"General Hospital: Night Shift" -- The Future of Soap Operas?
By Ed Martin TV / Video Download Archives
Industry doomsayers continue to hint that daytime dramas will become extinct during the next few years, destroyed by a perfect storm of changing lifestyles, digital competition, escalating budgets and aging demographics – not to mention terrible storytelling. But there may be a way to save them. In fact, the model for their salvation is already in place, on SOAPnet, a basic cable network initially conceived as a second-run showcase for ABC’s soap operas.
I’m speaking of General Hospital: Night Shift, the nighttime spin-off of ABC Daytime’s long-running serial General Hospitalthat just concluded its outstanding second season. Under the very skilled guidance of head writer Sri Rao and executive producer Lisa De Cazotte, Night Shift served up all of the elements of a perfect daytime drama, and even though SOAPnet debuted only one new episode per week, the experience of watching it and thinking about it brought all of the rewards that used to come with following a daily serial and required only 1/5th of the time commitment. It was so entertaining, in fact, that I found myself wishing that SOAPnet had produced two episodes per week during its three month run.
Perhaps this is the new model that might save the eight soap operas currently on broadcast television: ABC’s General Hospital, One Life to Live and All My Children; CBS’ The Young & the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, As the World Turns and Guiding Light, and NBC’s Days of Our Lives. Maybe they all have a future in a stripped down, twice-weekly format, if not on their current networks, where two installments a week would dismantle historically rigid daytime schedules, then on SOAPnet or other cable outlets like USA Network or Oxygen.
Regardless, if scaled back versions of these shows proved to be as superior to their original formats as Night Shift was to General Hospital, soap opera fans would have much to celebrate. Advertisers might also be happier with a more concentrated and focused audience for these franchises. Of course, maintaining the networks’ current daytime dramas while developing weekly spin-offs of same and amortizing their production budgets is another interesting option.
One can’t help but give thought to the business and creative opportunities that Night Shift appears to have made possible. I say this because Night Shift has in recent months given me as much to smile about as any soap opera has in many years. It reminded me why I became a passionate fan of General Hospital 30 years ago, and it did so in a manner nobody could have predicted, transforming what had been in its freshman season a perfectly putrid spin-off of a soap opera that is now a mere shadow of its fantastic former self into a sophomore series that embodied almost everything that was sublime about its mother-ship back in its heyday. It was a three-month treat filled with characters from and references to that glorious period, delivered in a storytelling style that was as sophisticated and respectful as it was heartfelt and thoughtful.
Like hundreds of thousands (or could it be millions) of GH fans, I have felt increasingly beaten down by the show’s dark, dreary and sometimes depraved storytelling during the last ten years, which has glamorized criminal activity and pathological behavior while dishonoring doctors, nurses, police officers, military personnel and other everyday heroes. But Night Shift lifted me out of that abyss and allowed me during the last three months, if only on a weekly basis, to experience some of the perfect pleasure that GH served up on a daily basis until it went so terribly wrong. For the first time in years, I couldn’t wait to visit the town of Port Charles and hang with the staff at General Hospital. That’s what a good soap opera is supposed to do. Rao and De Cazotte brought back the heart, the humor and the community of it all. It was as if they heard my personal complaints, heeded my professional advice and did what they did just for me!
Night Shiftonly got better as the season moved along, especially in its mature, thoughtful telling of super spy Robert Scorpio’s battle with cancer and the efforts of his ex-wife Anna Devane and pregnant daughter Robin to care for him during his time of need. On GHthe Scorpio family was rudely ripped apart over 17 years ago, but this summer we got to watch as it pulled itself back together. Tristan Rogers has been playing Robert off and on since 1981 and Finola Hughes has played Anna (on GH and on All My Children) since 1985, but they were never better individually and their chemistry together was never more powerful than during the last few weeks of Night Shift. Rao and his writing team even managed to make good use of Antonio Sabato Jr., a likeable actor who is not exactly known for his dramatic skills, as Jagger Cates, the largely forgettable character he played on GH in the early Nineties who hadn’t been seen since 1993. Just as the storyline about Robert’s cancer brought closure to the long-running separation of the Scorpios, so did the tale of Jagger and his autistic son give voice to unspoken feelings about the deaths of the two people Jagger loved most: His ex-wife Karen (who died from supernatural causes on the short-lived GH spin-off Port Charles) and his brother Stone (who passed from AIDS in 1985).
But the retro respect didn’t stop there. In the first half of the two-part Night Shift season finale, Rao and De Cazotte gave longtime fans multiple closures of their own. During a fever dream brought on by the torment of his cancer and its treatment, Robert was surrounded by the characters he (and we) loved best in the Eighties: Robin, Anna, best friend Luke Spencer, former fling Tiffany Hill and World Security Bureau colleague Sean Donnelly (along with younger bro Mac Scorpio). The only significant characters missing were Frisco and Felicia Jones and Robert’s other wife, Holly Sutton – though Holly’s name was gingerly dropped by Tiffany.
The Scorpio and Jagger stories and the actors in them weren’t the only laudable elements of the vastly improved Night Shift. There were many new characters on hand who felt like old friends after the first few weeks, played by an exciting group of highly appealing young actors. Adam Grimes and Ethan Rains as battling brothers Kyle (an intern) and Leo Julian (a doctor), Carrie Southworth as intern Claire Simpson and Azita Ghanizada as Dr. Saira Batra all excelled in highly emotional storylines. Grimes was especially good in the story of Kyle’s tentative relationship with gravely ill patient Eric Whitlow (played by Chad Allen).
Ed Martin
Ed Martin is the chief television and content critic for MediaVillage. He has written about television and internet programming for several Myers publications since 2000, including The Myers Report, The Myers Programming Report, MediaBizBloggers a…
