Can One Really Double-cross Themselves? #Counterpart #Starz #3weekroundup #recap #review

Can One Really Double-cross Themselves? #Counterpart #Starz #3weekroundup #recap #review

All pictures courtesy of Starz

A beloved character-actor’s journey back to TV has been a somewhat bumpy one that has landed us here. Yes, it’s time for yet another recap/review of a new show of the 2017-18 season. So, is Counterpart worthy of becoming a part of your well-balanced TV diet or is it part of nothing special? (Oy! That was a terrible setup!) Let’s find out together!

Starz’s Counterpart stars Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons as Howard Silk, the coggiest cog in the corporate machine that you can find. Every day, he goes to work at a plain gray building, walks down a plain gray hall, receives a briefcase with a manila folder inside with pedantic phrases on it that seemingly have no meaning, exchanges said phrases with someone on the other side of a thin prison-like glass, then goes back home from what the first episode shows. It’s very Orwellian in nature. No, the person on the other side of the pane is not an inmate but is a simple man just like him. There is no exchange of greetings as that is not permitted. The other man is the one who starts the “interface” by saying the phrase that was either given to him that day, or that he finds in his own briefcase. The case is filled with other folders each with other phrases on them, but Howard must choose the one labeled with what the other man says to him. They then go down the page exchanging the phrases written on their papers and writing numbers in what seems like a random pattern.

The day ends and Howard leaves to go about his business. A man of patterns, every day Howard picks up some freshly cut flowers and goes to the hospital where one of the on-duty nurses always lifts the old flower from the previous day and allows for him to replace that flower with a new one while she gives him a brief overview of any progress. He then takes the remaining bouquet down the hall to his wife’s room where she has been in a coma for some months now after a car hit her in the street. He reads to her.

This is his routine. On this night his brother-in-law comes to visit and hound him about how Howard’s wife’s mother wants her moved “home” so that she can be with “family” if and when the time comes for them to give up on her ever waking. Of course Howard objects because this city is her home and he is her family. His B-I-L is trying to force him to sign some papers that would surrender his spousal rights so they can move her. Howard then goes home, sits for a while, makes himself something to eat and goes to bed.

Every morning he gets up, goes down to a local cafe terrace and plays backgammon with a younger friend and always lets the guy win, then it’s back in to work. Except today is different. See, some guy in another department just got promoted which means that Howard can get promoted to that guy’s vacant position. He’s been doing the same job for near 30 years but finds it problematic. He doesn’t know what the hell they do there. He has no idea why he has to say the phrases, has never properly met any of the people with whom he interacts with through the glass, and never has a proper conversation with them. But the previous day he messed up. He got up from the desk and, as he turned to leave, pointed out that the man on the other side had a little smudge of jelly on his tie. That’s against the rules, and now things are going to change.

But the jelly is not the reason why. No, his life is going to change because they suddenly need him. His boss Peter (played by Harry Lloyd of Game of Thrones fame) and his second superior Aldrich (played by Ulrich Thomsen) have a source that will only talk to him. And we are, to this point, still just as confused as Howard is. And they bring the source in, and take the bag off the source’s head and it’s revealed to be... Howard Silk. But different. Cooler.

Apparently, about 30 years ago the universe and/or time split in two. Somehow this earth made a direct copy of itself but left a doorway open between the two earths. And ever since then the worlds have been secretly exchanging intel. On it’s face, you should already see a huge problem with this conceit, but I’ll withhold judgment until the end of the review. Again, up until about 30 years ago, there was one world and then there were two, but they still both had the same history, same memories, same advances, and then they started to diverge from each other which has led them to become two drastically different worlds. If you're following this, you will know that Howard Silk is still Howard Silk in the other universe, dig? He doesn’t have a different name or looks different, because he was born before the split, so his timeline could only diverge so much. From this point on we will call the original Howard “Howard” and the other Howard “How2.” How2 is a spy of some sort in his world which we’ll call earth2. From what I could understand from the first episode, he works for the same corporation/government-funded business that Howard works for but in an entirely different department. I wasn’t too clear on it, but what was clear is that he knows all about the corporation and their various levels/departments as he is rather shocked and disappointed that Howard is still in Interface, which is the base department you can be in. Somehow Howard, who is told not to freak out, doesn’t freak out at seeing his double for the first time—he must secretly lead a super-exciting life. Still, he can’t get any real answers until How2 tells his two bosses to bring him up to speed because they’ll need him for the mission.

Left to right: Howard, Peter, How2

Howard learns what I already told you: the world split into two different universes 30 years ago and everything is slightly different on the other side of this doorway that they call The Crossing. There are so many sci-fi questions that beg to be asked here but aren’t because Howard is more concerned with how he’s being treated as a pawn in a much bigger game of which he knows nothing about. He’s told to go home and just chill out until How2 returns the next day.

Meanwhile, as Howard is back at home, one of his coworkers and semi-friend is murdered by this woman at a gay club. This action is a warning shot to How2.

Back to Howard who comes into work the next day with an entirely different notion of what he does for a living. He meets with his bosses again along with How2. They tell him that a very bad assassin has come from the other world into Howard’s and is seeking to hurt How2 emotionally to send a message. How2 tells him that his/their wife is dead on earth2 but this female killer knows that earth1 wife is still alive. So she figures that if she kills the comatose wife too, it will be a double whammy for How2 to have to know that his wife no longer exists anywhere in the two known universes. Basically, it’s the “you can never save her” trope similar to Inception.

So now Howard is all-in on whatever he has to do to keep his wife from being killed. He thinks he’s going to become some super-spy or something but all How2 wants is to stand in as him for a while so that the killer doesn’t know who she’s dealing with. How2 knows that the killer is already watching Howard’s routines, and believes that the best way to thwart the murder is for him to pose as this world’s Howard and go visit his wife in the hospital as usual. Then the killer will come, and he’ll kill her before she hurts the wife. All Howard has to do is take him through every step of his routine so that nothing feels out of place to the killer when she comes.

They prepare for the night by talking about how much they love their wife and how she died on earth2 and the kind of life they lived and how people are right when they say that one little decision can change the entire world. Here, I’ll just say that I thought there’d be a deeper conversation and there really wasn’t. They spent about ten minutes screen time together just sitting and talking; three days later I could hardly remember anything they actually said to each other.

Moving on, the Howards and the two bosses all go to the hospital at the usual evening time. How2 goes in posed as Howard while the other one stays safely tucked down into the seats of the car, hoping not to be seen. How2 does the routine, save for one crucial detail. As the nurse sees him coming with the flowers, she plucks out the old one from yesterday, but he doesn’t stop to put in a new one or talk to her. He bypasses the nurse’s station completely and goes directly to her room. He is able to sit with her for a while and remember how it was to be with his wife.

And then the brother-in-law comes and starts spitting that foolish nonsense again about signing papers to move her and How2 doesn’t have time for this. I don’t know how he knows but he does know that the killer is coming and she’s already in the building. So he shuts up the brother with some boss moves, then sneaks into the hall with his gun raised. He hides in the cove of another doorway when the killer stops near the nurses’ desk and sees the missing flower. She knows, slips out of her shoes to quiet her steps and runs for cover before firing off a few shots. They engage in some gunplay which sees How2 chase her through the building and lose her on one of the floors. She gets out and winds up exiting right near the car where the bosses and Howard are, and she fires at him. Now she knows what’s up and the game has changed. Howard’s wife is safe for the night but everything will be different going forward.

