Crashing Pilots: The Mob Doctor
By David Mumpower
October 11, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Judging by the ratings, you have never watched The Mob Doctor. Virtually no one has. After four episodes, this series is averaging less than four million viewers per airing. Once the second episode’s ratings were known, there was speculation that The Mob Doctor would be pulled from the Fall schedule. The following two showings have garnered 3.46 million and 3.36 million viewers, respectively. Its rating share is 0.9. BOP fans would recognize this as Dollhouse territory.
Barring a miraculous turnaround, The Mob Doctor will be canceled, possibly by the time you read this. There is unlikely to be a follow-up conversation about the show for this reason. Still, I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss the pilot because I believe there is value in deconstructing the failure of this series.
The creative process in Hollywood has been forced into an awkward marriage with commerce. This shotgun wedding leads to a significant share of failed premises. Largely, the truly Bad Ideas never get filmed. This is why shows such as Homeboys in Outer Space are so memorable. There is that moment of wonder when we pause to consider exactly how someone could come to believe that a concept with that particular title could be selected to air on a major network.
The humorous aspect is imagining exactly which shows were deemed inferior. How would you like to be the would-be producer of a network (well, UPN) program who is told that a decision has been made that Homeboys in Outer Space is better than your idea? Have you ever watched Futurama? Moments like this are why Suicide Booths will be invented in the 30th century.
Pilot season is a maddening period during which agents, producers and actors work non-stop to persuade network executives that their pilot is the next Modern Family. While anyone who believes that Hollywood is a meritocracy is living in denial, most of the shows that are selected are the cream of the crop. I speak not of pure quality of the product but instead with regards to that perfect combination of quality and marketability. As is the case with movies, financial investors always must place their laser focus on the latter, hoping that the former is good enough to satisfy customers.
The concept of The Mob Doctor is marketable. While Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese have the most penetrating impact on mob tales, David Chase gets most of the credit in the field of television. The Sopranos was a groundbreaking program not for its reinvention of the concept but instead due to its humanization of truly awful characters.
Perhaps no moment reinforced this more than when Tony Soprano narrowly avoided incarceration when the New York don was busted. After the dust had settled and Soprano had emerged on top, the law enforcement agent monitoring him cheered in victory. A man paid to bring Tony Soprano to justice actively rooted for him over another felon. In 1990s television, The Sopranos trained viewers to root for the bad guy, at least occasionally.
Any program that follows in the footsteps of The Sopranos presumes that the viewer willingly embraces this philosophy. Given that medical dramas have been the bread and butter of network television for several decades now, The Mob Doctor wins in a pitch meeting. The Sopranos + Grey’s Anatomy is a marketable premise. And this is where we live the difference between when a show works in theory versus in execution.
I should preface my statements about The Mob Doctor by mentioning that I love My Boys. It was exactly the sort of jovial escapism that cable television manages so much better than network programming. Every cast member of My Boys is talented and charismatic. Still, anyone who watched My Boys immediately recognized that the glue, the superstar in waiting, was Jordana Spiro.
When I heard that Spiro had been cast in a new mob drama on Fox, my first thought was that she would finally have the hit series she so richly deserves. Given the above, this clearly has not happened, which means some enterprising casting agent needs to scoop her up for the upcoming pilot season. Yes, it is already time for the next cycle of this madness to begin anew. The sooner The Mob Doctor is put out of its misery, the sooner Jordana Spiro can go back to finding the project that makes her famous.
Why is The Mob Doctor not that project? The pilot is a good enough. This is not high praise, of course, but considering how strong my hatred was for the Revolution pilot, this series is definitely a step up. Spiro portrays Grace Devlin, a doctor whose troubled upbringing continues to be her downfall. Grace’s brother, Nate, mirrors his father too closely. Grace wanted her father dead and now she is frustrated to know that her brother is walking the same path.
This is the first issue with The Mob Doctor. Grace already has a deal with the mafia at the start of the series. She performs surgeries for them at rotating locations as a payment for an existing debt. I presume that the show would have gradually demonstrated the backstory that led to this situation over a series of episodes unlikely to air now. Without this origin detail, what is revealed is that Grace did no wrong. Instead, her troubled brother wound up owing a debt to Paul Moretti, the current kingpin of Chicago. In order to save her brother, Grace accepted Nate’s debt as her own.
What The Sopranos handled deftly was finding the interesting aspects of horrible people. The Mob Doctor instead chooses to establish its lead character as an innocent. This concept is much less interesting than a generally good woman whose mistakes lead her to an untenable agreement. By absolving Grace of blame, the storyline options are prematurely truncated.
Brother Nate has to die at some point. When he does, Grace’s only two concerns in breaking her agreement are the anger of the mob and their inevitable threats of blackmail for previous services rendered. There isn’t a lot of conflict that would exist beyond those issues. This is problematic, which guarantees that Nate lives a lot longer than the average man who pisses off the mafia. Desiring a relatively pure character as the heart of the series negates a lot of the promised intent of the title, The Mob Doctor.
In watching the pilot, I quickly hit upon the second issue with the series. This problem is much larger than Grace’s ambivalent working agreement. In order for the show’s premise to be maintained, a key element has to come into play each week. A mobster has to get sick or injured. Yes, I realize that this is a danger pay profession. Even so, the storyline options are far too finite for serial television.
There are maybe eight mobsters shown in the pilot. In a 22 episode season, not only would all of them have to get sick at least once but 14 new people would also need to be introduced who would also suffer various maladies. In order for The Mob Doctor to be a functional program, every member of the Chicago Mafia would have to get shot at least once. And after about the seventh gunshot surgery, the concept would lose its luster. The Mob Doctor sets the bar too low and thereby artificially reduces its options.
What is good about the pilot? Veteran thespian William Forsythe has graduated to the role of retired Mafioso after a solid career of movie villainy. Yes, the episode telegraphs the inevitable swerve that his character, Constantine, will inevitably wind up running Chicago. In spite of this, he is still disarming as a caged tiger awaiting that special moment when the zookeeper lowers his guard.
There is also a clever bit of stunt casting. Michael Rappaport occasionally accepts guest roles on television. Were he to anchor a program, most of the publicity for the series would be focused upon him. Since this is not the case with The Mob Doctor, there is an unmistakable conclusion about his character’s fate. The pilot for The Glades used a respected character actor in a similar capacity to sandbag the viewer with a tremendous swerve. With The Mob Doctor, the results are much less satisfying.
Rappaport’s character is the one who owns Nate and thereby Grace. He plays the role with a smug confidence that all but screams that a comeuppance is coming soon. To Forsythe’s credit, he still manages to create a satisfying moment wherein he regains the power he had once held. Simultaneously, he breaks his friend Grace’s heart by establishing that she works for him from that point forward.
This is the final frustration I have with The Mob Doctor. Constantine and Grace are such good friends that she leans on him for words of wisdom. Her actions in the pilot directly lead to his consolidation of power after years away from the business. Shouldn’t he be thankful enough that this has happened that he absolves her of the debt? The answer is obviously yes but in that scenario, there is no second episode of The Mob Doctor.
I mentioned earlier that a series works best when it demonstrates a good combination of creativity and marketability. A program that combines mob mythology with medical drama sounds great in theory. A deeper consideration of the struggles the program would face reveals exactly what has been stated above. There is too much suspension of disbelief required for the medical mystery of the week. There are also not enough warm bodies in the greater Chicago area’s mob to evoke continued interest in the series. In the end, The Mob Doctor is better served dying a quick death so that its cast members can find new work in a show with greater growth potential.