There was too little build-up to the Ball this year. In the past, we've seen characters prepare for the Ball for several days prior to the show. It's true that Lucy's frenzied attempts to press people into dressers or performers were wearing thin, but they served the function of alerting the viewers and building anticipation for the Nurses' Ball. This year, aside from Carly persuading Sonny to go to the Ball (two episodes before the Ball), and Emily and Juan mentioning rehearsal once or twice, we had no references to the Ball. (There were blurbs at the end of the episodes about buying Nurses' Ball T-shirts, but those references were outside the story.) This lack of build-up made the Ball seem more inconsequential than it has been in prior years.

One of my favorite Nurses' Ball traditions is the montage of the characters dressed up and headed to the Ball. This year's montage did not disappoint. However, the segment showing Alexis leaving to the Ball with Ned and Chloe should have been edited or redone. It was disruptive to hear Ned tell Chloe about Alexis's scratched cornea when we had seen Alexis heading to the Ball in the prior episode. Did Alexis scratch her cornea en route to the Ball? (Nancy Lee Grahn had apparently scratched her cornea and was unable to work the day(s) the Nurses' Ball was taped. While this is a completely valid reason for Grahn's absence, Alexis's absence was clumsily explained. The audience shouldn't be expected to know real life details about the actors to understand the story.)

The Ball itself was disappointing on several levels. It was short, forgettable, and hastily stitched together. Compared to prior years when the Ball itself extended over two episodes each of Port Charles and General Hospital, this year's Ball extended over two episodes of Port Charles and one episode of General Hospital. This year, there were a total of five performances--one on Port Charles and four on General Hospital. By contrast, the 1999 Ball had a total of eight performances--two on Port Charles and six on General Hospital, while the 1998 Ball had seven performances--one on Port Charles and six on General Hospital.

Brevity, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. Five outstanding performances could surely take the place of seven or eight. This year's acts, however, were mostly lackluster. In past years, we've seen performances with complicated choreography--last year's "Jump, Jive, and Wail" and "Doctor, Doctor," for example. This year, the most complicated act was "Footloose," which showcased only three members of the cast. Two of the performances were obviously taped, contrary to the Ball's "live" format. (The Ball, as viewers see it is, of course, taped. But we're supposed to see a show about live performances.) While Ned Ashton has been a frequent performer at the Ball, we've seen Ned performing as Ned, not as the Eddie Maine we saw this year. The Ball is purported to be an amateur show, and seeing Eddie Maine's performance along with Juan Santiago's detracted from that sense of the Ball as an amateur show. (Not that Eddie Maine's and Juan's performances were "professional." Wally Kurth is a competent and likable musician, but his "Simply Irresistible" performance was not his finest hour. Michael Saucedo is a weak singer and the show's insistence on presenting Juan Santiago as a "hot new singer" is laughable. There are many General Hospital actors who are better singers--Amber Tamblyn, Vanita Harbour, Stuart Damon--whose characters are not presented as singers.)

Another clumsy aspect of the Ball this year was the way the end of the Ball was marked. The June 21st episode of General Hospital ended with Carly threatening to shoot AJ. The June 22nd episode of General Hospital began with the Carly/AJ scene and a scene of Chloe visiting Felicia at home right after the Ball. Because the Carly/AJ and Chloe/Felicia scenes were presented in the first act of the show, the presumption to be made is that the Ball was ending just as Carly confronted AJ. And yet the June 22ndd episode of at morning's Port Charles showed the end of the Ball with Lucy's closing speech. Viewers who watch General Hospital only would come away from the Ball with the vague impression that the Carly/AJ scene somehow ended the Ball.

