General Hospital is the first soap to reveal plans amid the coronavirus pandemic. The show halted production earlier this month and it was scheduled to resume in just a few weeks.
Unfortunately, the social distancing guidelines have been extended through the end of April. This means that General Hospital showrunners had to decide what to do going forward.
What will General Hospital do while taping is suspended?
As of now, General Hospital has been airing full episodes without missing a beat. The show was said to have already taped several weeks’ worth of episodes before they decided to suspend production. It has now been two weeks since that decision to suspend the show happened, so it was time for a new gameplan.
According to Deadline, General Hospital will continue to air all-new episodes Monday through Thursday in the coming weeks. Friday episodes will be encore presentations of show. The new schedule will begin this week.
When each encore episode airs, a General Hospital cast member will be introducing it. This week, Laura Wright is the chosen one. Moving forward, it is unclear who the other cast members will be.
This plan is scheduled to begin this week and go through May 22. At that point, if filming hasn’t started again, General Hospital will resort to running old episodes until things resume to normal. It is expected that there will be some interruption, especially with the timeline on when social distancing will end being so up in the air.
What lies ahead on General Hospital?
Looking ahead, a lot of things are happening in Port Charles. May sweeps is also a big deal for soaps. General Hospital typically incorporates the Nurses Ball into their plotline with plenty of twists and turns.
It is unclear if they already taped any Nurses Ball episodes. Given that May 22 is the cutoff for when new episodes will air, the timeline is up in the air.
With things going downhill for Mike (Max Gail), there are plenty of heavy episodes ahead. Nelle (Chloe Lanier) is still wreaking havoc, and Cyrus (Jeff Kober) is still an issue. A lot of the characters will be affected in the coming weeks.
As the changing times call for different schedules with General Hospital, viewers will have to adapt. Hopefully, filming can resume in a reasonable amount of time, and things will go back to normal in the coming months.
General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC.