Volume I, Issue vi

February 1999

GH in Review by Amy McWilliams

View a section by clicking on the links below, or read the entire review by scrolling down. The review takes up 8 separate pages, but the navigation at the top and bottom of each remains consistent.

General Hospital

Carly/Jason/Robin

Carly/Jason/Robin cont.

Sonny

The Cassadines

The Cassadines cont.

Mac and Felicia

Justus

Jax

The Spencers

Bobbie

Lucky and Elizabeth

Laura

The Quartermaines

Sonny

• Mike and Sonny talk about Brenda's death. (12/28)
• Mike and Sonny continue to bicker. Jason visits Sonny and tells him about Moreno. He asks him to come home to Port Charles, but Sonny refuses. Later, he arrives at the penthouse with Jason, to Robin's relief. (1/7)
• Robin and Sonny talk about Jason and Brenda. They then meet Jason at the PC Grill for dinner. Jax approaches and Sonny accuses him of killing Brenda. (1/8)
• The two of them swap insults until Robin returns from the pharmacy and tells them both to stop fighting in Brenda's name. Alone, Jax asks her to leave Sonny and Jason, but she refuses. At home, Sonny rages at her when she tries to point out that Jax didn't kill Brenda. He calms down, but she goes to stay the night at Mac's, telling him that she'll always love him no matter how he gets. (1/11)
• Sonny and Jason plan to lie low and wait for Moreno to make a mistake. (1/12)
• Taggert just happens to run into Sonny and Jason on the docks. (1/13)

Sonny: "How come the only time you won't walk away is when nobody wants you around?"

Sonny: "Why don't you go to hell!"
Mike: "There's no room in hell, Michael. You've taken up all the space."

Mike: "I thought we had reached some kind of understanding when you left town."
Sonny: "Yeah, yeah. And based on my understanding, I wouldn't have to look at you anymore. I wouldn't have to listen to you tell me about Brenda, how to feel about Brenda, how to act about Brenda, which you love because it makes you feel important. Because you knew she would always be there to tell me, 'Hey, you know, it's Mike. Be nice to Mike. Be patient with Mike. He's your father.' Well, Brenda's not around for you to hide behind now, Mike. So I don't have to put up with you."
Mike: "You're right. She's gone. And that's probably why I'm here. But what do we have left? I mean, are we--could we ever be anything like a real father and son? Or are we just two guys that a woman we loved kept from killing each other?"
Mike: "Sure, now I remember there is--there is a way that you use me in your life--as a figure of speech to compare yourself to because you always feel so good in comparison. But not this time. Yeah, I'm scum. I deserted my kid, and I deserted my wife. But I am here right now, and that works in my favor. And what about you? You deserted the world to do what? To sit in your room, drunk, scaring dogs and showgirls? You know, I think I stack up pretty good next to that. You did not kill her! Yeah, you--you hurt her bad. The same way I hurt your mother--almost exactly the same way. And you saw that close range. And you saw that that could be lived with. And once she got through it, she was ok. She was even happy, and she told you herself she was happy. Her blood is not on your head."

Sonny: "Hey. What are you trying to do, starve me?"

I adore Sonny and Mike, and this opening between them told me immediately that all bets were off. With the loss of Brenda and his isolation from Jason and others who might manage to ground him, Sonny wants nothing of Mike and reverts to complete estrangement, canceling any progress they might have made before he left town. It's not that simple, though, and Mike knows it. It's about Brenda. Mike was a big cheerleader for Sonny and Brenda, just as Sonny is for Jason and Robin. He's also a reminder of Sonny's past losses, from his childhood on through Lily and Brenda. He is, in some ways, Port Charles, and by facing him down, Sonny faces down the inanimate things that he can't fight or scream at with any effect.

What I loved about these scenes, though, is that Mike didn't take it. Or rather, he took it for what it was and reminded Sonny precisely of how low he'd fallen. At the same time, however, he tried to convince Sonny that Brenda's death was not his fault. And that's perhaps the most infuriating thing of all to a man who will carry the deaths of two women for the rest of his life--absolution.

That last line, as Sonny teasingly chided Mike for taking away the lunch tray he had rudely refused before, showed that Sonny knows that his harping on Mike's leaving isnt' true. He knows that Mike isn't going anywhere, and that knowledge lets him use Mike as a verbal punching bag. That ain't a healthy relationship, but it does mean that Sonny counts on Mike in some strange way. Interestingly enough, I think Carly uses Bobbie in the same way, though she's not as sure Bobbie won't leave her (for that matter, Bobbie may use Carly that way too). Sonny and Carly have a lot in common when it comes to issues about their parents, and for them to meet over a crisis of paternity (and loyalty) means that the sparks are sure to fly.

