I can’t really get into soap operas. Sure, there may be one or two storylines that might be interesting. However, they’re interrupted by a whole bunch of other ones I couldn’t care less about. Guess I’m just a one-episode A-Plot/continuity B-Plot kind of viewer.
On the other hand, I have a mom who is into soaps, even when there were more important things to watch, like Transformers or He-Man & The Masters of the Universe. She wanted soap operas, she could have watched Robotech. Did her Luke Spencer fly a giant robot plane? I don’t think so. (Although I do recall a storyline where someone flash froze the entire city of Port Charles in the summertime. Maybe if they had a superhero or two…)
However, I’ve stated since literally the first post to this blog that just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. General Hospital will soon be the longest running soap opera on TV and is ratings gold for ABC and their cable spin-off channel, SoapNet. Although not it seems to be less about the hospital and more about the mob, but I digress. It even has a spin-off show on SoapNet, the prime time GH: Night Shift, and I have to admit that the intro was pretty darn cool.
The visuals are stunning, and really show off the hospital. According to Wikipedia, the hospital used is the Los Angeles County -USC Medical Center in California, which has been also used in the movie City of Angels and the TV Series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. For Night Shift, however, extra levels were added, but the wiki claims it was still modeled off of the original building.
I also like the theme song, and although the series was otherwise done in the same format as its parent serial, the look is more like a “regular” medical drama. While the parent show has spun off into the larger world of the fictional city of Port Charles, Night Shift was set primarily in the hospital, giving the actors who portray doctors and nurses more time to shine, and from what I can tell, did try to fit more medical drama-style stories into their format. It also included the closest thing to a favorite character I could have, the wacky hacker Damian Spinelli.
Ah, if only “The Jackal” were on a show I wanted to watch. But for the best in visuality (surprisingly not a word), I have to give props to the new opening of the main series.
I don’t know how much of the backgrounds are CGI and how many are actual places like the hospital, but that’s one way to give the illusion of an actual city on a soap opera budget.
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