A Critic’s Review of General Hospital: Choppy Pacing & Family Feuds

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: A Critic’s Week In Review

I really wanted to like the special, Laura Collins (Genie Francis) centric episode of General Hospital, but I just didn’t. The pacing was choppy, I objected to some of the characters used therein – surprise, surprise, Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) and Carly Corinthos (Laura Wright) was shoehorned in – and nothing ultimately resulted from it. There was no resolution – we still don’t know who founded the group – and even a cursory look at the spoilers proves that they’ll be no follow-up.

And while I did appreciate seeing that retro clip of Bobbie Spencer (Jacklyn Zeman) rocking poor Laura’s world, haven’t we seen these two bury the hatchet about a half dozen times? Stop going back to that well. It’s dry.

The obvious highlight, and the scene that made every lackluster one before and after it palpable, was the one between Francis and Jeff Kober’s Cyrus Renault. Talk about a master call. And you want to know something, Cyrus had a point. Laura’s worship of Sonny blinds her.

My final takeaway from the whole enterprise: Francis is just as luminous now as she was back in 1978. How this is even possible one will never know. Perhaps talent staves off the aging process.

Further GH Musings

* Quotable General Hospital

Olivia: The Quartermaine’s may be a little bit backstab-y. Maybe, occasionally, a little bit of money-grubbing. Or, once in a blue moon, even a little bit bloodthirsty. Okay, nobody ever said that this family did not have its –
Brook Lynn: Foibles?
Michael: Faults?
Brook Lynn: Fatal flaws?
Olivia: I was going to say moments!

* Was anybody else thrown by how…reasonable Portia Robinson (Brook Kerr) was when apprised of her daughter’s excursion to The Highsider?

* While I was utterly thrilled with Ned Quartermaine’s (Wally Kurth) decision to throw his all behind Valentin Cassadine (James Patrick Stuart), I wish it had come about simply because Ned felt a certain way about how Michael Corinthos (Chad Duell) and Drew Cain (Cameron Mathison) were treating him.

Instead, it seemed like it was Lucy Coe’s (Lynn Herring) caution that without a common foe to rally against the Q’s would resume backbiting one another that spurred Ned to take the action that he did.

General Hospital (GH) airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Port Charles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on GH spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.