As a House & Sherlock fan, there's nothing much the show has to offer

twist-bite

score 3/10

Just finished the first episode and to be honest I think it's going to be a show full of clichés that people have already seen in other similar shows.

On short, it's about a young boy who suffers from autism, but also "savant syndrome" and he is a phenomenal doctor who gets a chance to save a life in the first act, just in time to change everyone's minds about having him work at the San Jose Hospital.

Just as I was googling the hospital's name, I found out that this drama is in fact based on a Korean show that aired for only 20 episodes: Good Doctor (Korea, 2013).

There are a lot of things that I find wrong in this show, starting from it being directed similar to BBC's Sherlock (drawings and writing floating in the air) to it trying to be deep just like House MD. (background story of main character who had a rough childhood and his only motivation lies in the pain of the past that he doesn't want to experience again)

On the bright side, it might be a decent show for people who haven't seen BBC's Sherlock or House MD, but boy .. I suggest you go see those instead. I like Freddie from Bates Motel, but he may have been more suitable for Norman's role than this one. He seems too young and his character seems to suffer from a weird form of autism in which he conveniently socializes when the plots asks for it. The story tries too hard to make him look weird and out of place. For example when he brings in the boy, after saving his life, he's kicked out from the hospital (with a bit of comedy?) even though everybody who came with him knew that he saved his life and that he was a legitimate doctor.

But anyways, I am not going to bore you any more with this review. I will wait and see if the next episodes will be better than the pilot, but by the look of it, it might just end in the first 10 max episodes.

EDIT: Watched the second episode and it's even worse. They are trying too hard to make it look like Dr Murphy's current actions always trigger a memory from the past and in given situations he has to "fix" the past by helping other people. I find it extremely disturbing the justification of being irresponsible and ordering a lot of test just to have an example of a patient who would have been helped if the test was ordered. He's supposed to be a resident, why is no one taking care of them around this hospital? They are ALL busy with an operation? Is it difficult to have more than one doctor taking care of the students to make sure they are not screwing up? It's people's lives at risk!

Also, the other characters are just fillers and don't seem to have an impact whatsoever. Take for example, Dr Claire who promised a patient that she's gonna make it after the surgery even though all the medical records proved otherwise. Why wasn't she punished for this? And then.. when they had to make the unbelievable call by none other than Dr Murphy (who's the best of the best and can't even be surpassed by people who are doctors for more than 20 years), Dr Claire refuses to take the risk and help the patient letting her emotions control her and proving once again that she's not ready to be a doctor. Well, lesson learnt! In the end, she even takes credit for saving the patient's life. What a great hospital that I would never want anyone to go to. I understand it's fiction, but at this point, it feels like bad reboots of previous shows. (Take Scrubs as an example if you want to make better television!) Lowering this to a 3. Not worth and I am not going to watch any other episode. I'd rather rewatch the better shows this one is based on.

twist-bite 25 September 2017

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3814712/