Stream It Or Skip It?
Workplace comedies like St. Denis Medical generally need time to find their way, mainly because the show’s writers need to figure out how to mold stories and jokes around the cast, their characters, and the chemistry they have together. It’s why the second seasons of shows like these always are funnier and more satisfying to watch than the first seasons, and St. Denis is no exception.
Opening Shot: A man is wheeled into the ER at St. Denis Medical; he has burns from an accident during a gender reveal party.
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The Gist: It’s a typical day at St. Denis, with documentary filmmakers following people around the ER, as well as Joyce (Wendi McLendon-Covey), the hospital administrator. Joyce is excited about the opening of the birthing center that was completely her vision, complete with themed rooms. Want to give birth in the Outback or Old Hollywood? Come to St. Denis.
Meanwhile, back in the ER, charge nurse Alex (Allison Tolman) has come back from a Hawaiian vacation, and she feels she can carry those vibes to work. She needs to do it, because she was so overworked and over anxious in the past year. ER doc Ron (David Alan Grier) jokes that he doesn’t recognize her, but he also cynically believes that her feeling won’t last. Alex is also dispensing Hawaiian-laden advice related to sea turtles, ignoring everything that nurse Val (Kaliko Kauahi), a Kauai native and related to Hawaiian royalty, tells her about them.
Also in the meantime, nurses Matt (Mekki Leeper) and Serena (Kahyun Kim) are in different sections, as they mutually requested to be scheduled to avoid each other, due to Matt’s crush on Serena. Emergency surgeon Bruce (Josh Lawson) shows off his new compass tattoo to anyone who notices (which is no one) and tells the story about getting lost in the woods to anyone who will listen (also no one).
When Joyce gets a call from the benefactor who funded the birthing room saying that she’s visiting, she scrambles around to get the unfinished space cleaned up. Then she scrambles around again when the benefactor’s assistant says she likes to contribute her own design ideas. In the meantime, Alex is desperately trying and failing to hold onto those vacation vibes.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Our description from the first season, that St. Denis Medical is Scrubs crossed with American Auto, The Office, Parks and Rec and Abbott Elementary, holds true this season.
Our Take: Justin Spitzer, who created St. Denis Medical with Eric Ledgin, is pretty adept at creating workplace comedies that establish their ensemble pretty well within their first few episodes, then run like clockwork after that. That’s the case with St. Denis, which had a rocky start but was a much more consistently funny show by the end of its first season. That continues in Season 2, and much of that is due to writing that takes advantage of the show’s great cast and the chemistry they’ve developed with each other.
As we said during the first season, St. Denis isn’t reinventing the workplace comedy wheel; it has most of the tropes that have become SOP on workplace comedies — especially mockumentary-style ones — dating back to The Office. But because Spitzer, Ledgin and the show’s writers have leaned into the characters and dug out most of the show’s humor from their personalities and relationships, the show doesn’t have to survive on a succession of gags.
So when there are gags, like Matt accidentally spoiling the couple’s gender reveal in the cold open, those gags hit harder. Part of that is the physical gag itself, but part of that is that we know how much of an innocent Matt still is, even with a year of experience at St. Denis. Knowing the characters and incorporating their foibles into the jokes is always a good thing, and St. Denis starts out its second season having a much better idea who their characters are than when the show started.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Val corrects Alex once again when Alex tells the camera crew about sea turtles.
Sleeper Star: Dave Theune is funny as the underappreciated, but very creepy nurse Keith.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Joyce asks Alex for help with the birthing center, Alex tells her she’s on break and warming a meal in the microwave. So Joyce tells Alex she’ll buy her a new microwave. That speaks to how little Joyce listens sometimes, but it’s also one of the sillier lines in the episode.
Our Call: STREAM IT. St. Denis Medical is entering its second season as a workplace comedy who knows who its characters are and how to craft stories and humor around that, which is always what shows like this should aspire to do.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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