So How2 goes back through the portal only to reveal that his wife, apparently, is still alive. They meet in a bar, and we end on that shot.

Episode 2 picks up right where we left off in the second world. How2 meets his version of Emily Burton Silk played by actress Olivia Williams. But unlike in the first world, here she seems to be his ex-wife as she shirks his touch (she is with someone else at the moment, leaving him out in the cold). Emily2, apparently, seems to work for the same company as him but in the “housekeeping” department, meaning that she basically has a team that does dirty work on various agents and brings them in to make sure things don’t get out of hand in the agency. She has come to meet her ex because he just had a rendition order put out on him. She asks what he’s been doing on the other side, and he gives her no details as to his business, the business of saving the other her. Her team—three men with surly faces and holstered guns—are already stationed at the bar and How2 says that he’ll go willingly, but smells something fishy about the whole thing. Oddly, he walks out and the men follow him out but his ex-wife does not, which I thought strange seeing as how these are supposedly her men working on her team. Anyway, they escort him over to their car where he gets into the back seat with one of them and they start looking through paperwork and talking to each other in another language when he takes one of their guns and kills all three of them, then quietly gets out of the car and walks away, all with his ex-wife none-the-wiser.

From here we start to dive farther into the traditional espionage intrigue that one would expect from a show like this. How2 goes to a priest buddy who is also somehow connected to the organization they work for as he can get “visas” into the other world that last for a few hours to a full day. The priest tells him that he didn’t hear anything about a rendition order and that he doesn’t need to go on the run, just go back in to the organization tomorrow and see if they arrest you for killing three men or if they let you through. If the former, then there really was a rendition order. If the latter, then someone is trying to kill you and cover it up. Guess which one happens.

We don’t see much more of Emily that is really important, save for a meeting with her superiors where she is questioned about the rendition order that never was. And clearly the organization on that side is just as secretive as it is on earth1 because she sheds not a single tear for the three dead guys. I’m guessing that even though she was technically their boss, she didn’t know them. She also has a meeting with the priest to ask about How2 and see if he knows what the guy is doing on earth1. He knows nothing.

Meanwhile, back in this world, Howard receives that promotion to Analysis like he wanted. Now, his job is to take those enveloped, strange dialogues that he used to say everyday in Interface and interpret/decode them. How are they supposed to decode them and what are the messages they are expecting to find? He has no idea, but he knows that they are supposed to move quickly because they have more and more of them coming in throughout the day. But before he can even get to decode one, his boss and the other guy show up again needing his help because How2 is back on their side and has a plan.

Since How2 has been a spy for years—he helped establish the entire clandestine network for the organization that spans between the two worlds—he knows how this female assassin would think because it is how he would think. In the process, he also lets Howard in on more of what’s really going on. So, as stated before this is another world, but it is not, I repeat not, just a doorway into another realm or universe. In other words, this world wasn’t just a parallel universe that always existed but it was definitively created by some kind of experiment gone wrong which made this world duplicate and from there they became alternates to each other. Essentially, it is like a cell that has split. There’s one cell to begin with, but that cell, in order to reproduce, splits in two, creating two unique cells both of which have the same things in them but differ ever so slightly from each other.

Also, there’s some serious political upheaval on How2’s side which still felt a little unclear, but know that there are now two factions that are battling for control and that know about The Crossing. One faction sent the assassin. The assassin’s name in earth2 is Baldwin—her nickname—which, up until now was believed to be a man’s name. The problem: she was born before the split. Yes, that means that she exists in both worlds and has a doppelganger. How2’s plan is to exploit her earth1 self to find out how Baldwin might operate.

In this world, the woman’s name is Nadia. Now, putting aside the fact that this woman still looks like she’s in her 20s yet her character is supposed to be near, if not over, 40, she fits both roles they have her in. Played by Italian actress Sara Serraiocco, Baldwin seems like a reluctant assassin who shared a childhood with her doppelganger Nadia. Nadia, after the split, continued in the same vein as her early years, continuing to study violin until she became a professional classical violinist for an orchestra. The two girls grew up under the watchful eye of a stern, drunken, abusive father who demanded violin perfection from his talented daughter. They even share the memory of his death. He died by falling on the train tracks of a subway station and being run over when his daughter dared not extend a hand to help. After that they both went into the foster system and their paths diverged with different families choosing them.

Baldwin still uses the raggedy shack that her father left her in his will to clean herself up from the gunshot wound she sustained in the gunfight at the hospital. She knows that Nadia knows about the place too and that How2 will figure that out. Somehow, Baldwin also has an earth1 handler on that side that tells her the only logical next step is to kill her counterpart before Howard, How2 and the organization can exploit her. So the race is on to find Nadia and keep her safe.

Well, How2 beats Baldwin to the punch and finds Nadia and pries some info from her. Howard and his bosses are then able to go to the woman’s apartment and to that cabin only to find that Baldwin has been there but is now back in the city. In a genius move, Baldwin calls in an emergency about two guys being dead (she then kills them) and a man holding a woman hostage in a local bar (How2 with a drunk Nadia). The police raid the place and “rescue” Nadia only to take her out into the open where Baldwin already awaits the woman’s arrival. But looking into her eyes, remembering that traumatic moment in which they both witnessed their father’s death keeps her from killing her otherworldly self. She kidnaps her and yanks her over to the theater where Nadia and the orchestra practiced earlier. How2 and the dudes from the organization are still tracking after her while Howard wanders around.

At this point Baldwin doesn’t know what to do. She knows she has to kill herself but can’t and can feel the cornering guards closing in. She reveals herself to herself only for Nadia to think that she is so drunk she has become delusional and is having some sort of Scrooge-like vision of her past demons (Baldwin has a nasty cut on her face from a gunshot wound). Baldwin wants to know how Nadia got over their father’s death and how they were partially responsible, but Nadia can give her no real answer. Nadia eventually escapes Baldwin’s clutches only for her to run onto the orchestral stage and be gunned down by one of the organization’s men even though Howard tried to shout him down. Baldwin is then so stunned by this that she can hardly move as she and Howard watch Nadia slowly die. Even worse, instead of the organization being quick to grab her, the local police scoop Baldwin right over Nadia’s dead body. What was once a slight problem has now become a huge mess.

Emily

Episode three starts six weeks prior with a look at this world's Emily Silk. Emily was out on a plaza at night and appeared to be looking/waiting for someone. As she looked back over her shoulder in anticipation, she stepped off the sidewalk and into the street right in front of the path of an oncoming van. That accident landed her in the hospital where Howard has been coming to visit her every night since the accident. Here I should say that I could have sworn that on the first episode they said they were going to move his wife to another hospital, as opposed to another wing of the floor but the way it was filmed definitely said “same hospital.” But again it doesn't matter, it's just one of those little details that kind of irritate you, and I was half-trying to write the review while watching, so I probably misheard.

