HawthoRNE

Fair or unfair, I judge medical shows by how they depict a Code Blue. The real thing is the rawest of dramas: fifteen or more professionals descending on a room within sixty seconds of the alarm and performing meticulously organized chaos to save a helpless human body. When done right, there is even someone who guards elevator doors to be sure that family is intercepted before blundering onto the scene. I'd rather watch My Mother the Car than see a depiction that comes off as too real. I've been involved in codes more than once, and I'm a wimp.

So when not one but two patients' hearts stop during the pilot of HawthoRNe (emphasis on the RN) I was relieved to see a sanitized version of reality.

Chief Nurse Christina Hawthorne [Jada Pinkett Smith: she of the bad girl leather outfit in Matrix 2 & 3] is the gutsy head nurse in Richmond Trinity Hospital. She bends rules to the breaking point while facing widowhood and bringing up a gutsy teenage daughter Camile [Hannah Hodson] who, strangely, also bends rules to the breaking point.

A pilot for a series has but one opportunity to get the attention of the Powers in TVland, so the producers and writers of HawthoRNe (and Pinkett Smith is an ExProd) threw in everything but the E.R. sink to get the job done.

In this episode we are presented with a suicidal patient, a street lady with something special in her shopping cart, and a near fatal mistake that leads to the aforementioned second Code Blue. Three medical sub-plots are a bit much. After all, CSI only deals with two crime scenes per episode. Don't forget the time we need to explore the Goth daughter's turmoil and nurse Christine's soliloquies to a funeral urn. That makes five themes. I think there were six, but I left to get a glass of water.

This is an ensemble cast, of course. Surgeon Dr. Tom Wakefield [Michael Vartan, Alias] offers support and conflict, and David Julian Hirsh does a nice rif about nurse Ray, a man in a traditionally women's profession. Jillian Armenante [Judging Amy] is a veteran actress with depth, but she has a small role and doesn't appear in the web page cast list. Will she be there next week? I hope so. The problem with pilots is that we don't know who will last. Captain Pike didn't do Star Trek, and Fr. Mulcahy wasn't in the pilot for TV's M*A*S*H.

But wait! I forgot about nurse Candy, [Christina Moore: MADtv] who looks pretty in pink and is the generous type, giving a nearly R-rated reward to a returning war hero. I'm all for fulfilling male fantasies, but, hey, this is only an hour show not counting commercials. Subtract one plot point and there would have been more time for gratuitous sex.

HawthoRNe doesn't have the edginess of, say, Saving Grace. But it has good moments. If the writers settle down and cast members grow into their parts, it could be what the doctor ordered.

TNT Wednesdays at 9:00 Eastern, 8:00 Central

The Guru