Dear readers, first, I offer a disclaimer: sometimes, a character behaves in a way that makes me mad, and I react at the moment on Twitter because I think some of you probably feel the same way, and I like soap banter on Twitter. I like feeling like we are all watching GH together in some big movie theatre. Depending on the episode, we go out for a beer afterward and discuss and laugh or cry.
This week, I threw out a little thread on Michael (Quartermaine) Corinthos because he was on my last nerve. I tweeted this thread:
"Okay, GH Fans, imagine this...they do a DNA test on Wiley and find out Michael isn't the real father, and Nelle had a one-night stand with Chase. Then Chase and Brook Lynn get to raise Wiley, Willow leaves Michael, he loses ELQ to Ned and Valentin -- Michael gets NOTHING."
"Or, maybe Morgan comes back from the dead and seduces Willow away from Michael as revenge for Michael stealing Kiki. Carly is so excited about Morgan being alive that she ignores Michael completely. Michael ends up with NOTHING. @BryanCraig, are you in?"
"Or Sonny gets tired of Michael threatening him and gets one of his toadies to kidnap Michael and send him to Puerto Rico to be a bellman at his island hotel. Willow thinks Michael left her and starts dating Austin (so we can get him away from Maxie), and Michael gets NOTHING."
I was annoyed at Michael for bullying Willow and being so controlling and telling her she was not allowed to talk to Sonny. The way he has been treating her lately is harsh, and I just don't prefer it. He's a spoiled, entitled brat who is used to getting his way, and I want him to lose. I want Nina to get visitation with Wiley and for Michael to deal with it. Do I like everything Nina has done? No, but she still has rights as Wiley's biological grandma.
That "Michael gets NOTHING" Twitter thread struck a chord with my followers. As of this morning, that Tweet has 53,134 impressions; 3,075 engagements; over 1,000 likes; 74 retweets; and 207 comments. I tweet a lot, mostly about soaps, and I can't recall any tweet I tweeted getting that many engagements. My favorite comment was, "You had me at Michael gets nothing."
Readers, I ask, why is Michael so polarizing? When Michael was played by the adorable little redhead Dylan Cash, do you recall? Who didn't love Michael back then? He was universally adored. A feisty little scamp who survived kidnapping and other mob-related incidents. Then we had Drew Garrett for five minutes after the writers' SORASed Michael. After the shock of his aging ten years overnight, we still liked Michael, and Drew was a fiery and fantastic young actor.
No one was quite sure why the powers that be recast Drew with Chad Duell, but in time, we grew to love and appreciate Chad in the role. For a long time, Michael was this tender, soulful guy who was the peacemaker of his family. Taking after his grandma Lila as the voice of reason in family squabbles, he was the dependable one when chaos exploded in Corinthos world.
When Sonny was presumed dead, Michael was wrecked. The only father he had ever known was gone, and he was inconsolable.
So, you'd think that when Sonny came back to life, Michael would be exorbitantly grateful to God or the universe for a second chance with his dad. Instead, he is angry at Sonny for cheating on his mom, which is totally understandable. Still, Michael vowing to take Sonny down? Like he's coming after his mob boss father to...what? Take down the mob? Send him to jail? Bankrupt him? This doesn't make any sense to me. He's, to put it in the words of my pal Max Updates GH -- being a jerk. And as Max noted recently, there are too many jerks on GH. Willow should have stayed with Chase. He's a prince.
Indeed, Michael could reasonably be angry and hurt that Sonny was unfaithful to his mom. But doesn't Michael have the capacity of compassion to realize Sonny lived a life for a year with amnesia and that Sonny is still struggling to find his way back?
I'm mad at Sonny, too. I'm perturbed that he slept with Nina five minutes after Carly was supposed to arrive on the Haunted Star. I'm annoyed that the writers have taken away the very core of Sonny -- that his mantra all these years is "Don't mess with my family." Despite everything that happened in Nixon Falls and whatever feelings Sonny developed for Nina, once he knew she lied about his death to his family for nearly a year, the old Sonny would be her sworn enemy for life.
But Michael's anger spilling over into hatred and plotting to ruin his father is too much for me. And his entitlement and bossiness got the best of me. When I tweeted that I wanted Michael to end up with nothing, wow, dear readers, you overwhelmingly agreed. There was some dissent. Some people are rooting for Michael to take down Nina, and I don't necessarily disagree with that. I want Nina to pay for her crimes, too.
But I don't want Michael to despise and become estranged from his dad. Like Bobbie, I don't believe that Carly and Sonny are done for good. If only Jason was here to play peacemaker and help the Corinthos clan heal.
So, to sum it all up, I do not hate Michael, but I am perturbed at the direction the writers are taking his character. Some of you have suggested that since Maurice Benard is talking about retiring, they may be grooming Michael to take over the mob. Which I hope is not true. I'd rather see Ms. Wu take over Sonny's territory. I want to see Michael with the heart of Lila, seeking peace and harmony in his family.
I predict that next week at the custody hearing, Sonny will either have to stand with Nina or with his family. If he chooses Nina over his family, we should just go back to calling him Mike, because he won't be Sonny anymore. His "Don't mess with my family" mantra has been the core of Sonny for three decades. Suppose Sonny doesn't side with his family, regardless of whether or not he agrees with Michael. In that case, it's not true to Sonny's core character.
I'm also mad at Carly because she knows that Nina is Willow's biological mom and hasn't told her. That little fact could put a halt to any impending trial. Would Nina sue her own daughter? Instead, Carly is playing Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Mobile games with the DNA on Nina's cup. Does Carly genuinely believe that Harmony lied on her deathbed, or is she just stalling?