We zoom ahead to the current problem which presents as a helluva doozy for both sides. Somehow news of Baldwin's arrest made it back to the other side already. Because of this, they have already begun the process of getting her back which will entail a negotiation between the two sides. For those fans of political shows this part is for you as we begin to see more interaction between the two sides on a diplomatic level, and we see the potential for what the show could be.

So, first we have the plan. How2, in conjunction with Howard's two bosses comes up with a plan to disrupt the negotiation for as long as possible. Remember, How2 knows or at least thinks he knows that there is corruption on his side somewhere in upper-management, so if Baldwin gets to go back to their side she could very well be let off free and contracted to do more jobs in the future. He wants to know what she knows before sending her anywhere and thinks that any intel she gives them would be far more valuable while in this world rather than in his. So they feel they must distract from this proposed trade by any means necessary. The trade is two fold: an ambassador from earth2 that lives full-time on this earth will meet with some higher-up management on this world that work for the company or “embassy” of this world to make a deal. We learn that the two worlds each have their own problems that they deal with and for. For instance, earth2 has undergone a worldwide pandemic that decimated the population. In fact, the destruction was so catastrophic that they have WWII-era-like movie theater propaganda commercials that tell of the dangers of not getting vaccinated and becoming sick. You are to report your friends, neighbors, coworkers, even family members who do get sick. This epidemic was implied as the cause of someone from this earth getting through The Crossing to earth2 and spreading a common sickness that this earth has already cured. One world has a crop problem and can't feed everyone, the other does not. Different diseases have been cured in different worlds, different wars fought. But some things that do remain the same: the makeup of the land not disturbed by war. And that is what this side wants.

This earth's head ambassador is the father-in-law of Howard's main boss (nepotism at its finest). He wants the geological surveying of the land around the San Andreas fault line to see if there's gold there which I guess is something that the other side would know. Anyway, they dicker about it for a while and finally come to an agreement.

The other side of the negotiations are with what earth2's embassy calls an Inquiry Team. How2 has to convince this inquiry team that this earth should hold on to Baldwin longer for the reason I said above. The problem? The other side sent over his ex-wife Emily2 and her new lover. They weren't supposed to be talking with How2 but with the ambassador, and also, this is Emily2's first time to the other side. In what feels wholly strange but also lacks a certain suspense, we finally see someone passing through The Crossing. And I gotta tell ya it's... bland. I don't know what I expected but whatever I did expect was in no way met by this transfer. When they say it's a doorway, it really was a doorway. Followed by a short hall, punctuated by another door. It seriously looked like it was filmed in the basement of some zoo or something. There was some junk down there and a dark, dank path and before she knew, she was to the other side. No frills. No amazing music. No magic of the moment whatsoever. The strangest part to me, however, was that she walked through the hallway first, before her lover (everyone, apparently has to go through alone), then, when she got to the other side, I swear that her lover was already there. So maybe the crossing has some kind of time element to it or maybe I'm just trying to make a boring show-aspect more interesting.

Anyway, they talk to How2 and she tells him to give up this fight for Baldwin to stay because the deal is already done. She then tells him that the phony rendition (kill) order that came in for him was sent by none other than that priest guy he talked to in that church and that he should be super careful about who he trusts. He then gives her a coded message about lighting a candle for his mother in that same church when she gets back.

As the inquiry team heads back, Howard and his second boss are sent to talk with Baldwin to see if she knows more about the other world's corruption. She will only talk to Howard because of the death scene of Nadia from episode two. She, again, says literally nothing of substance as they talk not about the corruption but about how different he is from How2 now, but how a person is that person regardless of circumstances, and that he will eventually turn into How2. Eh! Whatevs! They get word that the negotiation has gone through and somehow lawfully walk out of the police station with her in their custody, even though she killed a police officer. That means this place must have a ton of power and probably went to someone so high up in the government to make a call that the very sound of that person's voice and designation caused the receiver of the call to go limp. In any case, they load her into a bulletproof van and are making the short trek back to the crossing at “the embassy” when a group of mercenaries run by Baldwin's handler in this world shoot up the van and threaten to blow it up if they don't get her. Under Howard's pleas for life, they free Baldwin and live another day.

Meanwhile, Emily2 goes back home, goes into the church and lights the candle in the exact place that How2 asked her to. Beneath where she lights the candle she finds a neatly folded letter. She walks to the same cafe terrace where Howard is seen playing backgammon on earth1. Here, on earth2 it looks like an abandoned warehouse/factory district. She starts reading the letter and we hear a voice-over of Emily from our world. That's right, Emily1 knew How2; in fact, she was his informant in her world and I guess shared info on possible corruption on our side. Not only does the episode make the implication that she was waiting for How2 the night she was struck by the van, but that she may also have been somewhat of “the other woman” in How2 and Emily2's relationship back when they were still married. Now that becomes a bizarre and intriguing question of: Can you really cheat on your wife with your wife? And you finally start to understand that this series is supposed to be more philosophical than action/thriller/suspense-oriented.

After reading the letter and realizing that How2, after their divorce, was so in love with her that he was still getting his Emily fix with Emily1, Emily2 goes back to her apartment. She enters, flicks on the light, cuts her finger and sucks on the cut a few times. And then she starts to feel woozy and drops to the floor. From the shadows someone emerges wearing paper booties so as not to leave a footprint. We never see this person's face but do see them peel some sort of sticky goo off the light dial, and empty out all her prescription pill bottles, staging the scene to make it look like she overdosed. It is unclear if she is fully dead but her eyes are left open as the unseen perpetrator exits her apartment. Oh, and back on earth1 How2 has decided not to go back to earth2, but send Howard instead.

What's my grade? I give it a solid B for now, though that could change with the development of the season. This show is one of those short-season shows, so it will only have ten episodes, and we're already near a third of the way through the season. I had started doing this review/recap thinking that it would be longer and failed to check how many episodes it had (oversight on my behalf because I've been so busy and distracted). For these kinds of series I would usually just do an entire-season review/recap, but here we are. So, what are some good and bad things about this show? Let's dive in.

First, we can just get this out of the way, J.K. Simmons is terrific. He's been really good in just about everything he's been in back since his 90s stints on Law and Order, so it's to be expected. He convincingly plays the two Howards with enough complexity to make you understand how they are similar (sharing in every detail of their childhood and young adult life), while still being almost completely different. In one scene on episode one it is mentioned that they even have different taste buds somehow because one prefers American food while the other prefers Chinese and as the viewer you don't make a quick leap to doubt this bizarre and ridiculous trait because he makes it believable. And yes it is rather ridiculous, but we will talk about that further down in this review. The point is Simmons plays both characters in an intriguing way that makes Howard a sympathetic everyman and How2 an interesting and complex spy. I've never seen the show Orphan Black but I can only surmise that this is the type of performance that the lead on that show gives too as I have seen people rave about her many roles played.

The atmosphere (cinematography, set design, saturation, overall tone of the show) is muted and rather bland, almost Wachowskian in nature, yet not as eye-popping as The Matrix's color palette. Our world, or the world of Howard is dipped in an olive-green hue similar to the inside of the Matrix, while How2's world is bathed in blueish tones similar to the real world outside of the Matrix. I don't know if that was supposed to be a deliberate callback to that particular work or if that is just how the show creator and exec producers wanted it without influence from earlier works, but you can certainly get that vibe from the entire show so far. Howard was an “office” cog just like Neo and is only now awakened to the truth while everyone around him is still, for the most part, asleep in their innocent dreamworld. Granted, this is/was the plot for many a-movie both before and after The Matrix, but this feels closer to it. I digress.

