Drew Cain, played by Cameron Mathison, was paralyzed for over six months on General Hospital, courtesy of his loving wife, Willow (Katelyn MacMullen), who injected her controlling spouse with a paralytic drug to keep him at bay.
Last week, Drew finally got his faculties back and confronted Willow over her wicked scheme, terrorizing his wife the way Jack Nicholson‘s Jack did Shelley Duvall‘s Wendy in The Shining.
“Here’s Drew!” proclaimed Drew when Willow set eyes upon him, standing high over her. (The man is tall!) “Not happy to see me? Because this moment right here is all I’ve been dreaming about for months!”
Indeed. Over half a year is pretty long in today’s soap opera story-telling world.
Willow demanded to know what Drew had done to her mother, Nina (Cynthia Watros). “Nothing…yet,” said Drew, enjoying every bit of control that he was now feeling. “I wanted to come see my ‘loving’ wife before I did anything else.”
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Willow tried to stall and deflect, but Drew wasn’t buying her tactics.
“I have listened to you for so long, and all I could do was sit there and blink like a desperate idiot,” Drew blasted Willow as she shushed her. “Now it’s my turn. You blink all you want — while you still can.”
The dialogue was simply delicious, but Mathison didn’t just rely on the biting words to convey all of Drew’s anger and rage. He used his physicality to intimidate his diminutive wife and he did his best to control the anger so that Willow would fully understand just how pissed off he was.
Willow whipped out her phone to call for help, but Drew wasn’t afraid of her reaching out to authorities. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked both sarcastically and rhetorically. “You going to call 9-1-1? Make sure you tell them you shot me in the back at close range, twice.”
Yeah, Mathison’s Drew wasn’t just furious over the last six months he’d been paralyzed. There was that whole thing about Willow shooting him and him standing by her while she stood trial for the crime.
Realizing she couldn’t explain everything away to authorities, Willow put the phone down. Again, she attempted to reason with Drew, but Mathison played his character as a man who had nothing left to lose.
Drew was also livid over Nina’s attempt on his life by her rolling his wheelchair into the lake, which was the best wheelchair shove on TV since Laura Ingalls pushed Nellie Oleson’s chair down a hill on Little House on the Prairie!
“Oh, look, it’s mom!” Drew snarked as he picked up Willow’s phone and saw Nina’s name on the caller ID. “Should I answer it? Or should you? Because I’d like to tell her the good news. That we’re home, alone, together, and I am so excited about what comes next.”
Tension continued to build as handheld camerawork in the scenes heightened the drama between Drew and his former captor.
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Willow tried to reason with Drew, telling him he’d be throwing his life away. “I know,” Drew sighed. “But I’ve been imagining wrapping my hands around your neck and squeezing the life out of you for so long. But…no. I’m not going to kill you, Willow. But you’re going to wish I did.”
Drew’s promise was a powerful show tag, but the episode wasn’t over yet! “You know what the hardest part of this had been for me?” he continued. “Not being able to tell you how stupid you sound lying to yourself and trying to justify your actions. Did the woman I love ever exist?”
Willow tried to explain that Drew never loved her. He just wanted to mold her into what he wanted her to be.
Drew’s response (“Well, now I know better”) may have read on paper like he was accepting some responsibility for their dysfunctional marriage, but after months of being paralyzed, that’s not how Drew felt and that’s not how Mathison played it.
The actor had his character revel in the fact that he finally had the upper hand against the woman who had betrayed him and she was going to pay if it was the last thing he did.
Drew made good on his promise to make Willow wish that he would kill her after he rubbed in her face his plan to tell her children, Wiley (Viron Weaver) and Amelia (Sienna Goerisch), what their mother had done. Sure, that would hurt them, but it would hurt Willow more. Drew enthusiastically added that Michael (Rory Gibson), Wiley and Amelia’s dad, would learn the truth, too, and get full custody while Willow rotted in jail.
He promised that Willow’s kids would, someday, not even remember that they ever had a mother! Drew twisted the knife by telling Willow that he had planned on giving her everything, including her kids, and she re-paid that by trying to murder him.
With nothing left to lose, Willow bluffed Drew that she might be able to take him out physically, given that he wasn’t used to being so active over the last several months. “Let’s find out,” a confident Drew shot back at his wife.
Just then, the calvary arrived in the form of Nina and Jack Brennan (Chris McKenna), armed with a guy, which stopped Drew in his tracks.
That didn’t cause Drew to lose his full momentum, however. “What’s the big plan now?” Drew asked. “’Cause Gio [Giovanni Mazza] knows I didn’t drown in that lake despite Nina’s best efforts.”
Brennan told Nina that shooting Drew wouldn’t be necessary as they now had a way to control him. If you thought that Drew would rather die than become paralyzed again, you’d be right. “You might as well shoot me,” Drew told Brennan. “Because there is no way you’re going to drug me again.”
Brennan said that he didn’t need drugs. He had paperwork that Drew had pulled some fast ones by misusing federal funds, bribed a nurse at the burn clinic where Michael was being held, and bribed a judge (who ended up dead). Brennan said that by the time Drew got out of jail, he’d be a pariah.
Mathison, however, continued to play Drew as a man who had nothing to lose. He calmly stated it’d be worth it to take everyone else down with him.
However, realizing he didn’t want to lose Scout (Kayden Brenna Tokarski), his daughter, or his freedom, Drew asked what was on the table. Willow offered a clean break: Forget the past, give up politics, and they’d get a divorce.
“We’ve got a deal,” Drew calmly stated, adding he was thrilled to be rid of Willow. He got one last dig in by telling Willow that she had a surprise coming her way as the WSB knew how to double-cross.
After Willow proclaimed her freedom, Drew said, “Enjoy it while it lasts, you treacherous bitch!”
Our hopes were high for this payoff as we figured Drew wasn’t going to remain paralyzed forever. Mathison, who will always be remembered and loved as good guy Ryan Lavery on All My Children, was handed a very different kind of role when he became GH‘s Drew.
The actor has embraced the character’s dark side and immersed himself in the understandable fury that anyone would be feeling in his position.
Bravo to Mathison for bringing to life an antagonist character, whom we suspect is going to seek revenge down the line!
General Hospital, Weekdays, ABC