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February sweeps was a mixed bag this year. Though there were some incredible
individual scenes and performances, for the most part the overall storytelling
was repetitious. Characters were making some changes, but having the same conversations
over and over again. And some things simply made no sense to me. From the fantastic
scenes between Sonny and Carly to the sheer drudgery of Bobbie and Roy, February
wasn't bad, but it wasn't really sweeps material either.
Out of habit, I'll talk about each group of characters in turn. You'll find
overall comments here, and links to pages of transcripts and photos on key scenes
at the end of each section:
Sonny and Carly:
These two have been the best thing going on GH for me for a while now.
Yes, their overall story is repetitious (How many near death experiences can we
have in one month? It seems that Sonny's job is dangerous only when the writers
need it to be.), and yes, Tony Soprano would never leave his enemy tied to a light
pole. But despite the troublesome plot points, Sonny and Carly have had, hands
down, the best scenes of February.
Judy has often complained that these two have had the same scene over and over,
but it is the power of the performers that make them a favorite of mine, whether
I've seen the conversation before or not. In February, however, we saw the pay-off
to their story, at least for me. As we built up to the scene where they exchanged
their vows again, we were treated to several scenes from Brown and Benard--both
apart and together--that made the wedding chapel and the wedding night such a
nice culmination to what had gone before, not only this month or this year, but
for many years of their characters' pasts. Carly's scenes with Bobbie as she asked
her mother to look at the wedding dress Sonny had purchased, counterpoised with
Sonny's rage as he confronted his enemies, were subtle and wonderful. The scenes
at the warehouse fire were excellent, watered down only by the addition of Elizabeth;
without her, this would have been a pure echo of the scene where Jax and Sonny
came out of the burning warehouse and Brenda ran to Jax. In this case, Carly ran
to Sonny before Jason, a sign of her love, especially to those of us who had seen
Sonny's face as he watched Brenda run into Jax's arms.
And the series of scenes in which Sonny tried to make Carly leave him for her
own sake? Again, we've seen these things before--the story brought out lots of
echoes of past scenes and situations--but the differences in what we saw now showed
me just how much each of the characters has grown, even while dealing with the
same insecurities and memories. Carly saw through the mask Sonny put on, proving
that she now understands him, and also herself, calling him on his bluff, and
refusing to hate him. Meanwhile, while Sonny wants Carly safe, he also wants to
avoid guilt--not just guilt over the death of one he loves, but also the guilt
over having them in the first place. For me, his prayer to God was notable because
it was in those scenes where I saw Sonny change from "I don't deserve her,"
to "she was given to me as a gift."
The scenes on the beach, then, were the moment I'd been waiting for. The church
was good, but Sonny's words were overheard by accident, and the vows weren't saying
everything I wanted these two to say. The conversation they had in the middle
of the night was perfection, and Carly and Jason's conversation in the park was
the icing on an already rich cake.
These two have had their fair share of repetition, but these scenes in February
were truly sweeps scenes. They were the culmination of several years' worth of
stories for both of these characters, and while Carly has been recast by the time
you read this, whatever comes, I've had my pay-off where these two are concerned.
The weakest point of the Sonny/Carly storyline comes with Deception. Carly's
scenes at Deception are few and far between, and in the two parts of her life
she seems like two different people. When Carly and Laura get together to snipe
at each other, I find that I don't particularly like either of them. Elton is
a dream, but there is absolutely nothing going on in that office building that
convinces me either one of these women know how to run a company. That's a shame,
because I was quite taken by some of the earlier scenes between the two of them:
Laura finding Michael on the docks, sympathizing with Carly after Sonny had been
shot, etc. Finally, while I've argued above that I see Carly learning, changing,
growing, figuring things out, her behavior at Deception seems only to remind us
how low she can still stoop, and how much she believes that nothing good will
come to her unless she fights dirty. And for all that, I don't find her dealings
with Gia to be as heinous as I think I'm supposed to.
No, the only good thing that came out of the Deception storyline in February
was the lovely scene on the docks where Carly told Sonny that Laura wanted her
out of the business, and Sonny replied that he would stand by his wife. It was
one of those epiphanies for Carly that I think led to her amazing understanding
of Sonny above. It was a moment that outweighed the shots that were fired immediately
following Sonny's quiet proclamation, and it's one of the reasons that she was
able to hold on so strongly and believe that he loved her even when he told her
that he didn't.
Key Scene: Sonny's Prayer, 2/23/01
Key Scene: On the Beach, 2/27/01
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