Fox’s amnesia drama is a mess to forget

On By Littum

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Not long to see Fox’s new amnesia drama “Doc,” I had a desperate desire to turn off the television.

There are certainly worse TV shows than “Doc” (Tuesdays, 9 EST/PST, ★½ out of four), which follows Dr. Amy Larsen (Molly Parker), a hard-nosed doctor who loses eight years of memory after a traumatic brain injury. There are series with lazy writing, shallow characters, boring plots and even offensive elements. But the sin of this particular series is one that’s hard to get over: deep unpleasantness.

“Doc” is, as the kids might say, “shrink”. It’s awkward, uncomfortable and annoying. At times it is actively depressing and not what I would classify as “entertainment”. Despite the efforts of creator Barbie Kingman (“Magnum, PI”), Parker and the rest of the cast, “Doc” never coalesces into a coherent and functional television show. It flatlines from the first moments.

Amy is every stereotype television has ever developed about a callous doctor who is brilliant but misses the bed. Her patients hate hanging out with her, but she gets it resultsfor hell. She is the head of internal medicine at a hospital in Minneapolis, where she annoys her ex-husband and hospital administrator Michael (Omar Metwally), stands in the way of the ambitious hack Dr. Richard Miller (Scott Wolf) and takes time for a discreet meeting with the young hunk Dr. Jake Eller (Jon-Michael Ecker).

But all that is thrown into chaos when Amy is involved in a car accident that leaves her with a traumatic brain injury. When she wakes up from the operation, she thinks it is 2016 and that she is married to Michael. She also believes that her daughter is 9 and her son is alive, and she is struck with great sadness to learn that her daughter is 17 and her son died seven years ago. Oh, and she’s also a much nicer person without the eight years.

The concept, based on the Italian series “Nelle tue Mani” (“In your hands”), has potential. But “Doc” never does anything interesting with the plot. It’s all reduced to simplistic binaries. Amnesia Amy is good, present day Amy is bad. Amy is a medical genius and the rest of the doctors are pale imitations. Amy loves her ex-husband, who has moved on. Amy’s new fling can’t tell her they were together because of office politics. It’s all pretty boring.

And in the end, it’s uncomfortable, and not in a good way. Amy’s every interaction is filled with dramatic irony, but the audience isn’t in a good place knowing that her teenage daughter actually hates her, or that the new head of internal medicine is a quack who killed a patient. We’re just a little stressed about it.

This story has been updated to correct the series’ origins.

It’s a shame, because Parker is a top-notch actress with great credits like “Deadwood” and “House of Cards.” She’s almost talented enough to build this creaky show, but not quite. The show can’t decide whether it cares more about Amy’s memory loss and personal relationships or the medical drama of the week. Each episode is severely unbalanced and poorly paced.

Watching TV shouldn’t feel like so much work. I’d rather forget about it.