Jersey Mike

Sonny is giving cocktail advice, Avery has a precious necklace, Liz can't convince her hitman ex not to kill her husband, and Olivia is super pissed. Let's discuss in this week's Two Scoops.

My dear readers, it's a beautiful week to be alive, isn't it? I am feeling hopeful again, and I pray you are, too.

Somewhere in New Jersey is a handsome amnesiac going by the name of "Mike," who has some really great advice about signature cocktails and high-end liquor, and his new friend Phyllis thinks he might be a chef. (Which he kind of is -- I mean, his pasta is legendary.) "Mike" seems especially happy in his new life. That tortured look that Sonny always carries on his face is gone. There is a light in his eyes and a pep in his step that we have never seen before. It makes me wonder whether, if not for Joe Scully, Sonny wouldn't have a cooking show on the Food Channel called "Sonny's Pastabilities!" instead of being in the mob. That charm, his pasta, and those dimples would be a ratings guarantee.

I know some people hate amnesia storylines on soaps. I do when they drag out for too long. But they can make for some fantastic plots! Letting Sonny be "Mike" for a while allows him to come alive in a way we have never seen before. It will enable Maurice Benard to play something other than brooding. I mean, he's the best at brooding, but I love seeing Sonny wiping down tables and whistling around the bar without a care in the world. I'm in no hurry for Sonny to come home and mob up again. I want to rest here for a while and see how life unfolds.

Will he meet a nice Jersey girl and fall in love? Will Crimson come to cover the new cocktail sensation they have been reading about and find Sonny? Will Cyrus show up and try to recruit Mike to be a drug dealer for him? Will an alive Connie Falconeri, who has been in hiding for years, find him and take him home with her? I can come up with a dozen unique scenarios for amnesiac Sonny.

How will Carly and Jason deal with losing Sonny? Will they turn to one another in their time of grief? I mean, Sam kicked Jason to the curb, and Carly thinks she's a widow, so I can see the two besties turning to each other for comfort. Will Jason be able to hold off Cyrus alone? Will he have to turn to his frenemy Ava to get some old Jerome contacts on his side? (I miss Carlos) Will Britt be able to help Jason take Cyrus down on the hospital side of the drug ring? Again, a plethora of storyline possibilities.

All of this to say to those of you clamoring for Sonny to go home, think of all the fun we can have along the way before Sonny gets home. And we know he eventually will get home to Carly. But let's indulge the writers and let them play a little and see what they come up with. I'm ready for anything.

There is definitely some reason why the person who found Sonny is Nurse Phyllis Caulfield (Nina's old nurse), who delivered Nelle to new parents. Is Nelle really dead? Is she behind the scenes, pulling strings? Did she and Phyllis stay in touch all these years? I feel like there is a reason it was Phyllis rather than a random stranger who brought Sonny home, but my Soapy-sense can't quite figure it out yet. Do you have any theories?

I do have one plot bugging me a little, because the holes are so big that I keep falling through them in my brain. My husband, who pretends he doesn't watch GH, came in this morning to give me his input before I started writing. He was very passionate about the idea that Avery, who is 6, could easily have been distracted about the necklace with a cookie or any other shiny object.

I don't understand Carly's fear. Let's follow this along. Avery goes out in public and wears the half heart necklace. Nina sees it. She asks Avery, "Where did you get that necklace?" Avery says she found it on the ground. Even if she says she found it by her Daddy's cabin, how would it tie back to Nelle? As far as I know, no one in Port Charles ever saw Nelle with the necklace on. Even if they did, how would that tie back to Carly being accused of pushing Nelle off of a cliff? If Jax keeps his big Jax mouth shut, no one would ever know that the necklace belonged to Nelle or that Nelle was Nina's daughter.

But I think Jax is going to blab. And I think it will backfire on him. Jax and Nina just said, "I love you" to one another, but I predict it won't last long. Once Nina finds out that her perfect, shiny Jax is a liar just like Valentin, she will run back to Valentin, and I can't wait. Valentin invented a daughter to make Nina happy when he couldn't find her real daughter. Jax knows who her real daughter is and lied about it to keep her from the truth that his ex-wife was fighting with Nelle before she died. In soap morality, Valentin's lie was far more honorable.

Now, I must move across town to the Quartermaine mansion. Olivia asked Robert to teach her to be a spy, and she got way more than she bargained for. She had a noble goal of trying to be a friend to Alexis and uncover Tracy's lies, but it led to a heartbreaking discovery. Everyone involved in this storyline was at the top of their game -- Lisa LoCicero, Wally Kurth, Nancy Lee Grahn, and Jane Elliott all shone like sparkling diamonds in their scenes. Passion and accusations flew around the Q mansion like fireworks going "boom!" in every corner. Poor Sam was the unsuspecting audience to the mayhem.

As viewers, we have the unique ability to see through the eyes of each character. My Daddy was a pastor, and he used to say, "We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions." We know each character's intentions, pains, and circumstances, and all the reasons they did the things they did.