I imagine that the vast majority of Port Charles viewers are also General Hospital viewers. The Nielsen numbers, however, clearly indicate that not all General Hospital viewers are also Port Charles viewers. Since the Nurses' Ball is a General Hospital tradition and since many General Hospital viewers (by choice or by lack of opportunity) don't watch Port Charles, the Ball should have ended on General Hospital. In addition to the clumsy handling of the Ball's end, this year's Ball suffered from poor coordination between General Hospital and Port Charles. In 1997, soon after the inception of Port Charles, the Port Charles interns attended the Nurses' Ball on General Hospital. The 1998 Nurses' Ball was wonderfully coordinated between the two shows with continuity from Port Charles to General Hospital back to Port Charles and so on. Characters from Port Charles appeared and performed on the General Hospital segments and vice versa. The 1999 Ball was less well coordinated, but not as disjointed as the 2000 Ball. For this year's Ball, if you were watching Port Charles, the camera showed Port Charles characters only as members of the audience. If you were watching General Hospital, you could easily assume that the Port Charles characters were not attending the Ball. For a network that has tried to lure its audiences to watch all of the ABC daytime line-up (via Linda Dano as Rae Cummings or Finola Hughes as Alex/Anna), the executives missed a natural and more easily digestible opportunity to attract viewers to Port Charles (or General Hospital).

Aside from the lackluster performances and careless coordination between Port Charles and General Hospital, this year's Ball suffered in the area of matching the performances to the characters and their current stories. In previous Balls, the performances have acted as distilled commentary--sometimes ironic, sometimes earnest--on the characters performing. In 1998, for example, Alan and Robin performed a song and dance to "Someone To Watch Over Me." Alan, who was heavily abusing drugs at the time, dropped Robin to the floor as they danced. What began as a sweet commentary on a physician taking care of his patient--Alan was treating Robin for her HIV infection--turned into public exposure for Alan and humiliation for Robin. Ned, entirely in character as the perennial Quartermaine cleaner-upper, took Alan's place in the performance. At times, performances at the Ball have mirrored the unfolding of storylines. During the 1997 Ball, when Bobbie's dance partner was injured, her brother Luke stepped in, signaling the beginning of the end of the estrangement between the siblings since Bobbie had married Stefan. This year's acts, however, were not correlated to the performers in any meaningful way. For example, "Lean on Me" could have been performed by any number of characters. Juan and Emily did not add any significance to the song.

In addition to being a charitable function for AIDS, the Nurses' Ball has in the past been used by various characters as a public forum for some revelation. Stone revealed his infection with AIDS at the 1995 Nurses' Ball. In 1997, Katherine Bell walked on stage showing she had overcome her paralysis (as a result of being accidentally shot by Stefan). At the 1998 Ball, the Quartermaine residency was announced and Tony Jones lashed at the hypocrisy of Port Charles society from the stage. During the 1999 Ball, Carly had her first public outing as a Quartermaine, while Edward announced the designation of AJ as CEO of ELQ (as a reward for having brought Michael into the Quartermaine fold). Absolutely nothing happened in 2000, unless you count Robin's pointless return. Why have a character who's been gone for 18 months return for one day only to rehash her verbal battles with Carly? Why not have Robin show some growth, some reflection on the impact of her telling the truth to AJ about Michael's paternity? Why not have Robin--instead of Chloe--talk to Felicia and Mac about their failing marriage? Absolutely nothing happened in 2000, unless you count Carly's attempt to shoot AJ. But the Nurses' Ball was not necessary as a locale or as a circumstance to Carly's intent. She could just as well have confronted AJ on the docks or at the Port Charles Grill or at the Quartermaine mansion. Absolutely nothing happened in 2000, unless you count Lucky's first public outing since his return from the dead. We saw Lucky have conversations only with Helena and Liz and Nik--the same people we've seen him with consistently. Although Bobbie and Roy attended the Ball, we have since then seen Bobbie greet (for the first time) Lucky on the docks, and we've seen Roy meet Lucky in Luke's office. Is the ballroom so huge and so packed that Bobbie would have missed her nephew? On second thought it must have been easy to miss people there, since we didn't see Felicia at the Ball and yet we saw her dressed on the following day's episode as if she had just returned from the Ball.

Taken separately, each of these oversights, clumsy sequences, and unimaginative acts may seem not terribly significant. But taken together, they made Nurses' Ball 2000 an appalling spectacle. Clearly, the executives and cast of General Hospital and Port Charles are capable of turning out well-crafted, imaginative, entertaining Nurses' Balls. This Ball was not one of them.

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