The Mob Doctor

I think this is the first post about TV...and probably more interesting because it's about why I didn't like a show rather than what I do like :)

My wife likes medical shows, and I lean more towards gangsters, so "The Mob Doctor" seemed like something we both might like.  But we only made it about 1/2 way thru the first episode before giving up.


There were some big problems.

1) Wrong network.  Gangsters ordering people killed should not be limited to saying "Heck".  The show should have been on cable so there could be profanity and violence suitable for the premise.

2) They really started the show at the wrong point in the character's lives.  She was already working for the mob, and quite soon got a message to kill a patient.  It seemed more like what would be season 2 or at least the middle/end of season 1.  It skipped past all the interesting story about how a nice doctor got sucked into working for the mob.

The process of the character going from good, making poor choices trying to help family, to bad would have been a much better start to a series.  Ending the season with a cliffhanger "Will she follow the mobster's order and kill the patient" or having that end the season so you wonder how far it'll go next year seems better than having it in the first episode.  (I'll never know, we gave up before finding out if she did or not.)

Boardwalk Empire spent whole 2 seasons taking their characters to nearly the point.

3) Because of that jumping ahead in the big story, it felt they were introducing a huge number of characters all at once.  Overwhelming and confusing.