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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Bad medicine

I don't think all television sucks, just the plethora of programs that have been cloned by the creators of Grey's Anatomy, especially that new one called Off the Map about doctor's working in a remote and undisclosed location in South America that is actually filmed in Hawaii. That show sucks major loads of swamp water.

I watched the first episode on On Demand during a desperate search for something I hadn't seen before. The actor who used to play Lenny on Laverne and Shirley (Michael McKean) guest stars as a tourist who is injured after running into a tree while repelling through the rain forest. His internal injuries are so severe they need to operate on him at the jungle clinic. They discover in the middle of the surgery that they don't have enough plasma on hand so the doctors leave Lenny on the operating table while they go retrieve coconuts. They then hook Lenny up to a coconut IV since everyone knows coconut milk is an excellent substitute for plasma.

Lenny survives the surgery and the coconut milk, but resists being airlifted to a real hospital until he has the opportunity to dump his late wife's ashes in a local lagoon famous for its glow in the dark algae. Apparently this was the real reason for Lenny coming to the undisclosed South American location. No one bothers to ask him why scattering his wife's ashes to get closure wasn't the first thing on his To Do list before taking the canopy ride on a harness through the rain forest. They simply throw his stretcher into a canoe and paddle to the lagoon. Lenny then proceeds to pollute the pristine ecosystem of the lagoon with his dead wife's remains and looks quite relieved. Perhaps this is really because he will have less luggage on his return trip home.

I won't go into any of the other inane and implausible subplots going on in the program but suffice it to say they involved cheesy stereotypes of third world patients gratefully paying the young, beautiful white doctors in chickens to thank them for saving their lives.

I want to go out on a limb here and state bluntly that the biggest lie shows like Grey's Anatomy and Off the Map perpetuate is that people who work in hospitals are attractive and majorly buff. Maybe I'm not going to the right hospitals, but no one in a hospital even looks remotely like anyone from Grey's Anatomy. No one in any hospital I've been in even remotely looks like they have ever seen the inside of  a gym or passed by a box of jelly doughnuts.

These doctor shows also falsely suggest that when you enter a hospital, you are immediately surrounded by surgeons anxiously waiting to remove your spleen regardless of whether there is anything wrong with it. My experience with hospitals is that you can languish for hours in the waiting room filling out paperwork before you get to spend an average of three minutes with someone you assume is a doctor. They generally look at your paperwork, look at their watch and then rush out the door presumably to act busy and distracted with the next patient. None of the doctors I have encountered seem overly enthusiastic about trying any new breakthrough surgery on any parts of my body, either.

But I suppose no one would watch television shows that depicted what doctors and hospitals are really like. Nor would they want to watch television programs about doctors who chose less glamorous specialties than brain surgery and plastic surgery. Dr. McDreamy wouldn't be as dreamy if he was a podiatrist or proctologist now would he? And what makes a person decide to concentrate on such things when they go to medical school anyway. Do they wake up one morning and say, "You know, I think staring at assholes all day is the direction I should take with my medical career."

Of course, I think staring at assholes all day is the direction many people's careers take them.

Butt, I digress...get it?

Anyway, I'll be glad when we get off from the doctor themed doctor drama's and move on to the next theme in the cycle. But please don't let it be more crime drama's or remakes.

I think the new Hawaii 50 sucks, too, BTW.

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