TV Tuesday: The Resident

Even though we still watch (and love!) Grey's Anatomy and don't really need another medical TV show, during the doldrums of winter TV, my husband and I tried The Resident, mostly because we both love the main actor, who played Cary on The Good Wife (and, I just discovered, Logan on Gilmore Girls). We have some complaints about this new medical show but are still watching and enjoying it overall and plan to continue.

Matt Czuchry stars as Conrad Hawkins, a third-year resident at sparkling, expensive Chastain Hospital in Atlanta. This is not the gritty public hospital filled with drug addicts and gunshot victims we saw back in the days of ER! In the first episode, idealistic new resident Devon Pravesh, played by Manish Dayal, starts at Chastain on his first day as a doctor, working under Conrad. It's a tough first day, and Devon quickly learns that Conrad is brilliant and cares about his patients fiercely but has little patience for following the rules. Nicky, played by Emily VanCamp, is a very intelligent and caring nurse who works with them, and Mina, played by Shaunette Renee Wilson, is an arrogant but highly skilled surgical resident. Heading up the hospital are star surgeon Randolph Bell, played by veteran actor Bruce Greenwood, and a bevy of other high-profile, very wealthy senior doctors. All is not as it seems at beautiful Chastain, though, and we see in the very first episode that Bell has developed some sort of tremor in his hands, which he is hiding - and still operating on patients, to their detriment - in order to save his reputation and career.

Much of The Resident is like any other medical show - different patient cases each week, with a few longer-term patients we see again, taken care of by a group of very attractive doctors, with some sex and scandal thrown in to keep things interesting. The difference in this show - and the thing that bothers us about it - is that the residents, nurses, and other underlings are all the good guys, and the senior staff at the hospital are all, to a person, evil and obsessed with maximizing profits, their own shiny reputations, and remaining powerful and wealthy. Really - every single senior doctor is evil. We get the point the show is trying to make: that sometimes hospitals, which are supposed to help people, are too focused on profit, especially in this time of privatization, to the detriment of the patients they are supposed to be caring for. But, every senior doctor? There's not a single doctor in charge here who wants to do what's best for his or her patients? It's kind of hard to swallow. Still, we are now up to episode 9, and we are still watching and enjoying it. The rest of the characters and stories are compelling enough to keep up tuning in each week, and Czuchry and the other actors are very good.

The Resident is a FOX show, currently airing on Mondays. We watch it On Demand. It looks like it is also available for free on Fox's own website, though as of today, the first four episodes are only available there if you are a cable subscriber (it asks you to sign in with your cable password) - the next 5 are available free to anyone. All of the episodes are also available on Amazon for $1.99 each or $19.99 for the whole season (so, you could pay for the first four and then watch the rest free on the Fox website).

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