Things blow up real good in NBC’s latest attempt to dip from the
Emergency-Third Watch well that has served the network so successfully in the past. That’s the good news. The bad is that it’s hard to imagine third time’s being a charm with the noisy but empty
Trauma. It’s the second time in a week—the other being NBC’s laughably bad nurses’ drama
Mercy—that I’ve found myself waxing nostalgically for the glory days of
ER.
If pyrotechnics are your thing, you may get a visceral thrill from the fiery helicopter-disaster opening that glancingly introduces us to the tramautized San Francisco EMTs who make up the cast. Barely has the shrapnel settled than the story jumps forward a year to the next calamity: a multi-car pileup with plenty more explosions to show off the pilot’s no-doubt-inflated budget. If future episodes can’t deliver crises on this grand a scale, I pity the viewer who’s stuck with these paper-thin and woefully derivative characters.
Most annoying, hands down, is
Cliff Curtis' cocky helicopter-jockey known as “Rabbit.” Having survived the opening trauma, he now drives like a maniac, crowing “I can’t die” to his appalled newbie partner (
Aimee Garcia). The others are so far mostly colorless cardboard clichés, including
Damages’ Anastasia Griffith as Nancy, who’s mopily nursing her emotional wounds when she isn’t going the extra mile for the unfortunates whose lives she’s trying to save.
No amount of CPR can help a show this creatively undernourished, however elaborately produced.
Trauma flatlines in between the big bangs. (Which is an obvious way to say you’re better off watching
The Big Bang Theory on CBS in the same time period, whose laughs are actually intentional.)
From the truth-in-counterprogramming department: My recommendation for those seeking a solid drama alternative in the time period (9/8c) is Fox’s
Lie to Me, an entertaining twist on the procedural and a smart companion piece to the powerhouse
House.
Tim Roth is slyly appealing as Cal Lightman, a master at detecting deception, leading a group of experts (including
The Practice’s Kelli Williams) who can spot lies through facial tics, body language and just about anything that
isn’t said.
With a new show runner this season (
Shawn Ryan of
The Shield and
The Unit), the show gets off to a strong start with a provocative puzzler guest-starring
Erica Christensen in a tour de force as a young woman who comes to Cal for help, having witnessed a murder in a vision that no one else believes. Cal can tell she’s telling the truth, but quite possibly not the whole truth. The psychological fallout as Cal gets inside this troubled woman’s mind is anything but run of the mill.
With
House as a powerful lead-in,
Lie to Me should be able to hold its own against the stiff competition of
Dancing With the Stars and CBS’s biggest hit comedies (
Two and a Half Men and
Big Bang), not to mention—because hardly anyone is anymore—CW’s played-out
Gossip Girl.