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The end may be near for General Hospital’s serial killer story line, but there still seems to be plenty of danger lurking in Port Charles. Last week hinted at the mayhem to come.
GH is a bit of a rogue in comparison to its other daytime counterparts. The soap has long relied on its bad guys to drive story, refusing to acknowledge its villians as villians. That mentality kind of takes the bite out of story lines in which there is in fact suppose to be bad guy because the bad guy is indistiguishable from GH’s heroes. The hospital killer story is a good example of that. Is Paul really any worse than Sonny, Julian, Jason, etc. Many viewers assumed that this story would end in typical GH fashion with Sonny and/or Jason saving the day. It was a pleasant surprise to see the PCPD working to solve the case and super spy Anna Devane coming to Tracy’s rescue. GH needs to surprise us like that more often.
A lot happened last week on GH and I wasn’t able to write about all of it. If you would like to share your thoughts on anything I did or did not mention, please leave a comment below or tweet me and we’ll chat!
General Hospital Week In Review for the episodes that aired September 26th-30th.
Desperately Seeking Susan
Tracy learns the truth about Paul.
Folks, sometimes things in life just don’t make sense. GH’s hospital killer story line is one of those things. Last week, we found out the motive behind Paul’s killing spree. He was doing it all for his daughter Susan. Susan had a drug habit and an abusive relationship with Sloane. When she tried to seek help, the system failed her. Susan suffered a complete mental breakdown as a result and has been in a catatonic state ever sense. Paul, feeling he had failed his daughter by not protecting her, had a mental break himself and reasoned, that if he got rid of those who hurt Susan, she would feel safe again. “I killed them all. I did it for you and nobody’s going to hurt you ever again and justice has been served. Justice has been served Susie.”
A concerned Tracy and Dillon decided to track down Susan, thinking that Paul’s upset regarding Sabrina’s death was because she reminded him of his daughter. Tracy found out that Susan was in a mental institution and decided to investigate what happened. She ended up overhearing Paul tell an unresponsive Susan that he was the hospital serial killer. Unfortunately, she didn’t leave quick enough and Paul found her eavesdropping. Paul offered to take Tracy out for dinner which she nervously accepted. Instead of dinner though he took her to a cabin where he gave her his Bond villain monologue and then planned to kill her. I don’t like that Paul actually went that far with Tracy. Sure he’s a crazy killer but, since his fractured mind is the result of not being able to protect his daughter, would he really traumatize his son Dillon like that? I think it would have made more sense to just have him beg Tracy not to tell anyone for the sake of their son. It might not have been as dramatic but there would have been less of an ick factor. Anna showed up before Paul could kill Tracy and Dillon was right behind her. Dillon’s going to need several hugs after all this is over.
Paul hopes he can bring Susan back.
Richard Burgi is a fantastic actor. Words like “Emmy reel” get thrown around a bit too often but I think he deserves one for the work he has put into the very flawed material he was given. His performance has been the story’s saving grace. It couldn’t have been easy to film some of what he had to film. GH has had an issue of getting great actors and then writing their characters into corners. That was the case with the recent exits of Teresa Castillo and Jeffrey Vincent Parise as well. Paul’s return started out really good. He was Tracy’s sexy ex and Dillon’s father… and that was played for about a hot minute before it was dropped in favor of an overplayed mob war nobody cares about, a kinky affair and a rewritten attempted murder of a crime boss. Paul’s a bad boy but he wasn’t suppose to be a creep. Paul is now back where fans wanted him, in Tracy and Dillon’s orbits, just not in the way that we wanted. I liked that Paul’s family had been brought into focus for the reveal but they should have been the focus of his story all along.
There are still a lot of holes in this mystery. Why where Bobbie and Lucas attacked? Maybe Heather will take the fall for these missing pieces in the plot. She seemed to imply that she might have done something bad in order to help Franco, thinking he was the killer. Why was Paul after Sonny? The fact that Paul tried to kill Sonny has been rewritten but he recently mentioned to Julian that he wanted to take Sonny down. Did Sonny’s business perhaps have something to do with what happened to Susan? It would be very Karen Wexler if that were the case. I suspect that aspect of the story will continue to be dropped though. And how could Susan have been in Port Charles this whole time without anyone realizing it? It’s a big town but considering what happened wouldn’t the police or hospital staff have at least recognized the name and made the connection? It’s all very perplexing.
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