USA’s newest series, “Necessary Roughness” is a charming and clever dramedy based on the sortof real-life experiences of real-life Long Island mom/hypnotherapist Dr. Donna Dannenfelser.
Here, she’s called Dr. Dani Santino (Callie Thorne), a shrink who specializes in getting bazillion-buck athletes to do what they get paid to do: hit, catch and throw balls. And, except for the balls part, I need to complain that someone stole my life.
Tonight, Dani catches her husband serial-cheating and throws him out the door and his clothes out the window. In return, she gets the house and the kids — as well the mortgage and threats by the ex to sue her for custody.
When Dani’s friend takes her out for drinks (daddy has the kids) to take her mind off her troubles, Dani ends up taking off more than she anticipated after meeting Matthew (Marc Blucas), a trainer for the Hawks.
When she’s trying to leave the following morning, a smitten Matthew asks Dani if she’ll hypnotize him out of smoking.
His treatment is so successful that the Hawks’ general manager asks her if she can hypnotize the team’s $15 million dollar wide receiver, T.K. (Mehcad Brooks), into holding onto the ball. T.K. has become a raging (literally) disaster.
Dani ends up tailing T.K. to a strip club, while she, in turn, is tailed not just by a private investigator hired by her ex, but also by the team’s all-around security man, Nico (Scott Cohen). If that’s not bad enough, Dani finds out that her son, Ray J. (Patrick Johnson), is blabbing about his mother’s new star patient and discovers, too, that her teen daughter, Lindsay (Hannah Marks), has been cutting school.
It’s all almost too much for one shrink. But, of course, all Dani really needs to do is follow her own rules: meditate to manifest.
So, how is her life like my life? Ditto everything except I never met the world’s cutest trainer for the Jets.