S01.E02: A Very Robust Personal Life

[chitowngirl]

Joyce's belief that personal life should stay out of the workplace is tested by unexpected news; Ron thinks a patient has a crush on him; Bruce tries to demonstrate the value of his important work.

[AnimeMania]

Kourtney Bell as Lisa

Lynn Whitfield as Barb
Jim Garrity as Mr. Williams
Dayna Beilenson as Harriet
Nate Mooney as Lucas
Brian D. Cohen as Bald Patient
Angelo Perez as Patient

[babyrambo]

I thought this episode was better than the pilot, but not by much. Going by the trailers, I expected this show to be a lot funnier, but maybe that’s because I thought it would be like Abbott Elementary, the only other mockumentary series I’ve seen & a comedy that was a hit right out the gate. The characters in this show are a little too cliche and mild and the script is missing the wit and spark that would make it stand out. But I also prefer medical dramas to comedies, so I’m biased. I know the writing will probably get better as the show goes on, but right now it’s more of a show to watch while everything else is on hiatus and not must see tv.

[iMonrey]

I love the cast. That's probably the strongest thing it's got going for it right now. I got a kick out of Bruce trying to find the perfect patient for the documentary. Bruce = Perry on Scrubs, kinda sorta. 

[possibilities]

The way that doctor tanked his chances with the awesome woman who was "too old" for him was something else! His spiraling commentary on her age made me laugh when usually that sort of thing would make me ragey.

I really like this show so far.

The new nurse from Montana is too much for me, though. His combination of incompetence and obnoxiousness are not fun for me.

I do notice a lot of stylistic habits, which are starting to be so commonly used on shows, that they are starting to get boring. Just ell a good story. We don't need all the camera quirks and format tropes.

[shura]

8 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Bruce = Perry on Scrubs, kinda sorta.

Except this guy is 100 percent incompetent and should be fired immediately, his origin story notwithstanding.  Perry Cox he is definitely not.

I liked the cast, the stories and the characters (except for the above).  I do hope they find a cameraman with steady hands if they insist on not using stationary cameras.   The way the camera was jerking back and forth constantly, I thought there was something wrong with my TV.

[ajsnaves]

3 hours ago, shura said:

Except this guy is 100 percent incompetent and should be fired immediately, his origin story notwithstanding.  Perry Cox he is definitely not.

While I agree he’s not Dr. Cox, I haven’t seen anything to suggest he’s incompetent. He seemed to handle the code blue on Mindy Sterling well. I think he’s a bit closer to “The Todd” maybe. 

Overall, I enjoyed these first episodes. Hope it gets better though. I worry it will be kinda forgettable when I’m busy with life and things, and then I’ll never go back. 

[shura]

34 minutes ago, ajsnaves said:

While I agree he’s not Dr. Cox, I haven’t seen anything to suggest he’s incompetent. He seemed to handle the code blue on Mindy Sterling well. 

Ah, you are right.  I completely misunderstood that scene.  After he wasted time trying to diagnose a tropical disease in a flu patient, I thought he was doing it again during code blue, and then I took Ron’s “which is rare, but it happens” as sarcasm.  I stand corrected.  There is hope for his character yet, although wasting three extra surgeries a week worth of time on dancing in the OR is not nothing.

[iMonrey]

11 hours ago, possibilities said:

I do notice a lot of stylistic habits, which are starting to be so commonly used on shows, that they are starting to get boring. Just ell a good story. We don't need all the camera quirks and format tropes.

Mockumentary style TV shows have just about worn out their welcome. I don't mind it here, especially, but I agree it's getting quite stale.

[cmahorror]

As someone who has worked in an ED for the last 8 years as the secretary, this one really hit the mark for me. I laughed out loud multiple times and really related to the situations the people were in. Although the new nurse Matt was a little much and we definitely do not have time to all sit down and eat lunch together., everything else was pretty much right. I am definitely in for the season.

[Irlandesa]

6 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Mockumentary style TV shows have just about worn out their welcome. I don't mind it here, especially, but I agree it's getting quite stale.

I was over its use with Modern Family.

Although with this, at least I didn't notice my least favorite mockumentary trope of using the talking head moment to contradicting what they previously said or did on camera.  I find it lazy and not a joke.

Allison Tolman and David Allen Grier are the standouts for me so far. I'll keep watching and hope it finds its groove.  Superstore took a bit to click for me.

