Chicago Hope

Lunchtable TV Talk: Heartbeat

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I wrote a bit the other day about how there is a glut of medical drama on tv and wondered about why some of it works, hits its stride, gains an audience (ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Hope, Chicago Med, The Night Shift…) while other stuff fails (Monday Mornings, A Gifted Man, Off the Map and a bunch more…). There are other shows that fall into the medical category but I would not put them in the broad “medical drama” category, for example, Scrubs was a long-running and successful comedy; The Knick is an exceptional prestige period piece on Cinemax – an entirely different breed from the churned-out, regurgitated medical-drama-of-the-week delivered on network TV; House was less about medicine and more about a troubled man; Nurse Jackie was a lot like House – medicine was the backdrop but Jackie as a woman trying to balance addiction, work, family was what brought the house down.

Heartbeat is another one of these that absolutely didn’t work. I don’t even know how to count the ways it did not work. But here are some reasons:

  • Melissa George (in general in the role – beyond her reach; in the role – too over-the-top and trying too hard/overacting)
  • The love triangle
  • The head of the hospital: Not believable as head of hospital; it’s like casting decided that they needed a hot, young, non-white/”ethnic” woman in a leadership role and checked that box off a list. It’s not that the actress was bad, just that the whole setup was stupid.
  • The flashbacks: Added no value, tried to build some meaning but just wasted time.
  • The outlandish medical stories (this was meant to be the hook, I guess)
  • The outlandish scenes (dance party in the hospital, some kind of off-site race, a flash mob in the hospital, etc.)
  • Gimmicky
  • Poor writing and even poorer dialogue: It was abjectly stupid

I could elaborate on these points, but it would waste even more time (and I already wasted enough by watching the ten or so episodes of this that existed).

Why I Changed My Mind: Carla Gugino

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Back in the late 1990s I watched and enjoyed the show Spin City – preferred the Michael J. Fox era to the Charlie Sheen era, but reflecting on the show, I realize that I really did not like the female characters in the show. Regardless of how much I love Connie Britton today, I was not the biggest fan of her character, Nikki (she was the best of the female bunch, in any case). Most of the female characters just felt pushy and very one-dimensional. It’s been a while since I watched the show; my memories of the female characters aren’t particularly positive.

One of these characters was “Ashley” – played by Carla Gugino. I may have mixed up my dislike for the character with a dislike for the actress. That’s the best I can come up with in reference to Carla Gugino. In looking back over her roles, I found that so many of them in her early career were as annoying as the Spin City role. Once again, it seems to have been a matter of the roles she was in rather than the actress herself. I remember seeing ads, for example, for the TV show Karen Sisco, and I just rolled my eyes. It was based on the character of the same name in the film Out of Sight (the even more annoying Jennifer Lopez played Karen Sisco in the film), and I can very rarely get behind a TV version of something that was a decent film. (Friday Night Lights, film and TV version starring the aforementioned Connie Britton, is the rare exception.)

I also disliked the show Chicago Hope – and Gugino was in it for a while. Not her fault – just didn’t like anything that was associated with the show.

Somewhere along the line, Gugino ended up in a few roles that made me fall in love with her. She comes across as smart and sexy – without overdoing either. It happens that she also showed up in shows I love (or have loved), which helped. I also saw her in the film Women in Trouble, which was not a good film, but it is really what turned me. There is a smart sarcasm and world-weariness (without cynicism) that comes across in her role as porn star Elektra Luxx. These same traits turn up in her other roles, and I am a fan.

Gugino showed up Hank’s attorney in Californication (once a favorite that has overstayed its time on TV). She turned up in an episode of one of my favorites, Justified. Perhaps my favorite role in which I have seen Gugino is the miniseries Political Animals. It was a smart show, with a great cast including Sigourney Weaver, James Wolk, Sebastian Stan, Ellen Burstyn and Ciaran Hinds, but sadly the show was more or less left on the table as a miniseries rather than a full show.

More recently Gugino appeared on New Girl (a funny but not favorite show), but by that time, I realized that I like her. Considered, reconsidered – Gugino has changed my mind.

I am starting to see a pattern. Younger women, in their 20s, are just not that interesting. They become multilayered and fascinating the more experienced they become. It’s almost like you can see the experience and depth come through in their performances. Youth is overrated.