"Chicago Hope" is a pretty decent TV show.
It's not a great TV show. It started off in that direction but lost its best actor, best character and best writer in its second season.In the season and a half since then - since the departure of Emmy-winning actor Mandy Patinkin and creator/-writer David E. Kelley - the show has floundered. The cast keeps growing, but the characters don't.
And, while watching tonight's episode (9 p.m., Ch. 2), it suddenly dawned on me why it's impossible to take "Chicago Hope" to your heart in the way so many viewers have grown attached to "ER."
Most of the characters on "Chicago Hope" are jerks.
They're rude. They're obnoxious. They're pompous. They're arrogant.
They're jerks.
All of this seems to be some sort of misguided effort to recreate the magic created by Patinkin, whose character - Dr. Jeffrey Geiger - was the biggest jerk of all. But Geiger's character was a perfect balance of all those awful characteristics tempered with compassion and caring.
Geiger was a tortured soul. When you looked at him, you could see that underneath all of his jerkiness was a man haunted by the death of his infant son - a man so singleminded in his quest to save patients lives that he was often unaware of what a jerk he was.
Geiger was also balanced by characters like Dr. Aaron Shutt (Adam Arkin), Dr. Phillip Watters (Hector Elizondo) and Camille Shutt (the since-departed Roxanne Hart).
Now, just about everybody on "Chicago Hope" is a jerk:
- Aaron has become both obnoxious and boring, dumping his wife for no apparent reason last season and floundering without a decent storyline ever since.
- Dr. Kate Austin (Christine Lahti) has been thoroughly unlikeable since she came on the show at the beginning of last season. We were apparently supposed to feel sorry for her when she lost custody of her daughter, but she was such a terrible mother she didn't deserve custody anyway. (Only recently has her character lightened up a bit.)
- Dr. Daniel Nyland (Thomas Gibson) went from being sort of a Lothario to being rich, spoiled and bratty.
- Dr. Billy Kronk (Peter Berg) has his moments, but mostly he's a Neanderthal.
- Dr. Jack McNeil (Mark Harmon) is not only a mean gambler, but he's a boring, mean gambler.
- Watters even acts like a jerk in much of tonight's episode.
- Tonight, Dr. Keith Wilkes (Rocky Carroll) demonstrates that he too can be a jerk in tonight's episode. First, he's so jerky toward Nyland you feel sorry for the other doctor. And then he accuses his wife - who just miscarried their baby - of having an abortion behind his back.
Unlike Geiger, who was a wonderfully written and acted character and who could have made something like that work, it just doesn't happen so that you can empathize with Wilkes.
About the only nice characters on the show are Diane Grad (Jayne Brook) and Dr. Dennis Hancock (Vondie Curtis-Hall), who usually have little to do except react to the jerky characters.
Which is not to say that every character should be a wonderful person in a television drama. That would get boring real quick.
Look at "ER." Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) can be overbearing and unpleasant, but she's not unremittingly so. Dr. Doug Ross (George Clooney) has often behaved abominably, but he's still a sympathetic character.
Even the biggest jerk on "ER," Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle), is written in such a way that you can understand him, even if you don't like him.
But characters like that are harder to write than the jerks on "Chicago Hope."
Tonight's installment of "Chicago Hope" features the return of Mandy Patinkin. But, before fans get too excited, he appears in one three-minute scene - and he may or may not be playing Jeffrey Geiger.
(If that's a bit cryptic, well, I don't want to give too much away.)
POOR JUDGMENT: "Chicago Hope" executive producer and his team display rather poor judgment in their treatment of alcohol and drugs this week and next.
In tonight's episode, excessive drinking by Aaron Shutt is, at times, played for laughs. And his excessive drinking leads to a sexual encounter - a particularly poor example.
One of the plot lines in next week's episode involves the debate over the medicinal use of marijuana. While the debate makes some valid points on both sides, it comes down strongly on the pro-marijuana side of the argument.
While that's a question that's open to debate, the episode also plays drug use for laughs - another poor example.
Where was the network input on these scripts?
UN-CYBILL-IZED: After spending much of this season floundering through different writers and different producers, "Cybill" has begun to right itself.
But it's still listing badly toward poor taste.
The show has always been a little out there. But it went way out there in terms of crude sexual innuendo. So crude that much of the dialogue can't be repeated in a family newspaper.
And so crude that "innuendo" would be a big understatement.
In tonight's episode (8:30 p.m., Ch. 2), there are still a couple of moments that will make you cringe. Fewer than before, but still there.
But what's really sad is that the episode tries to make a statement and fails. The main plot revolves around Maryann's (Christine Baranski) reluctance to have a mammogram.
It's an episode that tries to show heart - but demonstrates that "Cybill" doesn't have any.
CBS is apparently counting on "Cybill" to replace "Murphy Brown" next season, should Candice Bergen decide to call it quits on that show. But CBS better have something else in development.
"Cybill" won't be able to cut it.
VIDBITS: After literally months of wrangling, ABC and Arsenio Hall have agreed on a title for his new sitcom - "Arsenio." Really.
The newly christened "Arsenio" debuts on Wednesday, March 5 at 8:30 p.m.
- Roger Rees is returning to Boston. Well, at least the sitcom version of Boston.
Best known for his recurring role as Robin Colcord, the rich boyfriend of Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley) on "Cheers," Rees has signed on to play a recurring role in "Boston Common." He'll play the ruthless new college president who clashes with our hero, campus handyman Boyd (Anthony Clark). Rees' first appearance is scheduled for March 9.