He only appeared in a couple of really odd scenes on Friday’s “General Hospital,” but it seemed like big movie star (and legitimately fine actor) James Franco’s very presence on set bumped up the performances of everybody featured yesterday.

If you just tuned in to “GH” curious about what the “Pineapple Express” and “Spiderman” star was doing on a soap opera, you wouldn’t know what I mean here. But if you watch “GH” every day, like I do – yes, I’m a soap fan and don’t mind admitting it because it’s no less legit than, say, movies about teen vampires- you’d know that many of the players, primary among them Maurice Bernard, who plays screamy yelly mob boss Sonny Corinthos, were actually nuanced. And thoughtful. And introspective. And didn’t mistake volume for emotional impact.

Franco is playing a mysterious, morbid artist with a violent streak named – and this is a stretch – Franco, and it’s a shame, as far as I’m concerned, because “GH”‘s mob scene is my least favorite part of the show. The bloodshed and sexism that pervades the show has pushed the usual soap staples, like romance and, you know, THE HOSPITAL,  onto the back burner, and it’s put the show in the very icky moral bind of trying to play both ends against the very bloody middle – ‘fessing up to the danger and destructiveness of being a professional killer, while still trying to prop Sonny and Jason, his brain-damanged right hand man (Steve Burton) up as good men, good fathers and good partners.

Doesn’t work.

But something interesting happened Friday, even though much of the action, particularly Franco’s, involved a big stupid mob shoot-out and the death of a guest-starring mob dude named Joey Limbo – the reactions were restrained, and everybody, particularly Bernard, had some beautiful moments. If you don’t watch the show, just know that Sonny’s had some family problems lately, like finding out that the mob princess he married accidentally got his kid shot when she put out a hit on Sonny (whoops).

And then that kid, who is now 18, killed the wife with a shovel when she tried to steal his mother’s newborn baby, and he doesn’t feel bad about it at all. Like I said, he’s got some problems. But in a scene with his new associate, who he doesn’t know is his other kid, he gave a measured, regretful speech about how he dreamed of getting out. It was moving. Plus, no screaming!

As for Franco the artist, he apparently likes rearranging dead bodies and recreating crime scenes, and he’s stalking Jason the hit man – there was a creepy scene where he waved at Jason as the mobsters drove away from the shoot-out, and gave Jason the shivers. It was sort of awesome, because I really don’t like the mob. Later, you see him getting all sexy with his agent, the deliciously slinky Marsha Thomason of “Las Vegas,” and you see there’s just something off about the guy. Sadly, it all comes back to the mob. But Franco’s so intriguing – there’s an amazing amount of there, there – that I’m hooked.

I mean, I was watching it anyway. It might as well be good.

Heath Ledger-esque