Cast:
Jordana Spiro, William Forsythe, Zach Gilford, Michael Rapaport
Quick Synopsis:
Grace Devlin (Spiro) is a surgeon at Chicago’s Roosevelt Medical Center who is living the most odd double life. In addition to her regular hospital duties, she must also work as an on-call doc for the mob in order to pay off a debt her brother owes in order to save him from swimming with the fishes.
My Take:
I understand that this was only the pilot episode, but “The Mob Doctor” really better pickup steam if it expects to stay on air. The only person I related to in any way was Grace, and considering she is the main character it doesn’t mean much. Pretty much every other supporting character bored me – even Michael Rapaport, playing the mobster Moretti that Grace works for. His usual low-grade Lewis Black-style of acting didn’t help the fact that the story was kind of cruddy. Brother Devlin (so vanilla I can’t even remember his name) was quite obnoxious, considering he is the reason his sister has to kill witnesses in surgery and pull things out of mobster’s heads so that he doesn’t get fixed with cement shoes. I wasn’t even softened to Mama Devlin having cancer and getting beat up by Moretti. The only character other than Grace that I was mildly interested in was “reformed” mob boss Constantine (Forsythe). (Who else believed that he was out of the game? Not I, said the blind man.) I must admit, it was a little weird to hear him without his Manny Horvitz accent from Boardwalk Empire. Clearly, Constantine is on tap to be the biggest player in the game. Without spoiling, I am sure that our good doc won’t want to do many more housecalls to give him his insulin shots. Also, let’s not forget the love triangle aspect of the show, (which has to be thrown in of course), current boyfriend and ethical good guy Brett (Zach Gilford) and gangster ex-boyfriend, Franco (James Carpinello). Clearly the debt to Moretti is not the first run-in Grace has had with the mob, which includes the fatherly-seeming figure Constantine.
The “emotional” medical cases as the asides to the mob stuff are quite out of place, even if it is part medical drama. Case in point: pregnancy by “outercourse” happening to the teenage daughter of a family friend, who also is the recipient of a scholarship that would be taken away if she gets pregnant is just a little too convenient and dumb. (Yeah.) Plus, how the hell has she not been fired? Grace leaves the hospital a hundred times a day, leaving her patients in other people’s hands, almost missing surgeries, lying to parents of patients, getting her boss in trouble, etc. I mean come on! Where does this happen?
Recommendation:
I will watch a few more episodes (if it stays on that long) to see how it progresses, but don’t hate yourself if you only see the pilot. I’d understand. Mob + medical drama = weird. It’s a shame, because I wanted to really like this show, but it was marginal at best.
