Fox’s new medical drama Doc is full of the type of clunky dialogue, arrogant characters, impossible-to-diagnose cases, wistful modern rock needle drop scenes and hot doctors having sexy times that we have pretty much come to expect from a broadcast network medical show. Sometimes we start to think it’s fruitless to criticize these elements of these shows, because they all have them, especially since Grey’s Anatomy premiered 20 years (!) ago. And most of the medical shows we’ve panned or have thought were “meh” have gone on to have long runs. So we’re going to approach this review from a different angle.
DOC: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: We hear a car crash. Panning through the wreckage, a woman is unconscious. We then see her in surgery, where a bleed in her brain is being dealt with. Then, in an MRI machine, she’s asked a bunch of questions, including who is president. She jokes “FDR,” then says “Barack Obama.” One problem: It’s 2024.
The Gist: Twenty-four hours earlier, we see Dr. Amy Larsen (Molly Parker) getting ready to go to work at Westside Hospital, where she’s the chief of internal medicine. She’s called in on a consult by Dr. Sonia Maitra (Anya Banerjee) and Dr. Jake Heller (Jon-Michael Ecker); a pregnant woman has been having back and side pain, chills, fever, and frequent urination. The woman insists that it’s a UTI, but Dr. Larsen brusquely dismisses her, saying “Did you go to medical school? So maybe let us figure it out.”
Amy isn’t exactly known for her bedside manner, and most of the doctors in her department dislike working for her. Two have no problems with her: Dr. TJ Coleman (Patrick Walker), who gets a dressing-down from her about giving a family assurances that he couldn’t guarantee, and Dr. Heller. We find out when Jake and Amy start making out in a parking garage the reason why he defends her to Sonia and his other colleagues. Amy and Dr. Richard Miller (Scott Wolf), one of the senior attendings, are constantly at odds. And the hospital’s new administrator, Dr. Michael Hamada (Omar Metwally), warns her that she’s on notice for her arrogant behavior.
When Michael orders Amy to go home and get some rest, she gets into the car wreck as she texts and drives in the rain. She hits her head on the window during the accident, which led her to her brain injury. During the surgery, she dreams about life with her husband, son and daughter, which may be the reason why her colleagues discover that her memories between mid-2016 and the accident have been erased.
In 2016, she was still happily married to Michael, and she was close to her then-tween daughter Katie (Charlotte Fountain-Jardim); she’s now divorced and mostly estranged from her daughter. But the biggest change is that she and her family suffered an unimaginable tragedy seven years prior.
While trying to process all of these changes — and her grief — a second time, she finds out from Michael and her friend Dr. Gina Walker (Amirah Vann) that after Danny died, she immersed herself in her work, something she never did prior to that. She advanced her career, but it cost her her marriage as well as a relationship with Katie.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Doc is based on an Italian series called Doc – Nelle tue mani. It’s essentially House, but this time the gruff genius doctor’s disability is a traumatic brain injury.
Our Take: What we’re going to concentrate on here is the Doc‘s core premise: A doctor who re-learns how to be compassionate to patients and coworkers after an accident wipes out the worst years of her life. As we watched the pilot, the continual thought that popped in our head was just how long showrunner Barbie Kligman and her writers will be able to keep this idea afloat. Our conclusion is that it’s the type of premise that could carry the show through a season, maybe two if they’re short. But it doesn’t seem like a sturdy-enough idea for the typical long run most network medical shows enjoy.
Kigman and company certainly have in Molly Parker an actress that can carry this idea as long as possible. Her performance, both as the arrogant and in-pain version of Amy and the more compassionate, post-accident version were compelling. Her confusion over hearing about the missing eight years of her life was palpable, and we think that Parker will be able to communicate that confusion as the details fill in about what she and her life were like during the missing period. Even then, that knowledge will be secondhand instead of her own experience, and she’ll process it differently. There’s also the matter of Jake dealing with the loss of a burgeoning serious relationship with Amy, and his attempts to regain it.
But at a certain point, the show will settle into a rhythm as a traditional medical series, and Amy’s missing memories will become somewhat less of a dominant factor. Whatever practical knowledge about her job that disappeared will fill in, and she’ll definitely struggle with rebuilding some sort of familial relationship with Michael and Katie. But the the further away we get from the accident, the less those aspects will dominate the stories.
After that, what do we have? The standard medical drama crap we described above. That may be enough to carry the show; having actors like Wolf, Ecker, Metwally and Vann on board gives us hope that their supporting characters will develop into something deeper than the archetypes we see in the pilot. Even then, though, there might still not be enough there to keep viewers’ interest once Amy’s memory loss becomes a normalized part of the series.
Sex and Skin: Jake and Amy try to have some car nookie but don’t get far.
Parting Shot: We pan back from Amy in her hospital room, after a phone call where Michael says he’ll try to get her reinstated once she’s recovered, even if she doesn’t get her memories back.
Sleeper Star: There’s something more to Scott Wolf’s character Richard, who takes over as interim chief after Amy’s accident, than what we’re seeing in the pilot. Did he have a previous relationship with Amy? Or is he just a scheming a-hole?
Most Pilot-y Line: In an episode with an avalanche of exposition, we just hated this date-establishing line from the pregnant woman’s husband, who chafed at Amy’s crummy bedside manner: “For God’s sake, it’s 2024. Can’t you diagnose her without torturing her?”
Our Call: SKIP IT. Yes, we’re telling you to skip yet another network medical series. But this time, Doc doesn’t fail because it’s full of medical show cliches. It fails because its central premise feels like a house of cards, and there won’t be much to watch when it collapses.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Doc’ On Fox, About A Doctor Whose Memories Of The Past Eight Years Are Wiped Out After An Accident appeared first on Decider.
