The Good Doctor TV Review – Captivating Cringefest

The Good Doctor is a show I’ve been keeping up with for a while now and I thought I might write a little review. I don’t normally watch hospital dramas, but I watched the first season of this while I was stranded in a guest house last year and I’ve been keeping up with it ever since. I think they should call this show the “in reality, everyone would be fired immediately” show. That’s what’s most interesting about this show to me, and I’m probably going to use it to talk about the state of TV in general. This is my review of The Good Doctor.

This is a show where the hospital hires an autistic doctor to work as a surgeon despite his limitations. It’s a sort of aspirational elseworlds kind of premise, because in reality, no hospital would ever do that. In the first episode, the chief of surgery lays out the case against this idea: a legal liability, a risk for patients, etc. The President of the hospital, who is the aforementioned autistic doctor’s surrogate/adopted father, convinces the board to appeal to their better nature with an emotional argument. So, it’s also nepotism. In reality, this would never happen in the real world.

This is a show where, a few episodes ago, a male doctor had a violent meltdown in a parking garage, threatening a female hospital employee (who was also hired through nepotism). Nope. In the real world, immediate firing, total blacklisting from any industry, probably criminal consequences.

This is a show where the hot male boss begins a romantic relationship but not one, but two of his female colleagues, one of which is a subordinate. Nope. A show where one of the doctors uses her “alienate everyone and be a bitch” strategy and keeps getting promoted even though her reputation is well-known as a backstabbing opportunist. Meanwhile, in the real world, LinkedIn is wall-to-wall articles about excising toxic personalities from companies no matter how competent they are in the name of team cohesion. The people who succeed in modern corporate America are not bitches or assholes, but two-faced snakes who are gregarious and nice in person but undermine others in ways that are difficult to detect. So… nope.

This is a show where Shaun Murphy has a hot girlfriend for like an entire season where the girl clearly views him as a project (nope) and stays with him despite being consistently hurtful, insensitive and not fulfilling any of his girlfriend’s relational needs (double nope). The girl ultimately breaks up with him, not because their relationship is obviously a house of cards built on a terrible foundation, but because Shaun is caught in a love triangle with another hot girl (triple nope). In the real world, and I hate to say this, Shaun would be bullied and ostracized his entire life and probably become a school shooter.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention in my review of The Good Doctor that the show never acknowledges that it takes place in fantasy land. It treats these things like it’s an aspirational drama that’s appealing to our better natures, even though in the real world if almost anything on this show that’s played as an aspirational lesson actually happened, it would probably result in a corporate lawsuit.

I touched on this a lot in my season 4 Star Trek Voyager review, where B’Elanna is allowed to be a workplace bully because that’s “her personality”, and Tom’s foolishness is constantly forgiven because he’s “likable”, etc, but a lot of TV drama seems to be this way. TV drama tends to play up these situations and appeal to our understanding and sense of humanity to forgive these sorts of workplace shenanigans because we know the characters, but in the real world, there is no understanding, no one knows or cares who you are, and if you do anything at a job besides make conservative decisions and robotically do your job just competently enough to not attract attention to yourself while having a milquetoast, forgettable polite personality you’re not going to have a job for very long.

There’s a lot of cringe in The Good Doctor, but the show doesn’t seem to notice that it’s cringe. The show seems to think it’s inspirational. I’ll give you an example. Shaun, the main character, who is the autistic doctor, sings Nikki Minaj’s Superbass at karaoke. “He just gotta give me that look, when he give me that look/Then the panties comin’ off, off, uh.” What a triumph of, uh, acceptance for autism.

Speaking of acceptance for autism, which is sort of the central point of the show, it gracelessly walks a fine line between representation and harmful, meanspirited stereotyping. This show is to autism what Big Gay Al is to LGBT representation. Shaun is so over the top and stereotyped. But the show seems so pleased with itself, so I guess… just let them have their fun? It’s so self-serious and sanctimonious but at the same time incredibly damaging.

Shaun’s relationship with Lea is a good metaphor for the entire show. Lea is not altruistically friends with Shaun because she genuinely likes Shaun, she’s selfishly friends with Shaun because being friends with Shaun makes her feel like a better, more open and more tolerant person, which is actually hugely disingenuous and deceitful to Shaun and is the source of immense emotional and psychological anguish. Such is the show’s relationship with the subject matter of the show.

I realize I’m bagging on this show a lot, but its weird combination of heartfelt character moments, cringe, and otherworldly lack of self-awareness is something I find strangely captivating, so I watch every episode. The acting in this show is actually really good, by the way.

That about does it for my review of The Good Doctor. Click here for more Movie/TV Reviews.