General Hospital: Night Shift - The Complete First Season
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DVD details
Actor: Adrian Alvarado, Derk Cheetwood, Jason Gerhardt, Julie Berman, Lindze LethermanBrand: Buena Vista Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 530 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-02-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Product features:
- From the creative minds who brought you the Emmy® Award-winning daytime drama General Hospital comes the highly anticipated SOAPnet primetime spin-off General Hospital: Night Shift. If you can t get enough of the excitement, schemes and romance of Port Charles during the day, you ll get an even more steamy and intimate look on the night shift. When the sun goes down in Port Charles, matters o
DVD Reviews of General Hospital: Night Shift - The Complete First Season
DVD Review: Wasted Potential
Summary: 1 Stars
General Hospital: Night Shift.
Let's dissect, shall we?
STEREOTYPES: If you were deluded into thinking that the diversity of the cast would mean something positive going in, raise your hand! Instead, viewers were treated to a 13 weeks course of Stereotypes 101. The writers, of course, forgot to add this rather important disclaimer: these representations are abhorrent and false! Be you Hispanic, black, female, anyone of color really, or boast an iota of social awareness, prepare to be annoyed. From a Latino medical employee's usage of Spanish come-ons, to a 15 year old pregnant Latina girl with her gangster boyfriend and his posse, the nation's largest minority group were hit with the worst representation. The black student nurse once had an abortion, and the series' attempt to bond her with the black Chief of Staff felt more awkward for trying. Then there's the ridiculously over-propped Iranian student nurse throwing herself a manipulative pity party since "no one likes her because she's different," as if, it would seem, the rest of the multicultural hospital staff were all White Anglo-Saxan Protestant supremacists. Way to use diversity as a scapegoat for your own personality deficiencies, Nurse Mir, and trivialize history as a ploy for sympathy. If her portrayer's attempts at sobbing were even moderately mediocre, perhaps I could have felt something for the character other than revulsion. It was far from it. I must however credit Dominic Rains, who, while referencing his character's Iranian heritage, had the talent to showcase diversity as an endearing and beautiful element of a multi-faceted character, and so win Dr. Leo Julian a well-deserved legion of fans.
MISOGYNY: Actresses Noji and King did not disappoint, but their characters' storylines were typical of GH writers. Kelly is a sex addict who gets charged for sexual harassment, never mind the fact that Dr. Patrick Drake was introduced with much the same pattern of behavior. He's a man, so it's normal, right?, whereas with a woman, let's get her to therapy, STAT. Lainey falls for the man who threatens her with a knife, because, once again, it's GH, where violence is sexy and manhandling is a total turn on. O-kay. I adore the characters and portrayers, but both deserved story lines not founded on twisted misogynistic logic. And then the boob job 'jokes.' Um, GH, you're catering to women and with this show, a younger demographic as well. So, just don't.
MISERY: Let's now tackle the greatest flaw with this program, as fellow reviewers have artfully detailed: the central couple. The very pairing that was to and could have provided this show with a sense of warmth, heart, and rootability was dismantled almost right off the bat, with the XY portion reduced to a walking personification of his own genitalia, stripped entirely of any sensitivity or basic human decency toward the woman he claimed to love. Dr. Patrick Drake was, in my eyes, reduced to a condescending, disrespectful, hypocritical manwhore, whose very presence on screen, even when not engaged in euphemistically "extracurricular" activities, was for me intolerable. The XX portion of this could-be golden couple, didn't fare much better, as Dr. Robin Scorpio was a living portrait of misery, spending her weeks without any voice of self-defense as she was continually forced to walk in on her boyfriend's flirtatious antics with a character whose charisma rivals that of a piece of cardboard. Robin then sets aside her medical degree to at one point turn into a baby-crazed zombie, because as misogynistic GH reminds us, it's utterly impossible for a woman to have a successful career and a successful family life. Al-righty then... duly noted.
It is truly a credit to Kimberly McCullough's all-around fantastic-ness that she took the mediocre writing and motivation for her character and still turned in such consistently intense and heart-wrenching performances. She made me feel for a Robin that I at times did not recognize, but through McCullough's Emmy award winning talent, I loved and cried for her still. Wonderful.
As audiences go, I don't think those of us watching Night Shift were really that hard to please. We just wanted some of our favorite soap characters and actors, who are routinely sidestepped on regular GH, to be given the time and platform to shine. As management goes, those in charge proved how little in tune they are with their audience. While we in fact applaud them for their efforts to create a channel for soaps to continue to thrive, we insist that they have done themselves a disservice by so brazenly manipulating and ignoring the desires of their audience. Viewers felt lied to by advertisements, which, besides promoting the very couple that a large portion of the viewership (initially) tuned in to see and soon thereafter dismantling them beyond rootable repair, promised stand-alone episodes, several medical cases, and edgier and racier couplings. They did not deliver, and in some cases, even offended in attempt.
Logistically and substantially, this series was a sloppy mess. The editing was difficult to follow; storylines and characters were dropped without a word as the season went along. Viewers are more than willing to suspend disbelief, but we do ask in return to not be given migraines and cold sweats by the sheer lack of believable organization and overabundance of unsavory plotlines. If the writers had devoted their talents and yes, I understand limited time, to sensible, dramatic storytelling instead of resorting to cheap sensationalist antics, so many flaws would have been forgiven and overlooked by an eagerly awaiting audience. As it is: they did not.
In the end, it's your call. If this series taught me anything, it was to respect myself as a consumer more and refuse to reward those who respect me so little. I'd suggest saving your money, and checking out YouTube as an outlet for curiosity or for the few moments worth watching. My respect for the actors involved remains intact, but this series was a major disappointment.
Description of General Hospital: Night Shift - The Complete First Season
From the creative minds who brought you the Emmy® Award-winning daytime drama General Hospital comes the highly anticipated SOAPnet primetime spin-off General Hospital: Night Shift. If you can t get enough of the excitement, schemes and romance of Port Charles during the day, you ll get an even more steamy and intimate look on the night shift. When the sun goes down in Port Charles, matters of life and death grip the hospital. And when the sun rises the next day, nothing is ever the same as the day before not for the patients or the doctors. Featuring an all star cast, including celebrated actor Billy Dee Williams as well as Steve Burton, Kimberly McCullough and Jason Thompson, Night Shift goes to places General Hospital s never gone before. Follow the trials and tribulations of the hospital staff as they cope with drug addiction, parenthood, promiscuity and a host of other personal complications. Their conflicts are heightened by a series of unfortunate accidents at the hospital that put everyone s lives at risk. Own every episode of Season One, including a behind-the-scenes peek at your favorite daytime stars, on this 3-disc DVD set. Paging all doctors: working the Night Shift at General Hospital is not for the faint of heart.Bestsellers in DVD
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