My problem with this show is, essentially, why I'm having such a hard time trying to review it. It plays almost just like any other espionage show out there (the ones that take themselves super-serious) and uses its major conceit both as a driving force, yet also as a second thought. What do I mean? I mean that even though you know that you will have characters from two “different” worlds interacting with their other-world doppelganger, it doesn't feel like that. After the initial shock of the first episode wears off, everything seems rather ho-hum concerning the trick of two worlds. It never pushes the bounds into that truly bizarre and crazy sci-fi like what it maybe could've been; instead, it takes that one sci-fi element, sets up a great “what if” and then doesn't feel like it does much with that. Both with Howard and Baldwin/Nadia they each adjusted to the idea of another them too quickly, which made the whole show feel more like it was about long-lost twins rather than a sleek sci-fi exploration.

Then there's the writing—ah, yes, that most foreboding term in any of my reviews. What to say? What to say? OK, I'm going to have to mingle in a little bit of the directing here as I talk about this because I don't know which to blame more. The writing, while intriguing, is sometimes flat. I watched the first episode twice, OK? Twice. I still can't tell you details about that conversation between the two Howards when they were preparing for the hospital visit. And is it because I have a bad memory? No, I actually have a very good memory, although lately my brain is slowing and I really need to see a doctor about it. Yes, I can mention a few details like the taste buds thing and how they each got married differently, but it wasn't memorable or even all that intriguing. The idea of, “if you were to interview you, what would you ask yourself,” has been a philosophical musing for decades now, yet here it feels so blah that you could remove the entire conversation and miss nothing.

And about that taste buds thing... I'm confused as to how old people are supposed to be. Follow me here, everyone who existed pre-split 30 years ago all had the same exact life (remember the cell). If we're going by Howard's age and by what he said about marrying Emily, that means they were adults when the split happened. Yet, Howard and How2 have completely different taste buds? One would think that as an adult your taste buds when drastically change so much as for one to hate the type of food that the other likes, yet they do. How? There's never a reason given for this other than the split, which, in that case I'm more inclined to believe that they shouldn't look as similar then. If they're eating completely different diets that should even change how they appear. Yes, it's a small detail but it really distracted me from the plot.

Even worse, the writing never quite feels like it builds to something which is probably why it feels like it goes by so fast. OK, so let me put on my writer cap for a minute. In writing for film and television there is the thing called the three-act build. First act you establish a hero, second put that hero into trouble, third make the trouble bigger and force the hero to rise to the challenge. What most people don't seem to get is that the second and third act are supposed to have action. Yes, you want a good climax in the third, but the second is where the hero was supposed to have already met and/or been challenged by the villain in some way, making the villain only more evil in the eyes of the viewer. Now, I know that a lot of shows are being written as 10+episodic movies, similar to last summer's Twin Peaks revival, where multiple episodes can count as a first or second act, but there needs to be some more breakdown of that within the show. With Howard's and How2's conversation zipping by so quickly and being of little consequence, and the explanation for why How2 is on that side of The Crossing coming so late, the first episode felt like a rush to the end. Then when we do get to the action-filled end it leaves you with a feeling of, “wait, that's it?” And not in a good way. Then the second episode only halfway remedies this but it starts to jump around too much by trying to incorporate How2's ex-wife into the story. Episode three does well but there is something so cursory about Howard's existence that he feels like the least fleshed-out character on an earth1 devoid of any good fleshed-out characters. At this point they could almost kill Howard and just follow How2 and I don't know if I'd care.

The writing is not aggressively smart or funny and it doesn't try to be. It's simply serviceable. That, combined with the workman-like directing that both has style and lacks style is so milquetoast that it doesn't draw you in, but rather leaves you with a feeling of “hm. That was interesting.” Would I be willing to commit 50 hours of my life to this show for the next five years based on these three episodes? Probably not, but it's intriguing for now.

Should you be watching? If you enjoy espionage, government/corporate corruption, and/or “accidentally important people” stories, then yes I would say that you should be watching. And because it airs on Sunday nights in the winter, it doesn't have much competition from what I can think of (ABC and NBC are pretty dead, CBS is also a graveyard, and FOX is younger-skewing with most of their comedies now and I can't even think of what most cable networks have on). Still, this won't be for everyone--most people, actually. But it's got really good acting and, even if the writing has yet to truly pop with something memorable, it does seem to know exactly where it wants to go, so you can expect the intrigue to become more entangled and dangerous as the season continues. Counterpart airs on Starz Sundays at 9pm EST. Catch up with the series on StarzonDemand or Starz.com.

What do you think? Have you heard of Counterpart? If you haven't, do you think you'll tune in now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? What's your favorite part of the series? Do you think Howard will ever become a spy like his Counterpart? Do you think his wife will ever awake from her coma? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “I'mma step into this machine as Steve Urkel... And I'll step out as Stefan Urquelle.”

P.S. I started to look up an actual quote from the show but didn't feel like it. I have to go edit my book The Knowledge of Fear again, so... Yeah. Anyway, I'll try to come up with a better more original sign-off next time

Amazon
Goodreads Author Page
Goodreads Books Similar to TV Shows
Twitter@filmbooksbball

Is It The World Or Just Medicine That’s Apparently Filled With Assholes? #TheResident #3weekroundup #recap #review #FOX

Is It The World Or Just Medicine That’s Apparently Filled With Assholes? #TheResident #3weekroundup #recap #review #FOX

All pictures courtesy of FOX

FOX is batting three for 1000 this mid-season with the bad shows. First you have 9-1-1, which, while good, is far from the award-winning material that you would expect when reading some of the names in the cast (Connie Britton and Angela Bassett deserve better). Then you have the dreadful The Four: Battle for Stardom, which, thankfully, will be put out to pasture in a few short weeks—how can you make a show about stardom-hungry performers going head-to-head in singing battles so boring? Now you have this crap? Really? Oh crap! I’m burying the lede. I’m sorry, uh... So, is The Resident good enough to stay around and become a chief of some kinda... medical... department, or is this the wrong diagnose for FOX’s viewing schedule? God, that was terrible! I’m so pissed right now!!

FOX’s new mid-season show The Resident (#TheResident) follows the lives and sufferings of the staff at Chastain Medical Center. We open with a scene that sets the tone for the entire show and made me question why I (or anyone) even watches a medical show in the first place. Our opening takes place in a surgical room with a guy laying on the table to have a simple appendectomy before it completely ruptures. Here, we meet our first main player, Dr. Randolph Bell (note: I assume he’s one of the main players because he’s been on every episode so far and has had a lot of speaking and character development time, however IMDb lists him as only appearing in 4 out of 10 episodes). Dr. Bell, played by veteran actor Bruce Greenwood, is the aging chief of surgery that every patient loves and the hospital dotes on. People come from near and far to be operated on by him. Later in the episode they literally make a Grey’s Anatomy reference about how he’s the real-life Dr. McDreamy. As another aside, here I was reminded of what some song critic said about an old Omarion song IceBox when he remixed it and had Usher feature on the track. He said something to the effect of never let someone who’s clearly far better than you appear on your song. Dear The Resident, never reference a superior show in your same genre unless you really think you can compete with them. The viewers will just get pissed off and end up wondering why they aren’t just watching re-runs of that show rather than yours.

