Making the Rounds at General Hospital: Country Clubs and State Penitentiaries

On Friday’s General Hospital: Sonny spends time with his daughter at the country club, Liz goes into labor, Lisa continues to cause trouble for Patrick, Franco threatens Lulu, and Jason is headed back to the big house.

After Sonny silently watched Jax head off sailing with Carly, Josslyn, and the boys, Claire approached to tell the mobster he did the right thing. She then handed out some free advice – get out of the mob for his kids’ sake. This, of course, was met with laughter. Shortly after Claire left, Alexis showed up to invite Sonny to join her and the girls at the Country Club for lunch. He readily agreed and all was going well until Warren showed up and threatened Alexis and Kristina with Kiefer’s wrongful death suit.

Sonny’s scenes both with Claire and Alexis and the girls were actually fun to watch. The dialogue was something other than “it’s not my fault,” and we actually got the feeling that Sonny really cares about the kids and not about how he’s being judged. As for Warren and the wrongful death suit, I think too much time has passed. Granted, these things take time, and they used Nikolas’s threats as reason for the delay, but the story has grown old in the viewer’s mind.

Dante, Jason, and Spinelli continued to try and decode Franco’s clues. They ran with the idea that the song “Route 66” was a road map to Franco’s killing spree, even though Dante thought that might be a rouse. Meanwhile, Franco appeared at Crimson to terrorize Lulu. After complaining because neither Dante or Jason were guarding her, he asked, “Who do I have to kill to get some attention around here.”

Lulu tried to sneak her cell phone and call Dante, but Franco caught her and threatened to kill her while Dante listened. Franco then gave her an envelope and told her to tell Dante that it’s a souvenir from Barstow. After Franco left, Lulu called Dante and he met her.

Back at Jason’s, Ronnie showed up with the file Dante requested and arrested Jason, saying that since they have a lead on Franco, Jason’s release was terminated. Back at Prison, Jason found a picture of a toy monkey behind bars on his bunk. My question is how did Franco know Jason was on his way back to prison. My guess is that Ronnie is still working for the psychopath.

There isn’t too much else I can say about this story arc. It’s working well for me. James Franco is a high-caliber actor – especially when we’re talking psychotic and creepy characters – and he’s been given rather decent scripts to work with this time. The pacing feels good and I’m anxious to see how he gets Jason back out of jail, because you know he needs him at his big art show premiere.

Lisa told Patrick off for ignoring her and then threatened to tell Robin about their one night stand. Later she pitched a little fit in front of Robin then acted innocent when Patrick called her on it. And then finally, Lisa interrupted a tender moment between scrubs with the excuse of needing Patrick for a consult.

Yeah. We could see this one coming a mile away. I’m just waiting for Robin to come home and find bunnies boiling on the stove.

After confiding in Robin that she regrets treating Nikolas bad, both Nik and Liz apologized for their past bad behavior. Dr. Lee tried to stop Liz’s labor, but was unsuccessful.

There have been some cute scenes leading up to the birth of Liz baby number three, and I imagine we’ll get a few more before the baby gets caught up in the Franco mess. I was a little surprised when Liz went unnoticed last time Franco terrorized Port Charles and it will be interesting to see how Jason is affected by this.

In the interim, we were treated to a great big chemistry test between Lucky and Maxie. It seems now that they’ve split up the fan-favorite couple of Maxie and Spinelli, TPTB can’t decide if they want to do a Maxie and Matt story or a Maxie and Lucky one. Thus far? I’m much more interested in Maxie and Lucky. I think both characters have had huge growth since their last go-round and a shot at a healthy relationship could be fun to watch. Nothing against Matt. We just haven’t been treated to enough of him to care one way or the other.