013 began, my daily television diet consisted of The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and the same-day rerun of Days of our Lives courtesy of SoapNet. By the end of the year, I had picked up General Hospital and dumped the other three, though I did watch several episodes of Days just before SoapNet (RIP) went dark.  What happened, you may wonder?  GH was the only soap that was any fun to watch.  Y&R began to lose core cast members like rats fleeing a sinking ship, while adding so many new characters and recasting others that my mute button got a serious workout.  B&B senselessly killed off Steffy and Liam’s baby and wrote out Hunter Tylo in order to shove yet another Hope-centric triangle down our throats.  And Days, while well-written, has too much Sami and EJ for my taste.  If you’re a fan of their pairing, bully for you.  The only DiMera I like is Lexie, and she’s currently not acting outside the Salem Cemetery.

Let me get the fan boy routine out of the way before I begin:  I love Genie Francis.  Loved her as Laura, loved her as Diana Colville, and loved her as Genevieve Atkinson.  I would follow her to the gates of Soap Hell and back.  My main impetus for returning to GH, a show I had watched in the glory days of 1994 and 1995, was the return of Laura Spencer.  While Laura’s return was ultimately something of a disappointment—she was gone by Thanksgiving—there was something nice about seeing her back in Port Charles again, going on another fool adventure with Luke and battling the Cassadines like the good old days (which occurred before I was born).  General Hospital also celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a two-day marathon on SoapNet, which aired episodes from the very beginning.  To finally see Luke and Laura’s wedding, and the first meeting and wedding of Frisco and Felicia, and to revisit young Brenda, Jax, Jason, AJ, Ned, Lois, Jagger, and Miguel—not to mention Bobbie and Tony—was a real treat.  I only wish I’d been able to record the entire thing and save it for posterity.  Soaps used to be about romance, adventure, heartaches, healing, and overcoming challenges.  Nowadays they are more often than not about heartache and suffering, with little happiness and even less romance.

The reason GH remains on my viewing schedule throughout its fiftieth season is the skillful way the writers balance the tone of their storylines.  While Dante and Lulu were devastated over losing their baby in a custody battle, elsewhere in Port Charles Robin was being reunited with her loved ones.  The circumstances surrounding Connie’s death have played out a mystery for months (though most viewers undoubtedly know that “AJ” stood for “Ava Jerome”, right?)  The show isn’t perfect, of course—not every storyline works, but enough of them do to matter.  A perfect example can be found in the two episodes of Y&R that CBS aired last Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day; both were from 1998 and featured characters such as Katherine (how we miss thee) and Jill, Brad and Jack, Ryan, Victor and Nikki (in saner days), Nick and Sharon (our beloved Shick) and were masterworks of pacing and drama.  But said episodes also featured Jennifer Gareis.  You win some, you lose some.

GH’s anniversary coincided with a revival of the Nurse’s Ball, a 90’s staple that had been tossed onto the trash heap when the show decided to venture into much-too-dark-for-daytime territory.  Viewers got to see Frisco, Bobbie, Brenda, Jax, and Noah Drake return to the canvas briefly, along with the presumed-dead Stavros Cassadine.  Bobbie is still in town visiting, and Felicia and Mac were reunited in marriage.  Nikolas, Lucy, Kevin, and Scotty have also taken up permanent residence in town once again.  Robert sadly came and went, but Anna and Duke are here for the long haul.  To see old friends and new ones interact is what soap opera is all about—multigenerational storytelling that is shared through families and loved ones, passed down from others to us.  Many of those with whom I watched soaps in my formative years passed on a long time ago.  Even lapsed soap fans felt a piece of their life ripped away from them when the Guiding Light was dimmed and As the World Turns stopped.  I still think Days of our Lives is one of the best ever at fully integrating its cast—Maggie Horton and Caroline Brady are tentpoles and beacons for their family and friends, much in the way Dr. Tom and Alice Horton were for much of the show’s first thirty years.  Alice remained an important figure through 2007, and the Hortons are still, in my mind, one of the quintessential soap families.  While GH has sadly said goodbye to the elder Quartermaines Edward and Lila, I wish there could be more interaction between Monica and her grandchildren, Michael and Danny.  While Danny may not be a blood relation, Monica’s connection to Jason is unbreakable even by death.

But I’ve gone off on a tangent.  We’re here to talk about GH’s 13,000 episode.  Now that’s an accomplishment.  We begin our day at the MetroCourt, where Sonny has moved his “coffee importing business” to Connie’s old office.

Sean begins to thell Sonny who has been bankrolling the Jeromes.  My suspicion is that it’s Ric Lansing.  It helps that I’ve been following Rick Heart on Facebook for several years now, so if my guess is wrong, I’ll just blame him!  But these things must be drawn out for at least forty minutes, and I can see that even Sonny is growing frustrated.  Sean mentions something about dummy corporations and Sonny immediately blames the Quartermaines.  Then Sean mentions Barrett Enterprises which is meaningless to me.  We learn that Brenda inherited this corporation and it was apparently run by her sister.  I only remember the highpoints of Brenda and her love stories, but not her backstory.  Sean then tries to convince Sonny to call Brenda, and we go through a brief sojourn back to the Nurse’s Ball last year.   After a brief chat with his soul mate, Sonny tells Sean that majority interest in the corporation has been sold.  But we don’t know to whom!  Stay tuned…

Alexis and Julian play with Danny.  Despite their sordid history—or perhaps because of it—these two have a palpable chemistry, and share an obvious mutual attraction.  Still, Alexis’s reluctance is understandable—the revelation that Sam is Julian’s daughter meant that all three of her children were the spawn of mob kingpins.  Love in Port Charles only seems to run in one direction.  Julian tries to leave, but he and Alexis are magnetized to each other.  Kissing ensues.  Before Alexis can rip Julian’s all-black outfit from his well-defined body, a knock comes at the door.  Rafe alert!  Rafe alert!  Looks like he’s going to c*ckblock two relationships tonight.  Anyway, they leave Rafe to look after Danny while they flee toward the hotel in search of Molly’s chastity.  Poor Daniel Edward Morgan—he’s being tossed from sitter to sitter while Sam and Si take their show on the road.  Fast forward to the end of the episode, where there’s a knock at the door.  Hey, there’s Ric Lansing!  I nearly freaked out.  Nice to see you back on daytime, Mr. Hearst.