Hella-long aside but someone had to say it.

Anyway, Dr. Bell is really good, or at least he was at one point. Now, he’s secretly suffering through what looks like an early form of Parkinson’s. In what has got to be one of the worst, cheapest “I totally understand Millennials and even the most well-trained doctor-Millennials would do this” piece of garbage writing, during surgery the rest of the young surgical team (excluding an older nurse) stops to take a selfie because it is one surgeon's first surgery. Yes. That actually happened. It was a real scene. In this show. Not only was it a real scene but it was the opening scene. Of the series. Keep this scene in mind for later because when I tell you about all the other things that happen in these three episodes, you can refer back to this scene and see why I make the conclusion I do.

While everyone else is stopped to do the selfie and hold up the peace sign as they pose in front of a splayed stomach of a HUMAN BEING, Dr. Bell gets the shakes and accidentally slices through an artery. The team rushes to save him as one of the nurses yells something about pinching the artery, and the patient dies. They all gang-up on the doctor for killing the guy in a routine procedure, but he turns the tables on one of the other doctors and says that he “covered” for him on another accidental death during surgery and that if he goes down, the whole team does. The dude blackmails the team into covering up a medical malpractice. I was floored, and not in a good way.

That was the prelude surgery. We open in earnest with our two main characters. First we have Dr. Devon Pravesh, a young, newly Harvard Med-graduated doctor of Indian descent. Think of him as our Noah Wyle from ER (another show that was better than this). Fresh to his internship, he is ready to learn as much as he can and try to apply whatever he learned at Harvard to the real world. He is paired with who I’m assuming is our titular character in Dr. Conrad Hawkins.

Dr. Conrad Hawkins is a dick. I was gonna give some deep description of his look and whatnot, but eh! You know that one really annoying guy at your work who really is quite good at his job, but has few people skills and thinks he knows everything? Yeah, just picture him but white (if the guy at work isn’t). Conrad is supposed to be the semi-young Gen Xer who looks down upon everybody around him because they have an inferior intellect, yet really has a heart of gold because he actually saves patients and OH MY GOD! We’ve all seen this stupid show before, except on that one Conrad was an older, surly bloke who walked with a cane and called himself House. Anyway, ladies (and some fellas) if you aren’t convinced that he is a dick, after his intro scene where he is shown doing something stick-it-to-the-man-good, we are officially introduced to him when Pravesh meets him, and Conrad asks the very engaged Indian doctor what color he likes, referring to women.

Look, if you read this blog with any bit of frequency, you’ll know that I have said some pretty sexist, pretty politically incorrect things in my time but this bit of dialogue and character building felt pointless. Not only that but it later half-confuses the characterization of Conrad. In writing, they generally teach you to try building character through action and dialogue rather than just saying that the character is this or that. Ex: Sewn into the lining of Carl’s jacket was his most prized possession, the Terrible Towel. OK, that’s not a very good example, but do you see how I use a well-known item of memorabilia to tell you something about Carl rather than just saying it flat? Now you not only know that Carl is a football fan but that his favorite team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. So, it only seems natural for you to assume that this doctor who is gawking at a grouping of women through a thin glass like they are cuts of meat is probably a womanizer or at least a surgeon. Conrad is not a surgeon and he apparently is or was a playboy maybe? It’s uncertain.

At this point, let me stop and point out how I often only go on such long tangents and sink into this weird “I know things about writing” mode when I dislike something. Please bear with me.

Back to the show, Conrad gives Pravesh the rundown about how he is his boss from now on, how Pravesh may have just graduated from med school, but he really knows nothing, about how he can end the kid’s career if Pravesh ever talks back to him or questions his judgment because he’s always right (he actually said those words. I couldn’t believe it), and how he’s pretty much like god around there. At this point I stopped to ask myself, “Self, if this hospital is supposedly so good and Conrad is such an amazing doctor, then why doesn’t he have a gaggle of other doctors following him around too? Shouldn’t he have more than just Pravesh to oversee?” Myself didn’t have the answer to that question.

Conrad and Pravesh go to what will be Pravesh’s first patient interaction, a guy with some kind of disease that could eventually lead to lower-leg paralysis. After the back and forth “intern, what do we do” exchange, and Pravesh wanting to perform some expensive test, Conrad told him to stick a finger up the guy’s butt which will tell him if his anus is tight enough. If not, then paralysis is already beginning. Conrad takes the opportunity to make another crude sex reference before leaving and finding one of the nurses.

Nurse Nicolette Nevin (played by the lovely Emily VanCamp) is Conrad’s ex who he still wants. While it’s not explicit on the first episode, it’s implied through some careful spying on her Tinder-like account that he might have cheated and/or been too afraid to fully commit, not to mention childish. He displays his childishness by yanking her into an on-call room and trying to Christian Grey her in the middle of the day. I’m quite shocked that this scene wasn’t changed considering the atmosphere currently involving sexual assaults/harassment because it’s clearly both. However, that’s not what pissed me off about this scene. What pissed me off was how it so blatantly and easily fueled the fire with ammo for feminists on men’s behavior. It felt like it was written by a woman who hates men and who sees them all as sex-hungry monsters with no tact, which is overall what’s wrong with the character. Conrad, so far, has never tried to be a decent human being. A great doctor? So-so. But just human, someone who understands the most base rules of etiquette or decency? No. And the scene rings false, too. So even after he tells her that he will do anything to get her back, and she leaves him with his pants around his ankles and inside a locked (from the outside?) room, you don’t feel that sorta, “Yeah, you go girl! Show that ass-hat what’s what!” feeling that I think the writers wanted you to feel.

Somehow Conrad gets out of the room and Pravesh finds him after having checked the guy’s butt (note: I don’t remember them talking about the dude’s butt again after that). Right in front of them an addict is brought in with some kind of injury and struggles against all the doctors because she doesn’t want to be treated and is in denial about her addiction. Conrad looks at one thing on her hand and immediately IDs her ailment and tells her that she’ll be dead by tomorrow if she doesn’t allow them to treat her. Time never being on time itself, that tomorrow thing comes immediately, and she collapses to the floor. Conrad then says that Pravesh will take lead on this girl and that it is his call on what they should do about her. Pravesh performs CPR for 26 minutes even after Conrad tells him to stop. Her heartbeat finally returns but Conrad tells him that her brain’s been starved of oxygen for too long and that she’s brain-dead now and that Pravesh broke the first rule.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to another surgeon, Dr. Mina Okafor, a black woman from Nigeria. Not only is she a pretty good surgeon she is also the hospital’s leading surgical robotics expert. She is set to perform the hospital’s first surgery using a machine to make every incision and whatnot. She is shown to lack any sort of personal skills and is solely there to perform surgeries and become the world’s top surgeon, I guess. Frankly, little is known about her for the first two episodes save for that she is black, tall, from Africa, rather rude, single and is having visa problems. That last thing about her is used by Dr. Bell to blackmail her into letting him do the surgery that she’s been training months to do. He’s never operated the robotics, still can’t hold his hands steady with the robotic interface on his fingers, and can’t even cut into an apple with the robot, let alone a person, yet he wants to do the surgery on the hospital’s biggest donor.

