prefab1

I kind of want the Big Boss to be Brennan, even though that makes no sense. But then again none of this story has made a lot of sense so far, and it's best experienced as a kind of fever dream in the mind of someone who's watched too much Alias.

Pretty good episode today. I loved the Cody and Tracy scenes--those two really bring out the best in each other. And even though they were full of cliches, I enjoyed the Joss and Vaughn scene. He's the first guy I've seen Joss have real chemistry with, and their "undercover" scenes reminded me of the kinds of scenarios the show used to write for its 1980s supercouples like Frisco and Felicia.

The show's definitely not perfect right now (and this past week, there was too much emphasis on the Britt storyline). But the show could be and in fact has been much much worse. I'm not sure that a different regime would actually improve it, especially since some of the most obvious EP and head writer candidates are pretty terrible. For example, I recently watched a YouTube-recommended clip from 2009 (the late Guza era), and I was pretty much appalled on every level. Of course, Jason and Sonny are still doing shady things today, but the show's moral compass doesn't feel completely broken in the way it did back then.

I'm biased because I wouldn't wish Dante on any of the women on the show, not even Brook Lynn. He's constantly scowling and judgemental, and Dom plays him like a man with severe constipation. I'm glad that he and Lulu are apart right now, because I mostly like her, and I don't want to see her tied down to that stiff.

You know who I'm surprised they haven't chem-tested Jason with? Alexa Havins' Lulu, who hasn't really gotten a romance story since she came out of her coma 9 months ago. She's age-appropriate and spunky enough to be a good foil to stolid Jason. And there's some good obvious conflict with Dante and with Rocco and Danny already viewing each other as brothers.

Speaking of Chase, I'm finally catching up on the scenes from Monday, and I'm feeling pretty sure that at some point in the next two months, he's going to have a one-night-stand with Willow and somehow his weak sperm are going to get her pregnant.

I like Genie Francis, but those Laura scenes today were painful. Does she have any other function on the show than to seem vaguely distressed then ultimately look the other way after Sonny has committed some kind of heinous act?

Yeah, so many great directorial moments today with Willow. This sequence was my favorite:

I knew Nurse Willow would find some way to justify Drew's plan to falsify Michael's medical records. KM is doing a great job with Willow's turn into a full-fledged villain (albeit one who views herself as a damsel in distress). And I love how even Drew is a little afraid of her--some good face acting from CM as Drew figured out that Willow must be the one who abducted Daisy.

Finally an episode with a good cliffhanger! I'm wondering how Willow will react to Portia's bombshell that Drew is blackmailing her to falsify Michael's medical records so it looks like he's on drugs. Given Willow's recent actions, I think odds are good she runs back to Drew and says, "Portia told me what you did. And I just think it's so sweet that you'd falsify medical records just to help me get my kids back! You really would do anything for me!"

I feel like the show has had trouble writing Lucy-related storylines for quite a while now. It's like the writers understand that she's a comic character, but have no idea what tone to go for. And then putting Brook Lynn into the Deception context doesn't work at all, because she's such a wet blanket.

The Deception scenes today were very silly, as Deception-related scenes often are. But I did enjoy seeing Susan Batten on my screen for a few minutes today, since I was a big fan of Luna/Max on OLTL. Speaking of OLTL alums, I was surprised that Frank didn't get Terri Conn to do those Home Shopping Network scenes (although I guess she wouldn't have wanted to fly out to LA just to do a 1-day stint on GH).

Yeah, I was incredibly bored by the flashbacks. I wanted to get back to the guy sitting next to Jason on the plane. What's his story? How did he get to be so handsome?

I've got to agree. Mattson has a very likeable screen presence, and I think there's a place for a character like that on a soap. At times, she reminded me of a next-generation Felicia (another character who doesn't have many family members on the show, but who still feels like a vital piece of the Port Charles canvas). But the show rarely played to her strengths, giving her a lot of implausible backstory (e.g. Sasha as reluctant con-artist) and saddling her with a lot of stories where her main role was to suffer. At least she now has a kid related to a major character and family, so there's a non-trivial chance that, a year or two from now, we'll be reading "GH: Actress Back!" spoilers.

I agree that the editing was a mess, and they were probably trying to cover too many different stories in today's episode, but I really loved a lot of it. I was especially impressed by the ways that various stories are intersecting right now. We got Rocco running into Sasha and Daisy by the pool and asking lots of questions about the mother-child bond, as he tries to still process the news that Britt was his mother for the first year of his life. And best of all, we get Sonny hearing about the brief abduction of Daisy, deciding it must be mob-related, and abducting Marco in retaliation--not realizing that this was all done by crazy Willow, who was at her most delusional today, playing the innocent victim in her scenes with Isaiah and Lucas. The show has put a lot of effort into making Lucas and Marco a couple we can root for--they're one of the few couples who get truly romantic scenes on this show--so I'm curious if Sonny and Jason will finally face some negative consequences for their criminal abduction of Marco. By focusing on Lucas's panic when he realizes Marco is missing, they're certainly showing Sonny and Jason's activities in an uglier light than normal.

