August 28, 2008

Interested in a well-rounded medical education?  Come and complete your fellowship at General Hospital!  All of our physicians double as surgeons in a pinch.  All of our surgeons are perfectly qualified to perform brain surgery, cardiac bypass, spleen removal, and uterine repair.  Rest assured, every operation, no matter how routine, will result in a flat line, giving you ample opportunity to use those shiny defibrillators.  Apply now and we’ll throw in your own personal storage closet, perfect for those romantic interludes between patients. 

The past two weeks, Lulu and Johnny have transitioned from playing house in New York City to acting out their own version of Romeo and Juliet.  Perhaps this is why Johnny’s Italian accent is getting more pronounced?  Logan, though lacking the wit of Mercutio, fills in as the death that ratchets up the tension of the play.  Lulu and Johnny are acting increasingly rash as they see their families and circumstances conspire against them.  Madness and desperation to be together are easily overruling any common sense either character used to have.  Unfortunately, the play ends with the double suicides of two lovers that could have been avoided if either had stopped to think before they acted.  This one could end up with Johnny and Lulu permanently committed to either prison or the loony bin and all because of an ill-conceived cover-up.  Here’s hoping Laura can talk her daughter out of this “madness most discreet” and just confess that she acted in self-defense, thus sparring Johnny’s freedom and her own sanity. 

I can’t believe the day actually came when Robin, that stubborn, loyal character that I’ve grown up with, received a marriage proposal!  What were the odds that I would get married before my soap opera counterpart of the same age?   It’s the rare Port Charles resident who hasn’t been married twice by the age of thirty.  Wait, wait, you say, Robin didn’t say yes.  Oh, but she will, she will, just not until after confronting her emotional baggage.  From one girl with abandonment issues to another, sometimes it just seems better to stay away from the very things you want most.  It will be interesting to watch her learn to accept that she can have a happy ending, that her future is not destined to be destroyed in a boat explosion.  But back to the proposal itself, Patrick gets props for making sure that Mac and Anna were present.  However, announcing his undying love over the overhead was a tad much.  Then again, hasn’t their whole relationship taken place in full view of the entire hospital staff?  It would almost be cruel to leave them out of it.  Patrick’s tears as he listened to the love of his life reject his proposal were heart-breaking but also made for excellent soap.  Jason Thompson has come along nicely these past couple of years, hasn’t he? 

I also want to give Leyla her due for being able to look genuinely happy for Robin and Patrick.  Once she realized that she would never have his heart, she moved on and grew up a little in the process.  Highly respectably behavior for a soap opera character, don’t you think?  Eh, she probably has a voodoo doll of Robin tucked away in her hospital locker. 

Nadine and Nikolas are having a strange courtship thus far.  I like that he does not want to draw her into his dark, gothic world, but I think he underestimates her.  He should be careful not to view her as a shining light or the second (third?) coming of Emily, but as someone worthy of his affections all on her own.  Nadine, on the other hand, needs to move on from thinking of him as a fantasy and get back in touch with her toy-throwing self that is more than willing to show a backbone.  Am I an optimist because I believe all these things will happen?  No, I’m just a soap opera fan; I’ll never give up believing in the impossible.