One of the subtler ways
Deadwood had an impact on the era of Peak TV is that it was easily the
first of HBO’s great dramas where the female characters got to be more than
just attachments of the male ones. This was one of the greatest flaws of The
Sopranos and for all the impact The Wire had on television, it by
and large didn’t have many interesting women in its diverse cast. That Deadwood
did might seem contradictory: David Milch was writing a revisionist Western
but the women were still little more than wives and whores.
And yet all five
actresses who had roles on Deadwood proved the source of so much of the
best drama, showing an inner ferocity and melancholy among their work which led
all of them to work consistently through the more than two decades since the
show came to a premature end. Anna Gunn has had the biggest impact (not all of
it positively viewed) for her work as Skyler on Breaking Bad but the
same can be said of all the other actresses: Paula Malcolmson has constantly
worked as wives who are often left at the mercy of their husbands to find their
own paths (most famously in Ray Donovan). Kim Dickens has frequently
worked as women trying to strike out on their own in bleak landscapes, whether
it be trying to be a sous chef in post Katrina New Orleans in Treme or more
famously trying to find a path in the apocalypse in The Walking Dead franchise.
Robin Weigert has moved away from her incredible work as Calamity Jane to mostly
play caregivers trying to guide other troubled women, most famously as Celeste’s
psychiatrist on Big Little Lies.
Molly Parker’s work as
Alma Garrett was the biggest female role on the show, a drug addicted wife who
is dragged to the camp by her husband and finds a way to survive as a mother
and owner of a gold claim, while nevertheless being dragged by her worst
impulses time and again. Her ethereal beauty, which can best be described as
looking haunted, often gave lie to the fact that there was steel underneath.
Much of her work in the years since has often been overlooked (her work as Abby
in the network drama The Firm was her biggest role as a lead) but when
she has the right role (as she did as Molly Sharp, Frank’s replacement as minority
whip who makes it clear she has an independent streak in House of Cards)
she is magnificent. She’s never entirely stopped work but very few of the roles
she’s had have been of the same level as Alma on Deadwood. Now for the
first time in two decades of working on television, she has finally become the
lead on Doc, a series that would be fascinating in its own right with a
lesser lead but who Parker raises to a new level.
Parker plays Dr. Amy
Larsen, the chief of internal medicine who when we first meet her is the kind
of doctor with the kind of abrasive attitude that Gregory House would admire.
She treats her subordinates with disrespect, barely seems to talk to anyone,
and we’re astonished to learn she actually has a friend. When she meets with
the chief of staff (Omar Metwally) it’s clear that their have been many
complaints about her to HR and she has been ignoring them.
Then she gets involved
in a car wreck and suffers blood loss in the brain when being operated on. When
she wakes up she has forgotten the past eight years of her life – and then we
learn about the aftereffects. The chief of staff was her husband. She has a
daughter who doesn’t speak to her anymore. And she was in an accident seven
years ago and her other child her son was killed in it. That is in at least part
of why she is who she is: we learn that she threw herself into work,
essentially pushed away her husband and her daughter and has become increasingly
acerbic to everyone except two people. One is her best friend, Gina Walker
(Amirah Vann) the other is a slightly younger chief resident (Jon-Michael
Ecker) with whom she was having an affair – and now has no memory of it.
Parker is magnificent
showing all the sides of Larsen which the series decides to show in various
flashbacks: we see the cold workaholic, the utterly broken mother who can’t
find a way out of bed, the loving mother, the woman still looking to connect.
In the present she can only cling to one thing: being a doctor again. The
problem is, while her memory of the last eight years are gone as a person, the
parts of her personality that have clearly made her a problem are still getting
in her way. She pushes her ex-husband to try and make her a doctor and when
things go to slowly, she storms into a board meeting with her head still bandaged
and looking indignant. She constantly thinks her knowledge as a doctor surpasses
her current condition and Doc does not hide how her arrogance more often
then not keeps hurting her colleagues – and in many cases, nearly killing the
people she’s trying to help
Doc also goes out of its
way to make clear that everyone else remembers the last eight years under
Larsen and they don’t particularly want to make her life easier. Her ex-husband
is willing to help her professionally as is Gina and its clear that the nurses
and interns still think highly of her. The problem is there are more than a few
people who don’t.
