Serial Drama

Our September Soap Opera Digest Column

We hope that you were all able to check out the 9/18 issue of Soap Opera Digest. The cover had everything you could possibly hope for: shirtless James Scott! Pretty Megan Ward! Steve Burton looking like someone just asked him the square root of 49! For our September My Take/My Take, Too  column, we turned our hypercritical eyes to two of the most disappointing soaps: General Hospital: Night Shift and All My Children.

Becca discusses the tragic trajectory of NS and wonders how the powers-that-be managed to screw up a full hour of television centered around Patrick and Robin, let alone why they decided to waste Billy Dee Williams the way they have. Mallory was in mourning, trying to cope with pain of Greenlee losing her charm, Spike and Ian in peril, and Jonathan Lavery's continued presence in Pine Valley.

Night Shift Episode 10: Falling Star

Previously, the people who run General Hospital once again stomped on the hearts of soap lovers everywhere by completely screwing up what could have been a really good show but instead is a pointless, boring, and occasionally offensive piece of crap drama whose only claim to fame if there is any justice in the television world will be that it managed to alienate more fanbases in 13 weeks than anyone had previously thought possible.

Oh, on the actual show?  Robin and Patrick, around whom this show was supposed to be built, were really annoying for eight weeks and then they broke up.  Robin had a serious case of the baby rabies (thanks, Mallory, for introducing me to that phrase), and decided to adopt the baby of a woman she'd known for less time than it takes me to buy a really good-fitting pair of jeans.  Jason was uncharacteristically charming and sympathetic; I think the industrial cleaning supplies might have caused a new kind of brain damage, and I therefore want Sonny to get sentenced to community service as a janitor too.  Patrick kissed Leyla on the roof, treating us to Jason Thompson's first chemistry-less romantic interaction of his two-year tenure as Patrick.  Dr. Kelly Lee slept with...well, a whole lot of people, and is clearly coping with some kind of childhood abuse, but in the meantime one of her conquests slapped the hospital with a sexual harassment lawsuit.  Jolene turned out to be a serial killer working for MedCam, the big evil corporation that wants to devalue GH so it can buy it on the cheap.  And it turned out Robin didn't know her "good friend" Stacy that well, because Stacy's ex-boyfriend Curtis showed up to claim his daughter despite Stacy's story to Robin that she'd used an anonymous sperm donor. 

Also, Maxie flatlined like 26 times but is now out and about in Port Charles, and Cooper -- who apparently never visited her in the hospital -- hasn't been seen since the first episode.  There is a mysterious ______ Barrett character lurking around the hospital after being severely burned, and much to our horror we suspected she's supposed to be a recast Brenda, but nothing has happened with her in weeks.  Neither of these stories was featured on this episode, which is just as well, because I like Maxie and don't want her associated with this, and more ______ Barrett would have upped the suckage level to a point where I don't think we have the instrumentation to measure.

I really don't understand this show.  It blatantly rips off elements of other, more successful and entertaining shows but manages to make even those elements crappy, it's so boring that sometimes I think I'm watching a repeat when I'm not, nobody I know likes or fesses up to watching it, yet the ratings are good and they're talking about doing another season of it.  Night Shift is the soap opera equivalent of Nickelback.

Aaaanyway, you really want to know what happened in the tenth episode though, huh?  Oh, all right.

Night Shift Episode 9: Gutter Ball

PREVIOUSLY on Night Shift: Lainey's father's condition is worsening and he needs surgery deemed by Dr. Ford to be unnecessary because Dr. Ford hates all human beings; we were introduced to a Kentucky fried southern caricature playing the MedCam guy; Epiphany mooned over Billy Dee Williams; Maxie had an abscess in BJ's heart and had emergency surgery performed by the increasingly dreamy Dr. Leo Julian,  but then flatlined due to the machinations of MYSTERIOUS FIGURE; MYSTERIOUS FIGURE was revealed to be Jolene; Robin contracted a case of baby rabies and made plans to adopt Stacy's daughter; Patrick observed the Robin hijinks and responded with his best impression of Marge Simpson's exasperated groan; Nazanin Boniadi was put on contract at the OG GH; Amanda Baker was tapped to play Babe on All My Children; the actress who plays Regina was like "What the hell?!"

