A Gifted Man

It's a same ol' same ol' hospital drama, nothing new and this one very unrealistic on top of it. The mystical story doesn't contribute much to the plot either except being a gimmick. In the Pilot it all looked very promising but by episode 3 i can't find anything to keep watching it. The characters are bland and cliché with the depth and wisdom of a soap opera. The story line is nowhere exciting.

It's obvious where it's supposed to go: stubborn cold hearted rich MD at a private clinic gets turned around by the good hearted spirit of his ex wife who was a living saint. So far he's been running between two clinics (a rich and a poor - get is?) solving complicated medical issues without any trouble, while he gets nagged on by his ex wife. There is no depth anywhere and i couldn't care less about either of the characters. Just very boring. Very disappointing.

I was nicely surprised when I finished watching the first episode of Gifted Man. Even it is placed in medical context it is not like any of medical drama shows on TV. Many of them are so popular, and some of them are very good made, but they are all almost the same and are oriented only in character relations and melodramatics in everyday life.

So I don't watch them. If I would be medical professional I would probably watch them all. On the other hand everything that is different from conventional, and have a bit of mystery in it always attracts me. And that medical part here, looks serious and professional.

With that in mind I was happy to see what Gifted Man will tell me. I was not disappointed at all, at least with pilot. Not some masterpiece but overall, it is very good and even in medical context not like any well known medical show we know.

First we have very good actors in it, like it is Patrick Wilson and Julie Benz, and second, the spiritual world. I am interesting to see how they will develop this, maybe the hardest and questionable aspect. So it is not an easy task. It must be presented somehow believable. If they fail in in it the whole show will fall. For now the segment in dealing with what me missed through life was very good and it fits right.

I don't know much about Shaman's ritual, but I hope they present it in correct way.

So with first very good impression, I am happy to see where it will go, and I hope I will not be disappointed.

It is so refreshing to see a new show of this caliber. I have this show set to record on DVR because I never want to miss an episode. The cast is perfect and it is so refreshing to see someone in the medical profession willing to help others without the concern of money. There is so much greed in the world it is a sin the way many people can not afford proper medical treatment in this country. This is not only true of the poor but also the middle class. I would love to see this show continue on the line up for next season and future seasons to come. In my opinion this was the best Friday night new show of the season. I would hate to see this how canceled before it got off the ground.

After viewing the third episode, these are my thoughts: I really quite like this show. It has a major Broadway star (Raul Esparza) in a supporting role and he's excellent (that's just a side note - thank you show runners). The premise is so much better than Ghost Whisperer, whose spirituality I found, at best, pretty saccharine. I did however, like the relationship between Melissa and Jim. You can't do much better than Jennifer Ehle as Dr. Holt's dead wife. Patrick Wilson is such a beautiful man and talented actor that I'm totally buying into his narcissistic Neurosurgeon character, who has enough restraint to not go after every woman he sees, and a good amount of decency left as a man and a doctor to still care about every patient, not just the rich. That inner struggle is what will keep the show interesting (and that people keep catching him talking to thin air is very amusing. He has a lot to learn about how to keep that on the down-low). So it's walking a fine line right now. He needs to always be somewhat torn, struggling with his sense of privilege, or it will turn into Dr. Michael Holt, Social Worker.

I sort of feel that his situation is like the Rolling Stones cover of You Can't Always Get What You Want (But if you try sometime, you just might find You get what you need). There seems to be a spiritual force involved that is trying to make him more balanced, to feel on a deeper level than exulting in his art as a surgeon (what we saw in the premiere episode was pretty cold and contained, but he has thawed a bit in each episode).

I like this show enough to stick with it and gave it a solid 7 out of 10 because it has room to grow.

A possible reason why so many films and TV shows are set in New York is the feeling that just about anything can happen here. And when you have that element working for you, it becomes a wide open canvas on which the characters in the story can play. This is an example of a program trying to be both realistic and fantastic all at the same time.

Patrick Wilson played Dr. Michael Holt, a quintessentially arrogant but renowned Manhattan neurosurgeon, whose practice was making money hand over fist because all of his patients had Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage.

One night, he bumped into his ex-wife, Anna Paul, portrayed by Jennifer Ehle, who also happened to be a doctor, but a lot more down to earth: she ran a free clinic in Alphabet City. Michael and Anna instantly hit it off, just like old times, back in Alaska where they struggled when they were first married. So just when Holt thinks he might be rekindling things, he learns a horrible and bizarre truth: Anna died two weeks before he saw her that night.

The initial reaction was that Michael maybe should have a visit to the doctors on 379's "3 Lbs." and gotten a brain scan (if they could have done a crossover episode). In fact, he was seeing and connecting with the spirit of his former spouse and she had a bunch of stuff to share with him and some unfinished business of her own.

This changes everything for Dr. Holt who starts "taking meetings" with Dr. Paul, finding some empty room so he could talk to her about various elements of his job and about her former practice - it seems she left the Alphabet City patients in disarray and the staff needed access to her computer to make sense of some things. Some of the time, this is amusing as Holt is talking to himself as if he is speaking to another person. Other times it seems like the doctor is having a breakdown to the people around him.

Meanwhile, Julie Benz played Michael's sister Christina, who believes in the supernatural and is encouraging Michael to explore the factors involved in what he can see and how this is something that is both meant for him to be a part of and is proof of her philosophy. And it wouldn't hurt if Michael became less of a total jerk, with Anna's spiritual influence.

New York played a part in that classic "haves and have nots" way, with the wealthiest people who need medical help waltzing into Michael's gleaming hospital wing with every new medical device to help enhance or save their lives, and the people of the Lower East Side, barely able to cover their costs, struggling to get some doctoring for their health concerns at Anna's overcrowded clinic.

The always capable Margo Martindale played Michael's assistant and added some much needed gravitas and humor to the mix and Pablo Schreiber was a shaman Michael met, who worked part time at the Lower East Side clinic, and who helped Michael understand the elements of the spiritual, and was an ex of his sister.

Let's note the pedigree of the behind the scenes players on this series: Susannah Grant, who created the program, wrote the screenplay to Julia Roberts' Academy Award winning performance of "Erin Brockovich" and Jonathan Demme was one of the program's producers and directors.

I think it's difficult to have such an unsympathetic character at the center of a series. Yes, Dr. Holt is brilliant, but his bedside manner sucks and he treats his co-workers like meaningless underlings for the most part, even as he was learning to find his humanity again through his pro bono medical work. Maybe if he were a quicker study in human nature, more people would have been attracted to him, and to this show, which was, if you could stomach Dr. Holt, pretty good.