All those folks whose TV Producer friends said "Yeah, I'll help you get that on TV" have their wishes come true. Sometimes the results of this are awesome, 'The Good Guys' & 'The Unusuals' (I just won't let that dead show die will I? It's like the zombie of cancelled cop shows to me) and sometimes the results are 'The Philanthropist' (yes, I DO remember the plot of that shows pilot) which never did see the light of day again, except in blogs no one reads by desperate screen writers (see how I broke the fourth wall there?)
This summer we have two new entries that warrant mention from the digital ivories (I've been hanging on piano allegories lately). 'Rookie Blue' is back for its sophomore season, which is good for people who watch 'Rookie Blue' (I'm not taking on any more cop shows until the new season starts, still mourning the loss of 'The Chicago Code'.) and the show inspiring today's title 'Combat Hospital'.
[...Now I just want to say that I had the idea for this show a few years ago, probably about the same time the writer/producers on the show were concocting it themselves. In my case it was inspired from watching a Nat Geo doco (feel Australian with all these shortenings) about doctors in Kandahar treating the wounded there. The doctors in the show called the hospital 'Rocket Town' due - remarkably enough - to the persistent rocket attacks from insurgents (or locals, depending on your affiliation) Now MY show would've been called 'Rocket Town', but i suspect after the 'let's rename our niche show in the hopes of making it NOT a niche show 'Cougar Town' debacle that other shows with 'Town' in the title are off limits. So yeah, once again my lack of connections and general past apathy have saved me from an embarrassing situation at Pitch Fest in Banff where two teams with the exact same project run into each other, as if we were wearing the same striped sweater from Old Navy's summer 2010 collection - I saw you at the mall wearing-my-shirt-guy...]
Was I typing about something? Oh yeah, Combat Hospital. Silly me, maybe I was hoping for another M*A*S*H, but then again, why would I? I still have M*A*S*H, every season, every episode, sitting on top of my bookcase, so if I REALLY want to watch it, there it is. Do I expect another show about military surgeons, set in a warzone, during an ongoing war, laced with humour, helicopters delivering wounded and supposedly quirky characters, including a charming womanizing, boozing doctor with a drawer full of pharmaceuticals to be compared to the all classic and critically untouchable masterpiece that was M*A*S*H? Of course not.
But the show is acceptable, for a Canada/US co-production. (you can tell Canada comes first because the main character is Canadian, which is obvious to the audience because she has a Maple Leaf flag on her uniform (a'la what's his name from SG: Atlantis - which I continue to refuse to watch) The production quality is better than I expected, and the direction is certianly on par with a regular season drama. You even have some respectability with the cast, Elias Koteas (the poor man's Canadian Robert DeNiro) as Colonel Xavier Marks (TV name if ever I heard one) - a kind of dry, humourless salute to Colonel Potter - a young Afghan translator named 'Vans' (because he wears a shirt that says 'Vans', get it?) who I suppose could be the approximation of Radar. There's Simon, the boozing British civilian neuro surgeon who manages to bed all the ladies in his private plywood shack with a mock up of the London skyline as a backdrop, and the requisite moralistic rules be damned Rebecca, who may or may not be pregnant, stirring things up. Throw in the Vietnamese decent doctor Bobby (would it be too meta to suggest that the doctors name being Trang is an attempted allusion to M*A*S*H, in that while that show was set during the Korean War, it was really about Vietnam? Yeah, that's too meta). Oh yeah, I also forgot Deborah Kara Unger as the Father Mulcahey/Hot Lips Hullihan hybrid (last I saw DK Unger, she was taking in a young black man who would learn the truth about Reuben 'Hurricane' Carter, and before that she was having things done to her by James Spader that meant I had to keep that movie hidden from my Mom) as the base psychiatrist. (No Sydney Fieldman references so far, but there was a stoic CIA agent in the second episode - whether he was 'like the wind' or not remains to be seen - Everyone getting tired of my obscure M*A*S*H references yet? Yeah, well screw you, this is my pretentious TV blog)
So we get stories about Doctor Rebecca bringing an Afghan girl back to the base, and this is dramatic you see as if her Afghan family finds out they may want to disown/murder her, (would that this part were made up to, yet sadly it's probably the most realistic element of the story). Or there's the episode about the unknown bacteria spreading through the new patients. Could it be that this mysterious ailment could be cured by a local Afghan remedy? How about the episode where Rebecca must plan a party for the base while dealing with the realities of having used the whole installations O- blood supply in a vain attempt to save a young man. Yeah, these all sound original, right?
Okay, it may be difficult to do a medical warzone story that M*A*S*H hasn't done already, but that's the same problem that any family/animated comedy writer has with 'The Simpsons'; if you tried to do something they hadn't already done, you would have nothing to work with.
So yeah, watch 'Combat Hospital'. It's a pleasant, inoffensive yet wants to be edgy drama that takes the plots of M*A*S*H, extends them to half an hour and removes most of the jokes (that sounds like a far more scathing review than it is meant to be.) Seriously people, the show is good fun, a decent modern substitute for a classic age old comedy in the summer months. As a July-September entry, it's a real winner. Just don't stack it against House or Fringe or any main season entry, if you do, you may as well go out and get every episode of M*A*S*H, you'll laugh more.
