For standard broadcast fare, it’s impressive how innovative NBC has been with not just outside of the box hits but shows about communities you might not often see over the last decade.
One of the channels being known for the hallmarks of American television introduced us to shows like Outsourced (set in India), Sunnyside (a community of immigrants in New York), Perfect Harmony (the South), Superstore (the working-class American Midwest).
It’s perhaps in this tradition that NBC is branching out into far-off settings by adding a show about a Syrian refugee who faces margianalization despite his brilliance as a doctor on Transplant Season 1 Episode 1.
This highly relevant tale of a modern-day medical Maguyver of sorts starts off with an emotional wallop of a first episode. The only problem is where does the show go from here.
The show starts out with about three minutes of set-up as we see our protagonist, Bashir Hamid (Hamza Haq) cooking kebabs on a grill at his brother’s restaurant while three customers come in. It’s not much of a scene but it’s enough to give us clues about the diagnoses.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take long for the action to start happening and it’s a full-scaled explosion (likely the minority of the show’s special effects budget) caused by a truck crashing into the building.
We later learn that Hamid has his skills sharpened in Syrian war zones so it’s probably not unintentional that the Toronto diner suddenly looks reminiscent of a scene of carnage from Homeland or Jack Ryan or any other series set in the Middle East.
As opposed to most procedurals that simply feature their doctors walking and talking in sterile environments, the first few minutes of the pilot are gripping as we see a guy MacGrubering his way towards patient treatment.
As he and three of the other accident victims — his brother runs away from the scene fearing his immigrant status — get transported to the hospital, Hamid is unwilling to stop being a doctor.
To the frustration of the hospital staff, he continually leaves his cot to administer advice about the three other victims who serve, to varying degrees, as the case-of-the-week.
If there’s anything the first episode deserves credit for, it’s layering storylines on top of one another into a well-paced sense of chaos.
One parent gets angry at him unaware that Hamid saved his son’s life. One medical resident (Laurence Leboeuf) suspects he is a medical genius and is trying to mine him for information that could save the patient. Another administrator (Tori Higginson) is just baffled that the guy won’t stay put for his injuries.
On top of this frenzied circus is Hamid’s search for his brother and kid sister as well.
Then there’s a cop who suspects Hamid might have been the perpetrator of the crime. It’s such obvious racial profiling that it comes off as flat commentary. At the same time, it’s fantastically prescient considering the state of public perception of cops today and that this episode must have been written and shot before COVID.
While the cop is a little bit of a strawman, the series establishes the stakes pretty convincingly. This is a guy who has to work his way up from the bottom and this is a segment of society that I’m already pretty invested in.
It also helps that actor Hazma Haq boasts charisma out the wazoo as the wide-eyed Hamid.
Similar to the protagonists of those USA shows of the aughts like Royal Pains, Burn Notice. and Psych, it’s probable that the show is going to run the same angle: Hamid will not only be gifted but a special kind of genius (have a knack for diagnoses without modern equipment) whose shoes no one else can fill.
Similarly, those strengths will be balanced by a certain outsider status bought on either by self-imposed weaknesses (Pysch, Monk), bad luck (Burn Notice), or the way that society might just be rigged against the good guys (Royal Pains). In this case, it’s mostly the latter.
However, there’s also the social commentary angle which has the potential to make this show more than just a fun procedural if these guys play their cards right.
The main question is what happens when the show goes into being a procedural? It seems like he will be hired at the end of the episode as a legitimate doctor.
The pilot was exciting because an unknown commodity was running around a hospital curing patients without permission while evading police AND trying to locate his missing family. From here on out, it seems reasonable that he’ll have his colleagues’ permissions to perform medicine and I doubt he’s doing to get racially profiled mid-surgery.
So where do we stand? The show had a wonderfully exciting pilot but it might never live up to that unless it gets inventive really fast.
What do you guys think? Will the show be able to keep up the excitement of this episode?
Stray Observations:
- Based on the initial bickering of the two, I would not be surprised if Hamid and Magalie LeBlanc (the aforementioned orderly played by Laurence Leboeuf) were romantic interests. It’s too early to say if this is a good or bad thing
- Beware: Some of the medical scenes are pretty icky
- Come on Doctor Bishop, just give the man the job! Seriously though, I hope we get to delve into why he was rejected the first time around.
Orrin Konheim is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and his personal blog at Sophomore Critic.