KerleyQ

Don't lose hope. He left Y&R while he was still dating a co-star there.

The embryo should be the one thing Helena has done (if it does exist) that is too far for Nik. Yeah, he's doing a lot of awful shit, but being cool with his grandmother and father assaulting his little sister in that manner is just a whole other level.

Other than Tracy, I feel like they would all have to be people who we've never seen on screen before. (Is that what you mean?) Because Tracy is the only one in town that we've never seen drink the Holy Hitman Kool Aid.

That's really the only acceptable return of his memories story for me. How boring and pointless if he just goes right back to being the Holy Hitman. I want him to look at everyone who enabled and supported his homicidal self in disgust and horror - Carly and Sonny should get the bulk of it, but he should be disgusted with Sam and some others, too. I also want him to apologize to Monica in a big way (and a monologue in the crypt to Alan and AJ wouldn't hurt, either) for treating his family like crap and looking down his nose at them while he was out killing people in the employ of the fucking moobster. And then I want him to bring both Danny and Jake over for extended visits with Grandma, sitting with her and the boys while she tells them about Alan, AJ, Emily, Edward, and Lila. Michael and Tracy can join in, too. Seriously, I'm going to be SO pissed if he just goes right back to exactly who he was before he took that beautiful roll off the docks and out of our lives. What would be the point?

"I'll warm her up for you son. Or do you need some guidance to help get in there? I'll direct you. At least strap this GoPro on before you start." Well, going by that, at least we have the Liam/Wyatt dates to look forward to.

We can throw Britt in for you, too, if you'd like. Someone, please assure me there's a good sturdy set of stairs in the PCPD.

"One more thing before I go, though, Nik. This is awkward, and I don't know how to put it gently, so I'm just going to come right out and say it. Your kid's an asshole. Do better."

And in his rant about the airline, he talked about how much money they cost Kelly. You know, when they didn't force the volcano to stop right this minute because Bryan Fucking Craig needs to fly home where they don't eat dogs.

OK, there's one woman left in town. She's killed both Michael and Spencer, no mitigating circumstances, she just did it for shits and giggles. Who screws her first - Sonny or Nik?

They could have just had Luke leaving town to go to some out of the country clinic to get extensive therapy (or just leaving town because there's just too much damage done in PC in his life and he needs to retreat and get past it all), and Lulu and Tracy decide to get his whole family in town to send him off. We could have had all kinds of the one on one scenes we've gotten without the stupid "caper" story. Of course, Helena could have crashed it or been waiting for him on his plane after the party, giving the two of them one last scene, too. Shh! Don't ask! Ron will tell us Lucky is running cons like dear old dad.

I was wondering if someone from here stormed the offices and wrote those Bill/Liam/Katie scenes today. It had to be a shoutout. I loved it.

To be fair, Helena has been established as a super-villain who has the resources to have other people perform all sorts of ludicrous miracles. It sucks that they just want to off screen explain the bulk of it, but this isn't remotely out of character for her. I remember even back when Jake first died, there were a few mentions here and there that it wouldn't be surprising if, down the road, we found out that Helena had an actually alive Jake stashed somewhere. There's a reason that, as soon as there was an inkling of rumors that Jake was going to be alive, most people automatically assumed Helena was behind it. This shit is what she does.

I don't think anyone is claiming that someone we "saw" die and donate organs suddenly being alive isn't ridiculous. Of course it is. But it's also not groundbreaking, and not some new thing that Ron invented. Whether it's been done on GH or not before, it's been done on soaps. So whether it was Jake or another character, it's never truly been off the table.

TJ of course.

When he was in the background using the computer later, I was thinking "oh, you'd better go check what he's doing online!" Because that kid is either ordering explosives or chatting with Helena.

One of my favorite parts of the episode. No matter what any writer does to them, I will always love watching BH and JJ together. They're magic. If Jake manages to go all Firestarter on Spencer, I wouldn't be mad.

