@DRW50 The Lee stuff is fairly well done and feels intricate to the story and not necessarily just filler. Lee's role as Julie's legal guardian given hercompetency is significant and Julie and Chris' challenge of Lee's role is what leads to the dramatic moment where it looks like Lee is having a heart attack. Chris actually accompanies Lee back to Port Charles saying that he helped save his life, which is undermined in a very low key way by revealing Lee's problem was an embolism and not a heart attack as the meds Chris administered for the heart attack had no impact. It's a sequence which spirals in several ways. It brings the Baldwin clan together, who feels tighter and more developed than I felt in a lot of earlier sequences with Karen's monologue on her dream grandparents and Gail's confession that Lee still hopes that one day Lee and Scott will work together again. Most beautiful though are the moments alone between Scott and Lee where Lee has resigned to his fate (Monica has, off screen, confirmed that there is a low likelihood Lee will survive) and Scott has to be the one to uplift his father and convince him to fight.
There are clearly other threads building. With Lee incapacitated, he won't be able to fight Chris and Julie when they want to install Darren Leopold as Julie's new guardian. This also will enhance the animosity between Chris / Julie and Scott / Lucy as Scott and Lucy are fostering baby Christina. While this health crisis certainly drives the plot, it is also a moment to explore the dynamics of the Baldwin clan.
This episode might be worth a peak. It features Lee / Scott's conversation about DV / Lucy framed in the experience Scott had with Laura / Luke. It also includes Gail / Lucy discussing the incident with Lucy / DV and Gail, as a psychiatrist, framing it as something damaging that was done to Lucy. It's very nice to see Lee and Gail in support of Lucy. Lee also goes to confront Chris and Julie after Chris' news broadcast where he alludes to Lee keeping Julie locked up to manage her estate. It ends with Lee's health crisis and Gail calling Scotty to come to the hospital.
This episode features the more emotional Baldwin family moments. Gail pleading with Lee is heartbreaking. Marie Wilson has been in the role of Karen under 2 weeks and does a decent job selling the connection to the Baldwin clan. This features the Lee / Scott scenes starts at 15:22 with the rest of the family scattering leaving to some very wonderful work from Shriner and Hansen. In an era for the genre where this kind of character work was fading, this is a standout sequence.
@Vee The psychic spy stuff is definitely ingrained in the fabric of the GH universe from the Ice Princess through Casey the Alien and beyond. Riche's early adventure sequences were more grounded (even the Paloma / San Sebasitan stuff which I believe may have been cooked up by consultant Anne Howard Bailey seemed more down to earth) and I know she's about six months from turning over PC to Julie Hannan Carrouthers. I get what they are trying to do but it is such a tonally clash with the rest of the show, as you stated. There's also some stuff I skimmed over about Victor's electronic role playing game and some of the spy gear stuff that I think is suppose to evoke a level of modern day suspense paired with pop culture camp with references to "Austin Powers" and the inclusion of Peter Zorin. None of it really works for me, but I know there is some later stuff involving Eve where she has been convinced her child is alive that I will eventually have to get to that seems like it might be a better balance of the absurd and the emotional.
The Noel Clinton stuff occurs on the cusp of Lynn Latham departing and Scott Hamner assuming the reigns. I want to say it is set up in episodes still attributed to Latham, but he appears under Hamner. This is all the first week of May, which I believe also focuses on Lucy (as an amnesiac believing she is Eve White) and DV sleeping together. I want to say all of the Noel Clinton sequences are in a single episode.
I haven't seen enough of DV to make a firm opinion. Most of the stuff I've seen isn't great, but Riche typically allowed villains to have more layers than I've seen yet with DV. It's just very intriguing that so much story space is spent establishing the rewrite of Scotty's paternity in the very real timeline.
The one thing I don't think completely works is that Lee and Scott's bond is so strong and it was long established that Scott was Lloyd Bentley's son. Changing this doesn't change the relationship between Scott and Lee. I think they could have gone one of two routes to make this dynamic more interesting. Either establishing that Meg and DV had a child that DV raised that was a half-sibling to Scott (I'd go with a sister to pair with Kevin and shift Eve back to the younger set) or establish that DV's late wife and Lee had been involved with DV having raised Lee's biological child. DV as Scott's father is the more traditional route, but I think they could have extracted more by going a slightly different path. I almost wonder if Rachel Locke as Lee's daughter and DV's surrogate would have worked.
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