There are a lot of things in life that I don't understand, like why people have bad phone manners, trigonometry, how fax machines work, Fergie, etc. And now we can add something else to the list: how Bob Guza and Jill Farren Phelps were given a new show to write without ever having to provide anyone with an outline for how the 13 episodes would go.

BRIAN FRONS: We want you to write a show with some of the GH characters, but make it a little different.
BOB GUZA: What will I write about?
BRIAN FRONS: Don't know, don't care.
BOB GUZA: 'Kay!

I mean, giving this kind of freedom to two people with long track records of decimating shows seems unwise, to say the least.

Night Shift Episode 8: Employee of the Month

Previously, General Hospital: Night Shift pretty much sucked and lived up to none of its "More Drama.  More Sex.  More Soap.  More Story." tagline.  If you need to catch up on the series so far, here's an episode-by-episode recap:

• promising
• horrible
• meh
• boring
• terrible
• awful
• decent (just to throw us)

I'd summarize last night's as "bad."  There have been worse episodes, but this was a pretty crappy hour of television.

Night Shift: What Say You?

The "Employee of the Month" recap will be up later today (once Becca recovers fully from her eyeroll-induced migraine) but we'd like to ask you, dear readers, how you feel about the show. We haven't been shy about our disappointment with the show and have been vocal about our frustration with poor writing, heinous editing, appalling performances and people acting completely out of character for the past eight episodes. To sum up, we think it sucks. And blows. But since we've earned a reputation as being hypercritical and unnecessarily harsh, we want to hear what you think.

more at twiigs.com...

Night Shift Episode 7: Mother's Day

PREVIOUSLY on General Hospital: Night Shift: Maxie effing flatlined! And nobody mentioned it in the next episode! What the hell, show? I simply must know if she, you know, DIED while people blithely embarrassed themselves and their future progeny by making herky jerky movements set to a lame cover of "Dancing in the Streets" in a poor attempt to juxtapose "Life in crisis!" with "Life goes on! With music!" That really offended me far, far more than I can put into words. The dropping the ball on Maxie, I mean, not the bad dancing, although that was offensive in its own way.

On the last episode of Night Shift, the show followed the lead of one the shows it blatantly rips off by having someone perform surgery in an elevator; it followed the lead of another of the shows it blatantly rips off by titling an episode "Love's Labors" and featuring an emergency c-section performed by someone unqualified to do the operation (of course, NS differs from ER in that the hitman/janitor on Night Shift did a better C-section than the medical doctor on ER. And also, the "Love's Labor Lost" episode of ER was one of the most brilliant, heart wrenching episodes of television ever); Billy Dee Williams was cruelly betrayed by his elevator, which was broken no doubt by MYSTERIOUS FIGURE; Patrick was a dick; Robin was oversensitive, jealous and allegedly overinvolved in Stacy's case; much in the manner of only Patrick hearing "When The Saints Go Marching In", only Robin was able to see that Leyla pretty much sucks at her job.

Night Shift Episode 6: Love's Labors

Previously on Night Shift:  The show started off with a promising premiere but since then has plummeted downhill faster than Lindsay Lohan's sobriety.  This week's episode wasn't as bad as last week's or the second one, but it still wasn't good.  I still think the writers didn't sit down and map out a 13-episode arc, because the show doesn't hang together week to week, and there's no character development that you would expect from a weekly drama.  The only real constant is Patrick and Robin's ridiculously redundant and increasingly nonsensical bickering.  This week, there wasn't even any charming banter to help balance it out.  Sigh.

We open with what initially looks like a grainy dream/nightmare sequence (like last week) involving Robin and Patrick's patient dying. But then Robin is sitting in Dr. Ford's office with Ford and a hospital lawyer to say that what happened at the hospital that night is a major catastrophe, so the grainy footage is apparently a flashback.  Then we cut to Robin carrying coffee to the nurses' station, and it's clear we're going to be doing the whole "show the conclusion first and then the many hours leading up to it" thing that every drama in the history of the world, including GH itself during the last sweeps period, has done.  A total lack of originality by the GH team.  Who could have seen this coming?!

