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It's Not Even a Wonderful Alternate Universe

So, does GH plan on alternating gimmicks forever?

Giant stunt, It’s a Wonderful Life-lite, giant stunt, It’s a Wonderful Life-lite?

As you may have been able to tell from the lack of coverage, GH’s non-sweeps stunt was unable to hold my attention.  At all.  I did decide to tune in for the one-off “What happened if Maxie died instead of BJ?” episode this week though.

Now, sure, one thing GH appears to have realised is that focusing these episodes around people like Robin and Maxie is a good idea – though, given they’re clearly going to do this again, and again, it screams out for a “What happened if Jason didn’t hit his head on a rock?” episode, which is likely to be equally interesting and depressing – even with the focus on Maxie this episode didn’t really work.  At all.  

In fact, it sucked.

First, that wig was awful.

Second, the commentary from Maxie was unnecessary.

Third, why does every single one of these things have to involve Carly playing pool at Jake’s?  And why is she involved with Patrick in most of them?  What kind of cruel Patrick-Carly fetish does Guza have exactly?

Fourth, Robin talking to Maxie’s grave in the way she did made no sense whatsoever.

Fifth, as nice as it is to see Bobbie, why did Jackie Zeman add even further to the ravages she has apparently wrought on her body by dying her hair non-red?

Sixth, why the hell was BJ, (for all intents and purposes) product of Tony and Bobbie’s marriage which in this alternate universe was still fucked up by Carly, such an insufferable goody-goody?

Seventh, Johnny as mob boss hitting on BJ was just a silly unnecessary attempt to link things in with the ongoing story (and I don’t even mind the idea of Maxie and Johnny).

Eighth, the V8/Campbells placements were as clunky here  as everywhere else on ABC over this last couple of weeks.  I understand and appreciate the cause, but it still clunks all over the place.

Ninth, Spinelli the mob lackey being all depressed and snarky because he was doing the exact same job as he’s doing in normal universe GH, but not doing it for super hero Jason, was utterly laughable.

Tenth, as much as she rocks, I never want to look at Kristen Storms’ arms at this angle again:

And, keep in mind, this episode included many characters that I like.  Which is quite the indictment.  

On the plus side, Johnny as mob boss hitting up Lulu as Kelly’s waitress to start stripping at the Paradise Lounge was pretty hilarious.  Apparently someone both remembers the past and has a sense of humour in relation to Sonny, miraculously enough.

I suspect the same person was responsible for having Bobbie fired from the Hospital in the closing montage.  Making a quiet point.

I also do pretty much have to love the way that even in her dreams Maxie figures she's responsible for making Patrick and Robin and Lulu happy, as if she actually had anything to do with any of it.  Maxie is selfish and self-centered, but well intentioned, and that's the way we like her after all.

And sure, we got to see a lot of the appropriate vets.  Except, you know, dead Tony, and absent Felicia, and dead Alan, and dead Georgie.  And banished Lucas.

Apparently I’m bitter today.

Next on General Hospital:

- the long-ignored vampire population of Port Charles corners all the residents on a cruise liner docked in town during the Yellow & Green Charity Gala, causing the ship to crash into the Quartermaine Mansion causing it to burn down and killing a Quartermaine;

- Carly sleeps with Sonny and thinks she’s pregnant.  Again;

- Jax has a dream in which Sonny got arrested and thrown in jail for feeding drugs to Karen Wexler and the world is a much better place, though in the alternate present of his dream Carly is inexplicably married to Patrick and hitting on other guys while playing pool at Jake’s.

The Trajectory is Down

Last Week’s GH Catch-up.

Knowing what was coming in general terms, I felt the need to stockpile a few episodes of GH to watch back-to-back because I anticipated mucho fast-forwarding. And so it was.

Aside from the “I am not watching a single conversation between any combination of Carly-Jax-Jerry until such time as one ends in Jax running to divorce and family emancipation court” nature of the enterprise, “take something interesting and screw it up” also seemed to be a theme of last week.

Last Tuesday’s episode, if you edited out Carly and Jax, which I did, was actually a pretty damn good episode.

Think about it. Robin and Patrick having fun and talking seriously, Lucky and Liz working through stuff, Georgie and Spinelli being extremely sweet, Emily and Nikolas – ok, Emily – being pretty up front and reasonable, and Sonny being territorial, condescending, hypocritical and jealous in regard to Kate’s relationship with Trevor, and Kate calling him on every single one of those points in so many words.

Unfortunately, as the week went on, the horrible parts, even in those in relation to the bits that started out great, started to overwhelm the good. Plus the mob wars joined in. And that’s even with me not hearing a single word out of Carly’s mouth all week.

