Watch What We Say
Hawthorne
By Jason Lee
June 19, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Not to worry.
This week on Watch What We Say: And you thought YOUR hospital was crowded and overly complicated.
"We know drama." More than just a company slogan for TNT, that bold statement carries with it the insinuated promise of better dramatic programming. It suggests an insider knowledge of a particular genre of television that distances the network from other wannabes . . . after all, if TNT knows drama, then it stands to reason that other networks don't know drama, or at least, not as well.
Since TNT apparently knows drama, it's little wonder that they chose a medical drama to open their summer slate. Medical procedurals provide a number of inherent advantages for creating 60 compelling minutes of television: they get to feature a large cast filled with quirky characters, they benefit from an ongoing stream of even quirkier patients that can deal with any number of medical problems over the course of a single or series of episodes, they deal with life or death situations that can instantly ratchet up the show's intensity and due to the extended workdays of most hospital workers, personal and professional stresses often mix together.
Clearly, TNT knows this and has accordingly leveraged each and every advantage in the creation of HawthoRNe, a 60-minute medical drama that airs Tuesday nights at 9:00 pm. And herein, perhaps, lies part of HawthoRNe's problem. The show feels bloated. There's just too much here – too many characters, too many problems, too many storylines. In the end, I just found that I didn't care anymore, which is problematic when you're dealing with life and death.
The glorious Jada Pinkett Smith plays the titular character of Christina Hawthorne, the chief nursing officer at Richmond Trinity Hospital. The pilot episode takes place on the one-year anniversary of her husband's death (although we don't find out very much about how he passed away) where Hawthorne must cope with an exhausting array of trials from her staff, supervisors, patients and family members. This either provides her with a justified reason for popping two Xanax or a welcome distraction from the events of a year ago . . . or both.
The episode moves at breakneck speed, interspersing various problems with patients with interpersonal struggles while hinting at troubles in Hawthorne's own past:
We have a slightly deranged homeless woman that shows Hawthorne a beautiful newborn baby boy that she's found. After Hawthorne takes the baby into the hospital for medical care, we find out that the homeless woman is actually the child's postnatal mother.
We have Bobby, a straight-talking, no-nonsense, blunt-but-kind nurse who's being courted by a cop but struggles with insecurity over her prosthetic leg and calls herself, "damaged goods."
We have a chatty brunette nurse who can't seem to do anything right. She can't find a vein large enough in the newborn baby for an IV (Hawthorne has to insert it into the baby's head) and ends up crying in the arms of Bobby and Hawthorne after she's unable to understand an Asian doctor's embarrassingly stereotyped broken English. She wails, "Am I going to cry everyday?" Personally, I sure hope not.
We have Candy, a pretty, blonde night nurse who (in one of the opening scenes) gives an injured Corporal a handjob before passing him off to Ray Stein, a day nurse who dreams of becoming a doctor but is handicapped by his lack of medical school experience. Ray deals with one of the more prominent side stories in the episode as he, despite his own strong reservations, administers a large dosage of insulin to the corporal as instructed by a doctor, tapping the needle with a transparent frown on his face. He later watches helplessly as the corporal goes into insulin shock.
Oh yeah, and Ray has a crush on Candy. These feelings are not reciprocated.
We have an insolent daughter, Camille, who handcuffs herself to a vending machine at school in an indignant protest of the school's attempt to "control what we eat." When Hawthorne refuses to defend her daughter's actions to her principal, Camille reacts in shock and angrily attributes this to the fact that "one year ago, my mom let my dad die." That sharply barbed attack set my blood to boiling. Hawthorne tells the principal to throw the book at Camille and recommends indefinite suspension. I was so pissed off that I would have pushed for Guantanamo Bay had Obama not closed the damn thing.
On top of all these characters and sub-plots, we also have super stud Michael Vartan, who apparently is a hit with all the ladies in the hospital. I didn't see very much of him in the episode – it felt like he showed up on the set for two or three scenes and then went off to collect his check.
Does it sound like I enjoyed the show? I didn't, really. We don't get any truly compelling characters (other than Christina Hawthorne), the writing is unremarkable, the plights of the nurses feel familiar and the sheer speed at which new characters and new travails are introduced was simply dizzying. By the first commercial break, I'd written, "This feels derivative," in my notes. By the second commercial break, when my boyfriend asked how I was liking the show, I responded with, "It's not great. Too many needles."
What I did like was the character of Christina Hawthorne and the radiant performance by Jada Pinkett Smith. I'm inevitably drawn to any person who tries with all their might to do what's right, to do what's best for the people around them, to make sense of a world that seems bent into incomprehensibility and to hold onto things that make them feel the most human. I like Christina. A lot. I admire her strength and I appreciated her drive to do what's best in the moment, regardless of what consequences her actions may bring down the line. It's easy to see why everyone around Hawthorne respects her so much.
In the end, though, I think the show gets weighed down by its high ambition. The cast is the size of a small Midwestern state. The problems are big and never ending. There are moments of humor interspersed with moments of drama interspersed with clichés from better medical drams and these pieces don't work together as neatly as I'd like them to.
Toughest of all, some characters simply have too much baggage and not nearly enough time to justify their troubles (hey Ray, I care about the fact that you wanted to go medical school but didn't, I care about the fact that you like Candy but she doesn't like you, I care about the fact that you knew the insulin dosage was wrong but you followed hospital protocol anyways, but I can't care about all of that and still care about you by the end of this 60 minute episode).
Hawthorne is a great character and she plays mother hen to an entire staff of nurses, but like one of those moms who you love to hang out with but inevitably brings her hoard of misbehaving, unruly, demanding children along with her wherever she goes, it is a lot to endure after a while.
If TNT knows drama, they might want to consider having Hawthorne open up her own practice.
Watch What We Say rating: Two TiVos
Watch What We Say: Rating System
Four TiVos: This is television content raised to the level of a transcendent art form. Not only should you TiVo this program for yourself, you should keep it on your TiVo for future generations to watch and savor.
Three TiVos: This is a very good show with a regular spot in my TiVo rotation. I watch every week and will often invite my friends over to share the enjoyable experience.
Two TiVos: I'll TiVo this show if I need something to watch while I'm folding laundry or dusting furniture.
One TiVo: I actively dislike this show and never allow it to take up space in my TiVo. Often times, I'll gripe about the show's producers, ridicule the actors and lambaste the network for keeping it on the air.
Zero TiVos: If this show is on, I unplug my TiVo for fear that the show is accidentally recorded and my entire home entertainment system gets contaminated with this malignant, diseased trash.