Patricia Heaton lets her hair down (literally) here, in one of the better episodes of this underwhelming sitcom.
For me the setup here is what the show should've been about all along - a divorced woman adapting to single life, juggling a job and being a mother to an adult who is still in need of mothering.
We could still have had Lexi (used so much better here) as the "just one night but actually forever" lodger/fellow intern, Ashley Tisdale's characters blossoming romance with Daniel, Dennis, and the Carol/Dr Frost dynamic - you know, all the bits of this show that ACTUALLY work. Everything else could've gone.
The main plot works very well, the B plot less so. It's very obvious that the message will be "technology is no substitute for the personal touch", and seeing endless variations of that each episode leads to diminishing returns. Does every patient need to have pneumonia too?! It seems to be very common at that hospital.
Overall, this is a much better episode, if this was the start of a retooling then I'm all for it, but only time will tell whether this show can remain in such good form. It hasn't been able to thus far.
For me the setup here is what the show should've been about all along - a divorced woman adapting to single life, juggling a job and being a mother to an adult who is still in need of mothering.
We could still have had Lexi (used so much better here) as the "just one night but actually forever" lodger/fellow intern, Ashley Tisdale's characters blossoming romance with Daniel, Dennis, and the Carol/Dr Frost dynamic - you know, all the bits of this show that ACTUALLY work. Everything else could've gone.
The main plot works very well, the B plot less so. It's very obvious that the message will be "technology is no substitute for the personal touch", and seeing endless variations of that each episode leads to diminishing returns. Does every patient need to have pneumonia too?! It seems to be very common at that hospital.
Overall, this is a much better episode, if this was the start of a retooling then I'm all for it, but only time will tell whether this show can remain in such good form. It hasn't been able to thus far.
