This week making it's Tuesday TV Touchbase debut is St. Denis Medical, a mockumentary style sitcom about overworked doctors and nurses working at an underfunded Oregon hospital.
Blame endless promos that aired during the Summer Olympics on NBC for bringing us here but so far, the show is worth our attention.
Allison Tolman is Alex, a recently promoted supervising nurse (a little more money, a lot more work) who is our focal point as she tries to manage an eclectic group of nurses and doctors and whatever damn crisis is happening today. As much as Alex wants to get home to her kids at the end of the day, she is frequently curtailed into staying late.
My favorite character is Ron (David Alan Grier), a curmudgeonly physician who is too old and too tired for such things as hope and positivity. When he was asked if he was happy with a specific outcome on some crisis, he replied, "Happy? I am NEVER happy. I will allow I may be satisfied with an outcome but happy? No!"
(Andrea observed I have said that same thing myself and she is right. I will own that.)
I'm not sure we needed another mockumentary show but it does make sense for someone to document the work of those who try to help people in need despite the odds.
(Seriously, why is that documentary crew still following the vampires around on What We Do In the Shadows?)
St. Denis Medical is off to a strong start with some genuine laughs and some real heart felt emotion.
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New Night Court is back for a 3rd season. I wrote before I wasn't sure if we were going to stick around because the show just wasn't that funny.
Season 3 started off on a strong note and lot of that owes to adding Wendie Malick to the main cast as the new assistant D.A. Julianne Walters.
Julianne had appeared in seasons as a career criminal intent on getting revenge on Dan Fielding for prosecuting her years ago.
So she's a lawyer now?
The machinations that get her from the prosecuted to the prosecutor provides for a lot of laughs as well as a surprisingly poignant moment when Dan realizes Julianne really does have the background to be an attorney and is really trying to make a better life for herself that does not involve fucking around with Dan's sanity.
Unless she's still fucking around with Dan's head.
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High Potential reached the half way point of it's first season and it's still engaging our attention.
Morgan may be super smart and observant as hell, seeing stuff other people miss but she can be fallible and unlike other TV detectives who are super smart and observant as hell, Morgan is empathetic with the victims of crime and even on occasion their perpetrators.
This annoys Detective Haradec who has the job of overseeing Morgan in the field. But over the course of 7 episodes, he's beginning to appreciate the results of Morgan's unorthodox approach. Even if he is loathed to admit it.
Morgan and Haradec have really good chemistry together but I hope the writers can avoid the obvious route of a romantic pairing. (The French show on which High Potential is based has paired up these two.) For now, I think it's enough just to have the two of them claw their way to a mutual status of "like" and "respect" without introducing sex into this.
The ratings and reviews for High Potential have been very good and I'm sure ABC would love to add to it's 13 episode order for season 1 but production has shut down while Kaitlin Olson is shooting her other show, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and whatever scenes she needed for in Hacks.
I worry that the paucity of episodes and the gaps between them may dull enthusiasm for this show.
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Next week on the Tuesday TV Touchbase:
About damn time! The return of Outlander!
And a mid season report on Brilliant Minds.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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