Take Robin and Patrick. Early in the week a combination of fun, great conversations and romance. Really good stuff. By the end of the week Robin hasn’t appeared again and they’re heading for break-up over a stupid flirtation with a nurse who appears to have been cast (and contracted now, gawd) solely on the basis of her accent. Damn you GH casting department. You’re pretty much the one thing about this show (while the Holy Trinity of Geary, Elliot and Grahn are/were on holidays) to never let me down, and now suddenly your head is being turned by an accent that’s not even Australian. Blah to all that. Every level of it.

On other fronts, by as early as Wednesday Nikolas was already reduced to arguing with Alfred, and everyone else, about office space. And being “mysterious”.

By week’s end Sonny returned to his self-designated role of dispensing “this is for your own good” so-called advice in the most patronising tones possible to everyone in sight, having spent the middle part of the week yelling at various people and throwing things, and therefore being rendered completely uninteresting. Again. Sonny trying to move Carly and the boys back into the house for their own good? How does anyone even remotely think we would find that interesting? It wasn’t interesting the first five dozen times he did it and it’s not interesting now. No matter how many long suffering nannies they murder.

Poor Leticia got a line and a target painted so clearly on her forehead that I’m actually surprised her line wasn’t “this is my last shift before I retire”.

Even Trevor who started out pretty low what with the insults and ultimatums to Kate, went downhill by moving with great speed into threatening children.

Not everything went downhill during the week though. George and Spinelli were great throughout. Georgie herself is fabulous. She’s fabulous, and so natural, hanging out with Spinelli analysing Lulu and Logan. She’s truly fabulous when pointing out every single thing that is wrong with Jason and his life both from a killing people for Sonny perspective and from it all being thoroughly depressing perspective. Generally she was just a gigantic breath of fresh air the whole week and took Spinelli along with her. Not to mention being on every day. Amazing. Present and pushing a wholly reasonable anti-mob line for more than one day, and even doing so in a manner that wasn’t even vaguely suggestive that they intended to make her look bad in doing so (aside from the outfit, of course, see below). I repeat: amazing. Give me more.

By later in the week Lucky and Elizabeth may have moved on to discussing their problems with their best pals and having pool parties – totally reasonably – but somehow in between Lucky found time to join the Marines...

…and Liz aimed for ballerina and ended up at Olympia…

Sam and Alexis didn’t show up until Thursday, and they started out well too. Alexis’s absence was explained, and they were acting like mother and daughter. Sam wasn’t even being nuts. She, of course, went straight back down hill into fake victim mode pretty much instantaneously though.

Alexis, naturally, did not crash and burn like stories all around her, even with being sucked up into mob drama. Neither, interestingly, did Ric. If anything his trajectory during the week was up. Beginning in desperate to get Sonny mode and moving quickly into slightly desperate father and tormented son. Rick Hearst was great again this week. Ric’s such a bastard and he’s so all over the place and yet Rick manages to be able to turn on a dime and elicit my sympathy without me having to stretch at all. His resignation on Friday was perfect. And then Alexis skewered him nicely, as rightly she should.

Then, of course, we ended with (another) bombing and, most charmingly, the loyalest, most put-upon employee of anyone ever on this show, perhaps they only stable influence on those two little boys, gets murdered for her efforts. As if spending the best part of a decade working for Carly, Jason and Sonny and having to supervise Michael wasn’t enough.

In the fashion department things were also pretty dire. Georgie’s fabulousness was not diminished by being forced to wear the most hideous outfit I have seen this year. Which is a true mark of how great she was last week.

In the meantime her on-screen sister sported an outfit that makes me reasonably sure that Kirsten Storms’ weekend DUI was caused by her accidentally breathing in while walking past a wine tasting because that would have to be all it would take someone that horribly skinny to be over the limit.

Over in the part of Port Chuck that I wasn’t actually watching but only glancing at pictures of in order to make fun of Carly’s outfit, I was disappointed because she appeared be wearing something flattering and not wholly in appropriate.

Then she turned around.

Finally, although Diane made legal sense by pointing out that family law was not her thing – us lawyers not being specialists in every type of law, contrary to the usual soap position – she got stuck with a pale pink jacket over a black shirt for her efforts. Which is entirely unfair.

But it could have been worse; she could have been shot or strangled or knifed.

Next up: what exactly is the etiquette when it comes to contemplating sleeping with one’s sister’s grandfather?

Caps courtesy Clarissa.

GH – Non-Trial End of Week Wrap

Ta dah! Carly wears a bra!

However, urgggg, what is supposed to be going on with this Carly-Jerry-Jax-Irina story? Is this supposed to be in any way interesting? Are we meant to be getting some kind of potentially romantic vibe from Carly and Jerry, is Jax having sex with Irina at gunpoint meant to be compelling? Usually on this show I can at see what they want me to feel about a particular story, even if I don’t feel it, but with this scenario I’m not even sure what they’re going for at all.