For a moment, I thought we were going to get a story where he didn't realize she didn't know everything, and he apologizes, she says "as long as it never happens again" and he's still thinking she is talking about the sex. But, nope, she actually made it clear that what she knew about was just the kiss. And then his dumb ass calls Val the second Lulu walks into the bathroom to splash water on her face and explicitly talks about how they did have sex and he wants her to promise she'll keep it quiet. Your loft isn't that big, Dante!

That's what's bugging me here - Lucky knows exactly what kind of manipulation Helena is capable of. This is exactly what she did to him, faked his death and held him before allowing him to rejoin his family after she brainwashed him. You'd think he'd want to be around both to keep an eye on things and watch for any signs that Jake is like he was and just because the son he believed was dead for years is alive and well and he'd want to spend time with him. If he was working for the WSB and couldn't stay, that would make some sense, but just him cutting out the second Jake gets settled in without even sticking around to see ALL of his sons is just unfathomable. I can't believe that they couldn't even squeak in one little scene of him with all three boys. Just leave the whole explanation to the boys off screen (because we're never going to see any real explanation on screen anyway), and show us Lucky, Liz, and their three boys sitting together in her living room. Something. Dammit! I said I wasn't going to complain about the writing today. Nobody read this until tomorrow!

There's another kind of glaring thing that makes it clear that Maya wasn't always supposed to be transgender. When Caroline and Bill started digging around in her past back then, she should have been worried they'd find this, not just dig up the guy she went to prison for. Of course, even after the decision had been made, she didn't seem to have any fear that pissing people off, people with deep pockets and resources, was going to end up with someone getting pissed enough to dig into her background and find out all her secrets.

I think, at this point, the issue is more that Ron has his kiddie quad, and he'd have to age them at the same rate. And there's no way in hell he's going to age up Spencer. You'll pry NB from Ron's cold, dead hands.

I love that we got a one on one Luke/Liz scene. Before Jake's death, I loved their relationship. And JJ is so good in his scene with Luke on Liz's porch, as was TG. If I ignore all Luke's done to piss me off the past several years and just sit back to enjoy his farewell performances opposite his longtime co-stars, it's great. I mean, the ridiculous caper was ridiculous, but his emotional scenes with people like JJ, GF, BH, etc, so good.

For part of today, I'm not even going to bitch about the writing, because JJ and Becky are just so damn good together.

That's why I'm really hoping the return of Jake spurs her on to tell the truth. Sadly, knowing Ron, though, it will have her digging in deeper because she finally gets a chance to be a "family" with Jason and Jake.

Wait, so those proud Americans, talking about how "we don't eat that in America!!" say something like "Back to shitty American food"? I so want someone to respond to that with "at least it's not dog, right?"

I think the one catch in the whole idea that Jason will automatically be in love with Sam if he gets his memories back is this - what memories/feelings does he get back? We've already been down this road once with Jason coming out of brain injuries with a completely different personality and emotional makeup. So, do we get Jason Q? Jason Morgan? Some hybrid of the two? If this was a different character, I'd completely believe that, once he gets his memory back, he'll be exactly who he was before he lost it (or damn close to it), but with Jason, there are other memories and personality traits hidden away in him than just who he was before he "died." It would all be so much less damaging to Liz's character if, before she found out Jake was Jason, Patrick had told her something to the effect of "it could be harmful to try to force Jake to remember who he is" or some soap cliche along those lines. Then we would have Liz and Jake already into each other and her finding out who he is, but she can't figure out if she should tell him anything she knows, and she also can't force herself to stay away from him now that she knows, because this is a version of Jason that she can actually be with. And her justification to herself for keeping it secret would be that there's no way his loved ones would stay away and not try to re-establish their relationships with him if they knew instead of "well, screw it, everyone else in this town is bad, and they all get whatever the hell they want, so why should I do the right thing here?" It's still flimsy (although we all KNOW that Carly would be beating down Liz's door to get to Jason and inundate him with her version of their past), but she can also point to how suffocated Jason felt by his family trying to get him back to Jason Q when he woke from his original brain injuries (assuming she has heard that story at some point). Liz still wouldn't be doing the right thing, of course, but it wouldn't be as blatantly bad, either.