Elsewhere Ava meets with Carlos.  With Ava and Julian on the outs due to her relationship with Morgan, Ava is trying to surmise who is backing their organization.  She doesn’t know who the money man is?  Interesting.  Ava and Julian work together for the “greater good”, but they clearly don’t work together very well.  Interesting family dynamic going on between those two.

AJ hangs out in the cemetery, drinking himself into oblivion.  His imbibing conjures Connie’s ghost/aura/spirit/image/apparition.  The Connie rendered by AJ’s subconscious is actually a bit more fun than the late, lamented Real Thing.  She was a perfectly enjoyable character, but DID has a limited shelf life on soap unless Erika Slezak is playing the role.  But I’m just happy to see Sean Kanan on the screen, which hasn’t been the norm over the past several months.  Storylines cross paths when AJ stumbles from the cemetery to the Floating Rib, where he begins to interrogate Ava.  Carlos tries to remove AJ from the vicinity, but Ava defuses the situation.  Then she tells AJ he reeks of vodka.  Oops.  AJ keeps trying to get at the truth about Connie’s murder, while Ava threatens to tell Michael what she saw on the surveillance tapes.  The footage she conveniently destroyed, of course.  Ava is a femme fatale, people—they can’t be trusted with the truth!  AJ gets aggressive and Carlos drags him outside. When Carlos returns to the table, the truth emerges:  a convenient trip into Ava’s mind shows that after AJ stumbled out of the Crimson Publishing offices, Connie was still alive and well.  Hmm.

Michael and Kiki.  Can I just say that “Kiki” is the Worst Soap Name ever?  Either of her given names, “Lauren” and “Katherine”, would be preferable.  But names don’t even matter in this case, because these two just don’t have it.  The actors may have it, but the characters are dramatic dead weight when blissfully happy.  The drama involving Kiki, Franco, John McBain—er, Silas—is the only interesting thing to happen to this duo in MONTHS.  Michael wants Starr—er, Kiki—to apologize.  She’s too busy babysitting Rafe, though, so she’s not going home with Michael tonight.  You win some, you lose some, buddy.

Another bout of Molly/TJ/Rafe has broken out.  Molly and TJ don’t really work for me, in the same way that young soap love so rarely works these days.  I haven’t seen a teen pairing on soap in the past ten years that worked.  I suppose it would be hard to recapture a Holden/Lily, or Nick/Sharon, or Philip/Beth story nowadays.  Anyway, the young lovers have checked into the MetroCourt and been given a sermon by Olivia on how to be safe.  I’ve determined that there is no such thing as safe sex on a soap opera.  Even abstinence doesn’t seem one-hundred-percent effective.  They dine on room service.  I don’t know what Molly was drinking, but surely Olivia didn’t send up wine?  Maybe it was sparkling soda.  Afterward Molly and TJ change into their sex clothes.  Don’t get your hopes up, kids.  They are under the covers but still dressed when there’s a knock at the door.  Hey, there’s Alexis and Julian!  And Alexis is giving The Look.

Patrick and Robin drama.  Robin’s return to the show was one of the top soap moments on 2013—maybe the top moment—but the storyline has been somewhat marred by external factors.  Obviously Kimberly McCullough has her own ambitions outside the show and didn’t have to return at all, but chose to give the fans some closure.  And, I mean, she’s been on this show since she was a child.  They couldn’t very well kill Robin.  The storyline is a bit like overcooked spaghetti buried under amazing sauce, or hot fudge dumped atop freezer-burned ice cream.  Everyone’s initial joy was quickly tempered by Sabrina’s pregnancy announcement, Patrick waffling between the two women, and Robin’s decision less than three months later to flee Port Charles to cure Jason.  Are they planning to recast Jason?  I’m sure there are several men out there who could fill the part—I’d put my money on Timothy Adams if he wasn’t New York-based—but fans are often the biggest obstacle in the recast game. Robin tells Patrick she wants one last night together, but Patrick is feeling a different kind of anxiety.  Having to grieve for his wife once, now twice, is doing a number on his psyche.  Finally Patrick submits to his desires and takes Robin to bed.  I hope Rafe doesn’t show up there, too, because then no one would get loved in this episode.  Alas, it goes off without a hitch.  Let the music play, let the clothes come off.  After the love scenes, Robin tells Patrick she will return to him someday, and they will be together again.  Bittersweet, but hopeful.

All in all, a decent episode if not celebratory in an outward way.  It’s clear that there are enough interesting storylines designed to carry the show forward into its fifty-first year, though if Ava keeps shooting people the hospital is going to be overrun with casualties, and I’m not sure Dr. Patrick Drake can be everywhere at once.  Now if they could just bring Laura home again, things would be perfect.  And maybe Stefan Cassadine…

                                                                     Credit:  ABC