Online Pick of the Week (3/19): Nurses

This is one of those picks that isn’t going to be that well remembered, but it’s still worth a watch. The show is back from the day where Saturday night actually featured fresh sitcoms on television. In this case it is the spin-off of Empty Nest, Nurses, which took place in the same hospital as Empty Nest and originally ran on NBC from 1991-94. This was one of the final shows created by the legendary Susan Harris (best known for creating shows such as Soap, Benson, and The Golden Girls).

The show went through many cast changes, but the original cast was as follows: Cynical and sarcastic Sally Miller (Stephanie Hodge), married to a firefighter and a mother of three, and head nurse, Annie Roland (Arnetia Walker), immigrant Gina Cuevas who often mentioned her home country San Pequeno (Ada Maris), wise-cracking orderly Paco Ortiz (Carlos Lacamara), naïve newbie Julie Millbury (Mary Jo Keenan), and egotistical Dr. Hank Kaplan (Kip Gilman).

With this new addition, by this point in time, NBC had three Susan Harris shows airing in a row on Saturday nights: The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and Nurses. All three of them were set in Miami. And one of the things this block was known for was the occasional theme night where all three sitcoms had the same plot. I actually remember being a young child and watching the “hurricane night” on NBC. I remember both The Golden Girls with the two-parter “The Monkey Show”, and Empty Nest with the episode “Windy” well, but not the hurricane episode of Nurses oddly enough.

The characters are funny and their quirks are interesting. After watching this pilot, this is another one of those shows that I’d really like to see in repeats somewhere. Hallmark? WEtv? Anyone? So many shows air so many times, it’d be nice to see something different mixed in. Something that doesn’t get as much airplay.

Nurses, my online pick of the week!