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Monday, Oct 13, 2008
On "MDs" and "Presidio Med," rogue, renegade and maverick doctors search for a cure for HMOs.
Sep 26, 2002 | "MDs," ABC's new medical dramedy, premiered on Wednesday night with a group of exhausted medical interns wrapping up their first all-nighter on the surgical circuit. Just as they are getting ready to shuffle home, a door swings open and someone bursts in. The Medevac is three minutes out! It's a Code 2-K! Nobody's going anywhere! Cue running, cue music, cue Steadicam operator hauling ass down hallways and across a rooftop helipad. Anxious interns look on as a red cooler is rushed into the O.R. Is it kidneys? Hell, no. It's fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts, courtesy of the wacky-but-gifted Dr. Bruce Kellerman (William Fichtner.)
As the grateful interns eagerly tuck in to the warm pastries fresh from the deep fryer -- and the human-transplant tissue container -- Nurse Poole (Jane Lynch) an officious R.N. with a Ph.D. in management, pops in to see what all the unauthorized expense is about. She squints menacingly, but is foiled again.
Dr. Kellerman is the head of cardiothoracic surgery and latter-day Trapper John at Mission General, a fictional San Francisco hospital its denizens refer to affectionately as "the Mish." Kellerman is the type of character writers of press releases like to call a "rogue," a "renegade," a "maverick" or, if possible, all three at once. By the end of the episode, he will have met his own Hawkeye Pierce in the person of Dr. Robert Dalgety (John Hannah, the Scottish guy from "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Sliding Doors,") a war-trained trauma specialist fresh from Bosnia. "Perfect," the hospital's director notes, "for an inner-city hospital." Together, they find an ally in the young, idealistic intern, Maggie Yang (Michaela Conlin).
By now, it should be clear we're watching "M*A*S*H" in the Mission, or, for that matter, any medical drama/comedy hybrid that is unafraid to toss some light, existential laffs in with the wrenching pathos. ("We're talking about this patient's life here ... Ho! Hey! There's a small intestine in my shoe!") The sound-alike name of the facility itself is apt, considering what we have here is a mash-mish of bureaucracy-bashing, morbidity jokes and rueful last-gasp reckonings. "The Mish" may not be a mobile army medical unit, but that's not to say there's no war going on. It's being waged between, on one side, the uninsured masses and the doctors who risk their jobs to help them, and on the other by the Scrooge-like hospital administrators who say things like, "They did not misdiagnose it, they missed the diagnosis -- and that'll hold up in court."
Like the "M*A*S*H" boys, Kellerman and Dalgety have a little problem with authority, especially when it's stupid, dogmatic and inhumane. The uptight Nurse Poole and her petulant sidekick, sad-sack HMO administrator Chester Donge --"MDs'" very own Frank and Hot Lips duo, sans the mad love -- are dying to have the two doctors fired. But the rebel surgeons are in luck, it seems, because the hospital's board of directors has just hired a squeamish former amusement park manager, Shelly Pangborn (Leslie Stefanson), to run the hospital. As an outsider, she can see both sides of the pressing issue of the day. (Plus, she's hot.)
Of course, such lofty idealism can't just go unmitigated. Lest the two protagonists come across as less Trapper and Pierce and more "Dr. Kellerman and Dr. Dalgety, Medicine Men," we are soon informed that Kellerman has been a lousy husband and father. When we first meet Dalgety, he is getting on famously with a cute member of the housekeeping staff in a linen closet. "Gee, Dr. Dalgety," she giggles, "most of the other doctors don't even speak to housekeeping." To which he replies, "I'm a Doctor Without Borders."
Which is funny, because, at precisely the same moment on CBS's "Presidio Med," Dr. Rae Brennan (Dana Delany), another Doctor Without Borders, is sharing a cot in Pakistan with the George Clooney-esque Dr. Nicholas Kokoris (Oded Fehr). Dr. Brennan may be fooling around in a G.I. tent with a cute Greek surgeon who isn't her husband, but soon, she will rejoin her intense colleagues on this week's other new medical drama, which previewed this Tuesday but will run directly opposite "MDs," Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
"Presidio Med" takes place, curiously, just across town from ABC's Mission General, though in a far fancier neighborhood. The staff consists mostly of female doctors, including Dr. Harriet Lanning (Blythe Danner), a patrician OB/GYN; Dr. Letty Jordan (Anna Deavere Smith), a frowning cardiologist; Dr. Jackie Colette (Sasha Alexander), a shallow but plucky plastic surgeon; and Dr. Jules Keating (Julianne Nicholson), an idealistic pediatrician. If medicine is a calling, character is specialty.
Although they will do it with a straighter face, the ladies of "Presidio Med" (which was created by "West Wing," "ER" and "China Beach" executive producer John Wells, along with Lydia Woodward) will face the usual medical drama stuff, just like their downtown colleagues a few stops down the dial: ravaging diseases, ripped-from-the-headlines social dilemmas, coldhearted bureaucrats, avaricious HMOs and, of course, their own personal demons, interpersonal problems and romantic travails. Dr. Brennan's marital difficulties are bound to get worse now that her same-time-next-year Greek beau has gotten himself a job at the adjacent hospital. Dr. Keating has just found out that she has a tumor on one of her ovaries, and the prospect of never having children has her tense and depressed. Dr. Colette is not feeling the love of her fellow doctors, which may explain why, next week, she will put aside her thing against burn victims and agree to operate on an injured fireman.
The driving force behind both shows is the gonzo doctors, the ones brave and crazy enough to mess with the HMOs. On "Presidio Med," that doctor is Colette, who takes a decision to deny her patient coverage straight to the newspapers. On "MDs," of course, it is Kellerman and Dalgety, who team up in the hospital's morgue to remove a tumor from a patient who would have otherwise been sent home for lack of coverage. Strangely enough, both shows cast the same actress, Vernee Watson-Johnson, as an incidental bad guy. On "MDs," she plays an admitting nurse who guards the doors to the hospital like a sentry; on "Presidio Med," she plays the insurance adjuster who denies a sweet old lady her brand-new titanium knitting knuckles.
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