The medical drama genre is already a very crowded space on television these days. The field consists of the well-established and popular Grey’s Anatomy combined with Chicago Med and popular newcomer The Good Doctor. We also have the failure of other medical shows in recent years such as Pure Genius. So I was a little surprised to see that Fox was introducing a new series called The Resident.
This isn’t your conventional medical drama. If you’re looking for feel-good stories about talented medical professionals saving lives in dramatic fashion then this is not your show. The characters are arrogant, overconfident, grossly unprofessional, and in many cases lethally incompetence. The show starts off with chief of surgery Dr. Randolph Bell played by veteran character actor Bruce Greenwood performing a routine appendectomy. He is so renowned that the operating room staff interrupts the surgery so that they can take a selfie with him. Just then the patient prematurely comes out of anesthesia, flinches, and causes the doctor to accidentally slice an artery. His hands were already shaking indicating his incompetence. The patient bleeds out and dies on the table. He then proceeds to conspire with everyone in the room to come up with a fake reason why the patient died. At first he tries to blame the anesthesiologist but eventually they discover the patient’s family had a history of heart disease so they decided he died of a heart attack. It’s obvious that everyone is terrified of this guy and willing to do whatever he says to cover-up this huge mistake.
In this and subsequent encounters with people who cross him, he uses every bit of blackmail he can muster to manipulate and coerce people to do what he wants. He either cites stories of previous doctors, nurses, or residents whom he has already gotten rid of or he threatens them with something they did in their past. Apparently everyone is aware of this guy’s incompetence because he’s been given the nickname HODAD which stands for “Hands Of Death And Distraction”.
The main character that we follow in the opening episode is first year resident Dr. Devon Pravesh on his first day on the job. It starts out with the most cliché scene you’ve ever seen. He’s in bed with his wife or girlfriend we aren’t sure which and she wants to stay in bed with him and he says “I can’t be late on my first day”. How many times have we seen that scene in a TV show or movie. Not much originality here. They must be filthy rich because she gives him a fancy gold watch with his name engraved on it as a present for his first day on the job. We later learn that he did his undergrad at Yale and his med school at Harvard.
He has paired up with senior resident Dr. Conrad Hawkins played by Matt Czuchry whom you will recognize from his role and Cary Agos on the legal drama The Good Wife. He is abusive arrogant unlikable person but can get away with it because apparently he is the most competent doctor in the entire hospital even though he’s just a senior resident.
He is in charge of the new resident Dr. Devon and tells him that rule number one is doing exactly what I say. When a girl comes in with a drug overdose, Dr. Devon tries to heroically resuscitate her and after over 20 minutes of CPR Dr. Conrad tells him to stop but he refuses. He eventually gets the girl’s heart going again but she is effectively brain-dead. Now the family has to sit vigil over her for several days waiting for her to really die again. He’s done nothing but cause extra pain-and-suffering to the family.
Later in the show we see a talented second year resident from Nigeria Dr. Mina Okafor who has been training to use a robotic surgery device. When a VIP patient insists that incompetent chief surgeon Dr. Bell operate the device, they end up faking it having the resident actually performed the operation while the live stream video of the surgery makes it look like Bell was doing it. Again Bell uses blackmail threats to have her deported if she doesn’t cooperate in this scam.
The only decent person in this entire zoo other than the innocent novice Dr. Devon is another resident Dr. Nicolette Nevin played by Emily VanCamp in the first major role we’ve seen her in since the end of her series Revenge.
I’ve watched enough medical shows to know that for the most part they are medically inaccurate but I’m pretty sure this one takes it to an entire new level. I invite you to read the first User Review on IMDb.com. It’s a long paragraph that explains at least five different things that are ridiculously inaccurate as portrayed in the show.
I was a huge fan of Matt Czuchry when he was on The Good Wife. And I have had a bit of a crash on Emily VanCamp ever since I first saw her on Revenge which I never missed. But other than these two performers, the show doesn’t have much going for it.
I may watch another episode or two just to see if it gets any better or if the shock factor somehow makes it interesting in the same way as watching a train wreck. But for the most part I think I would have to give it a rating of “Skip It” or at best a very weak “Could be watchable”.