A Gifted Man

This is a great show. If you like medical dramas with some supernatural and comic relief mixed in. The show moves at a pace with minimal drag on parts. If you liked the movie passengers with Ann Hathaway and Patrick Wilson who stars in this ironically too, then you will really enjoy this. Its a show where all you have to do is watch one episode and you are hooked, trust me. Its also a show where you wont want the episode to end and you will look forward to the next one all week. Its a combo ER and Grey's anatomy, ghost but roles flipped flopped. What makes it better then those two is the pace the show goes at, plus the show is funny too without forcing it and trying to be. Saying he is a gifted surgeon is an understatement, but he lacks people skills which makes the show funny to. Please give this show a shot for one show, you will love it.

I have spent the entire weekend watching the first 12 episodes and at first I thought it was a little like House but then I got over it. I like Michael Holt and I like that he reveals a little of himself every week. The menagerie that accompanies him every week fits in with each episode and the writing is quite good.

I know it's probably headed for the scrapheap because most of the good ones are but I hope it reveals a lot more of Michael and Anna's relationship that we don't know already.

I love Rita and while I didn't like her at first she is the type to grow on you and certainly would pull the group at the Clinic into line and probably get them the money they need to continue to support the community.

Good one! Well done and let's hope that if the show is canceled that Patrick Wilson finds another home on TV very soon. He would be sorely missed otherwise.

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.

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.

totally Love this show.. just the right mixture of all emotions..like the the way the show can make me laugh and cry all in the same episode. one of my favorites this season.. A GIFTED MAN..really like the new women that's heading up the clinic but was really disappointed when you find out she is married.. honestly cant wait for next weeks episode.. its every mans night mare to be haunted by his x wife but i wouldn't mind it if she was always happy and cheery like the ghost wife on this show. its almost like the the good doctors conscience always leading him the right way to go even when he don't want to.. i was also impressed with the moral messages that were portrayed related to current issues in today's society..