A dive into summer with a big splash: General Hospital Two Scoops for the week of August 05, 2024

Port Charles has fully embraced the spirit of the Olympic Games. Kristina made a big splash from a high rise, Ava might soon be on the run for life, and John is looking to bring home the gold by taking down big, bad Sonny Corinthos, who is currently spiraling thanks to an un-doping scandal. It’s Two Scoops for the win, so let’s dive right in.

Holy smokes! General Hospital gave us a huge unexpected twist on Thursday when a heated confrontation between Ava and Kristina turned to a shocking tragedy. Kristina tripped over John’s bag, stumbled back, crashed through the glass window, and took a header into Metro Court’s pool several stories below—while onlookers watched and screamed in horror. There was no doubt where Kristina fell from, and several saw Ava directly afterwards as she desperately tried to hide her culpability by closing the curtains.

Ava is going to pay dearly for Kristina’s fall, and no amount of lying is going to save Ava this time. Unbeknownst to Ava, Brick—or one of his minions—had been snapping pictures of the encounter because Sonny had ordered Brick to keep an eye on Ava and the goings-on in her suite. One of those photos is sure to show Ava grabbing Kristina’s arm right before things went sideways.

Was it an accident? Mostly. Ava certainly didn’t intend for Kristina to take a swan dive into the pool, but Ava had no business putting her hands on Kristina. It’s because of Ava’s actions that Kristina ended up being rushed to the hospital and undergoing an emergency cesarean section, so Ava is going to feel Sonny’s wrath, one way or another. Sonny hates Ava with a renewed passion, and in his current state, there will be no persuading him that Ava didn’t mean for Kristina to get hurt. He will look at those photos and see Ava’s eyes glinting red with malice and shoving his precious pregnant daughter out the window with evil intent.

Further compounding Ava’s troubles are her actions directly after the fall. She called Scott, which shows guilt, because her first thought should have been for Kristina and the baby, not herself. Additionally, Ava made the boneheaded decision to try to cover up what transpired in the room, then she lied to a police officer when he questioned her about the confrontation. Foolishly, Ava tried to put all the blame for the fall on Kristina by painting her as out of control and violent. Dante didn’t buy it for a minute because there were more holes in Ava’s story than in a sieve, but he might have done Ava a favor, because as long as she’s in police custody, Sonny can’t get to her.

Sonny has been a ticking time bomb for weeks, especially since finding out that Ava was granted temporary visitation with Avery and that she’d been up to no good for years, secretly plotting against people he considered family. Kristina’s subpoena to testify at the custody hearing against him was nearly enough to send him over the edge. Will Kristina’s terrifying situation be the match that lights Sonny’s very short fuse? Without a doubt. Ava is going to need a lot more than Scotty’s legal prowess to get her out of this mess alive.

Buckle up, folks—it’s going to be explosive, because I don’t see Ava going down without a vicious fight.

The scenes of Kristina falling down several stories and into the pool were as shocking as they were jarring. I stared in disbelief as I watched it unfold, stunned that the writers had actually gone there with this storyline. In hindsight, I realize that I had been lulled into a false sense of security, because soap pregnancies are always remarkable for one reason or another. The fact that Kristina had had an uneventful pregnancy up until this point should have been a warning in itself that something bad was in the pipeline. I could never have imagined Kristina falling into the rooftop pool like that, though. What a delightfully soapy twist. Bonus points for it playing out on a Thursday.

Before anyone fires off an angry note to scold me for enjoying this unexpected dramatic turn, I’d like to clarify that I don’t believe Kristina or the baby will die. Oh, there will be some harrowing moments, but ultimately, I don’t think things will end with a death. Nor do I see Kristina waking up, realizing that Molly, T.J., and the baby belong together, and wishing them all well. The writers haven’t spent months setting things up for a nasty custody fight only to scrap it at the last moment, so I fully expect this experience to reinforce Kristina’s desire to keep the baby.

Kristina was more than halfway there prior to her latest argument with Molly. I noticed the surprise in Kristina’s expression when she realized that she’d been wrong about Molly and T.J. because they had been making plans for the baby, including readying a nursery and preparing for time off to spend with their newborn. It was one of the concerns that Kristina had expressed to Alexis, yet when faced with the truth that both Molly and T.J. are eager to be parents, Kristina remained silent. To me, that said a lot.

I know Kristina claimed to be trying to protect Molly’s rights by filing for custody of the baby to keep T.J. from taking off with the baby if things don’t work out with Molly, but that rings hollow to me. The whole point of Molly adopting the baby is to secure her parental rights as the baby’s mother. Once Molly legally adopts the baby, it wouldn’t matter if Molly and T.J. split up because Molly would be the baby’s mother regardless. If Kristina truly had Molly’s best interests at heart, she’d be doing everything to expedite the adoption, starting with signing those legal documents so they could be ready to file when the baby is born.

Alexis’ role in all of this has been greatly disappointing, too, because she’s constantly enabling Kristina, handling her with kid gloves because she knows Kristina is prone to outbursts and destructive behavior at even the slightest sign of criticism. She expects T.J. and Molly to modify their behavior to keep Kristina happy. It’s such a toxic dynamic, and worse, Alexis doesn’t seem to appreciate that time is not on T.J. and Molly’s side because Kristina was only weeks away from her due date. Decisions had to be made and things settled, because once the baby enters the world, T.J. and Molly will want to bond with their newborn, name their child, and begin their lives as a family of three.

It leads me to believe that if push came to shove, Alexis would ultimately side with Kristina. Her “I told you so” attitude while talking to T.J. was entirely unhelpful and another reason that I feel Alexis has been lowkey pushing everyone into the idea of sharing custody, relegating Molly to the stepmother/aunt role. No doubt, in Alexis’ mind, that would be the perfect compromise, but T.J. isn’t about to share his child with anyone other than Molly. He didn’t sign up to raise a child with Kristina.

