Emergency Ensembles

The medical emergency ensemble drama is a well-established genre, with ER as its flagship.  (Emergency! From 1972 may have been its pioneer, although I’m not expert enough in TV history to know for sure.)  Its moving parts are almost as interchangeable as the law enforcement procedural, nowadays, and it’s very difficult to make one that feels fresh or new.  That’s not necessarily a terrible thing—like two eggs and hashbrowns, it’s a classic for a reason—but it makes it a little harder for me to get excited when a new one comes along. 

This year, there are two new ones, Code Black and Chicago Med.  Both feature teaching hospitals in busy urban areas.  (Echoes of 1994, when ER and Chicago Hope both premiered).  Both feature improbably good-looking doctors handling emotionally and ethically challenging cases at the sort of crushing pace that ER made famous.  Both promise stories about the characters’ personal development and relationships as well as their medical challenges, although Chicago Med seems set up to be a bit soapier while Code Black which spends more of its time addressing the urgency of the doctors’ work and the toll that urgency takes on them and their patients.  And both feature a host of very expected gender stereotypes.  Men are defined by their levels of arrogance and perfection; women by their relationships with men and children.  On Code Black, even the hardest and most accomplished women are nurturers, whose personal losses guide their professional decisions to a fault.  On Chicago Med, it’s not much different.  But that’s to be expected:  on these shows, everyone’s a trope.  What makes them interesting, or not, is the extent to which they enrich and subvert those tropes.

I’ll review the two shows together, because each benefits in its own way from the comparison.

Code Black and Chicago Med (CBS and NBC, respectively.  New Fall 2015. Medical Dramas.)

Watched:  First 10 episodes of Code Black; first two episodes of Chicago Med.

Premise:  The emergency department of a busy teaching hospital (in Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively).

Promise:  Chicago Med show takes place in the extended NBC Universe that includes Chicagos Fire and P.D., as well as all of the Law & Order shows (and, via Detective John Munch, Homicide: Life on the Streets, The Wire, and The X-Files).  I find the idea of an extended TV universe very appealing, and for that reason I endorse the show conceptually.  But do I want to watch it?  Meh.  It feels very ordinary.   In contrast, Code Black is a stand-alone, and I expected to be just as bored by it.  But I’m not.  I think that’s because it’s masterful at the art of emotional manipulation, injecting just enough dramatic surprise into its storylines that I care.  It gives us enough information about the patients that over the course of an hour, we actually come to care about many of them, as well.  It can get old:  I don’t think anyone’s ever come into the Code Black ER without asking “Is my [husband/wife/child/partner/friend] all right?” and urging the doctors to help that other person first.  But it’s a technique that works.  The patient focus takes time, so it comes at the expense of story about the doctors themselves, but I don’t miss that.  It forces the doctors' stories to be more efficiently told, and I actually appreciate that the pace of the doctors’ stories is unfolding slowly rather than rocketing along at the pace of their treatments.  It seems more natural this way.

Code Black also incorporates a gender dynamic worth discussing.  The central characters of the show are the lead nurse, who’s male and known as “Mama,” and the lead doctor, who’s female and known as “Daddy.”  What I find fascinating about the nicknames is what they say about our expectations for different kinds of leadership.  The doctor leads through intimidation and high expectations (“Daddy”) and the nurse leads through encouragement and compassion (“Mama.”)  Beyond that, the characters embody very ordinary gender norms to a disappointing degree, especially the doctor’s lingering fixation with her deceased children, but they seldom play the nicknames for laughs—they’re just there, in the background, reminding us of our gender expectations. 

And that’s sort of the difference between the shows more generally:  Chicago Med is a little more comfortable; Code Black is a little more thought-provoking.  Chicago Med has the normal ebb and flow of medical rush; Code Black is entirely frenetic until the tiny moments when it’s entirely still.  Chicago Med sets up the usual “rules inhibit brilliance” dynamic; Code Black once in a while reminds us why those rules exist.  Here are some specific contrasts:  in each, a man islife-threateningly injured while carrying an engagement ring.  In Chicago Med, they give the ring to the fiancee-to-be, the man dies, and we watch the woman grieve and make decisions about organ donation.  In Code Black, they decide not to tell the woman, but end up saving both of them and let the patients have the romantic proposal moment with each other.  Here’s another:  in each, a woman carrying an IVF fetus is endangered.  In Code Black, they do a risky surgery to preserve her last chance to have a child with her deceased husband.  In Chicago Med, they convince the genetic parents to risk their fetus’s life to save the surrogate. I’m not saying that either show makes better storytelling choice than the other, but it typifies the difference between them. Chicago Med creates emotional suspense by reminding us that the doctors know more than their patients.  Code Black creates emotional suspense by making us care about the patients. 

Verdict:  I’m continuing to watch Code Black.  I’m not continuing to watch Chicago Med (just as I don’t watch the other Chicago shows, and for much the same reasons), but if you like the others, you’ll probably like this one.

And a SimonBaker, for a show not about saving lives, but about ending them:

The Bastard Executioner (FX, new.  Period Drama.)

Premise:  In medieval Wales, an honorable knight works as an executioner in his enemy’s court.

Prejudice:  I watched about half of the first episode and set it aside for time, thoroughly intending to return.  And then I didn’t.  I have every reason to believe it’s a good show, albeit one criticized for being unnecessarily gory and (like so much historical drama) focused on  the travails of vengeful men.  After I learned that the show’s creator had asked for it to be canceled after its initial 10 episode order, I ended up deleting it for space, with some regret but also a little relief that I wouldn’t have to watch so much blood.  

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  Minority Report, Blindspot, Scream Queens, Limitless, Rosewood, The Player, Quantico, The Last Kingdom, Supergirl, Wicked City, Agent X, Flesh and Bone, Into the Badlands.