Also in the hospital, Patrick is flirting/talking with Leyla.   Robin sees them, overreacts significantly, and gives his coffee away to Jolene before storming off.  Who could have seen this coming?!

Spinelli is doing his usual thing, following Jason around like a (really weird) puppy.  He shows the hitman/janitor the latest version of The Saga of Stone Cold, the video game that looks like you would play it on a Commodore 64.  Jason is angry Spinelli didn't delete the game.  Spinelli is stoked to have improved the game with a new "uber villain" named The Cackling Clown (based on that bizarre patient from last week), complete with an animated disembodied clown's head graphic.  I will be seeking a new blog and column collaborator, because somewhere in New York, Mallory just had a stroke. 

Night Shift Episode 5: Bed, Bath and Be Gone

There are times, more often than not, that my standards for entertainment are not that high. I enjoy quality things, but, you know, I read US Weekly. I watch The Hills. I firmly believe that Christina Aguilera can do no wrong.

But I do have some standards. And it's becoming more and more clear as each episode is aired that General Hospital: Night Shift is not up to those vague, not really that high at all, standards.

Since the promising pilot, the quality has veered from the downright tragically awful, to the so-so, to the unbearably boring to...whatever this episode was.

Night Shift Episode 4: Keep the Change

You know how sometimes you'll meet a new guy, and you think, he is the dreamiest!  Cute, smart, funny, treats his friends well, doesn't wear pleated khakis?  And then you go out and you realize eh, still cute, but not really all that smart, doesn't like to read, funny only if he's repeating movie quotes, and wears white sneakers?  But you stick it out for a second date and maybe a third, at which point you realize that if you spend any more time with this guy, you are either going to black out from boredom or kill him and possibly yourself just to end the misery?

That guy = Night Shift.

I tried to like it.  Really, I did!  I love the characters of Patrick and Robin.  I like GH stories that actually feature the hospital.  I adored the idea of plotlines that didn't revolve around Sonny, Jason, and Carly.  And the first episode didn't suck, which was promising.  But it's been downhill from there.  Why was I so optimistic about something from the people who bring GH into my living room everyday?  I have no idea. 

This week wasn't as awful as the second episode (the first one that I recapped, and still the worst so far, in my opinion), but it was so boring and pointless.  You know it's a bad episode when 1) I think Spinelli is the most amusing part, 2) I think Jason being on it would have improved it, 3) there is absolutely no charming Patrick and Robin banter, 4)  I miss the ______ Barrett sub-plot, and 5) I think there were episodes of GH last week that moved more stories forward.

I still think Jason Thompson and Kimberly McCullough are great together, and I kind of like Alternate Reality Jason (not that he was on this week), but I really could do without the rest of it.  The writing is terrible.  In this week's Soap Opera Digest, some SoapNet person makes noises about turning Night Shift into a regular (not limited run) series, and at this point I can't imagine they'll be able to sustain viewership for that. But then again I continue to watch OG GH, so clearly there are those of us who are gluttons for TV punishment. 

On with the blow-by-blow.  I hope you're sufficiently caffeinated.

Night Shift Episode 3: Paternity Ward

PREVIOUSLY on Night Shift: Jason was sentenced to mopping floors and wandering the hallways as community service for shooting Spinelli; Billy Dee Williams was creepy; Maxie was admitted to GH with a possibly life-threatening illness and bonded with Dr. Julian; Dr. Ford hated the human race; Stan hated corporate America and The Man; the writers found the concept of boobs to be absolutely LOL hilarious; Leyla was inappropriate with Patrick; the show decided to clumsily tackle serious racial issues; Sgt. Unsavory attacked Lainey, opened up to her and then asked her out for coffee; Kelly and Stan had some hot shower action; Clown Tapestry Lady made a reference to being stabbed by produce; _________ Barrett knows who Jason is; Patrick lost the "hotly" descriptor on account of being sleazy; the show sucked in myriad ways. 

And I had been really delighted by the pilot, clunkiness and Grey's Anatomy overtones aside. It's my own fault for being naive, you know? What on earth was I doing being optimistic about a show run by the same people currently ruining General Hospital? That's like tuning into According to Jim and earnestly looking for laughs. Foolish!