Josslyn Jacks Has Another New Career on General Hospital — But Is She Really Ready to Be CEO of JJE?

In her short time as an adult in Port Charles, Josslyn Jacks has had an increasingly impressive collection of careers. She has been a medical student, a WSB agent, and, as of this past week, the newly appointed CEO of Jasper Jacks Enterprises. That is quite a résumé for a woman who is still in her early 20s, particularly when you consider that none of these careers seem to have had enough time to become a particularly established part of her life before the show moved her on to the next one.

Josslyn Jacks on General Hospital

While it’s easy to wonder who Josslyn Jacks (Eden McCoy) thinks she is, perhaps the question should be directed at Jasper “Jax” Jacks (ex-Ingo Rademacher). He was the one who supposedly decided that his daughter should take over his international business empire. 

We say ‘supposedly’ because Josslyn did not hear these instructions directly from her father. Instead, Hudson Parker (Troy Lennon Appel), a man she had never met before, arrived with the news. After dropping the bomb that she was to be the international conglomerate’s new CEO, Hudson proceeded to berate Josslyn for not jumping on the opportunity. In fact, he was so offensive that even he thought he’d be fired for it.

But while Hudson is off, apparently, to help Josslyn get up to speed on the company, we have questions. For starters, where exactly is Jax? Sure, Hudson said Jax was sailing around the world, but not to take her call? This seems odd, even for him.

A phone call seems like the kind of basic communication one might expect when informing one’s daughter that she has just been handed control of an international conglomerate. This is not the sort of thing where you just leave a voicemail, but he didn’t even do that. Instead, Josslyn is getting the corporate version of, “Your dad left you a note.” And apparently the note says, “Congratulations, you’re the CEO. Figure it out.”

Who Is Hudson?

Which brings us to our next question: Who is Hudson? Sure, we already know a bit about the guy. Hudson appears to be the most likely candidate for being Phoebe’s father (and if that’s the truth, then his DNA was in a case file in the PCPD). He’s also the one who put his CEO announcement on hold to fly to Oslo, Norway, to smack around Ethan while trying to find out where Delilah and her baby were.

But despite that, Hudson is essentially a stranger to Josslyn. If he’s that close to Jax that he could assign his daughter leadership of a major corporation and be expected to handle the transition, then isn’t Hudson more qualified for the job?

Josslyn has had business experience. There is nothing wrong with a learning curve, but Josslyn has zero experience — not exactly the type of person who is the typical candidate for the position.

Josslyn’s Resume

If Josslyn had spent the last year working at JJE, learning the business from the ground up, sitting in on meetings, developing relationships with executives, figuring out how her father’s company actually operates, and slowly proving that she had an aptitude for the work, then becoming CEO would make sense.

Instead, she has essentially been handed the job because her father says so, with Hudson acting as the messenger. And that is particularly strange when you remember where Josslyn was not that long ago.

Josslyn had been pursuing a completely different future. She was in medical school with Trina at college when Trina met Kai, and was a pool lifeguard when Kristina nosedived out of Ava’s window. Then Josslyn joined the WSB, and a few shootouts later, the woman who was going to take the Hippocratic oath was an international operative on assignments that could have gotten her killed instead of her coworkers.

To be clear, I actually understood the appeal of the WSB storyline for Josslyn. She has grown up surrounded by people who are constantly dealing with danger; she just wanted to be on the other side of the law. 

But now we’re supposed to believe that she can simply pivot from international espionage to running an international corporation. No one can do that. Except Barbie.

Josslyn’s Next Move

Carly told Josslyn that she’d called Jax and made sure he knew that his daughter joined the WSB. Presumably, the idea to distract her with the company stemmed from that call. We can reasonably guess that Jax isn’t taking her call to add to the distraction in hopes that she’ll quit the WSB to take on the responsibility. That part seems to be working.

But Jack Brennan seemed to agree with our assessment. It was odd that Jax would hand over a multi-billion-dollar company to someone with no business experience, and said he was going to look into it. He should check out the messenger while he’s at it, because we think he’s got way more secret connections to Port Charles than just a bone to pick with Ethan and a memo to deliver.

Josslyn Jacks has had a lot of careers — but maybe it’s time for her to have an actual career that lasts. And, there is nothing inherently wrong with Josslyn becoming the head of JJE. 

In fact, there is something rather fitting about Jax eventually wanting his daughter to inherit the empire he built. It connects her to her father, gives her a story that isn’t entirely dependent on her mother, and could establish a new direction for the character.

Josslyn has gone from Metro Court pool lifeguard to WSB agent to CEO without ever seeming to have enough time to become an expert at anything before moving on to the next. At this point, I am not entirely sure what Josslyn wants to be when she grows up, but apparently her father has decided she is going to be a corporate executive whether she knows how to do the job or not.