Media Credit: Fox Broadcasting Company Website, The Mob Doctor Downloads
By Lauren Lisitano,
Managing Editor-
If you miss shows like House and The Sopranos, then The Mob Doctor is perfect for you. The Mob Doctor brings crime and medical drama together in one show, which premiered Monday Sept. 17 at 9 pm on FOX.
Taking place in Chicago—of course a city for a major hospital and major crime—Dr. Grace Devlin (Jordana Spiro, My Boys) acts as exactly what the title says, a doctor…to the mob. She is paying off her brother’s debt by being the mob’s special doctor. And no one knows this besides her brother. We still do not know exactly what her brother did to be indebted to the mob, but Grace says the mob would have killed her brother if she did not step in.
This secret alias starts conflicting with her surgeries, patients, and her love interest, Dr. Brett Robinson played by Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford, Friday Night Lights). Dr. Devlin is expected to drop whatever she is doing to help the mob when they need her. By the end of the episode, old mob boss Constantine Alexander (William Forsythe, Boardwalk Empire), reigns as leader once again. Constantine shoots the head honcho that Dr. Devlin worked for stone cold in his driveway. Constantine warns Grace to leave Chicago because “she knows too much,” but she decides to stay anyway because Chicago is her home, blah, blah, blah…Typical mob show with doctor drama sprinkled in.
Forsythe already knows the crime television genre due to his time on Boardwalk Empire, whereas Spiro and Gilford are newcomers. I’m sorry, but during the whole episode, I could not get the high school image of Saracen in Friday Night Lights out of my mind and when the next Panther’s football game was. He was in high school three years ago—when did he become a doctor?! And Spiro, the guys’ girl in My Boys, suddenly became so intense in The Mob Doctor that I could barely take her seriously.
Dr. Devlin is so intensely involved with her patients that it clouds her judgment. She is a moral doctor who cares about her patients more than protocol. For example, Dr. Devlin’s mother brings in a girl Dr. Devlin used to babysit, because the young girl happened to faint on her porch. This scene is random and awkward, but they needed to introduce the mother somehow. Dr. Devlin then learns the patient is pregnant…But still a virgin. The pregnancy was caused by some rare medical condition, and honestly it sounded so rare, so Immaculate Conception-esque, that it became unbelievable. Knowing that the young woman has a swimming scholarship next year and how angry her father would be, Dr. Devlin decides to tell the girl’s father she has an ovarian cyst and needs surgery instead of an abortion. She overrules Dr. Robinson—which was technically his case—and does what she feels is her moral obligation, even if that goes against the rules. So she gives the patient an abortion. This is the exact decision Dr. House would have made: doing what he believes is right and not what the rules say is right.
When House was on, these fans were already spoken for. They were obsessed, and there was no other show that could live up to their one true love. Now that House is no longer on the air, The Mob Doctor has the potential to sneak into the hearts of these fans. Although The Mob Doctor is less medical and less scientific, the main character is still a doctor who will do anything to save her patients. Dr. Devlin resembles Dr. House in these rebellious ways, but does not in any way compare to his innovative mind and legacy.
Because Dr. Devlin is no Dr. House, it’s the mob drama that will keep viewers coming back week after week. That’s mostly because we all know every episode will end with a cliffhanger. Besides that, it seems like each episode will delve deeper and deeper into the mob world. The viewers can attempt to piece it together, but the unexpected will always prevail. A good guy will turn bad or a bad guy will turn good, you just never know. It is this action of the mob that will keep the story moving.
At the end of the episode, Constantine kills the mobster that Grace is indebted to. So does that mean the series just ended in the pilot since she no longer has to be a mob doctor? Constantine truly cares about her and tells her to stay away, which makes me believe he would not want her involved with the mob anymore. Not quite sure if Grace will simply continue to do it because she likes Constantine, or how that is all going to work out. But it makes me think that future episodes will have trouble showing the connection between the mob and the hospital. If they lose that connection, then the show will disintegrate into two separate shows jammed into a one hour time slot.
The Mob Doctor has potential and if either one of these genres are what you are interested in, then give it a shot. It will be interesting to see how the series pans out. It has an innovative story idea. It’s just a question now of whether they can hold the connection between the crime and medical genres together.
