Family secrets. Every family I have ever known has them. I can close my eyes and picture my closest friends, and I know all of their family secrets, and they know mine.
I can speak freely of my family secrets now because, sadly, I am the last person standing in my immediate family.
I grew up in a family of three, just my parents and me. I was an only child. I told everyone I was an only child. But, it turns out I wasn't. Somewhere in my Dad's past, he had a child he didn't know was his. She discovered that she had been lied to her whole life. Not by my Dad, because he didn't know she was his child. Nonetheless, she was bitter. She resented me, even though I was just a kid, because I grew up with our Daddy, and she did not.
She never came seeking revenge on me like Nelle did with Carly, but I saw in Nelle's eyes the same look I saw in my sister's eyes the day she realized her mom had lied to her about her paternity her whole life. I saw that disbelief and shock wash across Nelle's face, and it brought back memories of my own family drama.
People are flawed. They mess up, they make mistakes, and then they start spinning to try to cover it up. It's human nature. Odds are that at least one person in your family has something in their life that they hope no one finds out.
Nelle's Daddy didn't want to admit that he just randomly sold his daughter's kidney for cash, so he concocted a lie. He lied to Nelle and told her that her stepsister Carly was the one who came calling for a kidney. Because of that lie, Nelle held hatred for Carly, a woman she had never met, in her heart. She plotted revenge. Even after meeting Carly and experiencing Carly's kindness, she didn't stop. The roots of the lie she was told had grown too deep, and she could not fathom the possibility that it was not true.
We saw Nelle wrestle with this internally. I think she has the capacity to be a good person, but she allowed the fury in her heart to take over her whole life. Bitterness only serves to continually victimize you repeatedly. The person you hate probably has no idea you hate them and is happily living their life while you are eating yourself alive obsessing over them.
But she's mad at the wrong person. I think, instead, that it was Jax who contacted her Dad for a kidney. I think that's why Jax was acting so squirrely when he saw Nelle in Port Charles and wanted Carly to stay away from her. But still, it makes no sense, since Nelle's Dad and Carly are not biologically related. Carly's Dad was the late John Durant. So why would Jax have thought to call Frank Benson for a kidney in the first place? Carly was adopted, so why Jax or anyone would even approach Frank doesn't make sense. This plot has moon crater-sized holes in it.
Readers, I have to say this was a very anticlimactic ending for me. All of that waiting and wondering what Nelle had against Carly only to find out that she had nothing. Not to mention all that fiddling Nelle did with the baby rattle, which apparently holds no significance to the storyline. Nelle based her entire revenge plot on a lie her Dad told her.
This makes no sense. From the day Nelle arrived; everyone told Nelle they had all believed that Jake was Joss's donor. Carly thanked Liz a dozen times over the years for sacrificing Jake's kidney so Joss could live. It made them frenemies! If Carly had known all along that it wasn't Jake's kidney, we all know that she would never have been nice to Liz!
If the writers revise history on this issue I will be furious! Bad enough that Jake came back to life and trashed that whole gut-wrenching storyline, but if Carly were actually guilty here, it would cheat longtime viewers out their emotional investment in the original storyline and make us unwilling to ever invest in the next sad tale they want to tell.
None of this has to do with the acting; Laura Wright and Chloe Lanier were extremely compelling in their scenes. They shined. They deserve Emmy nominations. Their performances were solid and gripped us with emotion. I believed the passion they both felt, and I felt it, too. I loved the slap heard round the world. Dang, Carly, it sounded like she hit Nelle with a brick! Very soapalicious.
But all that having been said, overall, I feel the basic premise of the story was flawed.
Readers, I am still not convinced that Sonny and Nelle actually slept together. That's the one piece of evidence Nelle neglected to share. I am not sure why she didn't lead with that. "I wanted to hurt Carly, so I staged an affair with Sonny, but I never really slept with him." If she wants Michael, why didn't she drop that key piece of information? Perhaps in her desire to win back Michael, she will eventually admit that it was all a ruse. But my guess is it will drag on a little while longer.
Or maybe I am wrong and she did sleep with him and will become pregnant by the magic sperm of Sonny, as all women who sleep with Sonny have learned.
Also, Carly can act self-righteous to Sonny if she'd like, but I firmly believe that if Jax had stayed in town a few more days, Carly would have definitely slept with him. Carly knows that Sonny was drunk. She knows that Nelle set out specifically to set Sonny up. Carly had left Sonny and made it clear she was done with him. Sonny was led to believe that Jax and Carly were back together. If I were Carly, I might offer him a touch of grace, considering the extenuating circumstances.
