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Last week’s General Hospital proved that it’s not the big disasters that make the best stories so much as the emotional impact when the fallout hits. It’s the moments that make us feel that stick with us. Years from now viewers will probably forget who Dixon and Raj are but remember how beautiful the Davis/Jerome family looked at the #JulexisWedding. Will we remember that Sonny punched a guy or the punch in the gut that Carly felt when realizing her failures as a mother? Well okay… we’ll probably remember Sonny’s sucker punch but it wasn’t on the same level as watching an overwhelmed Carly wash the blood off her hands or seeing Ava’s vulnerability while waiting to hear her daughter’s fate.
I think GH had a pretty solid February Sweeps this year and it definitely ended on a high note with Friday’s wonderful episode. The wedding, relationship struggles and family heartbreak were the must see moments in my opinion. I liked how the week began with the Davis and Jerome families uniting for a happy occasion and then ended with other families questioning the future after tragedy struck. The hostage situation dragged on too long and could have been cut in at least half. Fans of Sonny liked him being the hero but I personally found it too redundant. I won’t even get into the mess that was Morgan versus the mobsters on the docks. The action/adventure moments were many shades of mediocre; I prefer to see the heart in GH’s stories. The show may not have the Faces of the Heart opening credits anymore, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t still see the heartbeat. I feel like for the most part GH’s writing team has been successful in re-focusing the series on character-driven material, allowing relationships and emotional beats to be played more organically. Hopefully they will continue to push this style of storytelling to the forefront. I’ve seen a lot the characters I love gain some much needed layers and look forward to seeing what is next in their journey.
A lot happen this week and I couldn’t write about it all. If you want to get my thoughts on anything I didn’t discuss or share your thoughts on the past week, please leave a comment below or tweet me and we’ll chat.
General Hospital Week In Review for the episodes that aired February 22h-26th.
#JulexisWedding
Remember when the big events on soaps used to be things like weddings? Heck Luke and Laura’s wedding was watched by 30 million people! The fact that GH chose to make such a big deal out of Julian and Alexis’ nuptials had a very classic soap opera feel. Sure the wedding was interrupted by a villain nobody cares about and turned into a hostage situation but the walk down the aisle and exchange of vows was lovely. The joining of the Jeromes and Davis girls has a lot of potential. Julian and Alexis will have a ton of obstacles available for them by just dealing with their extended family. The marriage actually feels like it can break the soapy odds and last. It’s nice to feel that way about a union in a genre that has become way too reliant on triangles and doomed couples. I also feel like the big church wedding was written as a thank you of sorts to the supercouple’s large fanbase. It captured the reason that Julan and Alexis’ courtship has garnered much fanfare. William DeVry and Nancy Lee Grahn both looked great and played the “I do’s” perfectly. I loved how they kissed before they were suppose to, the sort of goof-up that fits this couple’s personality so well.
I do have one small complaint. I feel like I didn’t get as much of the wedding happenings as I would have liked and that took a bit away from the event for me. The wedding had enough going on with it that it didn’t need the hostage situation. We had the reveal that Brad got his divorce and is now free to wed to Lucas, more relationship goal disagreement for Nina and Franco, Kristina’s secret, etc. I would have liked to have seen more of these stories. The parts we did get though were very good.
Ava I Adore
A week made a lot of difference for the fabulous Ava Jerome’s story line. In the last year or so, she went from pretending to be “Denise” to a strange blackmail induced affair with Paul. I love Ava but seeing her get used by the shady DA wasn’t what I wanted to watch. Luckily, this week we saw Ava back to true form again. I haven’t liked the divide between Ava and her daughter Kiki. Ava isn’t a perfect mother by any means but I felt that a line was crossed that the character would not normally cross during the Denise story line. Unlike Sonny, she has always been more conscious of her sins and careful to not let them carry over to her children’s lives. Unfortunately for Kiki, Ava’s criminal activity did put her in harm’s way last week and this time Ava wasn’t there to intervene.
Maura West’s performance as she waited at the hospital while her daughter’s life hung in the balance was heartbreaking. Ava is an awful person but West has always manage to give the femme fatale humanity. It was a lot of the little touches that made me truly feel for Ava this last week. Ava was angry at Morgan for the situation he had gotten Kiki into but she was mostly mad at herself. She felt that her daughter was being punished for her wrongdoings. She let her guard down with Franco as they waited to see how Kiki’s surgery went. Ava always seems to be able to find an odd sort of comfort with her ex-lover. It felt at one point that she wanted to tell him she was sorry she had hurt him. I’ve wanted GH to move Franco back to his original spot as the love of Ava’s life and Kiki’s father ever since they made the mistake of rewriting it. This week made me feel like it’s really the right thing for GH to do for all the characters involved. The potential story would be great. Nina wants to have a baby with Franco but he doesn’t want to take that next step with her. What would happen if it turned out that Franco was already a father and that the mother of his child was Nina’s sworn enemy? Would that push Nina and Franco further apart? Would it bring Franco and Ava closer together?
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