Monday Mornings

I go along with pennymaui: Patients need this kind of wake-up lesson about not necessarily trusting the first doctor or opinion.

I've already learned a lot of things I didn't know just watching the show, especially tonight. (I DVR shows) I hope this show has a lot more then 10 episodes. I really think people can learn a lot just from the Monday morning parts of the show. I love what they do there. Especially about the feelings of the patients and their families. Please, please keep this show going, it's great. I'm so sick of all the stupid comedy and reality shows that are on now. They have canceled sooo many good shows after just one season.

I should clarify that this review is written at the very beginning of the series. So far, only the pilot has been released, so this will be obsolete soon. However, I saw that the show is already getting more negative reviews than it deserves, so I thought I should do my best to do it some justice.

Now, if you're a David E. Kelley Fan, you'll soon find familiar elements in this show, the easiest to spot being the abnormally high number of main characters with different personalities. You will probably come to love some of them and hate others. Personally, I love this aspect of Mr. Kelley's writing. Sure, shows with all insanely cool characters fighting insanely unlikeable villains are...cool. But, through creating an array of very different characters, the writer has you constantly questioning values, and as a result, gets you more emotionally involved.

One of the most disappointing things about the Pilot was the lack of Comedy. Now, obviously this is meant to be a drama, but again, Mr. Kelley has shown a lot of strength in intertwining drama and comedy in various dosages: The practice had lots of Drama and some comedy. Boston Legal had both equally. Harry's Law had perhaps the most comedy of all. But so far, I've seen lots of Drama and no Comedy, which can get boring, preachy, and resembling shows like Grey's Anatomy.

In short, this show does have a bit of promise, but some flaws too. However, being a David E. Kelley fan, one should know that all his shows start slow and work their way up. One should also know that the cast may change without notice, and one should also be sure of the fact that a lot of strength is bound to arise from the guest appearances.

In conclusion, if you are the kind of person who follows a show a week-by-week (as opposed to those who'd rather wait for the DVD to come out), then it's only fair to have some patience, and let the show grow. Granted, I won't lie and say it's the best pilot ever, but I see some promise in this show, enough to give it a chance to properly impress me.

I was very skeptical of this show to say the least. That's because I can't remember a single hospital show that I liked, ever. Monday Mornings ended up being a pleasant surprise. Maybe pleasant is the wrong word—the show is neither for the squeamish on the visual nor the emotional side.

One preview I read stated that Monday Mornings was special because it showed us a side of the medical system that we haven't really seen before in other hospital shows. I rolled my eyes a bit at that, because what it usually means is coating the topical parts of the show with some completely unrelated melodrama elements to show the "human side" of it all. Well, Monday Mornings does show the human side alright, but not in the way I would have expected.

The focus and unique element of the series are the eponymous Monday morning meetings of surgeons. The main topics discussed are cases of patients who died while in the hospital's care—namely those where the decisions or conduct of the surgeons might have been a factor in the patient's death. These meetings are highly dramatized for the sake of television, but they drive home the point of what immense pressure lies on a medical professional's almost every decision. And how hard these situations are for them personally, even before they have to take professional responsibility, and justify their decisions.

It's a part of the medical system we don't very much like to think about. With all the research, high-tech equipment and drugs marketed as miracles, a good deal of eyewash makes us want to believe that in our day and age, no one needs to die if we just have the technical means to heal them. But when we first decide to seek medical assistance, when we are diagnosed, how accurate the diagnosis is, if the doctors make the right calls at the right time, and whether they react correctly to the way we are responding to treatment—at any imaginable stage, the human element is a huge factor and source of error. Portrayed in other shows as the "gods in white", Monday Mornings makes it a point to show that, for doctors, mistakes being a matter of life and death doesn't change the fact that they are human beings who occasionally will make them. It's an uncomfortable truth that who treats you can make a crucial difference in your life. But medical science so far wasn't able to make us clairvoyant. Judgement calls, and bad judgement, are an everyday part of it.

While there are some stereotypical characters, they're less cringe-inducing than on most shows. There's the workplace sweethearts, but their relationship (so far) hasn't overshadowed the actual plots. There's the tyrannical supervisor who, just barely, manages to not turn into a caricature. And the Asian overachiever is actually funny ("What's the worst that could happen?" – "Dead. Worst is always dead." – "Have you done this before?" – "Once." – "How did it go?" – "Dead.") The first episodes averted more cliché lines than they gave in to, opting instead for more honest and realistic conversations. Going by genre alone I expected it to be painful to watch, but it really wasn't.

There is only so much you can do to keep hospital routine, even from such a different perspective, fresh enough for a television show. Monday Mornings has yet to show if and how it will manage to do that. Most other shows just add so many personal and relationship plot lines for the medical staff, that the entire show essentially ends up being a random soap opera in front of a hospital backdrop. Others... well, actually, the only other one I can think of is House, M.D., who borrowed from crime shows to become more of a thriller. I'm curious to see whether Monday Mornings will carve its own path. But so far, my verdict is that it's definitely worth having a look at.

Besides all the negative appointments and the low rating, i find this show amazing! Against all odds, it's almost cool as House MD, witch i really loved. Each doctor is amazing, completely different from each other, with very strong personalities. The stories are cool and well made, and the medicine part is so realistic.

There's some negative points, indeed, like the small cast. Will be a very difficult job to the writers to make more than twelve episodes, in my opinion. Each episode revolves around one or two specific cases. We could have one case for each doctor, for example. I think they should cover the personal life of the doctors, too. It's like if nobody got a family, kids, almost unreal.

But overall, it's very enjoyable show. Give it a try before believing in the negative reviews done here.

This show is about shedding some light on a process that is hitherto unknown or little known to public. As Sanjay Gupta, the author of the original novel by the same name (and a NYT bestseller) pointed out in one of his interviews, "As surgeons, we spend a lot of our time educating patients. If the show is authentic, then people may learn stuff from it and become more empowered patients. They may see what happens after something goes wrong and how the hospital and the doctors deal with it. It can be very humanizing. Often times when something goes awry in a hospital, the communication completely breaks down. (Read @: http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/04/

We all visit doctors at one time or another in our lives, and most of the time, do not know what questions to raise. At least I did not. In the past 30 years, I have seen lot of changes in the medical profession. Now we have doctor's assistants, nurses, nurse's assistants and a host of others to whom we keep repeating our medical history before we actually sit down with the doctor. Dr. Wilson says the boy's father is out of the picture, which indicates that he has spoken to the mother about him. Between the two of them, the question of his medical records got lost. The point here is it is a slip up and it can happen. That is what the story is about. We need to know what all matters.

Dr. Gupta said that he originally intended it to be nonfiction, but later changed it to fiction. Naturally, fiction means creating tension, some drama. This is serious stuff. I have seen comments on other sites that seem to agree with me. I for one am looking forward to other episodes. One thing I could say is the length of commercials. The breaks are too long and hurt the flow of storyline. Cutting it to half will certainly improve the flow.