CBS has been touting Patricia Heaton’s new sitcom “Carol’s Second Act” as her return to CBS. This is referring to her highly successful starring role in “Everybody Loves Raymond” where she played Ray Romano’s wife Debra for nine seasons. Since then she’s had a variety of TV roles on other networks including another nine years on “The Middle“… a show I never watched but it must’ve been reasonably good to harass that long.
Like last year’s series “The Rookie” in which Nathan Filion becomes a rookie cop in his 40s, in this sitcom Heaton plays a retired teacher who decides to start a second career in medicine. The show picks up on her first day as an intern where she is often mistaken as an attending physician because of her age. She’s also mistaken as the head resident because she’s wearing a long lab coat which she explains isn’t really long, she’s just short.
At times she uses her experience as an evidentiary school teacher to treat her fellow younger interns like they were eight-year-olds which is neither interesting nor funny. It tries to be poignant but fails that that as well.
As I previously noted in my review of “Bob Hearts Abashola“, any sitcom that has to rely on poop or fart jokes does not bode well for quality comedy. Sadly this sitcom suffers the same fate.
It is mildly reminiscent of “Scrubs” in that it is a hospital workplace comedy and although I wasn’t a big fan of “Scrubs” I don’t think this new entry into the genre stands up to even that low bar.
Kyle McLaughlin costars as the chief attending doctor and although he has played somewhat comic roles in the past, the broad comedy of this sitcom and the goofiness of his character doesn’t seem to work very well. The rest of the supporting cast consisting of nurses and other interns is so interesting it’s not worth it to describe them.
As I’ve often stated my ultimate test of a sitcom is “Did it make me laugh?” Unfortunately this one didn’t.
Before I waste anymore of your time or mine let me just say I’m giving it a strong rating of “Skip It“. Move along… Nothing to see here.