[shapeshifter]

I didn't like the 2nd episode as much as the pilot, which is not the way these things usually go. But I'll give it a few more.

[txhorns79]

3 hours ago, cmahorror said:

Although the new nurse Matt was a little much

I get that they want a character like him (who is just starting out) so they can offer a contrast between him and the more experienced nurses, while also giving the characters a natural way to give exposition as needed, but he really is a little much.  There is real life inexperienced, and then there is tv comedy inexperienced where you sort of wonder how the character can function.

I liked Wendi McLendon-Covey's character.  It felt like she has the right balance between seeming like a real person while acting absurdly.  I also like Allison Tolman, even if the episode spent too much time having her make faces at the camera.  I didn't like David Alan Grier's character.  I get that there are men really like him, but it's Lynn Whitfield and he could barely have a conversation with her without making it sound like she was used goods. 

[possibilities]

I have liked everything Allison Tollman was in (at least all the stuff of hers I've seen), so I'm hoping that means this will stay great. But also everything she's been in that I loved... has gotten cancelled after 1 season. So: I really hope this catches on. 

I thought about Scrubs, which I also loved, but I didn't think this show seemed much like it, either in tone or content. It moves way faster, for one thing. But also... I dunno. That one seemed to lean into the newbies vs experienced surgeon dynamic, and this one seems more like the general crisis/chaos of an emergency department. I think it highlights different issues.

The new nurse from MT bothers me because they didn't give him any new hire orientation, so it makes sense he would be flustered, but they compounded that with he can't even set a line, has no clue about organ donation, and also can't read a room (socially). Pick one or the other: either he's overwhelmed because he's new and there was a crisis on his first shift and nobody showwed him anything, like how to use the intecom OR make him a socially clueless person, BUT to make him genuiinely incompetent as a nurse is too much for me. 

I did laugh at him saying that one patient wanted [I forget which three drugs] and asked about a menu and he said he didn't think the hospital had one. He didn't seem clueless in that moment, he seemed delightfully wry.

Dancing doctor needs Wendy the Admin to dress him down for wasting time insteaad of doing 3 more surgeries. I felt bad for her, though, in that she had a good idea with the breast health initiative, even though it was bad that she didn't make sure they had the bandwidth to actually use it. And it seemed VERY realistic that the outdated computer system had not been considered. A computer upgrade is not sexy and marketable like "cutting edge diagnostics".

[iMonrey]

16 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

Superstore took a bit to click for me.

Superstore could also be very hit-or-miss. I noticed the similarity here right away even before knowing it was from the same guy. 

[ItCouldBeWorse]

13 hours ago, possibilities said:

The new nurse from MT bothers me because they didn't give him any new hire orientation, so it makes sense he would be flustered, but they compounded that with he can't even set a line, has no clue about organ donation, and also can't read a room (socially). Pick one or the other: either he's overwhelmed because he's new and there was a crisis on his first shift and nobody showwed him anything, like how to use the intecom OR make him a socially clueless person, BUT to make him genuiinely incompetent as a nurse is too much for me

Yes, he's too naive. I guess he's never had a television.

With regard to his concern that the surgeon might be too eager to remove organs from him to transplant into someone else:

1) St. Denis doesn't seem like the kind of hospital performing organ transplants. It's highly specialized and requires a special team

2) Bruce is not a transplant surgeon. That's a subspecialty requiring extra years of training. If he were, he wouldn't be working at St. Denis 

 

[astrohip]

Nah, I'm out. Too much American Auto, not enough Superstore. I'm glad they aired back to back eps, as I like to give new sitcoms a couple of shows to see if it grows on me. This saved me from having to wait a week to kill the SP.

Superstore was offbeat people, but close enough to reality that it almost made sense, with some biting wit. They were just big box store peons, and they were mostly doing their best. You could almost imagine a store actually being run that way.

American Auto was ridiculous (IMHO). Those people were running a car manuf, yet they had the common sense of a turnip. It was the wackiness of Superstore, turned up to 11, and made no sense to me. There was zero chance any business like that would exist.

And that's why St. Denis is closer to AA than SS. No hospital runs that poorly, No nurse doesn't know how to use an Epipen. No admin is the one actually overseeing equip installs. It was ridiculous, and every scene took me out of the moment. Maybe if one person was that loony, it would add icing to the cake. But when they're all that far out, it's all icing, and no substance. And the shame is, I like every one of the actors. Really like some of them. But the writing... 🤷‍♂️

There was a reason Superstore lasted six seasons, and AA was two short seasons (10,13).

