She is much kinder to the mentally challenged homeless than she is to the doctors, all of whom are portrayed in varying degrees of wrongheaded arrogance (except Michael Vartan's Dr. Wakefield, who has a crush on Christina) and one of whom, regrettably, speaks a sort of pidgin English that is a running joke with the nurses and the show.
There are the odd moments -- that Christina's best friend, Bobbie (a scene-stealing Suleka Mathew), has an artificial leg is revealed in a darkly humorous way -- and overarching familial tensions -- Joanna Cassidy plays the rich and witchy mother-in-law, Amanda -- but in the first few episodes these don't seem to add up to much.
Maybe it's that the tough and pretty rule-breaker needs something fresher than widowhood to hold our attention. Maybe the patients are too by-the-book -- Cloris Leachman is wasted as a crabby old lady who requires a lecture on respecting nurses. Maybe it's because the blond nurse is named Candy (Christina Moore) and offers "special services" to injured soldiers (yes, that was the sound of me screaming).
Or maybe it's that the one male nurse (David Julian Hirsh) is assumed to be gay. (Me screaming, again.) Maybe it's that the show is supposed to be set in Richmond but no one sounds as if they've ever even visited Virginia.
Whatever the reason, I found myself thinking less about the characters -- oh, Christina's so pretty, but she's so sad and tough, and her daughter's a royal pain, but then, you know, she just lost her father -- than I did about the enormous amount of work that goes into making a television show. The endless rewrites and the casting process, the long hours on the set, the costume department, the set designers, the location managers, the days in the editing room. I even found myself thinking about all those electricians hauling the heavy lights around, carefully taping down the miles and miles of electrical cord. Everyone working so hard, everyone talented and professional and doing their very best to make this a terrific television show, and it just isn't.
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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com
