First Impressions: The Mob Doctor ‘Pilot’ – You Had A Choice

The Mob Doctor is a modern medical procedural in the loosest sense of the word. It’s “modern” in that it uses HD cameras and was filmed in 2012; “medical” because it takes place in a hospital with all sorts of personal, political, and racial tensions; and “procedural” in that it will continue to produce 44 minutes worth of logic-free, entertainment-free television until Fox inevitably cancels it during or after season one.

First off, has there ever been a protagonist with such a stressful life? Chicago surgeon Dr. Grace Devlin is not only an unmarried doctor with dead daddy issues (as we find in the “shocking” “twist” at the end), mommy issues, and a brother she’s taking complete responsibility for – even though he’s an adult. You see, her brother’s gotten into some trouble with the mob (that we don’t know about yet), and somehow, Grace struck a deal to become the mob’s on-call doctor in return for her brother’s life.

This is the first big problem: why would it begin right after she makes a deal with the mob? Why not make that the pilot, and the first few episodes can be about her trying to juggle this new life being involved with both Chicago medicine and Chicago mobsters? There’s no weight given to the decision she’s made in this episode, since it’s already in the past. We don’t see her life transform from hero doctor to hero doctor/family savior, and as a result, there’s no chance in understanding why Grace does what she does on a daily basis.

And for a protagonist, boy is she inconsistent, acting and thinking only as the plot requires, and not in any sort of thought-out way to develop her character. For example, she spends an entire scene getting mad that her uppity, ignorant boss (who fills the “egotistical man with no personality” role quite blandly) over rode her decision – until she does the same thing to her boyfriend in the next scene, to protect some girl she knows from her angry father.

It’s gaps of logic and inconsistent tones like those that drive the majority of the medical and family drama of the episode, which tries to give us some throw away story about an 8-year old black kid who got shot and dies as its first “case of the week” story. It strums up some drama, but mainly between a cardboard secondary surgeon (“I’ve been here four years, and they still call me Daddy’s girl) and her off-screen father we haven’t met yet (thankfully).

The mob stuff weaved in throughout is no better, involving Grace’s father figure as her savior from the somehow more evil Pat Moretti (Michael Rappaport) who is beginning to claw his way back to the top of the slick-haired, gray-suited Chicago mob world again, because that’s who he is and it’s time everyone came to accept that. Being the admirable figure he is in Grace’s eyes, he merely shifts her “debt” from Moretti over to him after he ‘disappears’, in one of the flimsiest catches for a weekly procedural I’ve ever seen.

I could go on and on, detailing everything in my three pages of scribbled notes about how bad this show is, but do I need to? Every character on the show operates without any consistent motivation or logic, operating only how the scene demands of them – which of course, is always exactly what the audience is expecting – the dramatic equivalent of a lazy hand job from a disinterested girlfriend.

There aren’t going to be any surprises on The Mob Doctor: every episode is going to revolve around a mob threat, a couple random hospital cases that aren’t really related to anything, and lots and lots and LOTS of Jordana Spiro answering her cell phone and telling someone “I have to go, right now”. Watching The Mob Doctor is the television equivalent of two week old leftovers; you’ve had the meal too many times already, and what’s left just kind of runs together in a mushy, under cooked mess of shitty tasting glop.

Grade: F

Other thoughts/observations:

– I ranked this show last in my initial pilot rankings; it’s going to take a lot from Revolution tonight to steal the top spot next week.

– The show tries to bring a foggy morality into play a few times, but doesn’t get any farther than Moretti reminding Grace that “she made a choice” to work with the mob – though we have to take their word on that, since we didn’t actually get to see or learn anything tangible about that deal at all.

– the twist involving Severino makes the entire pilot unnecessary – a fact the characters point out themselves, in the show’s lone moment of self-aware intelligence.

– Is Grace a ‘tough’ female character, or just an irresponsible one? I don’t think the show is very subtle in its portrayal at all.

– A Chicago show that references the Cubs in a World Series-related joke? Be careful Fox, you might just blow our minds.

– why does Grace call the little black child “a good kid”? It’s unrealistic touches of “emotion” like those that made me groan multiple times throughout.

– Another question: does a cell phone ring EVERY time a guy tries to get laid on network television? I feel like every male character on the big four has a perma-case of blue balls in non-finale related episodes.

– let’s be clear: no mob boss would ever be contacting a lowly surgeon, nor would he be going out on solo rage-fueled missions.

– Does this show take place in Chicago? Nothing in it suggests anything about the city and its people, culture, history, or anything except that its a place where gangsters thrive, and people drive cars. Oh, and cell phone reception is REALLY good.

What did you think of The Mob Doctor?