In her capacity as an actress, I don’t have much of a frame of reference for Jada Pinkett Smith. What was she in? A Different World, The Matrix franchise, Madagascar, and Reign Over Me (awesome movie, by the way)? Besides being married to one of the biggest, and one of my favorite, movie stars in the world, she’s never left much of an impression on me.
And yet, it wasn’t surprising to hear that she was set to star in TNT’s newest series, HawthoRNe. A network built on the backs of strong female characters (Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson, Detective Grace Hanadarko), adding a third to its crown.
HawthoRNe hits the little screen at the same time as another nurse-centric series, Nurse Jackie. While I had no reason to believe that the two would have anything in common, I began to watch the pilot a little bit uncertain of what was to come, and a little bit trepidatious about what was to come.
Let me put this out there right off the bat: Christina Hawthorne is nothing like Nurse Jackie. That’s not to say that she necessarily wins any prizes of her own, but at least she’s not despicable. Phew.
Even so, a lot of HawthoRNe is of the predictable nature. With David Julian Hirsh playing Nurse Ray Stein, male nurse jokes abound, in a day and age when we’ve transcended most all race and gender biases. Classy. There’s the requisite child drama, and each stereotype is filled: slutty nurse, rookie nurse, jaded nurse. The only thing that may be missing is a homosexual nurse, but you never know what the writers have up their sleeves.
Also a bit yawn-inducing was the dead husband story, the pilot marking the one-year anniversary of Christina’s husband’s death. In the first hour alone, that was used as the cause for Christina needing a vacation, her daughter acting out, a grandmother-mother-daughter tug-of-war, and a really disturbing scene involving cremated ashes. Is there nothing new to do with the tired story?
Since they premiere at the same time, it’s only natural to compare HawthoRNe to Nurse Jackie in other ways. Both zoom in on the nurses that administer care in a hospital, and both, for some reason, feel the need to denigrate doctors in order to do so. In HawthoRNe’s case, the on-call doc (why in God’s name did someone hire Anne Ramsey again?) is not only out of reach on a golf course, she also over-prescribes medication, and then flies off the handle to defend herself. An unnamed doctor spends his entire shift sleeping in a chair, and the Chief of Surgery (Michael Vartan) looks like he’s a deer caught in the headlights, unable to decide between coming to the aid of his friend, Christina, or being on the side of the doctors in their battle versus the nurses. And this adds what to the show?
On the flip side, for a medical show, the medicine was central. As in, I had to turn away so many times, it made me feel as if the show knew what it was doing, as opposed to on Nurse Jackie, which made me forget that there was a hospital around all of Jackie’s drug-abuse. The latter may seem preferable, but that’s just because I have a personal aversion to gore; a medical show should include some medicine. That’s just good television.
As to the central question: does HawthoRNe fit in with TNT’s other cornerstones, The Closer and Saving Grace? For the sake of full disclosure, I’ve tried both but watch neither, because as shows, they hold no interest for me. I recognize, however, that each one is compelling because of the tremendously strong female lead at its helm. Now, granted, I’ve only seen one episode, but Christina Hawthorne is no strong female lead. It’s not that she’s weak; she just isn’t strong. Not a negative, or a knock, just nothing there to slap that label on.
Is it compelling? Not so much. Again, there’s nothing negative or offensive about HawthoRNe, but were this the regular television season, the show wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s innocuous. The conceit isn’t one that I can see sucking in an audience, and bringing them back week after week. Overall, the pilot was for a low-key, neither here not there, character-driven show about a woman dealing with life after the death of her husband.
She just happens to work as a nurse in a hospital, ostensibly the one her husband died in after suffering from cancer. She has an upper crust mother-in-law (Joanna Cassidy), who didn’t hit the notes that I’m assuming the writers thought she did, and a daughter (Hannah Hodson), who’s a lot more annoying than interesting. Fine if there’s nothing else going on, but that shouldn’t be enough of a reason for a show to be granted a long life.
But, like I said, there’s nothing particularly offensive about HawthoRNe. And, given the timing of the premiere, there’s no major time constraint on me or my TiVo (relatively speaking). Which is all to say that I will be trying it again; I just don’t see myself ever adding it as a season pass. Oh well … no harm, no foul.
Oh yeah; one quote from the premiere:
Camille (Hodson) to her mother (Pinkett Smith): “Pretty girls don’t have to buy their own pot.”
Christina: “I know that. Thank you.”
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jun 15, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
