General Hospital: Everything is Wonderful?

Random Non-Sequitur Notes I've Jotted Down During the Last Two Episodes

• It's been a long time since I've had anything nice to say about GH, but if every episode could be interesting conversations about identity and people bonding in non-purple offices -- sometimes even outdoors(!), I might stay on board. (Special note: this bullet point was on Friday; Monday dove heavily back into purple offices and costumes because they are deliberately taunting me, it's clear.)
  
  
• That's two men in two days condescendingly telling women to "calm down." (Jason to Sam, Julian to Nina.) Hey fellas, pro tip: you've just discovered the quickest way to make women do the opposite of "calm down!"
  
  
• Hayden's con literally got busted by.... googling? I have friends I love who will resent me forever for this but: I like Hayden with Nik. And y'all may have noticed on here, it's hard to make me enjoy Nikolas. Britt was the first non-Gia pairing that didn't make me sleepy, and this one surprisingly works for me. I know she's a poorly drawn character, but who isn't these days? Point being: it's a shame. Hard to come back from this one, and sweet mercy please spare us more smug-offs between Hayden and Liz. It's tedious.
  
  
• How many of us have our pitchforks out for Dante being caveman-ish to Curtis about Valerie? Is it weird to officially love his Nice Guy nonsense getting shut down right down? I love Dante, despite his terrible transgression, but I love the show letting him be a flawed human who tries WAY too hard.
  
  
• So Nathan didn't tell Maxie about his marriage, and she's offended. I'm always amused on our soaps how our long-timers meet a newbie and said newbie always has dark secrets and their feet are held to the fire if they offer up anything but full disclosure. But we almost never see our long-timers 'fess up to their new significant other about their own past misdeeds. I may have missed it, but I want to see the scene where Maxie tells Nathan about the following: Pillow Baby, Drug Pusher, Passed Off Own Baby As Best Friend's After Miscarrying Surrogacy, Confessed to Murder She Did Not Commit to "Protect" One Of Her Own Ex-Spouses In Turn Actually Getting Him Caught For One Of This Show's Most Highly Defensible "Crimes" And Sent Away Unceremoniously. And then I want to watch her explain Pillow Baby again. I mean, what is Liz going to say to her next boyfriend about her last relationship? "Well, he was a hitman with amnesia and a new face so I pretended we didn't already know each other, including the fact that we parented a child, because that way he'd stay with me?" Hey, remember when she actually did mention her ex being a hitman to that dude Ewen and he was all, "Hey, that's nuts, but we all have our history!" RED FLAG, LIZ, RED FLAG.
  
  
• Oh thank goodness we got to see Exciting Shawn again.

• Did Michelle Stafford play Phyllis this way or is this a choice? I didn't enjoy her at first because most scenes just felt like, "Ooo, look how crazy she is, she so crazy!" but I'm starting to enjoy it now because it feels more like consistent quirks. But I can't tell. The woman is practically an acrobat up in here.

And finally, there's so much to unpack here:

I know these women are tiny, but do they really need to Photoshop them out of actual human shapes? And naturally they put the balloons in front of the middle-agey-est lady's hips, god forbid! Two of those men look very unhappy and like they're being held hostage, I won't say which two. And poor Vinessa Antoine: this was seriously the least awkward shot they had of her? "Yep, yep, I'm just casually walkin' down the street, happy as can be!"

Comments

[BarbJ]

Michelle Stafford's Phyllis was totally different. On the plus side "Phyllis" repeated everything twice.... And I mean EVERYTHING. ALL. THE. TIME!!
Thank god she gave that up. I keep waiting for her to fall back into that bad habit.

[Louise]

BarbJ, oh yikes, that sounds like a very annoying tic. Well, she's growing on me!

[Jaydis]

The thing I have to keep in mind about Nina, is that mentally she is stalled at early 20s when she went in the coma, so while she looks more mature (man, there is no good way to say that) than she behaves, it makes sense story wise. That doesn't always help, because the kookiness works my nerves.