Ned loves Olivia. He adores her. He did not intend to have an affair with Alexis. He was just drowning his sorrows. He thought his wife cheated on him, aided by a deleted voicemail from Olivia that Brook Lynn deleted. Alexis was drunk and reeling from Neil's death. Disbarred, unemployed, fallen from her sobriety, crazy with grief, she also did not intend to seduce Ned or break up his marriage when she went out that night. Olivia was freezing Ned out because she was mad about the fight they'd had prior to her trip with Robert. Ned wanted her to stay and help him, and she left right after his only daughter's throat had been slit! However, Olivia's older son was locked in an institution with PTSD, and she had one brief window to try to see him.

There are no villains here. There is not one person in this triangle who schemed or planned to hurt the other. They were all just broken, wounded, flawed people who made bad decisions in a moment that led to this massive heartache.

Even Tracy, who absolutely did plot to get Alexis out of the way of her son's marriage, did so because he was finally in a happy marriage, and she didn't want him to ruin it like he had so many of his other relationships. She claims that she thought Alexis would just get sent to rehab and get the help she needed, while doubling as a way to get her out of Ned and Olivia's orbit for a while. You know all this. Why am I outlining it?

Because it's true to life. Sometimes there are heartaches with no bad guy. We all make decisions in a moment of heartache or anger that have consequences we could never imagine when we spontaneously do something stupid. I can't be mad at any of these characters because I love them all, I hurt for them all, and I want them to find a way past this one bad choice. I want Olivia to forgive Ned and for Leo to not lose two daddies in one week. I want Alexis to get a grip on herself and go back to A.A. with Finn and work on getting her life back on track, in spite of losing both Julian and Neil -- and her job -- in such a short time. I want Ned to forgive his mom and recognize her motive was love and the desire for him to be happy and loved.

But in the meantime, I am enjoying every ounce of the drama. When Olivia was yelling at Alexis, "Oh, you regretted it almost immediately, but not while you were unzipping your zipper and ripping open buttons." (paraphrase) I laughed and cried with her. When Ned spat out to Tracy, "Why are you even here? You are trying to control my life because Luke won't let you control his." -- Ooh, Ned! Ouch!

I fear this will get Tracy kicked out of the Q mansion and that we will lose Jane Elliott again. I get it. I would want to retire if I were her, too. But I am glad she is willing to come out and play with us from time to time. I dearly love her. I won't worry about Tracy's fate, though, because there's no way she will end up in jail -- Luke would totally come and bust her out if she got arrested for framing Alexis.

Another standout scene this week was Rebecca Herbst with -- everyone. Her scenes with Franco, Sam, and Jason were all magnificent. Readers, I think I must have missed something because I thought that Franco's brain surgery post explosion at the Floating Rib helped his inoperable brain tumor, but now it's as if that never happened. Am I wrong? Wasn't the implication that the explosion was a blessing in disguise for Franco because the blow to the head made it so they could remove a lot of his tumor? Or did I get a dose of Cyrus' toxic drug and hallucinate that?

Liz chastising Franco for wanting to be dead rather than spend his last moments of life with his family broke my heart. Her takedown of Jason absolutely riveted me. When Elizabeth listed all the ways Franco was better at being a dad than Jason, I loved every syllable of every word. People often tell Jason and Sonny what great dads they are, but are they really? Both of them have had their kids put in harm's way due to their life of crime. No matter how many guards have been assigned to protect them, Sonny's kids have all been in harm's way. Jason never even bothered putting guards on his kids. I loved Elizabeth reminding Jason that it's Franco who is with them day to day, caring for their needs, and that her kids love Franco. But passionate speech aside, Jason would not promise to not kill Franco.

There are rumors afloat that One Life to Live and All My Children may be coming back on the air as primetime soaps, possibly on a platform like Hulu, and it seems as if the AMC reboot is really a thing -- coming to ABC. So, I wonder if GH will really kill off Franco so Roger Howarth can go back to playing Todd Manning in Llanview, PA. I'd be excited to see those shows come back on the air, so if we lost Finn (John McBain) or Franco (Todd Manning) to OLTL, I'd find a way to be okay with that so I could have my other show back.

What will happen tomorrow, dear readers? Will Dante complete the mission discreetly and rid us of Peter? Or will Britt and Jason team up with Dr. O to take down Henrik? Will Willow and Michael switch back to Chase and Sasha? Will Cam go to Stanford and become a California surfer dude? Will Franco remember Drew Cain's memories, or will Drew Cain show up with his own memories and get Sam back while she's estranged from Jason? Will Alexis and Martin strike up a friendship, and she can be a paralegal for him? Will Lenny take some of Sonny's suggestions and get his bar on the Zagat's guide? Will Lexi Ainsworth coming home mean Kristina's going to be the one to pull Alexis out of her drunken hole? Will everyone who heard Martin's "duty of care" defense never, ever offer to drive a drunk friend home again?

Only tomorrow knows, dear readers, and I will tune in tomorrow as long as there are tomorrows.Tamilu

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