“'Off the Map' review: Welcome to the jungle, docs - San Francisco Gate” plus 1 more |
| 'Off the Map' review: Welcome to the jungle, docs - San Francisco Gate Posted: 12 Jan 2011 02:53 AM PST
If you tune in to tonight's premiere of ABC's medical drama "Off the Map," you'll probably want to come back for at least one more episode because the first show spends a great amount of time having the characters tell you who they are, where they are from and what it is about their pasts they are trying to escape by packing up for the remote South American jungle where various native roots, berries and leaves routinely stand in for real medicine. Toss in favorite colors and zodiac signs and you have a computer dating application. "Off the Map" was whipped up by the folks who created "Grey's Anatomy," and many of the elements that have made that medical show so successful have been transplanted to San Miguel. In other words, "Off the Map" is kind of like "Grey's Anatomy" meets "Survivor." The premiere episode finds three young medics arriving in San Miguel expecting some kind of Club Med with bedpans. The newcomers are Lily Brenner (Caroline Dhavernas), who wants to ease the pain of a recent loss by losing herself in her work; Tommy Fuller (Zach Gilford), a party boy who drank his way through med school; and Mina Minard (Mamie Gummer), whose by-the-book approach to medicine caused her to make a serious mistake back in the States and who is looking for redemption. The newbies have little time to meet the veterans at Clinica Cruz del Sur before they get thrown into the chaos of trying to treat tourists and natives alike with very few supplies and a whole lot of sometimes implausible ingenuity. No anesthesia handy for the guy with the stingray barb in his leg? Punch him in the puss and knock him out. Patient needs blood to stay alive and you're stuck in the middle of the jungle? Climb a tree, cut down a few coconuts and hook up a coconut-water IV. Fred Flintstone wasn't this imaginative. The clinic is run by the dedicated but brooding Dr. McDreamy-ish Ben Keeton (Martin Henderson), who is haunted by something in his past that will be revealed in the second episode. Among the other staff veterans are Dr. Otis Cole (Jason George), who's had a drug problem, and smart, attractive Zita Alvarez (Valerie Cruz). The staff also included Ryan Clark (Rachelle Lefevre), who is leaving the clinic in a huff at the start of the first episode but, we suspect, not for long. Within the first two shows, the docs have to cut a man's arm flesh to disconnect him from a zip line above the jungle, convince a native that the only way to keep his kids from dying of tuberculosis is to give them antibiotics, and treat an old woman for what seems to be a cold but is in fact asthma that almost kills her. In reality, though, the focus is on telling us about the characters, and there are times when the writers' zeal in this regard is almost comical. When a tree falls on a young Mexican tourist in the jungle and the guy would be writhing in agony if only he could move, Tommy Fuller seems to think he's talking to either a priest or a college admissions officer: "My parents told me to go to college and study hard and I just partied," he says. Nice to know. Oh, and do you think maybe you could nudge this massive tree just a wee bit to the left? No, my left, not your left. The characters may be formulaic types, but the actors are appealing enough for us to see the possibility of a long run for the show. (Gilford is the heartthrob from "Friday Night Lights," and if Gummer looks a bit familiar, it may be because she resembles her mom, Meryl Streep). The real challenge for the writers is to use the show's formula without becoming so enslaved to it that they fail to allow the characters to move beyond being cliches. We already know that Tommy Fuller is destined to become the jungle's resident stud while, at the same time, finding he has much more mettle as a doctor than he's given himself credit for in the past. Similarly, we can guess Mina will continue to worry about screwing up but, at the same time, develop into a good doctor by allowing herself to put the book aside and pay attention to the patients themselves. Lily will probably face up to her personal loss and become increasingly drawn to Ben, who, in turn, will wrestle with his own loss and his feelings for at least one other female doctor. "Off the Map" stands a fairly decent chance of catching on if it just follows its various formulas. It stands a slimmer chance of becoming even better than that if it doesn't. This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:27 AM PST  Perez/ABC Caroline Dhavernas, Tessa Thompson and Martin Henderson help the natives - and themselves - in the jungle-based ABC medical drama 'Off the Map.'After you watch Wednesday night's premiere of ABC's doctor drama "Off the Map," you might think the title means the show hasn't quite found its path yet. You'd be right. But it's got a shot to get there, with an engaging ensemble cast and a novel premise that could prove useful: It's set in the middle of a fictional South American jungle. Specifically, a gang of mostly American doctors has migrated to a clinic that is six or seven hours from the nearest full-service medical facility. They're chronically short on supplies and long on ingenuity. When they run out of blood during an operation on Wednesday's episode, boss man Dr. Ben Keeton (Martin Henderson) trots outside and shimmies up a tree to cut down a clump of green coconuts, whose milk can substitute for blood in emergencies. And you thought prime-time television was just entertainment, not education. So there's a hint of the admirable Doctors Without Borders program here, though that's hardly the focal point. Instead, we get something that fans of doctor shows like "Grey's Anatomy" will quickly recognize: a large crowd of good-looking young folks whose deep-down dedication to doctoring is matched by their deep-down personal and romantic neuroses. So the first priority of "Off the Map" is to quickly sort out the specific problems of the characters in the large cast.
That starts with the three young doctors who arrive as the show starts. Tommy Fuller (Zach Gilford) is a good-time slacker who needs a kick-start. Lily Brenner (Caroline Dhavernas) had a personal tragedy. Mina Minard (Mamie Gummer) made a lethal error as a resident. The staff in-house has similar issues. Ryan Clark (Rachelle Lefevre) keeps trying to leave and can't, partly because of a complicated thing with Dr. Keeton. Otis Cole (Jason George) has issues, too, and Zee Alvarez (Valerie Cruz) is exasperated that all these dilettante gringos keep coming and going before they even learn Spanish. Then of course there is an endlessly rotating supply of patients, natives suffering from rare and common diseases for which they have traditionally received little or no treatment. If anything, Wednesday night's premiere sorts things out a little too quickly, making some of the revelations feel like plot devices rather than natural development. It also plunges too quickly into feel-good moments and melodramatic revelations that might better unfold over a longer time. Once that's all out in the open, though, there's potential for nuanced relationships. The jungle also could become a solid character, though the show must take care not to make it a novelty. The jungle is also, on the surface, the only relationship here to ABC's hit "Lost." Truth is, however, "lost" is exactly what most of these characters are. If "Off the Map" can make us care about watching them find themselves, we could have a winner. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
Off the Map: Dramatic series. 10 p.m. Wed. on ABC. Check local listings.
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