Doc Series Premiere Review: A Slow But Promising Start

Molly Park's complex Amy Larsen is at the heart Doc Season 1 Episode 1, with this character-driven medical drama. Our review!

The post Doc Series Premiere Review: A Slow But Promising Start appeared first on TV Fanatic.

Over the years, we’ve learned that real doctors and their penned work often inspire the best and most compelling medical dramas. 

Will Doc join the ranks of the breakout hit Brilliant Minds in telling wonderful stories and reinventing the medical drama, or will it be deceptively good only to break our hearts and frustrate us like New Amsterdam?

We’re as uncertain about how to answer that or what the future holds, but it’s safe to say that Doc is a comforting addition to FOX’s slate, especially when TV Fanatic favorite The Resident signed off. 

Doc’s pilot gives the impression that it will strongly focus on characters and inter dynamics amongst them, then it will the medical cases. 

And there’s nothing wrong with that in the least. We’ve entered a new era of television where the best gateway for telling diverse stories and exploring complex characters and dynamics is through more traditional procedural formatting. 

• The Rookie Season 7 Episode 1 Resets Chenford & Introduces New Rookies in Season Premiere!
  by Jasmine Blu
• The Irrational Season 2 Episode 8 Sidelined Alec To Make A Point, But Were Rose And Marisa Any Different?
  by Jack Ori
• Doc Series Premiere Review: A Slow But Promising Start
  by Jasmine Blu

The best character studies are gems hidden behind a status quo procedural, which is how networks find new ways to successfully reinvent the wheel. 

There is a strong cast at the heart of this series. While we didn’t spend too much time with all the characters, as it was a pilot and definitely suffered from “pilotitis,” Doc has a talented cast at its disposal.

Everyone already feels settled into the roles, which is promising for how the series will proceed.

In the end, there’s not much interest in Felicia, as horrible as that may sound. The case is undeniably a plot device for the hour, mostly serving to compare Amy before the accident versus after and causing conflict among other doctors. 

Fortunately, Felicia was okay in the end, largely due to Amy’s brilliance, despite her abysmal bedside manner.

Doc doesn’t pretend to be a series that uses cases for shock value or to keep the viewers on their toes. 

The draw to this series is Amy Larsen, and following this woman as she navigates a world that is now unfamiliar to her after partial retrograde amnesia took the past eight years of her life away from her. 

She’s a complicated and flawed woman, a personal favorite archetype to helm a series; Molly Park already balances those complexities well. 

Via flashbacks, we see how warm and happy Amy was as a doting working mother of two who was head over heels for her handsome husband. 

But more importantly, lest we were to conclude that those flashbacks are merely a fluke or slight trick of Amy’s mind, we still see glimpses of that version of Amy when she’s with Jake (Jon-Michael Ecker). 

• Behind the Badge: Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Trailblazing Women in TV Law Enforcement
  by Carissa Pavlica
• The Evolution of Family on TV: From Perfect Households to Found Families
  by Carissa Pavlica
• Jessica Knight and Alden Parker: The Romance That Could Change NCIS Forever
  by Lisa Babick

She’s always been there; sadly, her grief took over, making this once warm woman cold and distant in almost all aspects of her professional and personal life. 

Doc is a primetime soap opera masquerading as a medical procedural, and I say that affectionately.

In just the premiere, they threw so many mind-reeling revelations upon us to set up the course of the season. In many ways, Doc placed us in a similar position to Amy. 

We follow this entirely new world through the eyes of a woman who was once part of it but can’t remember. Everything is fresh to Amy, too, making her a compelling and sympathetic character.

How does one process losing eight years of their life and having everyone around know more about you and how you’ve carried yourself over nearly a decade than you do? 

It’s bad enough on its own, but Amy is such a polarizing person within the walls of Westside Hospital that it’s overwhelming not knowing who has good intentions. 

To be fair to many of those put off by Amy, from what we saw of her before the accident, she wasn’t the easiest person to share space with or work alongside. 

She came across as emotionally detached, cold, condescending, and rude. It didn’t matter if someone was a fellow doctor, a nurse, or a patient, her behavior was the same. 

On the surface, Amy seems arrogant and abrasive. You always get the sense she believes she’s the smartest person in the room.

Interestingly, these are such common traits that we see in series like this for male characters, and we’ve come to accept or even embrace them for what they are. 

• Brilliant Minds EP Michael Grassi Dishes on Season Finale Cliffhangers & Season 2 Possibilities
  by Laura Nowak
• Jon-Michael Ecker on FOX’s Doc: Second Chances, Romance, and Medical Drama Redefined
  by Carissa Pavlica
• Kitchen Nightmares Showrunner Katy Dierks Shares Insights Into the Show’s Success and Gordon Ramsay’s Magic Touch
  by Carissa Pavlica

But society still isn’t prepared for women to exude the same confidence or possess the same traits. As a result, reactions to Amy were fascinating. 

Sure, she was offputting, but for at least a handful of men in any professional environment, that same behavior is just another Tuesday. Nevertheless, her behavior was a problem that the hospital couldn’t ignore. 