One of her biggest
antagonists is Sonya Maitra (Anya Banerjee). Before the crash, she had filed
multiple complaints against Larsen for creating a toxic work environment and
while we have yet to see any flashbacks between the two, we know enough from
the ones we see that she’s probably not wrong. She has no inclination to be
friendly to her in the present, particularly as the hospital seems to be
bending over backwards to try and help her get back to work. Smartly Maitra
doesn’t argue racism as much as favoritism: after all, Larsen was married
to the chief of staff so it’s hard to argue there isn’t a sliding scale. And
Sonya is clearly a good doctor, it’s just that Larsen rubs her the wrong way.
Her primary adversary on
the show is Richard Miller, played by Scott Wolf in one of his best roles.
Wolf, like Parker, has worked constantly in TV for a long time (and still looks
as boyish as he was on Party of Five) but he’s never had a role where he’s
had to play someone has the most reason to want Larsen to fail. The day before the
accident, Larsen seemed about to file a complaint that would have put Miller in
a position where he could have been sued for malpractice and his career would
have been ended. He and Larsen were the only ones who knew about it and her
amnesia has not only saved his career, he has now taken her job as chief of
internal medicine. He is terrified, justifiably, to learn whether Larsen’s
memories will return and he is basically advised by his attorney that it is in
his best interests for Larsen’s to fail.
It would be too easy
for the show to set Miller up as the villain of the series, particularly
because Amy’s memory has reset to the point that she considers him a friend and
is willing to support him. But the writers are too smart for that. Miller is a
good doctor, and when Larsen constantly makes mistakes that endanger patients
lives he has the moral high ground. In last night’s episode Heller, in order to
make Amy’s first day back easier, switched her assignment from being with Sonya
to Dr. Coleman, one of the few doctors who appreciates her treatment. While
treating a patient she diagnosed him as being an alcoholic, and though it went
beyond the scope of the restrictions, essentially influenced Coleman to do
things a certain way, leading to the patient leaving AMA and only being found
when he collapsed unconscious outside the hospital. Miller was clearly right
when he called out not only Larsen but both her intern and the chief resident –
in addition to everything else Larsen had been wrong about her diagnosis and as
a result the patient was almost certainly go to die. And for all his unwillingness
to have her succeed, Miller has no interest in letting innocent people become
collateral damage: when Larsen called him with information he listened and was
clearly willing to take her advice to save the patient. Miller may want Larsen
to fail but he still took the same oath she did and the show knows that.
It didn’t shock me
that, much like the superb medical drama Brilliant Minds, Doc is based
on a true story, albeit one set in Italy rather than America. And Parker is
superb in another very pleasing trend for both network television and TV as a
whole; in the last two years we’ve been getting a series of exceptional female-led
network dramas with fascinating actresses playing wonderful leads. Last year we
got Shanola Hampton in Found and Carrie Preston in Elsbeth. This
year we’ve already gotten Kathy Bates’s remarkable revival of Matlock (which
has already sparked talk of Emmy nominations) and Kaitlin Olson’s superb High
Potential. The latter two series have become critical and audience darlings
which have already been renewed for a second season. Parker’s work as Doc has
that same potential and for a network that has been having some intriguing new
dramas air in the last few years, Fox is showing that has an ability to move
away from the by-the-numbers procedurals it does and move into fascinating territory.
Doc is lighter in tone from such standouts as Accused and The
Cleaning Lady but it has the potential to be just as brilliant and
successful. It couldn’t happen to a better actress.
My score: 4 stars.
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