I love a good retrograde amnesia storyline, and the pilot of Fox’s new medical drama Doc delivers one, though it’s unclear how long the series can sustain the premise. Deadwood’s beloved Molly Parker — who I haven’t seen much of since her House of Cards days, though she’s been acting plenty — stars as Dr. Amy Larsen, your typical hardass, workaholic genius Chief of Internal Medicine. She’s cold, detached, rude to her patients, and disliked by her colleagues.
But Dr. Larsen hasn’t always been this way, as we discover when she suffers a car accident that leaves her with amnesia, erasing the last eight years of her memory. It was an eventful eight years, and unfortunately for Larsen, she has to learn about it all at once. Her ex-husband, Dr. Michael Hamda (Omar Metwally), informs her they’ve been divorced for four years, and worse, she discovers that her young son died seven years ago. Her daughter greets her warmly, but Larsen doesn’t yet realize that the girl lives with her father and that they’re largely estranged.
From what Larsen pieces together, her once-loving family was shattered by her son’s death, and she coped by throwing herself into her work. This cost her her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and the respect of her colleagues, though they tolerate her because she’s excellent at her job. It turns out she’s also been secretly sleeping with a younger doctor, Jake (Jon-Michael Ecker), with whom she was in love. However, due to their clandestine dynamic, they never told anyone, leaving Jake to suffer his loss in silence. He doesn’t even attempt to tell Larsen they were an item — why would she believe him?
The series’ central storyline, then, is what Dr. Larsen will do with her second chance. She has to grieve her son all over again, but will she push everyone away as before? Or will she try to reunite her family — a difficult task, given her ex is now remarried — improve her bedside manner, befriend her colleagues instead of alienating them, and become a warm mentor to her interns instead of an unbearable asshole? Additionally, she’s made plenty of enemies over the years, including Party of Five’s Scott Wolf, who plays the doctor replacing her as Chief. They might not be ready to forgive Larsen, even if she changes her ways.
Amid all this drama, of course, there’s the usual array of medical cases that dominate any given medical drama. There’s only one case in the pilot episode, but I suspect these will take center stage in future episodes while Larsen’s family and work drama settle into the B and C plots. How long can this premise sustain itself? At least a season, I’d say, and I’m willing to stick around because 1) Molly Parker is fantastic, 2) amnesia tropes work for a reason, and 3) I’m among the many these days who find comfort in cozy medical and mystery procedurals, particularly those with compelling characters, solid acting, and satisfying episodic endings.
The reality, however, is that Doc will almost certainly get lost amid the buzz for The Pitt, the highly anticipated and critically acclaimed medical procedural on Max that is definitely not an E.R. sequel. Molly Parker is great, but competing with Noah Wyle won’t be easy.