‘Code Black’ Review: Emergency! Help!
The “code black” in Code Black is a hospital alert that medical emergencies have reached critical mass, that every professional is needed, red alert, sound the alarm, beep-beep-beep, help!!!
This is the atmosphere this new medical drama, premiering Wednesday night on CBS, tries to sustain for a full hour. It wants to evoke that sense of non-stop crisis, and it’s willing to sacrifice believability and good writing in the service of frantic pacing. Marcia Gay Harden, an Oscar-winning actor capable of great subtlety, is forced, as the marquee star here, to set the tone and reduce her skill set to yelling, running down hospital corridors, and occasionally looking like a tired, sad puppy dog.
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As Dr. Leanne Rorish, she’s pretty roar-ish, yelling things like, “Hesitate and people die!” and “Sometimes you gotta be a cowboy!” Rorish counsels to a fresh crop of doctors; as the emergency-room residency director, she must guide the newbies with the firm hand of a parental figure. She’s their “daddy,” as opposed to Luis Guzman as a veteran senior nurse, who proclaims himself their “mama.” Get it? Code Black doesn’t need any stinking gender clichés — it’s bold, it mixes things up!
But Code Black trafficks in trite character types, I’m afraid. There’s the wise-beyond-her-years type-A first-year resident played by Melanie Chandra who helps out the too-timid-for-his years depressive first-year resident, played by Harry Ford. Bonnie Somerville is ostensibly Code Black’s co-star along with Harden, playing a tough-but-vulnerable first-year resident with an emotional backstory.
Somerville is a very good, likable performer who’s never had much luck in series television, appearing in short-lived shows such as Gary Unmarried, Cashmere Mafia, and Golden Boy. Her character, Christa Lorenson, ought to stand out, but Christa is written in the pilot as a prematurely world-weary woman who’s there to be guided through both medicine and life by Harden and anyone else standing nearby.
If you’d never seen an episode of ER, you might think Code Black is an exciting, daringly fast-paced medical drama. And since ER aired its last episode in 2009 — a generation in TV years — I guess there are a lot of potential customers for what Code Black is selling. But I can’t imagine there are all that many young-demo viewers eager to make a point of being in front of a TV set for a prime-time CBS drama. “We are officially at Code Black, God help us,” says a character in the premiere. God help you, indeed.
Code Black airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on CBS.
