Laura Wright, James Patrick Stuart: Why Carly’s blizzard move with Valentin on General Hospital actually makes sense

On General Hospital, Valentin (James Patrick Stuart) had been holed up at Carly’s (Laura Wright) place like a man waiting out a siege, stuck in the attic with his nerves, his guilt, and a blizzard bearing down. When Carly came up there with news that Charlotte (Bluesy Burke) had taken off and could be headed their way, you could see the panic trying to muscle its way into the room. The old Valentin reflex of doing something, anything, even if it was the worst possible something in a whiteout started to emerge. But Carly didn’t let it happen.

General Hospital’s Carly stopped a bad decision

General Hospital's Valentin, pondering Carly's words. | Image Source: ABC

Valentin’s fear masked itself as bravery. But it wasn’t heroic, it was a man about to sprint into a blizzard and call it parenting. Carly rightly explained that they couldn’t be sure what route through the woods Charlotte might take, and he could easily get lost in the storm looking for her.

Carly had cut across that impulse with the sort of blunt sense she always brought to emergencies, the kind that didn’t ask permission or wait for someone to finish spiralling. She had pointed out the obvious risk, as well as noting this was the exact kind of move people made right before they made everything worse.

Then she had done the most Carly thing possible, which was not a speech, not a hug, not a “let’s talk about your feelings,” but a redirect that gave his brain something to occupy itself. (Which characters are going to share their first kiss in the storm?)

The checkers board was the intervention

General Hospital's Carly, talking Valentin down. | Image Source: ABC

When she suggested checkers, it played like a throwaway at first, a little domestic prop in the middle of a Cassadine crisis. That is, until you realized what she was really doing. She wasn’t trying to entertain him. She was trying to keep him from bolting.

Checkers meant turns, rules, a contained little world where his mind couldn’t sprint ahead to the worst-case montage. It gave him something to do with his hands while the storm kept doing what storms did, and it made him stay put without Carly having to physically block the door like some kind of bouncer at Bobbie’s.

And Valentin, because he was still Valentin even while panicking, had tossed out, “Something tells me you cheat,” which was half joke, half truth, and weirdly revealing. He knew Carly’s style. She didn’t play fair when fair got people hurt, and she had never been concerned about methods when it was the outcome mattered.

That was why the move made sense. Carly hadn’t solved the problem. She stopped it from getting exponentially worse. (After the storm, can Carly and Valentin get out of their pickle?)

General Hospital can be seen weekdays on ABC and Hulu.