THE NIGHT SHIFT

Need I say more?

* (out of ****)

FOX’s announcement that they were attempting to do away with pilot season, and therefore the Fall TV Extravaganza, filled me with delight. This means that they are going to shoot 100 pilots, choose four or five of the least awful, and throw the rest away. Step two of pilot season is to air these series premieres, along with all of the season premieres, within a two week span in late September/early November. It’s a ton of work trying to stay caught up, followed by a whole year of nothing. If FOX pulls this off, they will get rid of an outdated system, and the other networks will have to follow suit. Summer, back in the day, was a dumping ground, for shows that were too stinky to find a spot in the fall. This is another tradition that will be going away soon, as networks will be able to release quality shows whenever they’ve got one on their hands. Why would any part of the year be set up for garbage? Maybe next year, networks of all shapes and sizes will have quality offerings for us. But this year, we have The Night Shift.

In a just world, the character T.C. wouldn’t be a doctor. He would be a character that our actual main character plays on a fake TV show, in a comedy about how terrible network dramas are. He thought that he finally got his big break, on a big shiny hospital show, only to find out that it’s one of the worst shows in the history of television. He can’t quit the job – it’s more money than he’s ever seen – but his character is so poorly written that he’s afraid that he will outshit all the shit around him, and take all the blame. It would be a perfect blend of comedy and drama, showing us the lows of what it’s like to be a working actor, and the highs of how putrid television can be.

Unfortunately we only get one half of that show – the putrid television half – without anything shedding a light on how bad it is, except for its poor viewer victims. T.C. is the most ridiculous part of the show (seriously…like every single frame he’s in), but it’s not like he brings down something that could have been mediocre. The show plays like someone looked up “hospital show” on tvtropes.com, printed out what they found, and then shot it. Even though I don’t think it’s fair to the other seasons, I’ve learned to lower my expectations while watching anything that comes out in the summer. No one can lower their expectations this far. I’d hope that someone could save Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under) and Ken Leung (Lost), but that’s if I thought this show even had a remote chance of lasting on the air. As it stands, NBC has produced 8 episodes, and it would surprise me if they even burned through those.

– Ryan Haley