Our long national nightmare is over. We finally have a new medical comedy on network television. “St. Denis Medical,” the new NBC comedy created by Justin Spitzer and Eric Ledgin, attempts to fill the enormous J.D. and Turk-sized shoes that have been left largely unoccupied since we lost “Scrubs” in 2010. Overall, it’s a great start.
Health care professionals have been waiting for a show like “St. Denis” for years. Beloved iterations of the mockumentary style have left many of us, including me, saying, “Why don’t they do ‘The Office’ but for medicine?” Well, here it is, and it’s almost too late. The knowing glances at the camera, better known as “The Jim Face,” are now offered by charge nurse Alex. The naïve, bumbling rookie nurse, Matt, gives interviews reminiscent of Andy Dwyer from “Parks and Rec.” It feels familiar, which takes a bit of the luster off the first major medical comedy we’ve seen in over a decade.
However, I still found myself smiling throughout the premiere episode in part because it simply felt good to laugh at a medical show again. We’ve been inundated by so many medical dramas over the years, it felt like the world forgot health care can be outrageously funny.
The premiere episode provides plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. David Alan Grier nails the burned-out emergency physician, Dr. Ron, who laments his two-minute exams, followed by 40 minutes of typing in the electronic health record. His banter with the nurses and self-deprecation (“I’m a glorified car mechanic”) ring true. It almost makes me forgive the decision to dress him in a shirt and tie. When the EMR goes down, the arrogant trauma surgeon, played beautifully by Josh Lawson, attempts to bring it back to life by performing CPR on a keyboard. When Nurse Alex asks a patient leaving the hospital if she’s OK, the patient deadpans, “I will be if I can find a hospital that doesn’t suck.” Joyce, the ambitious surgical oncologist turned hospital administrator, proudly announces her intent to make St. Denis a “destination medical facility” with the purchase of a $300,000 3D mammography machine as the hospital crumbles around her.
“St. Denis Medical” smartly focuses less on medical details and patient care and more on the relationships between doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators. The butt of the joke isn’t the patient — it’s the trauma surgeon delaying surgery so he can dance to the Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic.” I half expected the scrub nurse to throw an instrument at the surgeon when he broke sterile protocol by dropping his hands below his waist. “Scrubs” did this well in the 2000s, and “St. Denis Medical” tries to follow suit. There are a couple of uncomfortable moments in which tired tropes about drug-seeking patients reared their ugly heads, but overall, the jokes didn’t veer too far from the employees of St. Denis.
This is a strategy I use religiously in my “Glaucomflecken Cinematic Universe.” Medical comedy can be tricky. The comedy axiom of “don’t punch down” is more true in health care than any other part of society. The power dynamics are stark. Patients’ lives (or in my case, eyes) are in our hands. It’s a vulnerable position, and any ridicule or snark directed from a health care professional toward a patient, even in a clear comedy setting, doesn’t come across as funny — it’s bullying. This is why I never have patient characters in my content. I’ve learned painful lessons over the years about who to make fun of and how to make fun of them. “St. Denis Medical” walks this line well with only a little wavering.
I appreciate the dedication to highlighting both the nursing and physician healthcare experience. Most medical shows, my beloved “Scrubs” included, treat nurses as an afterthought, a bit character in a world dominated by physicians. “St. Denis Medical” does a great job mixing in both careers. Where “ER” had Dr. Carter, a brand-new intern, “St. Denis Medical” has Matt, a first-year nurse, accidentally stabbing himself with an EpiPen and beefing with the hospital chaplain, of all people. Charge nurse Alex is a focal point, the engine that keeps St. Denis’s ED running as smoothly as possible. Ten years ago, this character would have been a doctor. The balance between doctoring and nursing feels fresh and is important for the long-term health of a medical comedy set in an emergency department.
It’s not a perfect show by any means. As I said, these are big shoes to fill, but with standout performances and sharp writing, “St. Denis Medical” is a great addition to a lean roster of medical comedies.
Dr. Will Flanary is an ophthalmologist and part-time comedian who moonlights in his free time as “Dr. Glaucomflecken,” a social media personality who creates medical-themed comedy shorts across social media.