'Rosewood' Review: Hot Doctor In A Lukewarm Show
Morris Chestnut’s Dr. Beaumont Rosewood is one of those braggy know-it-alls that some viewers respond to because they like confidence and big smile, and other viewers turn away from because — well, they don’t like braggy know-it-alls. The “top private pathologist in Miami,” as he bills himself, Dr. Rosewood is always hustling the local police department for customers — he needs the cops to need him to take a close squint at their freshly dead cadavers; otherwise, how will he make the payments on his bright yellow sports car?
In the premiere, the doctor meets the new cop in town, Det. Annalise Villa, played by Jaina Lee Ortiz. She’s dubious about him until she finds out the reason he’s such an energetic, sunny optimist — he has two holes in his heart, and tells her he’s bound to die “in the next decade.” Thus Rosewood — I almost wrote Deadwood — becomes a live-life-to-the-fullest medical drama. Which in theory is a welcome contrast to yet another dark, gritty, people-are-rotten drama, except that Rosewood still seems like something you’ve watched before. It’s like Burn Notice meets Royal Pains interrupted by Cops.
Chestnut is a charmer, to be sure, but his grin gets as much of a work-out as those abs he’s constantly flaunting. Ortiz is equally appealing even though she has to make sure you know she’s super-tough. He wants them to become a team; she resists — guess you wins out? In case we didn’t get the process here, in one scene, she breaks a perp’s nose and he immediately re-sets it. “See?” Rosewood says, flashing his pearly whites. “We make a great team.”
Or maybe Chestnut was gritting those teeth, trying to put the best face on a show he stuck in. Oh, yes — Orange Is The New Black’s Lorraine Toussaint plays Rosewood’s mother. She deserves better, too.
Rosewood airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Fox.