Despite how great she was as a doctor, one’s bedside manner is a critical part of the job, and enough complaints lined up could cause an issue for the hospital. I don’t envy her ex-husband for having to maintain that. 

It’s especially heartbreaking for him when he knows and remembers what Amy was like before and gets that her grief has made her become this hardened emotionally inaccessible person. 

The hospital is unusual ground for Amy to navigate and attempt to mend because there’s so much uncertainty around how many people are genuinely rooting for her versus eager to watch her fail.

The charge nurse and other doctors gossiping and poking fun at Amy at the nurse’s station was difficult to watch. No matter what their personal beef may have been with her, most people wouldn’t root what Amy has endured on their worst enemy. 

TJ endeared me by having the gumption to speak out against them despite his position as an intern. Essentially, for all of their issues with Amy, they all came across as hypocritical in their lack of basic empathy for her. 

The tidbit we learned later that she’s why he became a doctor put his strong response in perspective more. Seeing TJ was one of the few genuine smiles we saw from Amy post-accident. 

But thus far, Jake stands out most because of how complicated things are for him. Not only was he Amy’s most prized pupil, but he was her secret lover. 

While the chemistry between the two needs a bit more work to be convincing, I sympathized with Jake’s difficult position throughout all of this. 

• 5 Things We’re Excited to See on Grant Ellis’s Season of The Bachelor
  by Whitney Evans
• Audacious Smashup TV Crossovers That Would Be So Epic
  by Carissa Pavlica
• 32 (!!!) January 2025 Premieres You Cannot Miss!
  by Carissa Pavlica

He’s in love with this woman he’s been dating for five months in secret, and he even worked up the courage to tell her about his feelings right before the accident. 

Unfortunately, outside of telling Sonya, no one knows about them, and he’s all alone in his devastation over the woman he loves being in arm’s reach but not knowing who he is or what he is to her. 

Jake is completely erased from Amy’s mind, and he’s left carrying all the love and what they were to each other by himself while watching her pine after her ex-husband. 

Now, we have a love triangle of unusual power dynamics at play. Jake shouldn’t have been dating his chief in secret, and one has to wonder how that relationship came to be and if he’s the first good thing Amy has had in four years. 

But amnesiac Amy only remembers loving Michael. They were such a happy family and couple before Danny died. It’ll be hard for Amy to process how they ended up apart because she can’t remember it. 

It’ll be worse when she realizes that Michael has seemingly remarried and is expecting another child. My jaw dropped at that ending, and my heart broke for Amy. 

The accident upended her entire world, and she still hasn’t begun to experience all the ways in which that has happened. It’s concerning how people are keeping things from her to spare her. 

No good is going to come from this in the long run. Amy will face a real challenge with her loved ones trying to protect and spare her too much and those who don’t like her trying to take advantage. 

We don’t get much from Gina within the hour beyond being Amy’s best friend and cautious and reluctant to divulge much to her. But I’m curious about their friendship and excited to see a solid female friendship at the forefront of this series. 

But then we have Richard Miller who must’ve been frothing at the mouth over that Chief of Internal Medicine role and is thrilled to be in that position by any means necessary. 

• The Last of Us Season 2 Sets April Premiere at HBO: Check Out the Latest Trailer!
  by Paul Dailly
• Grosse Pointe Garden Society Trailer: NBC’s Steamy New Drama Packs A Killer Secret
  by Paul Dailly
• Lifetime Channels Musical Icons for ‘Voices of a Lifetime’ 2025 Slate
  by Paul Dailly

Miller isn’t someone who will be in Amy’s corner when he has a vested interest in her not reclaiming her memories. If she remembered the night of her accident, she’d continue pushing for an investigation into him that could cost him his job and license. 

It’s so good to have Scott Wolf back onscreen, even if he plays a scheming opportunist like Miller. One wonders how far he’ll go to cover up his misdeeds. 

He’s thrilled at this temporary promotion and willing to run with it as if he has the gig permanently, but he already seems like he’ll try to dismantle and undermine Amy as a doctor and person while in the role. 

Jake was too “Pro-Amy” when it came to advocating for her technique and her in general, and he indeed comes across as biased at times, but he and Amy were right. 

And if he’ll have to contend with working for Miller, he’ll have his work cut out for him. Plus, Sonya has it in for Amy, too. 

What happened between Amy and Sonya? Sonya’s relentless pursuit to get back at Amy feels personal.

The writing is on the wall that Sonya will work closely with Richard; he’ll take her under his wing. 

I cannot wait for them to realize they’ll still be working with Amy despite her accident. It’s doubtful either of them prepared for that. 

Doc had a bit of a slow start, but the potential for a solid drama is there. 

The characters are already intriguing. I’m locked in for more episodes.  How about you? 

Doc Fanatics, how do you feel about the premiere? Will you be tuning in too? Where do you fall on the love triangle? Sound off below!

The post Doc Series Premiere Review: A Slow But Promising Start appeared first on TV Fanatic.