Nightingales

Ok, so this show wasn't Shakespeare. It was pure trash, but fun trash. It actually begain as a two hour movie in 1988. Mimi Kuzyk was the star (replaced by Suzanne Pleshette in the tv series). Fran Bennett was in it as Nurse Lenore and Kristy Swanson, Chelsea Field and Susan Walters were also there. The other two girls in the movie were played by Galyn Gorg and Neith Hunter (replaced in the series by Roxann Biggs and Kim Johnston Ulrich). I really like the movie and was happy to see it ordered to series the following spring. Barry Newman was on hand as Garrett in the series but about midway through the run of the show Gil Gerard was added to the cast and I got the feeling he was there to phase Barry Newman out. Also added to the cast midway through the season was Doran Clark as over the top nasty Dr. Charlene Chasen. She was an actress I had always liked, but I could not stand her character on this show.. This was pure soap opera full of sexcapades and silly storylines, but it was an entertaining hour of television. I was very sorry to see it end, especially since the storylines were left up in the air.

I enjoyed this show when it was on. I too was surprised that NBC canceled because of "sexual nature". I always enjoyed Suzanne Pleshette and was saddened to hear she passed away, last year.

I really hope that DVDs will be issued, because I would get them. University Hospital was a syndicated show, and it seemed to have some similarities to "Nightingales". I believe it ran in the mid 1990s.

I wonder two things :

Would Nightingales have fared better on maybe HBO or Showtime ?

Should it have been put on a few years later (i.e. Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place), like that genre ?

*sigh* The only thing I want to respond to are the comments about why this show was cancelled, that pretty much ILLUSTRATE why this show was cancelled.

As Ken Auletta explained in his book THREE BLIND MICE, Aaron Spelling pitched this show (from memory, so apologies if I botch this quote)as "student nurses sharing a house in California and the air conditioning doesn't work." As the people who had advertisers pull their support for this show (actual nurses) pointed out, the nursing was barely a part of this show (whose episodes you can all find on YouTube, perverts) pointed out, it was pretty nurses in various states of undress sharing what was essentially a sorority house, with Pleshette as "Mrs. Garret" to these girls. At a time when networks were trying shows like "St. Elsewhere," "LA Law," and "Hill Street Blues," this throwback to Spelling's jiggle era just looked silly. Comparing it to "Grey's Anatomy" is insulting, IMO, but then, I find the idea of couching softcore porn in a pre-internet age pathetic, but typical of the latter part of Spelling's career. The saddest part is, by today's standards, it's not even good at that (in other words, it's not even very sexy). Plots are juvenile, sensationalist at times, and melodramatic. The fact that people still think this was a great show pretty much illustrates how Donald Trump can do so well as a Presidential candidate.

Once again, a show that I cannot find on DVD, an old favorite of mine, but too far back in time for me to go into details. After my review of MODELS INC. I was informed by an IMDb member that this one is available on YouTube, but I cannot access YouTube with my little touch- screen BlackBerry, and the first and last episodes available on VuClip are wrong aspect ratio which I find tragic to watch, how come so many stuff are available in this shoddy way, but nobody complains? OK, that is another story.

Like one of the three other reviewers (only three??? This is indeed a forgotten show, dead and buried, and most undeservedly so!) said, this was very tame by today's standards. Observe MELROSE PLACE's final season 10 years later. The story at the time was that a sisterhood of nurses complained that nurses are poorly paid and then they have to be confronted by a show depicting them in a bad way. Drivel! I say there were housewiveys America-wide who didn't want a second CHARLIE'S ANGELS, another show with a sexually overcharged rep, in their living rooms for hubby to gawk at, and as TV is governed by the ad market, the housewives' complaints wouldn't have fallen on deaf ears.

Point is, this show had potential. It is from the Aaron Spelling stable and would have improved. Viewing those two episodes I mentioned years later, does reveal corniness, I'll grant that. But the sheer beauty of the cast...! Wow, Kristy Swanson, wow, girl! I've always been a sucker for Kristy ever since DEADLY FRIEND.

But the real point is, the Haters get their way every so often, while there is total SHI (I may not say the word here) that continues to thrive and thrive. And now nobody would release a show on DVD that fared so poorly it got canceled almost instantly.

:(

I think my previous 'paragraph' sums it up. So fight for your favorite show, be like CHUCK and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER fans.

Addendum, 12 August 2014. I have since found some of the episodes on Mobile9 (WapNext) and WapTrick, and there it is in mp4 quality, unfortunately ads and all. Gee, I'm not really complaining about that, real thankful. Objectively viewed, there are lots of lame bits in the script, hell, it would take several miracles for this to ever be released on DVD. I do remain a fighter for the cause. If Kristy could e-mail me with kind words of support, so much the better. Just kidding.

RavenGlamDVDCollector@gmail needs feedback from the fans! It's a lonely battle!

The thrust of the other IMDb reviews is that this show was "ahead of its time" and was unfairly thrust into the garbage can of history because of its overt sexuality.

All I can say is ... maybe.

One reviewer went so far as to mention it was a Spelling production and therefore, logically, it should have had an edge as to quality.

That's completely wrong.

It was BECAUSE it was a Spelling production, and BECAUSE it was green-lighted on the basis that it had the potential to be another Charlie's Angels .... that problems arose. That the buzz went sour. And expectations backfired.

Remember that during the peak of the Charlie's Angel phenomenon, a reporter asked one of the leads why, in her view, the series was so successful...? And without blinking an eye she responded that it was "a mystery" to her too, until she realized "we weren't wearing any bras." So, in one sense, the battle was over before it even began. It was the wrong time and the wrong place to try to make lightening strike again.

And, as for the argument that the show was ahead of its time, "no" there too.

As I have written in hundreds of other reviews for the IMDb (over 600 so far) current TV is on an entirely different level of magnitude than what came before -- the change happened in the mid 2000s and it was HUGE.

Casting, directing, writing, scoring, management of story arcs, even the way titles are rolled -- so much has changed.

Yes, there are copies of this series floating around Youtube. Out of curiosity, I watched one or two.

We already know the series did not survive when matched against its contemporaries. Does it fare any better when allowed to age like fine wine? Does it stand the test of TIME? No, frankly, it does not.