GENERAL HOSPITAL February 2023 Discussion Thread

[Taoboi]

Both good couples nonetheless. Lightning in a bottle. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Yes, exactly, and how rare these days to see it show up not just once but twice in one show!! Now if the writing team could just figure out how to decide on a storyline & stick with it, NOT change their minds 2 or 3 times along the way, GH might approximate its past glory! 

[Taoboi]

THIS.

[Taoboi]

2-7

 

Oh, look...Liz with who she SHOULD be with on the current canvas...even if it was brief nice to see her with Jake. 

 

Wait...PORTIA HAS A FAMILY??? Wow. Mind blown. How long has Portia been in town again? Has she mentioned them outside of Trina? And now Stella is MIA, but they found a nice replacement in Laura cuz...LAURA.

 

Nik, Nik, Nik. I enjoyed the crazy eyes he had. But just when you think he cannot get low, he went there with Ava and threatened a child's life. Uh....how does he come back from that...assuming he is no longer living that is. 

 

I feel like the Epiphany mention was more a placeholder @dragonflies. At least until they can put together a tribute. BUT I hope I'm not wrong. 

 

Taggert is love.

 

Smh. Laura so busy worrying about Nikolas that she's not seeing Spencer fall under Victor's spell. But I do hope she keeps fighting back hard.

 

YOU BETTA DANCE, TRINA!!!!  And awww at Spencer walking in. My Sprina heart.

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[Darn]

Hold the goddamn phone. I was trying to figure out where I recognized the actor playing Portia's brother Zeke from and he's Gavin Houston (the gay brother from The Haves and The Have Nots), extremely attractive, good actor, I can't believe he's not a new contract actor, etc. ANYWAY, he is 45 years old.

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How?! I guess he and Brook Kerr just decided to stop aging at 28.

God I love being black.

[j swift]

I liked TJ callback to knowing Spencer since he was a boy.

I also know that commenting on an actor's body is opening a hornet's nest, but Molly is distressingly thin.  I thought she was unrecognizable.

[Vee]

Granted I need to catch up on an ep or two, but I did want to chime in on about the recent Nikolas Discourse on various forums (and if you've seen this before forgive my crossposting):

Whoever the actor, I think this is who Nik has been for a long time. He's been going down a darker and darker trajectory for the better part of 20 years. He dabbled in Stefan and Stavros' sketchier dealings for a while. He cheated on Emily and then lost her forever, which broke him on a fundamental level IMO. He slept with his beloved brother's wife when they'd all been friends since kids and carried on a torrid affair with her, then had a protracted battle over Elizabeth's pregnancy. He got in too deep with Hayden Barnes and tried to have her killed. Then he fled the country and ended up getting got by Billy Joel Valentin, somehow.

I am not some huge Nikolas fan by any means, but there is nuance to some of this. It's been somewhat overwritten by both the show and overzealous fans who just really love to watch Nicholas Chavez do his thing to claim Nik was always a bad father, but based on the show I watched Nikolas was a devoted father to Spencer for a very long time, or at least as devoted as most soap parents in frontburner story get, raising him consistently in PC and then offscreen in Europe - until about 2015, when he skipped town on the Hayden rap and then 'died'. His staying underground, faking his death and diving deeper into the dark to take Valentin down was what changed everything for him and his son IMO. But all this has been a long time coming for Nik's character AFAIC. When he tried to kill Hayden and then fled as Tyler exited the role I bought it, because Nikolas had been cruising downhill morally since he lost not just Emily but before that Stefan, who also lost himself to the same darkness (and very bad writing). There's also the loss of the guiding influence of Laura, who for a long time was catatonic in a long-term facility. And Lucky and his sister both being gone, the sister Nik adored from birth. The affairs, the schemes, etc. all led here - knocking up his son's girlfriend, locking her in a tower, etc. It's all very Cassadine, for good or ill.

GH very rarely gets super good these days IMO but some scenes along with great performances really hit for me still. A week or two ago, Ava said "my God, you're so weak. I can't believe there was a time I didn't see it." That really encapsulates a lot of the Nikolas character to me. He wants to be good, he means well but often he is weak, and goes down bad paths. I don't want Nikolas gone for good and I do think Adam Huss has done a surprisingly good job - better than Coloma in recent days - but I hope someday Tyler can return. They don't need to clean Nik up too much for me though. This is just who he is now IMO, a very gray character.

On a side note though: If they try to use all this to make Esme a conventional heroine on the show fück that. That character is a lot of fun but is the definition of Shelf Life. Paging Obrecht, Nina, etc.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Vee

[Taoboi]

Exactly!! No matter what actor is playing him, Nikolas has been sitting on the fence between  light and dark. And in the last few years he has been going dark, darker, darkest. That writing has definitely been on the wall. I thought it was very telling that Laura made a comment about her time on Cassandine Island that put that in perspective.

 

That was a great scene and Maura played that line to the hilt. 

 

That is something I forgot to mention. The fact that while I too do not want Esme to be a heroine, I have to admit the actress is winning me over to her current state...the elusive tabula rasa. The audience is aware of who she is and what she has done, but in her current state, she has a remorse and common sense factor to her that does make her compiling in a way that Esme as vixen did not. One almost (note on ALMOST) do not want her to remember. That said...given SOD's February Sweeps info, it looked like she might be getting aimed at someone she should be aimed at, continuing to prove she should have never came out of that particular bubble of story. Even if the result if true, is typical of her current arc. 

[Planet Soap]

Very OLTL with the heaven scenes.

Need the anti aging elizr that Portia and Elizabeth have discovered.

New Nik isn't that good from what I've seen.

Edited February 8, 2023 by ironlion

[Contessa Donatella]

Did you happen to see the tribute that Tony Geary made of Sonya Eddy? I was so taken with it. He is quite removed from the show & from soaps in general, yet he took the time & the effort to sit down & write out his thoughts about her & got it to a soap mag. He was very effusive in his compliments. Among other things he said she always made him smile. I doubt very seriously that there are many people who could always make him smile. She must have been so special. May light perpetual shine upon her. 

[Faulkner]

I find him very awkward to be honest. Great-looking but his performance screams placeholder (which is what he is but not someone who seems like they’d thrive full time in that role. He doesn’t really have a Cassadine vibe to me).

Speaking of Chavez, he’s awesome but Spencer’s smugness in scenes with Nik is really grating.

[Contessa Donatella]

That was what put me off him when he first came on. 

[Darn]

I was just telling @Vee that Chavez is the only one who feels like a Cassadine to me. Victor is someone's friendly butler and Valentin is just as non-threatening.

I think Huss has been great considering the heavy lift involved but I wouldn't want him full time either.

[Faulkner]

It’s giving JJ’s Lucky for me. Thankfully, Tony Geary and GF were allowed to return serve in scenes with JJ for the most part. The Niks largely just sit there and take his abuse. (Neither Coloma nor Huss really has the gravitas to stand up to him anyway. TC, in his better days, probably could.)

Which is so weird, as “threatening” used to be JPS’s forte. He just looks so wan on GH. I think a lot of it is in how he (and Victor) are written too. They are like skim-milk versions of Cassadines.

[Contessa Donatella]

He was an incredibly cocky 11 year old! Still, I find that I miss both Lucky & Lulu. Which makes NO SENSE considering how crowded the canvas is. Probably it is just sentimentality, nostalgia.