Jason: "Yeah. You remember that time I brought you the $100,000?"
Sonny: "And a bus ticket."
Jason: "Right, a bus ticket. I almost used that bus ticket. But I was sitting in the station, and I remembered Robin saying, 'You have to say good-bye if you leave.' I say good-bye, then I start thinking about you. I start thinking about the hundred bucks that you lent me that I didn't pay back, and I couldn't go. I didn't know the word for it then, but I knew that I had obligations--people who meant something to me. I couldn't just--I couldn't walk away. Neither can you."
Sonny: "I already did that. My life was at Saint Timothy's, and I left her there. I never even told you. I went back. I was sitting at that park across the street, waiting for her to open the doors. It was raining too hard, so I couldn't see her face, but I could make out what she was wearing, her hair. She took a moment, and then she crumbled. You took her inside. Remember?"
Jason: "Yeah."
Sonny: "I walked away that night, Jason. There's nothing to go back to."
Jason: "It's more than you have here."
Sonny: "Well--"
Jason: "You remember when you said you want to finish with honor? What's so honorable about this?"
Sonny: "It's not your job to save me."
Jason: "All right, just let me ask you one question--if I was drowning, would you pull me out even if I told you not to?"
Sonny: "No."
Jason: "Would you ask me to get out of the water?"
Sonny: "Yeah."
Jason: "Get out of the water."

I absolutely loved this. I loved that Jason came up with this wonderful analogy, and I loved the way they both talked in stories of the past. These three are golden in their interactions--Mike, Sonny, and Jason. Even the weakest writing comes to life in that combination. Now add me in a little bit o' Luke and I'll be a happy camper. *G*

Sonny: "Oh. Well, you know, I should have been with her. I should have trusted her enough to tell her why I was leaving, to accept it, and come with me."
Robin: "Sonny, you loved her the best way that you could. You just wanted to keep her safe."
Sonny: "Yeah, I did a great job, didn't I? Leaving her here to die."
Robin: "No, Sonny. You left her here to live. You hurt her when you left her, but she dealt with that. She moved on. She learned how to make herself happy and believe in herself."
Sonny: "Yeah, I guess, well--I guess it's a good thing, thinking of Brenda happy."
Robin: "I know you miss her. I miss her a lot, too."

Mike and Robin both tried to comfort Sonny with the knowledge that she had been happy and that her death had been an accident, but that wasn't what he wanted to hear. He blames himself, in order to grant that accident some sort of meaning, perhaps. He finds, in this variation on Lily's death-by-car, a pattern to his life and his guilt. He creates it, and to tell him otherwise is to devalue that meaning.

Jax: "You got one hell of a nerve to show your face around here."
Sonny: "Well, well, well. If it isn't the man who killed Brenda."

Jax: "She was ravaged. While she was in a mental hospital with her wrists tied to a bed, you were sliding under some distant rock. Go back to that rock, Sonny. Go home."
Sonny: "Home is where I make it. Right now I'm making it right here. You got a problem with that, you just stay inside or relocate."

He sure ain't admitting that to Jax, though. It amazed me, this 180-degree turn from blaming himself for Brenda's death to blaming Jax. It isn't simply a verbal attack or a defense mechanism. Sonny truly believes both things at the same time. He left Brenda to die--was therefore the cause of her death--but Jax is the one that killed her. Or, rather, he left her to die as well, as he wasn't there with her, protecting her, in her final moments. What Sonny can't see is that Brenda had any agency in the matter at all. And it is a dreadful irony that he believes that he killed one woman by keeping her as his wife and one by leaving her.

Robin: "Listen. Jax treasured Brenda. He would have done anything for her. Anything. He would have died for her."
Sonny: "You know, don't, please. I mean, you--I don't want to talk about the wonderfulness of Jasper Jacks because when you--when you start, I shut down, ok? And I don't want to sit here and pretend because then I'd be conning you. Come on, you're going to be late."
Robin: "You know, I think I changed my mind."
Sonny: "I'm--I'm ok to be by myself. Yeah, it's dark in my head and I'm going to have to deal with that--I'm going to have to deal with that for a long, long time. I'll never be able to, you know, pass Brenda in an airport. I'll never be able to catch a glimpse of her in a crowd or hear her laughter on the street somewhere. I'll never be able to pick up a magazine and see how she's doing or hear her voice on a TV spot. But it's a process, and I just--I just need a little space."
Robin: "Lucky Uncle Mac. I'll be there to make pancakes for him in the morning."
Sonny: "I love having you around. You know that, don't you?"
Robin: "Yeah."
Sonny: "You're the best thing. You and Jason--you're the best thing about my life."

Robin refuses to let him dismiss Brenda's happiness, though. The sad thing is that if Sonny believes she was happy, she has to admit that it wasn't because of him. His speech about seeing her in airports or on the television was amazingly reminiscent of the speech Robin remembered of Jason's, as he told her that he would be ok just knowing that she was in the world somewhere.

Sonny: "We'll become bait, completely legit. We don't even litter. We'll wait for Moreno to make his first mistake."

Sonny hasn't gone legit, except as a business tactic. And it's driving Taggert nuts. *G*