A Critic’s Review Of General Hospital: Character Integrity & Chemistry Tests

When it comes to General Hospital, every fan has their own opinion – and Soap Hub is no different. For five days, we sat and watched the good, the bad, and everything in between, and now we offer you a handy review, and a cheeky critique, of the GH week that was.

General Hospital: The Critic Gets Personal

Those of you who follow this spot week in and week out — and I know there are two or three of you out there; Millie Martin, I’m especially thankful for your kind words –know that I have never, ever taken a side when it comes to the Carly Spencer (Laura Wright) vs. Nina Reeves (Cynthia Watros) debate. I despise both of them. I also think they are both in the wrong. And no, one of them is not “more wrong” than the other.

What most sincerely displeases me is the lengths that the General Hospital writing team has gone to to get me, and the characters, to this point.

It was one thing to have Carly keep secret Nina’s connection to Nelle Benson (Chloe Lanier), but it was quite another to have her not only keep mum about Nina being Willow’s (Katelyn MacMullen) biological mother but to have her actively sabotage Drew Cain’s (Cameron Mathison) efforts to suss out the truth? Ridiculous.

And look at what they’ve done to Nina. First, the integrity assassination that was the ‘Nixon Falls Incident’ and since then they’ve turned the woman into the second coming of Gladys Kravitz. And why? So they could up the ‘drama factor’ and make it nigh inconceivable that Nina and Willow would ever come together as loving mother and daughter.

Good, solid writing, building on the already established animosity between the women is all that was necessary.

Further GH Musings

* I cannot imagine a world in which I will ever find Josslyn Jacks tolerable, but damn Eden McCoy is a terrific actress.

* I can see that the PTB at General Hospital is desperately trying to figure out what to do with Josh Kelly’s Cody Bell. A chemistry test with Kirsten Storms [Maxie Jones] here, chemistry tests with Sofia Mattsson [Sasha Gilmore] and Amanda Setton [Brook Lynn Quartermaine] there and there.

It’s accepted that Kelly Thiebaud’s [Britt Westbourne] departure took the crew a bit by surprise, but this is what happens when you don’t have a long story and/or the talent to pivot when things don’t go as planned.

* I stand by a woman’s right to choose. It is her body, after all. That said, I REALLY wish that people would stop saying that Willow’s plan to forgo treatment for her leukemia until she entered her second trimester makes any kind of reasonable sense. It doesn’t, and I’m glad that Willow is finally starting to recognize that.

Speaking of Willow and her baby, I’ve heard rumblings in the soapsphere that a majority of fans are predicting an imminent swap with the spawn that Esme Prince (Avery Kristen Pohl) produces. To that possibility, I beg anyone associated with General Hospital to just say no. I cannot sit through another Wiley/Jonah plot. Just can’t.

* Though scenes of their ilk were in short supply when compared to last week, I’m thankful for the “warm and fuzzies” inducing interactions between Elizabeth Webber (Rebecca Herbst) and Laura Collins (Genie Francis) and Liz and Cameron (William Lipton).

* Why oh why did they have Spencer Cassadine (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) say that he might be the father of Esme’s baby? Did the writers not go to great pains to have Spencer say, on more than one occasion, that he and Esme were NOT sleeping together in the lead-up to her romp with Nikolas Cassadine (Marcus Coloma)? I distinctly remember that point.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind Chris and Dan/Dan and Chris that they still have TWO — and possibly three — unresolved paternity tales currently occupying the backburner, so adding yet another seems misguided at best and just plain stupid at worst.

That said, I’ll suffer through such a revisionist storyline — is there any other kind on General Hospital? — IF they in turn reveal that Cody is really Mac’s (John J. York) son and that Trina Robinson (Tabyana Ali) is really Curtis Ashford’s (Donnell Turner) daughter.

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