Spin-off of General Hospital set to debut in July on SOAPnet.

Night Shift

I dread this show. It's a sure fire way to screw over Scrubs fans while giving more time to GH for more mob suckitude.

I hope they don't screw over Scrubs fans, not that I can watch it live anyway, it will have to be clips for me.

I am trying to understand the format here - is it a half hour? How does most of that current GH cast have time to be on here having a whole other set of storylines? Is that what's going on? Or if they're phasing in new people like Lando Calrissian, Administrator Of This Facility, where are they on the list of cast?

I can't believe they recast Sonny and Jason's Only Black Friend again with Jamal, that's hilarious meta given this spinoff.

If I watch (if I can find the eps on or off SN, as I don't know if I'll get it when I move soon) , I will only watch for the hospital characters and Lando. This deal is getting worse all the time...

As I understand it, GH has one dark day per week, which I think is Monday, and that'll be when they shoot this new show.

I don't have alot of hope for this one, given Guza and JFP are in charge. Guza didn't make alot of hay with Sunset Beach, and JFP has killed two shows, tried to kill OLTL and is slowly killing GH. Odds don't look too good.

I liked this show the first time. When it was called Port Charles.



Bwah!

And this is why I'm not on board. PC ended and with it some great characters that we never saw again (Lucy, Kevin, Sigmund?)

I don't want that to happen to Robin and Patrick (unless both actors choose to move on to other things).

I just saw my first spoilers.

Spinelli is injured in the first episode, and eventually develops a crush on Robin

Now that's something I can appreciate. It makes sense for both characters -- she deserves it, and he would totally do it!

I may end up hating this show, but damn! This board looks promising!

When do the poisoned fang SL's start?

I read an interview with Guza in a recent SOD that Night Shift would be completely separate from GH. He said that on Night Shift we could see Jason being treated for a gunshot wound, yet on GH he could be doing something else entirely.

I hope I misunderstood, though. Otherwise it could get confusing.

Everytime I read something new Guza has said, I'm surprised to find that he's amount of hackness and stupidity is even greater than I thought. Even when I think he can't possibly be any worse, the proves me wrong.

I was ready to check this out, now that I have soapnet, until I heard Jason was going to be on it. Isn't he already on GH 5 days a week? Do we really need another hour of the week with him? Why can't Robin's parents be on it? That would make me tune in to see all the Scorpios together.

Why do they need a spin-off of GENERAL HOSPITAL to show the goings-on of GENERAL HOSPITAL, when they already have a show which is supposed to be about the characters and their lives at GENERAL HOSPITAL? Huh? Why not just have a spin-off for the mob?

Rumor has it that the first two episodes were screened for focus groups (Frons' favorite thing), and did not go over well. Why am I not surprised?

I hope some of the comments were along the lines of "we want to see hospital scenes on the actual General Hospital, not some lame spin-off, you nimrods."

I blame it on not nearly enough DL-56.

That person also said that Jason Thompson would be gone by the end of summer, which would be a full 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years before his contract is up.

I for one am hopefully that Night Shift may actually be good as it will seemingly involve the characters I give a rat's ass about and leave the others most on GH. If I can cut my need for General Hospital down to 1 night/week, I'll be quite happy.

I dread that SBu is so involved, but I do really hope he is only there as a plot point and not really involved to much.

Based on an interview SBu is in 11 of the 13 episodes. Blech

I so hate that.

I should add that unless Soapnet suddenly appears in Canada or CTV picks the show up, I will only see it by downloading or getting a DVD of it from someone.

This is a bad idea, although it could've been decent. In order for their to be a point to this spin-off, they needed to take a small amount of characters from GH, add new people and focus. Instead they've brought like half the cast of GH, many of whom are already in major stories on the main show. Why the hell does this need Jason for example?

I also can't support a self-contained spin-off of a SOAP OPERA on a channel called SOAPnet. Then you have Guza/Phelps controlling this as well which means you're just getting GH with some location shoots. Thats stupid.

In order for a soap opera spin off to work, IMO, it has to be different from the mothership. Put two hours of Grey's Anatomy on and it won't work. If it worked they'd do that for all the hits.

Maybe this will prove me wrong, but I still see characters like Lainey getting neglected in favor of someone like Jason or that annoying Spinelli.

And bringing most of the cast in is going to cause so much confusion with what Guza has said in mags about the two shows being completely separate. So I'll see Jason shot one day and the same night he'll be mooning over Elizabeth on a bridge?

So much more of Jason to hate... yecch.

So, in the history of bad ideas, this whole thing seems to score fairly high. Repetitive, confusing, no demand for it... yep, sounds like a winner to me.

If Frons, Phelps & Guza want to do a hospital show....gee, there's a show running that used to be all about hospitals...seems its name was General Hospital. These three give pin heads a bad name.

I think since the ratings are pretty good for GH that TIIC think we want all these mob happenings instead of hospital happenings. Hence, limited Scrubs and more Sonny/Jason.

