SAME OL’: Mamie Gummer stars in The CW’s “Emily Owens M.D.” as a young intern who can’t shake her high-school loser persona. (
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Is there a virus going around that is infecting all new female doctors—or is this a disease that is just infecting all new female doctor shows?
Either way, an emergency C-session (creative session) is in order. There have been three new female doctor shows and one movie (“Coma”) this season.
Two of the new series are (were) on Fox, “The Mindy Project,” which is up and taking nourishment, and the totally unforgiveable and very dead “The Mob Doctor,” which was actually DOA when it hit the ER.
Now comes The CW’s “Emily Owens, M.D.” which may also meet its untimely demise due to that pesky, yet fatal condition: LOCS.
LOCS is like other popular TV medical syndromes such as ED, IBS and RLS, but more widespread. What does LOCS stands for? Lack Of Creativity Syndrome.
“Emily Owens, M.D.,” like “Coma,” begins on a young intern’s first day at the hospital, where she also manages to accomplish more in one shift than most doctors do in years.
Like the doc on “The Mindy Project,” Dr. Emily, (Mamie Gummer) is a dork of a doc who can’t get past her high school days as a loser.
No, it doesn’t matter if she’s pretty, extremely smart, funny or even a doctor with people’s lives in her hands — these shows believe a woman will always remain an insecure high school nerd who doesn’t know how to deal with mean girls, nice guys or authority figures without making a jerk of herself.
Because Gummer is the daughter of Meryl Streep, she is, of course, a good actress, but here, she’s a good actress in a mediocre sitcom; one that skirts the line between grown-up series and one that will appeal to The CW’s young-girl demographic.
Sure, our doc Emily may be 29, but she’s just as insecure as those 12-year-old viewers. Or something.
The episodes are told both through the dialogue that takes place out loud and the dialogue that takes place silently in Emily’s head. It’s a fun technique, and it’s done effectively here.
On tonight’s premiere, we meet not just Emily, but the whole ensemble company that works alongside her at Denver Memorial Hospital, where she has just started working.
There is the mean heart surgeon/genius, Gina Bandari (Necar Zadegan). There is handsome Dr. Will Collins (Justin Hartley), a friend from med school and Emily’s secret crush.
Memorial’s resident lesbian intern is Dr. Tyra Dupre (Kelly McCreary), while there is one other handsome young male resident doc, Dr. Micah Barnes (Michael Rady), who Emily should pursue, but probably won’t.
On her first day at work, Emily stops to look in the schoolyard of the local high school and a kid calls her a loser.
Emily then goes to work and realizes her worst nightmare has come true: Not only has she not escaped emotionally from the mean girls at school, but one of the interns with whom she will be working every day was her Numero Uno high school mean girl tormentor, Cassandra Kopelson (Aja Naomi King).
Not only that, but when Dr. Cassandra realizes that Emily has a crush for Will, she starts batting her big browns at him while Emily replays her old role of nerdy loser.
A dramady inside a sitcom, this doc show has a 50/50 chance of survival.