Now, ready for the kicker? Though newbie Pravesh idolizes Dr. Bell, almost everyone in the hospital knows that the old guy is unhealthy and that he keeps killing patients. A few other doctors know, all the nurses do and most of the other surgical crews do as well, yet he keeps doing surgeries. And nobody reports him for malpractice or violation of the Hippocratic oath or violation of hospital guidelines or something! My mind has never been more boggled. And worse, Conrad comes face-to-face with him multiple times and asks him when he’s going to give it up and stop trying to operate on people and the dude is just like, “I still got it.” And it’s half-baffling because you don’t know if these interactions were written on some kind of artistic level or if the writers were completely unaware, because from any outside viewer with a decent understanding of what’s going on in the episode, you can see that Bell is basically Conrad in 20 or 30 years. They’re both the same amount of arrogant, narcissistic and egotistic. But worst of all is that near the end of the episode you learn that they’re also the same amount of corrupt.

Left to right: Dr. Bell, Dr. Conrad

After Bell blackmails Dr. Okafor into a genius plan of operating the robot during the surgery while he sits up front (the surgery is recorded and broadcast worldwide) and mimes the movements to take credit for her work, Conrad sneaks off to the brain-dead girl’s room, closes the door and the blinds and turns off her machine on the sneak. Luckily, Nurse Nevin comes in and catches him, guilt-staring him into turning the machine back on and quietly leaving. Dude was about to Million Dollar Baby the girl without any forethought to organ donation or something like that. And I really sat there like, “What?” He seems more like an idiot than a compassionate person trying to save the family weeks, months or years of agony thinking she might wake up. You wanna take a guess at what the next episode involves?

Episode two starts with three people all going down in a medical emergency that will unite them all with the brain-dead girl. While at career day for a local high school speaking to the class of one of his patients, Conrad helps to save the life of his teacher-patient by recognizing the signs of heart failure. Across town, Dr. Bell and another lead doctor in the hospital Dr. Lane Hunter are out on a hunting excursion with a congressman and a lobbyist. The Congressman has a heart attack and errantly fires his gun, filling the lobbyist’s ass with buckshot. You know what happens next?

Yep, you guessed it: both the congressman and the young teacher need a heart transplant. At first they only have one new heart that is on the way from another donor and because the teacher is on the top of the list, it’s scheduled to go to him. However, because the congressman is a VIP, Dr. Bell does some shady stuff and un-allocates the heart for the teacher (he’s black, by the way) in order to give it to the old, white congressman. Antoine Fuqua is one of the producers of this show. I can’t believe that he or somebody didn’t see this or read the script, or stop to think about the casting and say, “Wait a minute, something’s not right about this.” But nope! Nobody saw the blatant racism in episode one; nobody saw the blatant racism in episode two. And no I’m not talking about the Dr. Okafor thing from episode one. I’m trying to save my critiques for... you know, the critique, but it’s just so stupid to set up these kinds of easily identifiable racial plot-points and not actually make a statement about race that I have to call it out a little right now. I digress.

After a ton of back and forth about whom the heart belongs to, Conrad tampers with the DNA/viability tests that determine if the heart would take in the old congressman. This forces the head of surgery to finally concede and go talk to the mom of the brain-dead girl and convince her to donate her daughter’s organs. Both men get saved.

Meanwhile, Conrad sends Pravesh out on his own on what he’s deemed “Independence Day.” He will have no other doctor to help him with anything but can turn to nurses for stuff. Now, I don’t want to compare this to Grey’s Anatomy but since this show did bring that show up, isn’t it customary for the new interns to follow their lead resident for at least a couple weeks before going out on their own even for basic chart work-ups? There is literally nothing in this episode that makes us think this is even two days after episode one. I swear it’s the next day. In any case, Pravesh has to do all the charting and sign-out work for the other doctors. He also has to visit a few patients and deal with the pesky task of learning. There’s a scene where he is in the room with Dr. Bell and a patient can't breathe so Conrad comes and dumps a bucket of ice on her to stop her from crashing, and Pravesh also fonds over the female doctor that was on the hunting excursion. He then notices that something is happening with the lobbyist who took the buckshot and runs the guy up to surgery when the nurses and another doctor told him that he should've paged Conrad and that they could’ve taken care of whatever was happening with a much more simple procedure.

In the end, Pravesh and the rest of the doctors (not Bell) end up in a bar like Grey’s Anatomy, where he stands up to Conrad and tells him that this spoiled white boy really doesn’t know everything and that he made the right call about the lobbyist and that if Conrad wants to end his career he can, but he was right. Conrad, in turn, congratulates him on passing Independence Day because he wanted him to realize that no doctor is always right, which felt kind of like a false-flag victory because the dude is Harvard trained. I think he has the sense enough to figure out that no human is ever always right about something.

Dr. Okafor

Oh and there’s also this completely perfunctory scene that, unfortunately, cemented my original idea that this series was written by a male-hating woman who clearly doesn’t even care to entertain notions that the male mind or social norms could both be slightly different than she expects. Case in point: The male nurse who works to remove the buckshot from the lobbyist sits at the bar and tells a woman that he is on-call and that he works at the hospital across the street, and she assumes he’s a doctor and moves closer to him. Meanwhile, Dr. Okafor, the tall, short-haired Nigerian woman sits at the same bar and is approached by a black man who sits and smiles and asks her what she does. When she says she works at the hospital, he assumes she’s a nurse. She corrects him and says that she’s a doctor actually. He then, in the most ludicrous way possible, stares at her and quietly slips off the seat and away into the crowd. A-tee-hee!

I’m sorry but this was the funniest thing. First off, I get that they are ever-so briefly touching on social attitudes about gender and what’s assumed here. It’s not that the guy is mistaken for a doctor and the girl for a nurse that is funny. What’s funny is both how this scene is acted and this recurring notion among professional women of all races (black women especially) that men are too afraid or intimidated by their success, which is why they are single. It’s not that serious. And if you are going to keep thinking this then you will remain single. The gender love gap is far more complex than that.

First off, they’re in a bar. You seriously think this dude is looking for a wife or even a relationship in a bar? No. Most men are looking to pick up some woman, so they can get laid. This is how you can tell that the scene was most likely written by a woman, just like you can often tell when female sex scenes are written by men, because they think differently about the situation. A woman is already thinking long-term about how her success will intimidate a man away when you just met. The guy is not. The guy is just thinking about how hot she is and how quickly he can get her to put out. Might be a sad commentary on things but it’s true. There’s no way he’s gonna care about your career or what you do the first time he meets you, especially if it’s not an ACTUAL date. Most men are like those four kids from Stand By Me, they only care about DAT BODY! So thinking that a man is gonna slip away just because you’re a successful doctor (actually, he doesn't even know if she's a successful doctor or not and doesn't even know she's a surgeon), and not because he maybe saw some other more attractive woman down the bar, is slightly self-fulfilling-prophecy-ish. But I digress.

