Round Two: Carol’s Second Act

Carol’s Second Act: Season 1, Episode 2 “You Give Me Fever” (C+)

I had wanted to like this show, since Patricia Heaton’s very likeable and unusually positive performance surprised me a lot during the pilot. This second outing, however, indicates that there’s not much creativity to be found here, with lots of recycled humor, expected plotlines, and absurd situations that would never actually be able to take place in a hospital. “Grey’s Anatomy” popularized the idea of supervised surgeries akin to film screenings, and in this episode, we actually got that, with doctors and nurses sitting down to enjoy laughing at a colleague who never learned how to do a blood draw, something that should probably be more cause for serious concern than just mockery. Carol also seems to get infinite chances to disregard instructions, though Dr. Jacobs should probably yield a bit more to her instincts since discharging this patient without properly addressing the red flags she raised would have been deeply irresponsible. Lines like “she has an irreversible case of old” seem particularly flippant and unrealistic, but I guess I don’t watch sitcoms to find real life mirrored back at me. This episode was big on the milk metaphors, with the very timid Caleb eager to be like almond milk, not nearly as hot as oat or anything else but ready to survive at the back of the fridge. That might work, though he’s sure to be taken advantage of, something Carol was more than happy to do when she got assigned a bunch of punishment work. I’m not optimistic about this show but might give it one more shot.