You would think that into a vacuum, greatness would rush. At a time when so many groundbreaking shows -- "ER," "The Shield," "Battlestar Galactica," "Boston Legal" -- have triumphantly concluded, you would imagine networks killing themselves to come up with the next innovation. Instead we get "HawthoRNe."
To create a power-trifecta of female leads, TNT has asked Jada Pinkett Smith to join Holly Hunter of "Saving Grace" and Kyra Sedgwick of "The Closer" as Christina Hawthorne, a recently widowed head nurse at Richmond Trinity Hospital. Balancing her grief, her rebellious teenage daughter and, of course, her bottomless capacity to care, Christina constantly battles with doctors who don't respect her, patients who desperately need her, and the crazy pace of a city hospital.
Following fast on the heels of Showtime's "Nurse Jackie," "HawthoRNe" (which premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday) covers some of the same themes but in strangely unapologetically risk-free manner. With a sensibility neither Housian (Pinkett Smith is no comedian, sardonic or otherwise) nor Greysian (there's some early dating among the staff, but no action in the supply closet), writer and producer John Masius ("Providence," "Dead Like Me") seems to think groundbreaking is overrated. Except for Pinkett Smith being a black woman, two descriptors still rare in a lead character, "HawthoRNe" nestles cozily right smack in the middle of either the box or the envelope, depending on your cliche preference.
Now this may have been a conscious decision, a form of firmly placid protest of the current frenzied and often gratuitous emphasis put on pace-shifting and quirkiness. But "character-driven" shouldn't mean boring, and the front-loading of righteous pro-nurse speechifying by Christina doesn't do "HawthoRNe" any favors; when a show makes "Saving Grace" seem subtle in terms of message delivery, you know you're in trouble.
Pinkett Smith does her best to quickly establish Christina as a sad, tough, competent rule-breaker with the obligatory broken heart of gold. She tries to talk a cancer patient from a suicidal jump, then saves his life when she fails. She tries to talk her daughter Camille (Hannah Hodson) out of trouble with the principal, then leaves the child to her fate when Camille mouths off. In the way of medical dramas, Christina performs duties that would normally be left to surgeons, social services and security, none of whom are up to her standards.
