Review: Dick Wolf adds to his TV triad with 'Chicago Med'
Bang! Kapow! Ka-boom! That's how networks serve up their dramas in this ultra-competitive age. Terrified of losing their audiences to FX or Netflix, they slam viewers with shrill, abusive body blows.
Bang! Kapow! Ka-boom!
That's how networks serve up their dramas in this ultra-competitive age. Terrified of losing their audiences to FX or Netflix, they slam viewers with shrill, abusive body blows.
That's how procedural whiz Dick Wolf opens his new emergency- room melodrama, Chicago Med. Within 90 seconds, we're thrown into the middle of a deadly train derailment
The third in Wolf's Chicago triumvirate, after Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D., the series premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on NBC.
Wolf opens on devilishly good-looking Dr. Connor Rhodes (Arrow's Colin Donnell) as he casually, yet so very meaningfully, gets on the subway for his morning commute.
Then Skid! Crack! Ouch!
In the blink of an eye, Rhodes is on the move, assessing injuries. He's masterful! A comic book superhero!
I suppose we should thank Wolf and his writers for their subtlety. They were restrained enough not to open the show with a nuclear strike, a biblical flood, or a city-devouring Godzilla.
At the Chicago Med hospital, everyone is celebrating the opening of a new ER. Their beepers activate en masse and we're off to the races.
Suture, intubate, IV push, the docs and nurses throw out . . . fracture, femur, fibula, hematoma . . . epinephrine, diazepam . . . stat!
Unlike CBS's more brutal frontal assault, Code Black, which is all action and no personality, the writers fill Chicago Med with just enough character work to make the players interesting. So what if they lift every hospital drama cliche, from '60s classic Dr. Kildare to ER and Chicago Hope?
The train disaster happens on Rhodes' first day on the job. When he dreamboats into the ER, he's challenged by resident alpha male Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss from Shameless). Before the season's up, I bet they'll go at each other MMA style, then become BFFs.
Chicago Med is stocked with progressive character types - plenty of female doctors to balance out the men and a noticeable mix of persons of color.
The two male leads are backed by a solid cast, including S. Epatha Merkerson as the hospital's chief, Oliver Platt as the gentle, caring head of psychiatry, and a slew of hotties as various other doctors and nurses, including Yaya DaCosta, Torrey DeVitto, Brian Tee and Rachel DiPillo.
The patients are less pleasant to look at. Cookie-cutter characters, they embody pain, anger, shame, jealousy, poverty, greed, and a range of other miseries. But I guess the docs need something to make 'em look good.
At times, Chicago Med hits a deep vein of absurdity that's hard to shake off. In one scene, Rhodes stands bolt upright in the back of a speeding ambulance and administers chest compressions with just one arm. He flexes the other for us to admire.
I admit I've been wrong before. I hated the pilot for Chicago P.D. because it was so ludicrously over the top, but it developed into a good drama over its freshman season. (Not so much the following year.)
Perhaps Chicago Med is headed in the same direction. A humble suggestion for Wolf & company: Stop cribbing from superhero comics.
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Chicago Med
Premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on NBC10 (WCAU-TV).
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