Also, judging by her wardrobe, Irina appears to be a reject from a British girl band, who likely got kicked out for being slightly too deranged:

Jason advising Spinelli to never get involved with one of Carly’s plans as relayed by Spinelli to Carly and Jerry was quite amusing though.

Amusing in a whole different level: Carly: “When I lie it’s to help people.” Hmmm. I see some fundamental flaws in that statement.

In more promising news, Sam got her own apartment. Do we think Sam has ever seriously lived alone in her entire life before this point?

And as I have mentioned before, I am absolutely behind a Sam-Maxie friendship. I am perhaps even more behind a Sam-Maxie Bitchy Friendship. But that does not mean I want to hear them whinge and talk, and do nothing BUT whinge and talk about Elizabeth. Establish they both hate Elizabeth – not actually that difficult to do given it’s been on the record since Maxie slept with Elizabeth’s husband and Sam discovered Elizabeth even existed - and then have them either (a) do something about it; or (b) move on the talking about boys. But just having them talk about how much they hate Elizabeth gets boring after, it turns out, less than one episode. Especially when it’s backed up by Sam going to Jason to whinge about Elizabeth. There are so many more things Sam could be doing with her new apartment and new friend.

She could begin by burning her friend’s dress. When Sam in sweats and a tank top or three is clearly the healthiest looking and best dressed person in the room, you know you’ve got at least two problems there Maxie:

Also positive, though in a God help me kind of way, despite fake aphrodisiac sex, I’m still kind of liking Sonny and Kate. Megan Ward is, of course, fabulous, and Maurice Bernard seems actually alive.

The Lulu/Logan stuff was all over the place this week, but the last couple of days proved once again that a soap can virtually never go wrong with an early relationship pool date. Once they got down to the billiards, Lulu and Logan started to feel pretty good again, organic. Plus, he is just super hot when he genuinely, as opposed to assholishly, turns on the charm. And their little date at the resurrected Vista Point was also charming. If they continued to be like this, I could really get behind them as a couple. Let him be an asshole with others and like this with her and it could work, in the manner of many classic soap couple beginnings.

So, I think this week gets summed up as when it’s bad it’s very, very bad, and when it’s good it’s okay. And frustrating.

Caps courtesy Clarissa.

GH – Second Half of Week Wrap

“No more nut-jobs!”

That aside, do you remember the days of grown-up relationship comedy on this show? I do. It involved as least some of the characters we see today. It did not involve garden hoses. Carly, as usual, drags everyone down to her level.

Georgie and Spinelli: good. That should be the way that it works, you’ve got the other four younger characters in an odd quadrangle that as far as I’m concerned could go either way, and then you’ve got these two, friends and third wheels, putting them together should be a natural fit, and can roll into the rest of the younger set’s relationship dramas quite well. Of course it’s pretty fucking typical GH that they’re bonding over guns. Couldn’t they have bonded over, I don’t know, the fact that they’re both smart?

Is it wrong that fake-cop Elizabeth represents the most professional looking plain clothes police officer we’ve seen on this show in years? If not decades?

Diane degreasing her palm after shaking Bernie’s hand just makes me love her more. And frankly I didn’t think that was possible.

I’m not sure what was worse, Maxie’s dress, the fake red rock and wire cage night club set, the presence of Maxie’s shoulder blades in that dress or the comparative thinness of Kirsten Storms’ arms when rather hilariously patching up Logan’s wound.

Also, I’m surprised she has enough body mass to be able to hold her eyes open with those fake eye lashes.

The powers that be can stop paying me back for liking Carly for a few days there any time now. Okay, I get it, she’s just as horrible, self-centered and delusional as ever. Point noted. Stop now, please.

Almost finally, thank god Night Shift has started, because I could not have put up with any more pointless pre-show exposition. Aimless, pointless, exposition between Epiphany and a bunch of student nurses we don’t care about discussing Robin and Patrick when we could be watching Robin and Patrick who are standing right over there. And then throw some awful dialogue into their mouths as well.

Though, yay Anna! Boo Robert explanations. Boo glossing over Anna’s lack of presence in the hostage crisis. Boo them striking down both Anna and Alexis with the teenage gene in the space of two episodes (even if Anna was always a bit of a goof). I swear, if Diane starts drooling over Eli Love, or anyone else for that matter, I’ll throw something at the TV (well, computer screen in my case).

That being said, the Robin/Patrick/Anna interaction was such a vast improvement over their rest of week detour through the mountains of clunky exposition mentioned above. At least it felt a bit genuine, on a character level, if not on than a story level.

And I do wonder why they manage to set up the student nurses and random doctors and Robin and Patrick being banished to the night shift and all of that in preparation for that show, while completely forgetting that little detail of getting Jason out of jail and into the right hairstyle. But that’s more a point for my next post.

Caps courtesy Clarissa.