Pilots week continues here at Stuck on a Channel. Today I review “Off the Map”, the latest offering from medical drama specialist Shonda Rhimes as well as some old favourites in Modern Family and Grey’s Anatomy.
Unfortunately I’ve had to hold back on my review of this week’s Cougar Town. I had trouble finding what I needed to finish the review. But don’t fret – I will get that to you as soon as possible, hopefully early this week.
Spoilers aplenty.
Modern Family – “Our Children, Ourselves” (B)
I think the Dunphy family wins for best storyline this week. I must say, despite the downright incredible cast of Modern Family, Ty Burrell and Julie Bowen have got to be my favourites. I don’t think there’s been a storyline between these two that I haven’t liked (don’t check the back posts I can’t remember what I wrote). They have wonderful chemistry with each other, and their TV children only manage to accentuate that (my love for Luke is no secret). The other families certainly have their moments (hilarious moments), but none of them are as consistent as the Dunphys.
Which is why this episode didn’t score higher for me. While I really enjoyed watching Claire and Phil freak out over Alex – especially hearing them describe their love of terrible B-movies – the other stories in this episode really didn’t appeal to me. Mitchell and Cameron’s story had a few good one liners, most notably the twice repeated “I need to have my reaction” line, but ultimately felt a little flat and contrived to me. While I certainly didn’t call it, I’ve seen the whole little person mistaken for a child thing at least a couple times before, so the hilarity wasn’t really there for me. Gloria and Jay’s storyline was more of the same. I wasn’t really into the Jay is senile bit, and there wasn’t much else outside of that recurring joke to keep me entertained.
It may just be me, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the show do a few different character pairings next week. Mitchell and Cameron have felt a little isolated from the rest of the cast as of late. They’re terrific together, but too much of a good thing can grow tiresome.
Off The Map – “Saved by the Great White Hope” (B+)
I actually really enjoyed this episode. I’ll admit I was pretty sceptical going in. Shonda Rhimes (it's actually created by Jenna Bans, but Rhimes is an executive producer) has a fairly distinct style, and none of her shows have really strayed too far away from what made her successful in the first place. And to be honest this show doesn’t really break the mould either. You’ve got a bunch of good-looking untested residents (played by Caroline Dhavernas, Mamie Gummer, and Zach Gilford) and their good-looking know-it-all attendings (Martin Henderson, Jason Winston George, and Valerie Cruz), manoeuvring through what I can only describe as some downright absurd medical situations. Throw in some smooth talking dialogue, a few misguided student-teacher relationships and essentially you’ve got yourself Grey’s Anatomy in the jungle. For whatever reason though, I find Grey’s Anatomy in the jungle quite intriguing.
Now I have a well documented love for doctor shows, and that may be impairing my judgement here, but it’s exactly my experience with watching this type of show that has me intrigued. There are soooo many medical dramas out there set in state of the art hospitals. As stupid as it sounds, the simple change in setting unleashes countless new medical scenarios that a jaded viewer like myself hasn’t seen before.
And I don’t mean the whole coconut blood thing. I don’t want to see this show turn into the MacGyver of medicine or anything like that. What really struck me was that, the medical situations treated in the pilot weren’t really all that uncommon. On Grey’s you get ridiculous patients every week, and while I’m sure this show will make me regret saying this, for the moment at least they’ve kept the ailments pretty down to Earth (minus the zip line thing). It may just be for the pilot, but what I think that does is focus the story on characters rather than diseases.
One of my major critiques of Grey’s these days is its horribly unrealistic portrayal of men. Grey’s characters have a very particular way of speaking, and unfortunately I don’t think it serves the male characters (guys really don’t talk like this) as well as it does the female. At times it feels like certain lines are specifically designed to be exactly what women want to hear (I think anyways). I mean how are men supposed to live up to the unrealistic stereotypes being perpetuated by a show like that. It’s downright sexist is what it is (ah irony). Now I’m not naive in my understanding of who these shows are targeted towards. I’m simply making the point that good drama requires complex, three dimensional characters (regardless of gender), not convenient caricatures designed to please a target audience.
Now that’s a fairly drawn out explanation for the very simple point I’m trying to make, in that I feel like Off The Map does a much better job in this regard. Zach Gilford is an extremely talented actor (one of my favourite parts of Friday Night Lights), and does a great job here of making his character Tommy feel authentic. He brings the sort of balance that Justin Chambers brings to Grey’s Anatomy. I also have to commend Martin Henderson – he shows a lot of restraint in the pilot considering his character is clearly designed to be this shows McDreamy (I hate that I just said that). The one low point for me was Jason Winston George, whose character Otis Cole is pretty much the epitome of what I mentioned above. Though I guess to be fair his role was pretty limited in the pilot, so there’s certainly room for improvement.
This was by no means a perfect episode. A good 50% of it felt like characters finding unnaturally awkward ways to reveal their backgrounds, much like patients do on Grey’s Anatomy (ironically always relating to a problem one of the doctors is having that week), but each one of the three new residents was at least somewhat interesting to me. It’s a little bizarre that this apparently extremely selective program managed to pick three relatively broken doctors (both in their careers and personal lives), but combined with the setting there’s a lot of room to work with these characters. Plus, I’m sure the wise philanthropist Dr. Keeton picked this crew specifically because they were all damaged – part of his way of giving back as cheesily as possible.
Maybe I’m just at an age where finding yourself in the jungle seems appealing. I’ll probably regret sticking my neck out for this show, but for the moment I have to give credit where I feel it’s due. Hey, Grey’s Anatomy was good for a couple of seasons. Right?
Grey’s Anatomy – “Start Me Up” (B)
Speaking of Grey’s Anatomy, it’s odd how I rant about its shortcomings yet continue to give it decent reviews every week. In my defence, they’ve been a lot better as of late, and most of my complaints stem from my frustrations with earlier episodes of the series.
I’m a big fan of Teddy’s new storyline. First off, can I just say how awesome Scott Foley is – cause he is. There, that felt good. He and Kim Raver work well together, and watching these two bond over the course of the episode was great. I especially liked their fruit cup scene early in the episode, as well as the scene after his surgery, which hopefully set the groundwork for a much longer storyline between these two.
On the other hand I really don’t like Bailey’s new relationship with the nurse. It’s not that they had a ton of screen time or anything, it’s just that when they were together they were incredibly annoying with each other (and a little nauseating).
Hats off though for the solid bombshell ending. I didn’t see the Callie is pregnant thing coming at all – they did a great job of disguising it early in the episode. That’s a promising storyline and it’ll be interesting to see where they go with it.
Well there you have it. One more pilot down. Let me know what you think in the comments.
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