Jordana Spiro stars in Fox's newest twist on the medical procedural. She plays Grace Devlin, a gifted surgeon who -- thanks to her idiot brother -- finds herself indebted to the mafia on "The Mob Doctor." Her brother got himself into some trouble with a gambling debt, and so his sister agreed to owe mobster Paul Moretti. This usually meant patching up his cronies, but he upped the ante in the series premiere, asking Grace to kill a patient on the operating table.
When she didn't go through with it, Moretti took her mother hostage in her home. Grace managed to lure him away by smashing up his car. One wild car chase later and they were at her old family friend Constantine Alexander's (William Forsythe) house. Constantine was a former mob boss who claimed to have gone straight since being released from prison.
At least, that's what Grace thought. So she was completely stunned when Constantine shot Moretti dead. Later, he told her that he was basically now back in and back in charge. He gave her the option to pack it up and skip town, or she could stay and her debt to Moretti would now be his.
She chose the latter, and the ongoing premise of the show was established. There was plenty of the more general types of dramatics at the hospital viewers are used to from other medical shows. What will make it different is how the two worlds interact, and how Grace tries to juggle them.
Spiro promises the show will only get more exciting from here, but some critics are already looking ready to tune out. TV.com said it was "already flatlining" in their headline, going on to say that Grace's strict moral code gets pretty grating pretty quick. EW didn't like it much better, though they did come up with ways it could have been worse. Of Spiro's casting, they wrote, " It’s sort of like mashing Meredith Grey and Walter White into one horrible Frankenstein’s Monster character, and then casting Jennifer Aniston."
See what HuffPost TV's Maureen Ryan thought of the premiere, and then decide. Will you keep watching "The Mob Doctor," Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox?
TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.
Related
Before You Go