Will Molly reach out to her father if she and T.J. end up in a custody battle with Kristina? I can’t tell you how excited I am about Rick Hearst returning as Ric Lansing. Both the actor and the character have always been among my favorites. Rick Hearst is perfection as a gray character, and even though Ric has done some truly heinous things in the past, there’s always been a vulnerability about him. He grew up feeling rejected and abandoned by his mother and was told lies about his brother. It didn’t help that Sonny has always treated Ric like something vile to be scraped off the bottom of his shoe, even though Sonny is certainly no better than Ric and arguably a lot worse.

Ric makes things interesting, and he has undeniable chemistry with his leading ladies, especially Becky Herbst. If Kristina and Molly head to court, you can bet your bottom dollar that Sonny and Ric will end up squaring off, too. Ric knows all the buttons to push, especially with Sonny. It’s for that reason that a part of me wonders if perhaps there’s another reason Ric ends up in town. Ric is a former district attorney, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he landed a federal job prosecuting criminals for the government.

Did Ric facilitate John getting assigned to the Pikeman case and cutting the deal with Jason? It would definitely be in Ric’s wheelhouse. He has always had a special hatred for Jason because Jason was important to Liz.

Speaking of Pikeman, it looks like the storyline has wrapped up. Valentin is on the lam with Charlotte, living somewhere without extradition, compliments of the WSB (Anna’s theory, not mine), while Brennan turned up in Washington, DC, as a newly reinstated WSB agent. Beyond that, Jason is no longer beholden to the FBI, and Carly is off the hook for RICO charges because the evidence mysteriously vanished. Brennan’s doing? Probably, since only the WSB would have the ability to access an FBI database and delete an audio file. Some men send flowers; Brennan tampers with evidence. If you’re Carly, that’s a good thing, because she can’t seem to stay out of legal hot water.

I refuse to believe that this was the endgame when the writers first pitched the Pikeman storyline four score and seven years ago. This couldn’t possibly have been their plan, and it’s pretty obvious that this storyline underwent extensive rewrites over the course of its telling. It was pretty much confirmed when Steve Burton returned as Jason Morgan, but I don’t think it ended there, because a series of nonsensical twists and turns turned this plotline into a convoluted mess that meandered its way to an anticlimactic conclusion with a bunch of unanswered questions.

Who killed Austin Gatlin-Holt and why? Who was the insider betraying Sonny and feeding information to Pikeman that led to several attempts on his life? It wasn’t Valentin because Sonny didn’t share everything with him. Why were Brennan and Valentin trying to kill Sonny if they had successfully forced his compliance? If Pikeman is a shadow organization secretly sanctioned by various alphabet government agencies, why was the FBI trying to shut it down?

I’m also trying to figure out why Agent John Jagger Jingleheimer Schmidt is still in town instead of sitting in Quantico headquarters, being debriefed and demoted for letting Valentin slip through his fingers. It seems odd that he can switch missions/agendas at the drop of a hat without being held accountable for his failures, especially when his government-issued identification badge was last used to access the missing file.

Has John gone rogue? Obviously, he’s not the upstanding agent he presents himself to be. He clearly believes that the ends justify the means, based on his wicked smile when Ava shared that Sonny’s medication had been tampered with and that Sonny is currently unmedicated and descending into mental illness as his bipolar disorder goes unchecked. A good guy would do the right thing and recognize that taking advantage of someone unwittingly struggling with mental illness will make them sympathetic to a jury and possibly earn them a not-guilty-by-reason-of-temporary-insanity verdict. Bad guys smirk and exploit the situation; good guys don’t.

I hate that everyone who tries to take Sonny down turns out to be an unscrupulous bastard. I had had high hopes for Agent Cates, but those were dashed by his recent actions, including his stupid decision to fall into bed with Ava. How can he hate Sonny and believe the worst of him, but see Ava as a victim? The fact that John didn’t question Ava more about Sonny’s medication being tampered with—given her very public history of replacing Morgan’s bipolar medication with placebos—was downright criminal.

John is going to deserve every bit of misery he has coming his way, and I’m going to enjoy watching every second of it. Ava will chew John up and spit him out without missing a beat. He will have no one to blame for his downfall but himself because he freely walked into the spider’s parlor without a moment’s hesitation.

Random thoughts and observations

Why is John keeping his gym bag of stuff in Ava’s suite? The Metro Court might be the only five-star hotel in town, but I’m sure there’s an Airbnb available somewhere in Port Charles where he can put his meager possessions. If not, there’s a seedy motel on the outskirts of town that some nefarious souls are drawn to. He should fit right in.

If Brennan basically got a mulligan for his slew of Pikeman crimes, will Valentin get one, too? Like Brennan, Valentin has a special skill set, and he has vast connections to the underworld, both as a Cassadine and Theo Hart. He’s just as valuable to the WSB as Brennan is. More, in fact, because Valentin is now free to work outside the constraints of the law.

During Molly and Sam’s conversation at the Surf Lodge, Molly said that she had no biological connection to the baby, but that is incorrect. Biologically, Molly is the baby’s aunt. In fact, it was for that very reason that Molly and T.J. agreed to accept Kristina’s egg donation and her offer to be the surrogate.

Reader feedback

And how can Sonny be so under control, and even reasonable, if he's taking placebos instead of his bipolar medication? Is this supposed to be his "manic" stage before he sinks back into a dark depression? I've seen Manic Sonny before, and it sure didn't look like this! -- Scrimmage

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Drew is just gross. I’d rather have Golden Retriever Drew back than this version! -- mg

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I enjoyed Gio and Tracey talking NYC. That was a great scene, as are all scenes with Tracy these days. -- Jane