May Sweeps is typically a nonstop firehose spray of action coming at your face at breakneck speed. But this past week has not felt like Sweeps. It's been lackluster, to say the least. We watched Sonny and Brando working on cars at the garage. We watched Gladys briefly encounter the sleazy photographer and casually hand him back his memory card, and we watched him delete Sasha's photos from it. (Although I am not convinced that he doesn't have a backup.)
We watched Leo sweetly recite his poem, which was adorable and cemented my love for Easton Rocket Sweda. Still, if it was an actual Sweeps week, Julian would have burst into the room to see his son's show and shocked the entire town.
Chase and Ned beautifully sang Brook Lynn's song, and her creepy ex-manager Linc showed up, claiming he owned her songs. Okay, that's an exciting development, but seriously, why was Linc at a grade school assembly? How did he know Brook's song would be sung? Even she didn't know it! (Side note, Wally Kurth and Josh Swickard sounded angelic together; they need an L&B record contract, stat.) But if this was an actual Sweeps week, we would get the long-awaited love-making scenes when Brook Lynn and Chase finally give in to their pent-up passions. The writers have been holding off on us for months now, and my assumption was that they were waiting to give us the payoff during Sweeps, but here we are on May 21 with still no resolution. I like the slow build of a good romance, but this is like turtle slow. Maybe this next week will give me all the conclusions I crave.
Let's move on to the teen scene. I was so thrilled when Sam convinced Spencer to confide in her about his plan to take down Esme. Sam is correct. If Esme feels betrayed, she will absolutely let Spencer take the fall for her, just like she did when she torched Ava's car. I will only accept what is happening between Esme and Nikolas if Nik is secretly working with Spencer to take Esme down. I can't believe Nikolas would be so dumb as to genuinely trust Esme and let himself be seduced by her.
Sam, Portia, and Spencer are the only ones working on Trina's case. Ava is onto Esme but hasn't gotten any proof. Dante is running interference between his dad and his brother. Curtis is off tracking down Marshall -- and just in time, because Marshall got stabbed. Jordan is preoccupied looking longingly at her ex kissing his new girlfriend, and she's trying to find out who is harassing Liz.
And thanks to Violet, who is a better sleuth than all the adults, we know for sure what we have long suspected -- the person who is harassing Liz is... Liz. Awhile back, I suggested that Liz's alter ego be named Biz, but we have not even gotten to see her yet.
Readers, I liked the cheesy days of old, like on One Life to Live with Viki and Niki, where we got to see both personalities going around town, living their lives. It was fun to see buttoned-up Victoria Lord dressed like a floozy and hitting the town as her alter.
Wouldn't you love to see Liz's alternate personality be some chain-smoking motorcycle-riding hellion wearing one of Jason's old leather jackets? But the only thing we see is Liz in a trance, cutting up Violet's crayon drawing. I am interested to see how this unfolds. Still, now that the mystery has already been figured out, I feel like our chance to see and know the alternate personality has passed. Maybe it's something different altogether. Maybe Liz has a brain tumor like Franco had. I was hoping I was wrong and that it was Franco back to life, but alas, that doesn't seem to be the case.
And now, a break for a little bit of GH history. This week in soaps marks the anniversary of May 16, 1994, when Tony and Bobbie learned of B.J.'s accident. Tony realized B.J. was brain dead and wanted to donate her heart, which Maxie got, thus allowing her to live. This gut-wrenching storyline was from the glorious Claire Labine years. In my humble opinion, the B.J.'s heart storyline was the saddest soap plot ever to air, followed closely by the Robin and Stone AIDS storyline. But GH rarely mentions it or shows clips, although sometimes Maxie mentions it.
I would love to have a scene where Maxie says to Felecia, "Can you believe that it was 28 years ago today I got my cousin's heart? I can't stop thinking about B.J. today," and have Felicia remember the day, using clips of those old heartbreaking scenes. Sure, it was a different actress playing Maxie, but she was a little girl, and I don't think the audience would care. In my opinion, GH has such a rich history, and they don't use it nearly enough. At least we got to see Bobbie and Carly together this week. Now, if only we got a scene with Bobbie and Lucas. I wish we could get Ryan Carnes back, as he had such great chemistry with Parry Shen.
Also, I am happy to see more scenes with T.J. and Molly. The scenes with T.J. and Marshall were compelling. But I confess that, overall, I am just not that invested in Marshall. The big lead-up for months to Marshall's big secret and the truth was just a letdown. So, all that secrecy and the warnings about not talking to Sonny and having mob-tinged hints were all red herrings? The whole secret is just that Marshall had a nervous breakdown? Make it make sense.
Have you ever watched Maurice Benard's fantastic YouTube series, State of Mind? If you are a soap fan who watches more than one soap like I do, this past episode was gold. Maurice interviewed Eric Braeden, Victor Newman from The Young and the Restless. Hearing his stories and experiences and seeing two soap legends sitting down together was "must-see" viewing. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend it.
What will happen tomorrow, dear readers? Will Felicia give Valentin more lectures about ghosting Anna? Will Valentin dress up like a French lieutenant and return to Anna's for that wine? Will T.J. and Molly ever get that beach vacation? Will Bobbie waste any more good liquor on Nina's face? Will Cameron hide all the scissors and lighters from Liz? Will Portia confront Esme the way she did Spencer, and if so, will Esme add Portia to Daddy's hit list? Will Nina keep wearing that red dress because Sonny really liked it? Will Finn work harder to track down Hayden so he can get Liz's sister back to town, as she clearly needs family support? Will Liz's sons let Grandpa MacGyver know he needs to come to town and fix his broken daughter? Will Michael end up with nothing?
Only tomorrow knows, dear readers, and I will tune in tomorrow as long as there are tomorrows.
Tamilu
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