But before you send me hate mail and accuse me of always taking Sonny's side, that's not what I am doing. Sonny is a mobster. Although ultimately he was not responsible for Morgan's death, it wasn't for lack of trying; he did intend to kill Julian. Sonny is a liar, and he should have been honest with Carly. My only point is that Sonny wasn't out on the prowl looking to cheat; someone set him up and took advantage of his drunkenness and grief. Those factors should weigh in to Carly's response, in my opinion.
But I've parked here too long, and I have many more opinions! For instance, I paused the TV during GH and said to my husband, who pretended he wasn't watching, "If you were holding someone hostage in your trunk, would you carry on a full conversation with them in a parking garage with the trunk open?" Kooky, unhinged Olivia actually did that! Julian's mouth wasn't even taped shut; she was just standing there in the garage, chatting with Julian as he lay handcuffed in the trunk.
Readers, I can't help myself, I love campy, crazy soap villains. I love unbalanced villains like Heather, Faison, and Obrecht, and diabolical villains like Helena Cassadine and Jerry Jacks. Add Olivia to the list of mad people I know I shouldn't like, but I do like her. I truly hope that Tonja Walker sticks around for a while.
First off, I need to see the scene where Ava meets Olivia. Meow! Next, I want to see if Olivia will take pity on Anna now that she has been diagnosed with PV (Cancer) and leave her alone. Hint: she won't.
And how does Griffin play into all of this? Is Anna his mom? Is Olivia his mom? I know it's unlikely that Duke and Olivia slept together, but hey, stranger things have happened on GH.
There are more stories to tell with Olivia, and I hope she gets to stick around and tell them. Besides, she was a damned good A.A. sponsor for Alexis. I hope this won't send Alexis back to the bottle. I can't handle another round of sauced-up Alexis.
Meanwhile, at the bottom of the footbridge, Sam who had been knocked over the bridge, was trying to scale a steep wall in boots with giant heels -- while pregnant -- in the snow. She's a very pretty girl but not a bright one.
I always envisioned that there was water at the bottom of that bridge, but instead, it's just grass and a dusting of snow? Why did I hear rushing water when Robin and Jason used to stand up there? Maybe I was hallucinating.
Before Jason arrived to rescue Sam, she was loudly groaning and crying out in pain, but the instant Jason arrived, suddenly, all the energy evaporated from her body, and she could only whisper and squeak out his name in a tiny mouse voice. Mmm-hmm.
At least baby Scout made it through the ordeal and lived to tell. If Sam's baby had died in the fall, I would have been downright surly about it.
I liked the scene where Franco told Jake that Sam and Jason had their baby. Very sweet. Roger Howarth has always had a great gift for acting against kids, all the way back to his Todd and Starr days on OLTL. But as always I ask, while Franco is with Jake, where are Cam and Aiden??? We seriously haven't seen Cam since Emma and Spencer moved away. Maybe the Chupacabra in the stables ate him.
Next up, the hospital board vote. So, Laura was drugged by Olivia's henchmen and shipped off to JFK? And then the henchmen texted Kevin to come and pick her up? This is all very bizarre. Is there more going on here? Was Kevin involved? Did Lucy convince him to help her sell GH to get a giant commission to buy Sigmund a bigger bathtub? I can't decide if this was just a random action or if there is a bigger story here. What do you think, readers?
While we are on the topic of GH, how much did Finn sell his drug patent for that he was able to fund he entire hospital with the proceeds? Mind you, he did all this and negotiated this giant deal while being a drug addict. Impressive.
It's a good thing he saved the hospital because Anna definitely needs GH to be there, since she has been diagnosed with PV. I was wondering how GH settles on a disease to highlight. I was curious if someone on the cast or in the crew was diagnosed with it, or why they chose that cancer to focus on? I have read that it's quite rare, but perhaps that is part of the story, that if you have a disease people don't know much about, it's harder to find treatment than if you have a common cancer for which there is an entire industry.
I am very interested in this storyline, and I hope Kimberly McCullough can stick around for a bit. I lost my own mother to cancer, and I would love to see the mother/daughter dynamic of fighting this disease play out between Robin and Anna. I'm also excited that Robin is pregnant. It's about time Emma got a sibling.
What will happen tomorrow, dear readers? Will Tracy, Hayden, and Roxy the bearded dragon host an intervention with Finn about his addiction? Will Liz, Amy, Epiphany, and the gang be grateful they got to keep their jobs? Will Obrecht worm her way back into the chief of staff office? Will Laura wake up in the parking garage at O'Hare next week? Will Nelle learn to always log off of her computer when she leaves the house? Will someone hear Julian writhing in the trunk before he suffocates? Will the people of Port Charles stop parking in that garage because bad things always happen there?
Only tomorrow knows, dear readers, and I will tune in tomorrow as long as there are tomorrows.
Tamilu
What are your thoughts on General Hospital? What did you think of this week's Two Scoops? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
