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Jordana Spiro stars as Dr. Grace Devlin, a surgical resident at a prominent Chicago medical center, who has a bright future ahead of her as a doctor, but is also deeply indebted to the Southside mob in Fox’s new drama, The Mob Doctor.
Jordana Spiro stars as Dr. Grace Devlin, a surgical resident at a prominent Chicago medical center, who has a bright future ahead of her as a doctor, but is also deeply indebted to the Southside mob in Fox’s new drama, The Mob Doctor.
The Cast
Along with Spiro, William Forsythe plays Constantine Alexander, Florianna Lima is Nurse “Ro” Angeli, Zach Gillford is Dr. Brett Robinson, Jaime Lee Kirchner is Dr. Olivia Watson, Zeljko Ivanek is Dr. Stafford White, James Carpinello is Franco, Jesse Lee Soffer is Nate Devlin and Wendy Makkena is Daniella Devlin.
Production
The Mob Doctor is a production of Sony Pictures Television. The series was created and written by Josh Berman and Rob Wright. Both serve as executive producers along with Michael Dinner. Dinner directed the pilot.
The Concept
The pilot gives us a glimpse into a typical day in Grace’s life. She’s forced to treat a mob patient in the back room of a warehouse and then she needs to rush across the city to the hospital to perform surgery. The pilot also shows us the various important relationships in Grace’s life. Ro is her best friend and she’s dating Brett, but they don’t have a lot of time to spend together between their demanding schedules. Olivia is her main rival and Dr. White is their boss and Chief of Surgery.
Grace has a complicated relationship with her mother, Daniella, and her brother, Nate; all three of them are living together in the same Southside neighborhood where they grew up. Franco is Grace’s ex with ties to the mob and the mob boss, Constantine, seems to have a soft spot for Grace and she has one for him too.
My Take
I didn’t love this pilot. It moved very, very slowly and I found myself checking the time more than once to see if it was almost over. Spiro is great and she was my favorite part, which is a good thing since she was in every scene. But for me, there was too much exposition in the dialogue and it made the scenes drag. I know new shows need to introduce us to all the characters and the cast is fairly large, but it felt like the show was throwing too much at the audience at once. The scenes with the hospital rival felt like overkill. Yes, it’s realistic that surgical residents are competitive, but there’s already enough drama going on without giving Grace a work rivalry.
The potential for a love triangle between Grace, Brett and Franco was nicely set up without going overboard. It seems like the classic good boy versus bad boy and Spiro has chemistry with both actors so I’m curious to see how that plays out. But the last 10 minutes of the pilot are the best and there was a twist that I did not seeing coming at all. It’s those last two scenes that convinced me to add this to my DVR this fall.
The Mob Doctor premieres Monday Sept. 17 on Fox at 9 p.m.
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