Episode three starts with Conrad in a bike race with another doctor. He does some nice BMX jump to show how cool and fearless he is and wins by a hair over the other doctor. As soon as the race ends, some drunk guy (horrible acting) steps into the spokes of a bike on the ground and snaps his leg. They take him to Chastain where Conrad and Pravesh, along with all the other doctors must sit through a presentation on the billing practices. Basically, they're showing more corruption because they are trying to figure out ways to charge patients more for simple things like irrigating ear infections. Naturally, Conrad bails.

While the pay thing is going on, one of the women who subcontracts with Chastain and helps to exercise long-term patients experiences some back pain that turns into something serious when she drops to the floor. The billing specialist doesn't want to treat her because she doesn't have insurance and can't pay for the expense that the hospital will incur. It turns out she's an illegal immigrant with a huge tumor that's killing her, but the billing specialist doesn't care. Even worse, she was brought here as a child and has no more family here, so she can't be released into her own care by law. She is, essentially, a ward of the hospital, and, regardless of what they do, they aren't getting out of the situation without an expense of at least half a million. So the CEO of the hospital then engages in a bidding sale to try to pawn the girl off onto some other hospital for a fee. They're trading the girl for cash considerations.

Left to Right: Dr. Pravesh, Immigrant, Nurse Nevin

And then somebody calls immigration. Before the men in ICE jackets get to her Conrad the black doctor and their minions send her into surgery with Conrad's other doctor surgeon buddy. And the operation goes well, which means that she will be their patient for a little while longer but as soon as she can walk they will kick her out because she becomes someone else's problem then. Dr. Bell even tries to make her walk the moment she gets out of surgery and I sat there wondering how ridiculous this show could get. Nurse Nevin even has to stick it to the billing specialist when she discovers that the woman has ordered an expensive MRI for a patient who doesn't need it without checking his history. MRI's are magnetic and will rip out anything metallic. He happens to have a metal penis implant. Yet another bit of close-call malpractice in a hospital rife with it.

As far as the broken leg guy, his liver is failing, and he needs to stop drinking but can't. Oh, and Conrad was in the Marines at one point making him a poor man's TC from The Night Shift.

What’s my grade? I give it a D+. Yes, the plus is for the diverse cast. Other than that, you would be hard-pressed to find something worth a single damn in this show. It’s funny because it’s actually rare that I give not one but two super-low ratings to new shows in a single season, let alone in a single week, yet here we are. And for them to both be on the same network is astounding. It’s funny how I started this 2017-18 viewing season back in September/October thinking/writing, “Gosh, there are really not that many new shows premiering this year for the networks, at least not full-season orders.” If this show is an example of what they were offered, I can see why. And it’s also crazy how everyone calls out either ABC or NBC for constantly having new shows because they have to cancel so much stuff. At least they actually try to make good and/or innovative and creative programming. FOX decided not to do something creative this year, but instead went with watered-down carbon copies of other things that are hits. Between this show, The Orville and The Gifted (which started good but became like every other X-men film you’ve ever seen, save for Logan and Deadpool), we’ve gotten stuff that reminds us of other, much better stuff. Where do I thoroughly begin?

Before I rip into this show, I cannot stop and stress enough how much I hate critiquing other people’s work even when it’s good. As a creative myself it always makes me queasy. And distance-critiquing is the worst because you know that you are too far away to effect anything which makes it feel like you’re old-man-shouting obscenities at the kids on your neighbor’s lawn. “Like, Old Man, we’re not even on your lawn. Chill!” Just know that this is going to be very painful for all parties involved.

Like House But Without House And Kal Penn's Character Alive

To say that The Resident is a ripoff of House, MD does a disservice to all the other medical shows it rips off. Now, before you start jumping on me about how medical shows are a genre to themselves and how there will of course be overlap and similarities, let me take you through the odyssey of good/decent versus lazy shows. For those people who were there in the beginning, Grey’s Anatomy, when it first came out, was so good, so new, so different from the reigning medical show at the time (ER), that it literally (in concert with Desperate Housewives) helped to change the language and flow of all of ABC’s shows going forward. It became somewhat of a cultural phenomenon, so much so that to this day people are still referencing the McDreamy, McSteamy thing. Hell, this very show did it! Not only that but it melded music from up-and-coming artists into what often became the most heartfelt moments of the show. Would The Fray have been as big without Grey’s Anatomy pumping their single “How To Save A Life?” Maybe.

We can jump off Grey’s and over to other medical shows in recent years. To try to be different from Grey’s, they all went with some kind of hook that either drew us in on an emotional level or made us sit at the edge of our seats. Private Practice had a different feel than Grey’s while still fitting into that universe. The Night Shift was a hospital populated by soldier-doctors dealing with all sorts of PTSD, US disillusionment, etc. Code Black followed a hospital under severe stress from running out of supplies. Pure Genius tried to bring super-tech into medicine. Red Band Society tried to show what it was like to be a sick kid living in a hospital. Even The Good Doctor has a unique twist with our main character having autism. The only one that didn’t have a huge twist was Chicago Med, which survives because it is part of a much larger shared universe with the entire Chicago franchise on NBC.

The Resident does not have a draw or catch, at least not a good one. From what I can see, and this will take us back to the beginning of this post about how I had to think about why we watch medical dramas, this show is about corruption in the field of medicine. Our main character has a surgeon’s-like god complex and so does the actual surgeon. Both of them have already proven in the first three episodes that they will stop at almost nothing not to do what’s right but to do what best feeds their ego. If that means breaking the law, blackmailing someone, or just flat-out committing malpractices, so be it. What’s worse is that there is an emotional dissonance about this whole thing. Whereas House seemed like he really did care and was an overworked, beleaguered genius who was essentially always mad because he could never master the art of being human, Conrad doesn’t seem to show any of that. For House his gift was his curse. Conrad doesn't seem compelled to help people. Yes, the hot nurse he used to sleep with tells Pravesh that he totally has a heart of gold and is the guy you go to if you “want your engine fixed” but there’s something so intrinsically oily about him that it’s hard to see past his bad behavior.

Yeah, I used this pic twice, in ode to this recycled show 

Also, the supposed genius of him feels lost when, on Pravesh’s first case, the girl goes brain-dead and he just seems completely pissed about it. Yes, Conrad told Pravesh to stop and he wouldn’t, but he also told him that the case was his. And in the end, when the girl’s organs were needed for harvesting, I kinda felt, “Well, wait a minute so Pravesh technically did the right thing twice and both times Conrad told him he was doing wrong? What?” I know every single thing doesn’t have to be written in one episode and you need to give the characters time to build and whatnot, but it truly felt like Conrad didn’t even conceive of the possibility that the girl’s organs could be harvested. He was willing to turn off the machine and let her die and risk having some of her organs sour in a corpse. Who knows how often they would come in to check on the girl? Whatever.

And the third episode, to me, was morally washed out by the actions taken by nearly everyone on the first two episodes. They try to build this narrative that our titular character and his minions are the rebels against the corporate health machine, yet took no time to truly build the ground on which their moral superiority could stand. Between Bell willfully killing patients, Okafor being just as robotic as the tools she uses in surgery, and Conrad also being willing to kill, lie or cheat to get his way, why should I root for any of them to get their way over the wishes of the hospital? Do they really care or are they all just on a spiraling ego trip to the bottom? Right now I'd vote for the latter.

