So this is what selling out Han Solo gets you!  Billy Dee Williams lends his patented “Oh, you crazy kids!” grin to this SOAPnet spin-off of the long-running series “General Hospital”.  Unfortunately, Billy Dee is only a semi-regular guest star.

Okay, let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a big soap opera fan.  As a matter of fact, I never quite figured out what was so fascinating about people bitching a lot and sleeping around on each other (I used to bartend in a small town casino: I’ve seen plenty of drama).  So, when “General Hospital: Night Shift” showed up on my doorstep, I wondered how I should go about viewing it… after thinking it over, I decided to pay homage to several mother-like figures from my traumatic childhood: I donned the frilliest robe I could locate, put my hair in curlers, splashed a couple ounces of Wild Turkey in my morning coffee, swallowed a handful of barbiturates, and sat in front of an ironing board while the television blared away in front of me (I also tried to seduce the FedEx guy, but he didn’t appear to be very interested… in fact he looked a little scared… and angry, too, I think).

“General Hospital: Night Shift” really doesn’t offer the viewer anything new.  Much like its parent series, Night Shift has multiple (bizarre) storylines that would confuse even Hercule Poirot, mediocre acting direct from the school of “I’m Pretty - That’s Sufficient”, and crappy special defects that remind me early “Doctor Who” episodes.  A lot of the same… ahem, actors from “General Hospital” are carried over to this series (after all, doctors are on-call 24/7...plus a paycheck is a paycheck, right?) including Jennifer Love Hewitt-wannabe Kimberly McCullough, Nazanin Boniadi, Minae Noji, Dominic Rains, Angel M. Wainwright, Jason Thompson, Steve Burton and the annoying Bradford Anderson.

Also thrown into the mix (in order to enlarge the Soap Opera Gene Pool) are some new characters, such as the cool-as-a-baby’s-ass night janitor (Lando) who was no doubt written in to a) give Billy Dee something to do other than attend Star Wars Conventions and b) to appeal to sanitation engineers who feel a certain sense of anger from Neil Flynn’s character on “Scrubs”.

Ambulance operators that are accidentally getting high from a canister of laughing gas (which later explodes when some moron Iraq-vet decides to walk up and light a match), HIV Positive pregnant women, an old lady that has been stabbed and patiently sits in the waiting room talking, employees having sex in a closet, dead people turning out to be not-quite-dead after all, sex, drama and more sex: isn’t that why people watch soap operas?
I kept watching.  After two episodes, it started becoming kinda-sorta interesting… what was going to happen next?  Will the one lady do the nasty with that other guy… and oh, how his wife is gonna be maaaddddd when she finds out… .whooo!  Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to find out… it’s an entire season on DVD: I can just go to the next episode and see for myself and then call Donna and ask her is she saw that, too so we can talk about it over some General Foods International Coffee!

Suddenly, it all came flooding back to me… I remembered being forced to watch soap operas as a kid by a college co-ed babysitter (no, she wasn’t hot).  I wanted to watch the Vincent Price movie, but nooooo, we had to watch that fucking daytime drama shit!  Then, the memory became even more vivid: over time, every day, after school, it was the same show… it aired twice a day just in case we missed it and the babysitter usually watched it both times!  There was no way of avoiding it!  I even started watching it… willingly!  No wonder I was in therapy in grade school!

As I sat there, gluing my eyelids open in a vain effort to go on, I remember thinking to myself: “Fight it, man - fight it!  You can get through it.  You can remain detached.  It’s just a TV show… OK… OK… I’ll try… in a day or so… not now… must rest first… one character in the show is named Epiphany… aaagghhh!… these people can’t act… .ggrrrrrrrrr!… Soylent Green is made from people… Lando… no, not Lando… he’s not that bad of a guy, really… he didn’t have a choice… the Empire arrived right before Han did… nooooo!… if I could just reach my utility belt… ” and then I fell to the ground… crying.

Ah, hell, there was always tomorrow, right?

The next day, my life suddenly became landing strip for the bullshit drama of others: I started hearing about the lives of the people around me… so-and-so (who is married to what’s-his-name) is sleeping with the-guy-from-that-one-place-down-the-way who is married to another-lady (what’s-his-name took a handful of pills and is in a coma because he found out).  So-and-so’s former colleague (what’s-her-face) was caught vandalizing the vehicle of her estranged husband, (asshole-donkey-fucker), who happens to be the same guy that smashed in the face of a woman I used to date!  I’m not making this up, kids.

It was blatantly obvious to me what had happened.  By merely opening “General Hospital: Night Shift”, I had opened a Pandora’s Box of uncontrollable drama, the likes of which nobody should have to endure: this innocent-looking DVD was like having a hotline to pure evil installed in your living room.  I knew then what I had to do: I ran home, headed directly for my copy of “General Hospital: Night Shift” and took it outside.  There, after denouncing the forces of evil in front of a few wandering cats, I tossed the DVD into the path of an oncoming semi.  The sight and sound of the package being crushed so swiftly was nothing short of beautiful.  All of the sudden, the sun came out and shined directly onto me… there were plants and birds and rocks and things!  It was as close of a religious experience as I will probably ever have.

So then, for personal reasons, I really cannot recommend “General Hospital: Night Shift”.

Some of the chicks in the show are kinda hot, though… if that helps.

ATTENTION DVD-ROM USERS: Maybe there was something wrong with the copy that I received, but I cannot get any of the three discs in this set to play on my laptop.  The laser-inscribed artwork on the discs can be seen right through the other side (which probably isn’t good).  I also had the occasional problem with discs locking-up in my DVD player. 


Presentation
I think some of the cameras used for filming “General Hospital: Night Shift” were the same ones used when the original series started in 1963.  Sometimes the Full Frame video looks like it was fuzzy 16mm footage and quickly transferred to video overnight, other times the image looks like regular ol’ analog video.  Can’t say I was overly impressed with it (ditto on the Stereo sound).

Extras
There’s a Behind-the-Scenes look at the show (7:42) and a thirty-second promo for SOAPnet.  Big whoop.

The Bottom Line
Wear a Hazmat suit - it’s contagious.