The Mob Doctor follows a young and beautiful female physician (Jordana Spiro) who works at a prestigious Chicago hospital, while moonlighting for the mob and performing all kinds of medical fêtes to pay off her brother’s gambling debt. The TV show also features Floriana Lima, Zach Gilford, Željko Ivanek, Wendy Makkena, Jesse Lee Soffer, William Forsythe, and James Carpinello.
Is Mob Doctor worth your time? Here’s what some of the critics think:
Boston Globe: “Judging by the pilot, each week we’ll get a hospital story line in which Grace will break some rule, solve the problem, and suffer little to no consequences driving her haughty superiors — including a so-far underutilized Zeljko Ivanek — supportive colleagues, and irritated boyfriend just a little bit crazier. She will then be called upon, at the most inopportune moment — preferably during sex or a touching family moment — to handle a medical case for the mob: stitching up an enforcer or prescribing something for the boss. She will then have some sort of argument with her family and her boyfriend…
Alexander gives Grace an option: hit the road and start a new life helping people somewhere else, or stay and work off her brother’s debt with no guarantee of total protection. You owe no such debt to Fox, feel free to refuse this offer.”
Esquire: “In between meetings with hospital superiors and various subcommittees of syndicate underlings, the plot of the show flounces from one late-season ho-hum ER setup to another — a pediatric patient whose life hangs in the balance, a criminal informant going under our heroine’s scalpel, a quick smoochy scene in a deserted hospital room, and the introduction of a sultry rival doctress. It’s possible that the central tension of the show’s title is simply too confoundingly obvious. Spiro’s a mob doctor after all, which may be the show’s only really interesting health issue.”
Chicago Tribune: “The writers may surprise us, but this is one of those shows where the premise’s most dramatic implications happen right away, in the pilot, and you wonder where it can go. Maybe a crossover episode with Mob Wives Chicago?”
USA Today: “Fox is joking, right? Surely the network that helped re-energize the medical drama with House — and elevate its own critical standing in the process — doesn’t really want us to take Mob Doctor (* star out of four, Fox, 9 p.m. Monday) seriously?…
You could, if you wish, watch tonight trying to isolate the show’s worst moment… But why bother trying to separate the bad from the worse when it’s all awful. Which is what happens when you concoct a show out of leftover scraps instead of new ideas. And that’s no joke.”
Kansas City Star: “If Spiro looks familiar, it might be because you saw her in a much better show, TBS’ My Boys, a half-hour comedy that was too smart for its own good and lasted four seasons until 2010. She also guest-starred on the sixth season of Dexter. She’s back to extreme likability mode as Grace Devlin, but Mob Doctor has all the subtlety of a screwdriver to the forehead.”
SF Chronicle: “The Mob Doctor, a new dramatic series on Fox, defies both the laws of physics and of television itself: Despite being jam-packed with plot twists, character reveals, surprises, a car chase, a couple of dead people and a lot of cell phone calls followed by ‘I have to go,’ it is a constant struggle for a viewer to avoid being bored to tears…
The concept is silly, a kindergarten class could have fashioned a more credible script, the characters are unbelievable, and the performances are awful. Because there’s a good chance the cast will be looking for work very soon, I won’t single any specific performance out for criticism. To be fair, Meryl Streep and Dame Judi Dench couldn’t sell this drivel.”
What do you think? Have you watched The Mob Doctor on FOX? What did you think? Will you watch again?
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