General Hospital: Night Shift: Season One

Over the almost six decades that television has been a standard part of the American home there have been many genres that have risen to popularity. At one time the western was all the rage and then the crime drama or sit com would gain ascendancy for awhile. These types of series wax and wane in popularity but there has been one format that has lasted, the soap opera. A few of these series began on radio and made the transition to television at the very dawn of the medium. There are day time soap operas that now have over five decades of air time under their belts, amazing by any criteria especially when you consider that most series don’t last even one season. For example ‘As the World Turns’ has been on since 1956 and ‘The Guiding Light’ was on radio between 1937 until 1952 when it switched to television. There is a simple reason why these dramas last so long, people watch them. Many would go so far as to say they are addictive. When the O.J. Simpson trail took over day time television a legion of housewives complained loudly about missing their stories. ‘General Hospital’ may be much younger than these ancients of day time TV, it started on 1963, but it is the longest running soap opera on ABC. It is also considered one of the top stories on the air. It combined the aspects of the day time story with the popular doctor series that were on at night. It was only natural that the executives over at ABC would think of expanding the franchise and create a spin off for night time viewing. As such ‘General Hospital: Night Shift’ was born in 2007.

Ti would have been almost impossible to get this new series on mainstream broadcast television. The soap opera format has been successfully cloned and infused into a plethora of nighttime dramas like ‘The OC’, and ‘One Tree Hill’, geared towards the older teen audience. To make the show desirable high end cable networks like HBO or Showtime would mean making the series much more violent of sexually explicit. The core audiences of most day time series, including the parent show here, ‘General Hospital’ is demographically housewives and students. The challenge for the producers of ‘Night Shift’ was to capture this audience at night while avoiding direct conflict with the network series. The solution came about because of the huge number of channels available with most cable providers. The network SoapNet debuted in 2000 and carved out a niche for itself rerunning the most popular soaps. Over the years they started to feature original programming and the first official spin off of a day time soap, ‘General Hospital: Night Shift’ was premiered. Soapnet had a built in and extremely loyal set of viewers so this was a match made in network heaven. The series would quickly become the highest rated show on the network.

The format of the ‘Night Shift’ spin off was simple enough. The stated goal as professed by the network was to provide a series that would delve deeper into the relationships and medical cases in the Port Charles hospital. Actors would get to do double duty and portray the same characters on both series. They wanted each of the episodes would be more self-contained than is usual for a day time series. The main conflicts would be wrapped up nicely by the end of the hour. The main problem in this first season was the writing staffs of the day time and night time variations never seemed to have meetings together. One has to ask if they were in the same building and perhaps a few combined writing sessions. Since the characters are shared between the two series some attempt should have been made to make sure what happened on one series was consistent with the other. One infamous case was the death of a main character in the night show while she remained one of the most prolific promiscuous characters during the day. Even though death on a soap opera is no where near as permanent as in real life fan notice these things. This is especially true for the soap opera fan; perhaps one of the most details conscious fans ever. Many of these fans live for their shows and can recite off hand decades of storylines and family trees. It is only natural to consider that fans of the day time series would carry over to the night time making discontinuity like this a slap in the face.

The first scene of the initial episode sets the typical soap opera stage as the audience sees Dr. Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough) enjoying a shower. A man, Dr. Patrick Drake (Jason Thompson), pulls close to her and they make out right there in the doctor’s locker room. There beepers, buried deep in a pile of rumpled clothing goes off and they run past the all knowing, always around janitor, Toussaint Dubois (Billy Dee Williams). The emergency room is busy and the nurses run around taking histories but mostly chatting with each other so we can get the necessary set up and exposition. The staff goes out to the ambulance bay to wait for a patient and an SUV pulls up. Fans of the day time series will recognize the man exiting as Jason Morgan (Steve Burton). After talking to a friend deeply into the original series I discovered that in the day time story Jason was in jail. He seems to have gotten a little time off to help launch this spin off. It doesn’t take long before Robin and Patrick break some hospital rules and are banished to the night shift but Patrick is injured in the ambulance crash. There is a pregnant girl with HIV who dies, well kind of sort of dies, and other strange patients that wonder in and out of the frame. In later episodes Maxie Jones (Kirsten Storms) is given medical tests by Dr. Leo Julian (Dominic Rains) and it is discovered that she has a cardiac problem that requires surgery. I guess they don’t have enough walk in business in this hospital; they have to start treating the regular characters. This may be a bad thing considering one of the doctors; Dr. Andrew Archer (Ron Melendez) has an addiction to anesthesia. With the doctors and nurses so into everything but medicine it is a wonder that anyone detected that there is an angel of death killing off the patients. It is a wonder that this hospital as kept its accreditation. For good measure the season cliff hanger ending features two rival gangs fight it out in the hospital. This kind of makes sense since gang wars usually do result in trauma.

I have to admit it; even though I have never watched a soap opera in my life after previewing this I can understand why so many do. The stories do pull you in and hold your attention. Even if you take this as a satire or some other comedy form the stories will get to you. The drama is forces as is the case for the genre. The acting is occasionally stiff but what matters is trying to keep up with the plots, relationships and situations that in a constant state of flux.

Buena Vista releases all thirteen episodes of the first season to DVD with a nice little box set. The audio is Dolby Stereo with somewhat average channel separation. The full screen video was a bit grainy but held together. There is a behind the scenes look included as an extra. If you are not ready to get into a full blown soap opera this may be a good starter pack for you.

Posted 02/02/08