Hey, I'd take vampires on their own show over more of the SOS from F/P/G.

And in case anyone's wondering, even I was looking forward to a show that wasn't all Jason all the time. Dammit.

Knots Landing:
How do you account for the popularity of the CSI franchise then? Isn't that basically what they did, took a hit show and duplicated it two, three times over?

And from the GH thread, SBu apparently appeared on every single damn episode of GH last month. 23/23 episodes. Sweet fancy Moses. So naturally, he should be on Night Shift. And I'm sure he'll appear for every single episode there too. Because how are we supposed to know that a TV show is set in Port Charles, New York unless Jason Morgan is involved in every storyline to bestow his special blinky brand of truth and light?

Does Steve Burton have a clone? How the hell is he suppossed to tape 23 out of 23 GH shows and then go and tape 11 out of 13 Night Shift shows? Maybe, that would explain the borg-yness.

Because the GH set is dark one day per week (Monday I think) and that's when they've been filming this newest catastrophe. I believe I read they're about half way done filming.

For those that are interested, there are medianet pictures from the first episode available.

The caption on the majority of them is: After treating an indigent patient against hospital policy, Robin and Patrick have been assigned the night shift at General Hospital. An accidental shooting sends Jason and Spinelli to the hospital. Patrick is injured in an explosion and admitted to General Hospital as a patient. Maxie and Coop are caught in a compromising position and Robin is inspired by a pregnant patient,

I can't help it. I'm excited, though I know it will come back to bite me in the ass. I'll pretty much take seeing Scrubs where ever I can. It's a weakness.

ETA: They film on Fridays. I think they have five episodes done now, which means they should be almost done filming by the time the show debuts July 12th.

So do the actors get paid extra?

I'm sure. It's an AFTRA show, but they have the same general rules of SAG (where I work). It's a different show, so they'd have to have new contracts. Unless there was some ridiculous clause about spin-offs in their GH contract, but I doubt any good agent would have let that happen.

Nice how they remember Robin and Jason's friendship when they want to subject us to more Jason. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just dig up Amy Vining? Isn't she like, Laura's sister or something?

Hmm, so that's why they actually let Robin talk about Jason this week. Stupid me. I thought it was too good to be true.

So would I, LeatherJacket, so would I. I loved PC and was devastated when they cancelled, so...

p.s. I think it's going to need more SBu though. I mean, he is SUCH a necessity. *vomits*

In my world, he kinda is. Still, I was looking forward to GHNS being something different.. Maybe Guza should look up that word, different.

The scenes with Robin talking about Jason were really good, and I'm surprised that the one Awesome Writer was allowed to have her call Jason a killer, a moral schizophrenic, and whatever else, and to make clear that she had been blind about Sonny and his lifestyle. Of course, if they had wanted to really tell some truth, they could/should/would have dealt with Cottage Hell, too. Well, maybe next year the the AW gets out of her/his dungeon cell again.

This is stupid. I saw a Josh Duhon interview confirming it's a completely parallel universe to GH - ie: someone injured on one, healthy on the other.

WTF? Stupid.

That is exactly what I was afraid of.

Bleh.

I hope it doesn't go beyond 13 eps.

Maybe it's bizarro world, and the show is actually consistently good? And maybe polka dotted giraffes are painting puppies on my lawn.

God, at least on PC in the beginning they tried to make the shows consistent with one another. I guess they'll assume people who watch GH don't watch it on SoapNet because that's about how stupid they've gotten over there anyway.

Which of course means they'll likely use the SOAPnet airings of GH as a lead-in to GH:NS...

They are.

The show premieres Thursday, July 12, at 11 pm EST, which follows the GH rerun on Soapnet.

How on earth that is a workable timeslot, I've yet to understand. But perhaps it's the highest rated GH repeat of the week?

Mostly though, I don't see how they're helping the show to succeed by sticking it there.

Pardon my ignorance here, but nothing I've read has helped answer these questions:

1. Is this on weekly or daily?
2. Is it a half hour or full hour?

I'll definitely watch (or at least TiVo), just to see something similar, yet different.

It's on weekly for an hour for 13 weeks!

I pulled these episode titles off an LJ. Episode 1: Frayed Anatomies; Episode 2: Skin Deep; Episode 4: Keep the Change

Regarding the first one - really? That's all you could come up with? Do you really want to go there for comparisons? Because you will lose.

Who do you have to blackmail to become a soap opera writer? My fanfic is better than some of this stuff.

I'd have been surprised as hell if they hadn't made that joke or a variant of it somewhere along the line, Calliope.

Episode names, whoa. Doesn't Y&R do that? Over 200 titles a year. Of course they're not puns or play-on-words usually.

Is there a Jason episode? I suggest the pun "Comfortably Dumb".

General Hospital names all their episodes too, at least each day on my satellite there is a different name.