What's 500 Lawyers At The Bottom Of The Port Charles River?
by Joan Roseman
I know it's easy to bash lawyers, and on GH the DA and ADA are always
fair game, but if I were Alexis Davis I would, I don't know, sue? Alexis is certainly
the most professional, dedicated, and competent attorney to hang out a shingle
since Lee Baldwin. If she takes on a new client, he or she can rest assured that
Alexis will throw herself into the case with passion, commitment, and some fierce
intelligence. Her personal life may be a mess, and in recent months she has demonstrated
am alarming tendency to behave like a ball of mercury escaped from a thermometer,
skittering away when she should confront, but in the courtroom or across a conference
table, she is a laser beam, focused on the interests of her clients. Unlike the
other inhabitants of Port Charles, whose professions exist only to provide funds
to pay the check at Kelly's or The Port Charles Grill, Alexis's profession matters
to her. It defines her. So why do the people who profess to love her, or at least
to respect her, so easily dismiss the concept that she is bound by professional
ethics? Virtually no one makes room for the concept that Alexis was correct in
protecting her client, Zander Smith, even if Emily's safety was at stake? Granted,
it was an uncomfortable position, and one with which she had understandable problems,
but why is there no one supporting her, if only another attorney? Why has no one
(I don't count Chloe, who is more invested in the Ned-Alexis relationship than
the issues) made an effort to sit Ned down and explain Alexis's legal dilemma?
If there were a priest in town, or any clergyperson, surely they could relate,
but the show is called General Hospital, after all. How about a
doctor to relate Alexis's position to one of doctor-patient confidentiality? Oh!
Silly me! At GH there is no confidentiality. My bad. Go about your
business.
The New (but maybe not improved) Port Charles
by Amy McWilliams
I'm not really happy with the new format for Port Charles, and I'm not
sure why. It features, after all, my favorite characters. It has Kevin Collins
front and center in a family dilemma and puts him back together with Lucy. But
there's just something off, for me, about this version of our "little soap
that could," and I've been trying to figure out why. I should point out that
I've only watched the first month of "Fate," December, but I hear from
other editors that the things that disappoint me hang around into early Febuary
when I'm writing this. I've come down to three things, and though I may not be
able to put my finger on the specifics, here's my general reaction.
1. Isolation: PC has, before "Fate," done a better
job of keeping characters integrated with each other. Though characters fall into
several groups according to storyline, PC hasn't lost the feeling of community
that I've found lacking on GH recently. You could always count on people
to come together in hospital scenes, or at the Recovery Room, and even brief encouters
(such as those between Chris and Eve) were satisfying because there was some sense
of history and connection behind them. With the onset of "Fate," the
first big event was to isolate Eve and Ian away from everybody. Kevin and Livvie's
fantastic scenes slowed down as she wound up primarily with Chris and Jack. And
while Allison works at the Recovery Room, she and Jamal felt completely isolated
in their Christmas job storyline. I would have rather seen Ian and Eve deal with
their feelings in the same rooms, the same town, as Kevin, Lucy, and even Karen
(who did, after all, have a date with Ian at some point).
2. Pace and Balance: This is a weird one, but bear with me. While I
feel that while PC has always moved more quickly, I feel now that it moves
a little too quickly. We go from one big moment to the other, and have lost the
little, every day stuff in between. There's no sense of balance between the truly
"soapy" stuff and the more mundane, between the heavy and the light,
the dark and the comic. In other words, we have Victor on the scene, but we don't
get of Victor's Victor-ness (there was nary an accordian in sight). The weirdness
kicks in on the other hand, because I also think that PC is suffering from
repetition--from doing the same scenes over and over without moving on, from treading
water while we wait for the next chapter to begin. How many times can we have
Eve and Ian saying the same lines about striking deals with Harris, or refusing
to leave each other?
Finally, we had a big event at the beginning, with Eve and Kevin's disappearance,
and a big event at the end, with their return, but most of the first chapter of
"Fate" was the same old thing day in and day out. And while some of
it was enjoyable, the things that got left out of this new format are apparently
the things I enjoy most of all.
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