Then there is the overt racism, sexism, misogyny and misandry that has been written into the DNA of each character. Both Conrad and Dr. Bell are the literal epitome of white boy privilege. White male Trump voters, if you’re still wondering why or can’t see why so many minority groups dislike you and think that things are unfairly advantaged toward you, watch the first three episodes of this show, because this is why. The older, white male Dr. Bell who is known to be killing patients because he’s unfit to be a surgeon, gets to keep doing it for however long he’s been doing it because... well, because he’s white and has a good reputation. A reputation, mind you, which is filled with lies manufactured by him. There’s no oversight for this dude, nobody checking behind him, except for people that rank beneath him in the hospital. Meanwhile, Conrad gets to be as mean, conniving, sexist and racist as he wants and nobody says a thing. Can he sexually harass his ex-gf by pulling her into a room and forcibly kissing her? Sure. It’s just a cool joke and oh he will do anything to get her back. And seeing as how he was willing to kill a patient without consent (at least Bell attempts to save his patients every time), I’m not unsure that he’d do more devious things for Nevin if she asked. Do they have terrible personalities and could easily cause the hospital dozens of lawsuits if either of them were found out? Of course, but they’re really good at their jobs sorta (even that’s questionable) and they’re white males, so they get to stay.

This view of them and how their characters are built wouldn't be so bad if they tried to make an actual statement on social justice, or at least one that was less muddled. Right now it feels like they're saying that yes white men disproportionately have advantages in this society and that many of them can act like a-holes but it's OK so long as they do good with that. It is the Trump syndrome personified. Yes, House had some of this same shtick, however, he also had a certain bit of quirky, comical charm to both the character and the actor's performance. Here, unfortunately, Conrad looks like a d-bag. There's almost zero real charm here. Instead of a rye smile, you get a smug grin that doesn't feel like it's been earned either by age or experience. Oily. Super oily! I think what it is, is that almost all of the heroes here lack any kind of nobility. Again, I will keep going back to Conrad trying to kill the one patient, yet this military guy has Death Before Dishonor tatted on his back. Give me a break! 

Frankly, their behavior is partially indicative of a much larger problem in dramas (med dramas specifically) these days. They’re filled with assholes. We get it, hospital drama is life and death, so you need people who are at the top of their game to be the ones calling the shots, but where Grey’s Anatomy excelled at giving us more love and coaching-up of talent, most of these new dramas are corner-stoned in the chew out. There’s a sense that the teaching doctors have to be asses to you because that’s what the job requires. Uh, no. The job requires that you be on point and come ready. But you don’t have to challenge someone’s personality and try to make them in your own image in order to do that. On the flip, people are not as stupid as they are made out to be. They don’t come in thinking they know everything (and yes, that even goes for Millennials). Yes, they will come in thinking they know a lot but that doesn’t mean that they are so stupid that they have no idea what they signed up for. Again, I think this is a superficial generational thing to treat anyone under 37 as a complete moron because their brains are wired differently. I even noticed this in Grey’s Anatomy this season with the new interns. If you go back and watch the first season and compare how they were treated and reacted to things then as opposed to now, you can see that this new round of interns is, for some reason, written as intrinsically more stupid. It baffles me.

Dear Emily VanCamp, you are wasted on this show

Again, circling back to my idea that this show is about corruption in the medical field, I had to sit down in silence for a while and have a good think about why people even tune in to any kind of case-of-the-week procedural or medical drama. If we tune in to cop shows to see bad guys perform slick and ingenious crimes but ultimately getting caught, do we not tune into medical dramas to see people’s lives saved? Sure, there is always the one or two criminals that outsmart the cop or patients that die, which we ourselves learn from just as much as the characters, but we watch more for a good feeling, right? So then why the hell would I want to watch a medical show that has a malpractice seam running through its very fabric? Dr. Bell is almost every person’s worst nightmare whenever they think about going to the doctor’s even for a routine checkup. This man will kill you while removing a mole for god’s sake. He is definitely the one to leave a pair of scissors inside of you or accidentally make you blind when you had 20/20 vision. What’s worse is that Conrad doesn’t seem much better. They both operate with a mindset that rules don’t apply to them. Amidst the show’s light, sunny cinematographic composition lies a fairly dark show that both covers some of the same storylines as Grey’s and other medical dramas, yet has little to no gravitas underneath to support its weighty inquisitions. It’s a wonder to me that they chose Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” as the song to promote this show because it doesn’t fit the tone of the show in anyway. Same can be said for the title of the show because it really isn't about The Resident. In fact, I would have appreciated this show more if they just named it Malpractice and explored the dark side of medicine. For now, however, it seems to have taken on a mixed tone where it doesn't know what it wants to be and both the viewer and the characters are lost in this murky mess.

Therefore, I’ve come to what, to me, feels like the only logical conclusion I could produce: this show is a satire of other, much better medical shows. It has to be. Whereas Grey’s is a serious show and Scrubs was a parody, this lies somewhere in the middle with worse writing than both. Taking the storyline of McDreamy’s hand problems after the accident and turning it into a head-shaking killfest with Dr. Bell has to be the writers and producers critique of how terrible they thought that Grey’s Anatomy storyline was. Just like the annoyed, egotistical Conrad, who thinks he’s some kind of drill sergeant and/or father figure to the younger doctor who he sees potential in has to be a nod to Scrubs’ Dr. Cox. Because if this is supposed to be taken seriously, then yikes! What's worse is that I know at least two of the writers on the show have done far better work on shows that have gotten cancelled. One of the male writers and past doctor (currently under investigation for sexual harassment) worked on The Night Shift which most likely influenced the bits and pieces of military protocol on this show. The creator of the show also worked on Black Box which handled the business side of medicine in a much better, more interesting light and, because it was an ABC show, had far more heart and emotional weight to it than this show does. It's rather sad that both of those shows were cancelled when they explored some of the same territory that this show has but with greater writing.

Should you be watching? I would say no, but it seems like I don’t know what people like because people seem to watch the shows that I vehemently dislike. So maybe people are looking for something new or are looking for villains in a medical drama because if so, this will fulfill that need. But I’d say that there have been far better medical shows within the last three years and I named some of them here. Hell, I liked Pure Genius better than this. Sadly, I can see this getting renewed, but I doubt that it would make it past season three. The Resident airs on FOX Mondays at 9pm. Catch it on FOXonDemand or at FOX.com.

What do you think? Have you heard of FOX’s The Resident? If you haven’t, do you think you’ll check it out now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? What did you think of it? Was I too hard on it and it’s your new favorite show? What do you think will happen to Dr. Bell when the hospital board finds out about his sickness? And do you think Conrad will get back with his nurse ex-girlfriend? Let me know in the comments below.

Coming Soon

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “You got into Harvard Med?”

'What? Like it's hard?'

“Uh... Yes. It's really, like super hard. Super duper hard.”

P.S. There were some things that I wanted to say in this review/recap but I just got so frustrated with even reviewing this show that I couldn't spend another couple of minutes on it. I think of a better sign-off next time.

Amazon
Goodreads Author Page
Goodreads Books Similar to TV Shows
Twitter@filmbooksbball