Can Lightning Strike Twice for Cosby?

Article first published as Can Lightning Strike Twice for Cosby? on Blogcritics.

NBC and Bill Cosby are developing a family sitcom starring the legendary funnyman. With the success of The Cosby Show many years ago, the question remains, can lightning strike twice?

First of all, I find it very odd that NBC is the network doing this. Not too long ago, there was exciting buzz about that channel bringing back Michael J. Fox in a family sitcom, and NBC was so confident in the project that it ordered a full 24 episodes before the series made it to air. Roughly halfway through its freshman run, The Michael J. Fox Show is a ratings failure, sure to never get a sophomore season. With its last place numbers, especially on the night that was once Must See TV, it seems like NBC is doubling down on a failed idea.

But no two people are like, and so, too, will no two shows be exactly the same. Just because Fox couldn’t find something fresh and new (his sitcom, which I finally gave up on in November, definitely feels like one that would have worked well in days gone by, just not now) doesn’t mean the Cosby can’t. Judgment should be reserved.

Now, Cosby has already attempted and failed at a second go-round. Cosby, which began a few years after The Cosby Show ended (and also followed up the even more short-lived The Cosby Mysteries), ran for only four seasons. That may seem like a lot, and the death of series regular and comedy star Madeleine Kahn may have had something to do with it ending then. But that run is rarely remembered by anyone, a footnote in Cosby’s career despite its Emmy nominations and the return of Phylicia Rashad as Bill’s wife.

TV audiences crave a good new family sitcom. Modern Family is aging and The Middle and Raising Hope barely get by. Most of the popular comedies on television today don’t revolve around a mother, a father, and their children. Surely, everything clever about such a unit has not already been told? We just need a new style to tell it in.

However, this may be not be the direction NBC is going with the new show. One idea being bandied about is to bring back many of the actors from the original The Cosby Show, and making this new venture a continuation, a la Dallas. Dallas works, though, because it balances a new cast with the old. Since most viewers would tune in for Cosby himself, would this potential series be able to do that? Nostalgia can only carry things so far, and as great as The Cosby Show is, its era seems to be over. They might be better served doing something completely fresh.

It might not be a bad idea to try to provide other draws for the show besides Bill Cosby himself, if they go in that direction. He is getting up there in the years, and given that most successful comedies run for close to a decade, that should be taken into account when sketching out the premise.

Age has not weakened Cosby’s humor, though. Doing a fresh stand up (to be more accurate, sit-down) special for Comedy Central last fall, he landed joke after joke. The whole thing was hilarious. He doesn’t need to convince anyone who saw it that he can still deliver in the humor department. And he did so by mainly sticking to the type of material he’s known for.

So maybe I’m wrong that a traditional family program can’t succeed today. Maybe it just needs that special Bill Cosby touch. Maybe his brand is exactly the right one to catch that lightening again, and he can be a television legend once more. We’ll see.

Do No Harm doesn't harm, nor heal

Article originally published as DO NO HARM Series Premiere Review at Seat42F

Grade: 82%

NBC’s DO NO HARM premieres this Thursday at 10 p.m. ET. It’s a Jekyl and Hyde story about a doctor who turns into a psychopath for twelve hours every day. The medical aspect is played up, with much of the drama set in the hospital, making DO NO HARM a hybrid between a classic good vs. evil tale and a case of the week procedural.

In some ways, DO NO HARM reminds me of Awake, which was canceled after a single season. Both have two distinct realms, but the big difference in DO NO HARM is, instead of the other characters changing around the protagonist, the protagonist changes in the midst of everyone else. But they both dwell in mythology and mystery, to make the series just a little better than the standard network flare.

Does this signal the end of the straight cop or doctor show? We have so many flooding the air waves that any new show needs a gimmick to get attention. In the case of DO HARM, the hook is the personality shifts of the lead. This could be the future of the genre, using the tried and true formula that has worked for so many other shows, but including a little extra to trick the critics and discerning who would write off such a procedural without a second thought into sticking around.

In the pilot of DO NO HARM, Doctor Jason Cole (Steven Pasquale, Rescue Me) treats a man who has a cluster of blood vessels in his head. It’s a tricky surgery, one Cole has not performed before, but he soars through it, giving the man his life back. Cheesy goop, the same kind of story you’d see on any other medical procedural. This is the part of the episode we do not need.

What’s much more enticing is that Jason turns into a man named Ian (also Pasquale) at night, and since Jason has been using drugs to repress Ian for five years, Ian isn’t too happy. Now that Ian has built up a resistance to the regimen, he is bent on revenge. This could be a disaster for the surgeon, except that Jason is smart enough to put safeguards in place to keep Ian from actually performing surgery. For now, anyway, until Ian figures out a way around them.

There is a second villain in the form of Jason’s co-worker, Doctor Kenneth Jordan (Michael Esper, A Beautiful Mind). Jordan isn’t much of a threat, at least not yet, since he’s clueless about Jason’s condition. But we don’t need Jordan to be all that bad, since Ian is the real antagonist of the series.

Now, a big leap of faith has to be taken in that Jason is the head of a surgical department at what looks to be a major hospital. His boss, Dr. Vanessa Young (Phylicia Rashad, The Cosby Show), is extremely understanding of his unspecified medical condition, which does not allow him to work at night. But considering what long hours surgeons work during their training, it’s odd that he would reach such a level, especially at such a young age, without being able to fully commit to his job. And as a doctor herself, shouldn’t Vanessa have more questions? She clearly doesn’t know the extent of Jason’s struggle, and I find that very odd.

We also have to believe that Jason has a buddy named Dr. Ruben Marcado (Lin-Manuel Miranda), who not only just happens to be a brilliant researcher, but who is willing to continuously risk his career, using the hospital’s resources to try to find ways to control or cure Jason of Ian. I’m sure that the writers can spin a backstory that justifies the relationship between Jason and Ruben, but explaining how he does all of this work for Jason and still keeps his job will require quite a bit of a stretch.

That’s the issue with DO NO HARM: it stretches reality too much. I really love the interplay between Jason and Ian, the struggle for control over each one’s own life, and how the actor handles both parts, but some things don’t make sense.

For instance, Jason is apparently a very bad liar; at least, that’s what we’re told during his interactions with Dr. Lena Solis (Alana De La Garza, Law & Order), the obligatory love interest. Yet, he lies all day, every day in his normal life, to almost everyone, and even thinks he can lie to Ian in video form. How does that work? Is he a bad liar or isn’t he?

I did think it was interesting that this pilot begins with Jason’s flirtations with Lena, and then reveals a history that includes an ex, Olivia Flynn (Ruta Gedmintas, The Borgias), whom Ian is still obsessed with, and who has been keeping a secret from both men. Olivia seems like the sort of plot that would begin in season one, and then be revisited later, with Lena introduced much later in the series. To enter at this point is a choice I find intriguing, though not unlike what ABC’s Scandal is currently doing.

I enjoyed this episode for the most part. I like the premise, and the cast, which includes John Carroll Lynch (Body of Proof) as Jason’s confidant and Samm Levine (Freaks and Geeks) as Jason’s competent assistant, is great. Yet, the nagging plots holes did infringe on my enjoyment. Plenty of good shows start with some uneven storytelling and work it out, which is what I hope will happen here.

One last complaint. While the image of Jason writing Do No Harm in a foggy mirror, and Ian erasing the message, works great for promos, it feels completely ridiculous in the episode. This should not have been included.