Well, with Carly that makes total sense. Back when Sarah Brown originated the role, the character seemed so feral and wounded and defensive, it made sense that she would view other women as rivals rather than as potential friends. And Laura Wright plays her as a former high school queen bee, determined to be the alpha female in every situation, so again that would lead to plenty of rivalries. whi The character who I'm surprised doesn't have more close female friends is Laura. While we see deep bonds between other characters in that age range like Felicia and Anna and Lucy, Laura doesn't seem to be included in those friendships. I guess it speaks to just how much Laura was isolated on the canvas and treated simply as "Luke's wife" following her 1993 return.

I think you're making a good point, in that female rivalry is kind of the low-hanging fruit of soap writing. It's easy to write, and it gives opportunity for the kinds of catty dialogue and catfights that many soap viewers enjoy. (And not just soap viewers--Bravo has built a whole reality show empire on these kinds of scenes). I think it's harder to write good female friendships, which are also essential to a good soap. GH tries, with friendships like Nina/Ava, but they all feel a little forced. I will say, however, that as female rivalries go, Emma vs. Joss is one of the better ones. It makes perfect sense given the characters' histories, and I can also see the characters teaming up to take down Professor Dalton in a few months and eventually becoming more like frenemies than out-and-out rivals.

Is it wrong that I'm kind of loving Joss and Vaughn? Although I still don't totally buy her as a WSB agent, he sells the amoral spy very well. I loved the scene where he was telling Joss the story of his childhood pet, then leaving her to decide whether it was all BS or not.

Agreed. I don't even watch Y&R any more, and I'm offended by this. I will say though that in the hands of a talented writer, you could get a good front-burner story out of Cole's death. For instance, you could do a slow-building story where Victoria and Cole have started to rekindle their love, and Claire is starting to bond with the parents she never knew, and then suddenly at a routine check-up Cole learns that he has a terminal disease, then keeps the information from Victoria and Claire because he wants them all to enjoy the little time they have left together as a family. But then various people start to find out Cole's secret--maybe Victoria's ex, Nate, sees the pills Cole is taking to deal with his symptoms and recognizes what they're for--and then they have to decide whether to keep his secret or tell Victoria and/or Claire. And all of this could go on for months before Cole finally dramatically kicks the bucket. But of course to tell that story you'd need a writer who isn't allergic to drama in the way Josh Griffith is. And you'd need Cole actually on screen, which apparently he's only been 8 times this whole year.

Part of me hopes that they do--at least set up a situation where they have a drunken ONS they have to cover up for months.

I thought Reva and Josh were very toxic together, although some of that is the result of Kim and Robert each being on about 150 episodes a year, so the writers kept having to come up with front-burner stories for them and inevitably came up with "Josh and Reva break up AGAIN". The same thing happened with Jack and Carly on ATWT, and it had the same result on me: I eventually came to the conclusion that this couple was better off apart than together. I think some of the problem was that their breakup scenes were a little too brutally realistic, with Josh in particular saying some hurtful things about Reva that lingered in my mind. It's hard to root for "Always" once you've seen those 1996 Masquerade Ball scenes where Josh weaponizes Reva's childhood sexual trauma against her. I just got the sense that while Josh had powerful feelings toward Reva, he never respected her or even liked her that much. Men who were meeting her for the first time in middle age could see an accomplished and witty woman, but Josh always saw her as the oversexualized white trash girl he grew up with. So at the end, I was definitely rooting for Reva to stay with Jeffrey, who didn't always agree with her but who looked at her with admiration and seemed to be having fun with her.

So am I. That is a twist I never saw coming! I'd been worried that the show might run out of steam now that we've had some big reveals in the two frontburner storylines: Gio's paternity and the Willow/Michael custody battle. But I feel like they're doing a pretty good job of laying the groundwork for future storylines. I'm even now a bit more invested in the Curtis/Portia portion of the show now that Jordan had that conversation to Anna about contemplating if she wants Curtis back.

If they do want to keep Swickard, then I think he could probably pull off a storyline where Chase gets shot in the line of duty and goes blind (or is otherwise seriously disabled). I could see that shaking up the Chase/Brook Lynn relationship in an interesting way, since he's usually supporting her and not vice versa. Would their relationship survive him having to lean on her for help? Or would he just push her away and get closer to someone like Nurse Willow?

I cheered too, even though I thought Katelyn MacMullen did a great job with her breakdown scene. I do have to give the GH writers some credit for writing the Willow/Drew dynamic in a way that's so believably repellent that probably about 95% of viewers were happy to see the judge give Willow the smackdown and to see her lose custody of her kids. I mean, having a mother crying in court about losing her children is very soapy, but having the main emotion of the scene be schadenfreude is something new. And yeah, I thought Sonny had his "you're a dead woman" face on today.

So is Sonny going to flat out murder Natalia? That little look on his face when she was saying "You are such a godsend" suggests that, at very least, he'll find a way to shut her up so she can't incriminate him. I can't say that I'd miss her, but that would be an interesting dark turn. I know he's killed before, but it's usually been his mob rivals or crooked cops like Jagger, not a mostly-harmless accountant whose daughter used to date his daughter.