[Crashcourse]

I tried watching this, but the camera work just made me dizzy, so I'm out.

[iMonrey]

On 11/14/2024 at 1:23 PM, ItCouldBeWorse said:

1) St. Denis doesn't seem like the kind of hospital performing organ transplants. It's highly specialized and requires a special team

2) Bruce is not a transplant surgeon. That's a subspecialty requiring extra years of training. If he were, he wouldn't be working at St. Denis 

I don't think there was any indication that hospital actually performs organ transplants. The issue at hand was that a deceased patient was being kept on life support until the transplant people could get there to perform said procedure.

And I don't think they were inferring that Bruce is a transplant surgeon. Matt was asking him if something were to happen to him if Bruce would be less likely to try to save him so his organs could be harvested. 

But I might be putting more thought into this than the show did TBH. 

[kaygeeret]

On 11/13/2024 at 11:35 PM, possibilities said:

Dancing doctor needs Wendy the Admin to dress him down for wasting time insteaad of doing 3 more surgeries.

Actually, no one "dresses" down surgeons.  They pretty much rule the roost or at least they did in my day.

[Poohpoohpooh]

Joyce seemed more peppy and fun in the pilot (even before she found out her marimba mentor died. Even when the "news crew" wasn't "on" her in the pilot).

Love Joyce and Alex (the 2 leading ladies). Ep 1 is on NBC's youtube, it worked, they hooked me. Wish I found this show AFTER all 18 eps of season 1 are out.

I just tried watching Superstore pilot, too stilted for me as it's not a mockumentary. Also I'm ehhh on America Ferrera.

[Shrek]

16 hours ago, kaygeeret said:

Actually, no one "dresses" down surgeons.  They pretty much rule the roost or at least they did in my day.

They still do according to Fiona so that's not going to be changing soon. Cardiologists are usually at the top of that though, if you've had a heart attack at least, nobody will do anything for me until my cardiologist says it's okay.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 11/17/2024 at 1:16 PM, iMonrey said:

I don't think there was any indication that hospital actually performs organ transplants. The issue at hand was that a deceased patient was being kept on life support until the transplant people could get there to perform said procedure.

And I don't think they were inferring that Bruce is a transplant surgeon. Matt was asking him if something were to happen to him if Bruce would be less likely to try to save him so his organs could be harvested. 

But I might be putting more thought into this than the show did TBH. 

I agree that the show wasn't implying that Bruce was a transplant surgeon, but, instead, that Matt (the RN) was inferring that he was.

Matt's part of the conversation with Bruce:

"If I were an organ donor, would you try less hard to save me so you could, you know, use my organs?"

"Uh, I was just worried it'd be too tempting to let me die."

"Well, I mean, I'm just one little life but if I died, you know, somebody would get my lungs, my kidneys, my heart.  I mean, you would save, like, a dozen extra people."

I took that to mean that Matt thought that Bruce would be personally transplanting the organs that could save "a dozen extra people" because Matt is such an ill-informed person, he actually believed Bruce would have such a major personal stake in a potential organ-donor situation.

But I could be mistaken.

On 11/17/2024 at 8:58 PM, Poohpoohpooh said:

I just tried watching Superstore pilot, too stilted for me as it's not a mockumentary. Also I'm ehhh on America Ferrera.

I'm not going to try to convince you to watch more of it, but Superstore  got pretty funny, with great background customer bits and a lot of very funny actors.  Bruce, the surgeon had a recurring role as a pharmacist on Superstore. 

 St. Denis  is much less funny, so far than Superstore. (But it's still early.) 

On 11/14/2024 at 4:13 PM, astrohip said:

American Auto was ridiculous (IMHO). Those people were running a car manuf, yet they had the common sense of a turnip. It was the wackiness of Superstore, turned up to 11, and made no sense to me. There was zero chance any business like that would exist.

That is true, but parts of it were still very funny to me. There's also little chance that the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin from The Office would have been profitable, with so many employees doing basically nothing (despite Michael apparently being an excellent salesman.) 

 

  

[Shrek]

On 11/14/2024 at 1:13 PM, astrohip said:

American Auto was ridiculous (IMHO). Those people were running a car manuf, yet they had the common sense of a turnip. It was the wackiness of Superstore, turned up to 11, and made no sense to me. There was zero chance any business like that would exist.

 

Didn't realize AA was a documentary of the actual American automobile industry before the government bailout, my bad.