The Mob Doctor

The Mob Doctor

Episode 1: Pilot

By: Carlos Uribe

The Mob Doctor is a show about a doctor who also helps the mob. Shocking, right?

Spoilers Ahoy!

The surprising thing about the Mob Doctor is that it takes itself seriously. You would think that with the premise and the very title that it would realize it's a ridiculous idea but the creator seems to think he's creating the next big medical and crime drama. The Mob Doctor sounds like a fun show that would be on USA but it believes it's more than that. There's nothing wrong with having ambition for the series but it must be tempered with reality. It's possible that there is a gritty show that could tackle a character whose both a doctor and helping the mob. It just isn't that show for multiple reasons. It would have to have a different title and it would have to simply set itself up differently. Part of the reason this show is as idiotic as it sounds is because of how it's set up. It just doesn't seem to realize when it's being cliché and blatantly obvious. It's hard to describe what I'm saying but it seems that there's a difference between what is written and what ends up on the screen. The end product is a show that attempts to be serious but often just comes across as silly. There's multiple reasons that the Mob Doctor doesn't quite become the show it wants to be.

Let's begin with how it starts. It begins with Dr. Grace having to deal with a mob patient. This patient has managed to get a screwdriver stuck in his head. What does Dr. Grace do? She gives him a toy bone to chew and quickly removes the screwdriver. She drops the gloves and the screwdriver, leaving the veterinarian to patch him. This brings up two different questions. The first is why couldn't the veterinarian remove the screwdriver himself? It doesn't seem like you would need a human doctor to do that medical procedure. The second question is what tone is the show trying to set up? This is a scene that's supposed to set up Dr. Grace as a badass doctor. It instead comes across as light and something that Bones would do. That is the immediate problem that the show has: it instantly has a hard time establishing itself. The following scenes quickly become more serious and they try to tread a morally grey line but it never stops feeling lighthearted. That very opening sequence is a perfect example of what I'm trying to state: there's a difference between what's intended and what ends up coming across to the audience. If the show was doing an hour-long workplace comedy, like Bones, then this would be no problem. It's just you get the feeling that this is supposed to be a serious drama and therefore it shouldn't be funny.

The medical drama of the show should at least have been competent. The problem is the cases. There's a teenage girl whose pregnant despite being a virgin. Was it immaculate conception? Turns out she has a rare medical condition where sperm can impregnate her if they're near her or something. It's called “outer-course” by the main character. It might or might not be an actual medical condition, but it's hard to take seriously when the character describes it like that. The show sets up a whole ethical issue about whether or not tell the father that his daughter is having an abortion. The show apparently thinks that you need parental consent to have one. According to the Family Planning Associates, you do not. While they would be required to tell the father, it's not like they need him to sign the forms. I'm also not entirely sure why she would lose the scholarship if they told the dad. The only way the private school would find out is if either of them told the school. There's a whole dilemma here that feels a bit forced and doesn't really come together. Even if it did work, the conflict between the two doctors was swept under the rug.

There were a couple other cases. The first involved a little boy who was shot. He seemed to be doing fine as the surgery went fine. It wasn't until the boy was removed from our doctor's care that everything went south. It's a bit complicated on why he died but essentially it boils down to hospital corruption. Whose fighting this corruption? It's the main character. That's right: the main character is taking a stance against supposed hospital corruption. This is a character who forced her boyfriend doctor to lie to the pregnant girl's father about the girl's pregnancy. This is a character who has absolutely no right to judge. What's even worse is that the so-called corruption is completely legal and within the book. In fact, it seems like Dr. Grace is just more annoyed that she wasn't listened to. The show doesn't show this supposedly corrupt doctor as incompetent because he's barely on the screen. It ultimately all boils down to a law-breaking doctor being unhappy that a rule-abiding one didn't do what she had recommended. It's like absolutely no thought went into this whole corruption plot beyond that it fit the pilot's theme.

The last patient does fit in with the show's premise. It's an informant that can threaten to expose one of the mobsters of the pilot: Moretti. Dr. Grace is given strict orders to kill the informant and she struggles with this. It did lead to some decent scenes in the pilot but it was undermined because there was never any real belief that the show would actually turn it's protagonist into a killer. The fake dream sequence was surprisingly effective but the fact that it was only a dream removes a lot of the tension from the following sequence. By making it a dream, the show just told me that it isn't willing to truly make it's protagonist morally grey. That's the problem right there. Why does Dr. Grace help the mob? To help her brother. Why does she fight hospital corruption and what drives her as a doctor? Because she cares. She's the prototypical doctor archetype and she's not very interesting. If we had a glint that she belonged to the mob lifestyle because she wanted to, then that would make her more interesting. If she had an interest, then this show could have potentially show promise that future episodes could work as intended. As it is, we have a show that isn't willing to commit to what it wants to really accomplish. This is a major problem. All of the medical cases lead to drama that doesn't really work most of the time. This is a problem for a medical drama. Let's move on to the gangster drama.

If you were a character who had just failed at killing a character and the mobster calls you to tell you that he has your mother captured, would you antagonize said mobster? This is exactly what Dr. Grace does. If Morietti was a serious gangster, he would have killed Grace's mother before chasing her. That's the problem with Morrietti: his reputation is established more by dialogue than by what we see. Since we don't see how far he's willing to take things, he becomes a laughable threat. It surprised me a bit when he gets shot by Constantine, but it's not shocking that it happened. Constantine is your cliché Italian godfather kind of character who might be Grace's real father. That would certainly add an extra dimension to the show that could be good or bad. None of the other mobsters, just like none of the doctors, made any impression on me. On a crime drama that's bad. The show fails at piecing together a good crime drama or a good medical drama. In the end, we're left with two average dramas that are put together to form a forgettable and dull drama. It wants to be serious but it can't get the right tone, it wants to appeal but it has no characters that will hook a viewer, and it wants to be the next big thing but it's not committed to itself. The Mob Doctor might have more ambition that what it is but it's also holding itself back.