Welcome to “Off The Map,” also known as “Grey’s Anatomy: South America.”
That’s not mentioned endearingly either. Unlike the early years of “Grey’s,” this is not captivating television. Instead, its all the paper-thin characters, ludicrous medical plots and contrived interpersonal relationships.
The doctors in “Off the Map” are “baby docs,” down in South America to pad their resumes and “start over” from the mistaken pasts they somehow have despite a youth presumably occupied with medical school.
If the context of the show didn’t give it away, it’s another Shonda Rhymes production. But “Map” lacks everything that made early “Grey’s” great and the Addison that made “Private Practice” bearable.
It’s a shame—the show has a very promising cast, including Zach Gilford (“Friday Night Lights”) Mamie Gummer (“The Good Wife”) Rachel LeFevre (“Twilight”) and Caroline Dhavernas (“Wonderfalls”) as the new young doctors (another “Grey’s staple) while Martin Henderson plays the veteran “hot-doc” (presumably filling the role of “McDreamy”).
The first hour was filled with the doctors learning jungle-based medicine and painfully trying to communicate with the natives (nobody knows Spanish it seems). Further hitting home that this is a Rhimes productions, most of the characters fit a pretty distinguishable early-“Grey’s” mold, from characters reminiscent of Burke, Izzie, Meredith—and oh yeah—Bailey, or Zee.
In the first hour, we’re treated to each of the interns—I mean doctors—lives, somehow inspired by each of their challenging cases. And while no one got together in the first episode, there was enough forced sexual tension to predict the season’s worth of liaisons.
If you like soapy, predictable and reminiscent of existing medical shows, give this one a shot.
Too bad this show STUNK in its first episode, I was really thinking it COULD have been interesting based off the previews. However, once I saw the first episode there were several major flaws that I just can’t shake. Just to name a few:
1. The head doc’s Australian accent amazingly appears and then disappears, then reappears again!! Magic? I think not… just poor acting, either that or it’s a guy that can’t make up his mind as to which accent will better attract the ladies… maybe next episode he’ll try a British and/or French accent?
2. Why would this head doc hire a whole bunch of new doctors that don’t speak a lick of Spanish? Seems to me like that should have been one of the hiring criteria, unless they planned on stocking all the new non-Spanish speaking docs with a 13 year-old bilingual boy to translate for them and give them life lessons.
3. So first real accident, some guy is going down a zip-line and runs into a tree AND gets his arm stuck in the pulley system on the zip-line. Doctors go down zip-line and don’t pass one single tree that appears to be in the way of the zip-line. Where is said tree? Where? Possibly he ran into it going down a separate zip-line, but the guy decided he’d just continue riding along until something worse happens – like say running over your arm with the pulley system? Yeah – that makes the most sense.
4. Get this folks… If you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you don’t have any blood available for a transfusion, just cut yourselves a couple of “Wilsons” (aka coconuts) and use that for a blood transfusion. Makes perfect sense to me – we should just start growing a bunch of coconut trees around all the hospitals, that way they’ll never have to worry about running out of blood.
5. So they’re out on this “firefly” lake or pond or whatever and the way the dying guy said it was that if you throw a rock and disturb the algae, it’ll light up like a bunch of fireflies. Ok, right. But if all it takes is a little disturbance, than why did the canoe not disturb the algae when it was put in the lake or pond or whatever, and why did the oars not disturb it either… but when a rock and a person’s ashes hits them it drives that algae crazy mad?? Who knows? Also, how in the world could the guy that nearly had all his insides burst apart lean over the side of the canoe (because it makes perfect sense that he was in the boat with the two doctors, PERFECT sense) not scream out in pain when he did this?
6. Finally, at the end of the day, all the new docs head off into the woods (while it’s dark) and then magically (my there’s a lot of magic going on with this show!) they reach the ocean and the sun is shining!! How did that happen? Answer: either it’s magic or it took them all night to walk to the ledge overlooking the ocean. Suddenly – they all jump off one by one and are miraculously not killed by the crashing waves either drowning them or said waves smashing them against the rock wall. WOW. They have got some strong legs and arms to be able to propel themselves away from their death.
Needless to say, I won’t be watching next weeks episode where an anaconda or something wraps itself around a person and is strangling/killing him so they can’t cut off the snake because that’s the only thing that’s keeping that guy alive… UNLESS of course I’m feeling especially in the mood to bash some poorly executed show. Which I might be.
This show was pretty bland.
I agree about the lunacy of hiring 3 doctors for a South American clinic, 3 out of hundreds, that don’t speak any Spanish?
And for a third world country, the floors are rather well waxed and the dirt roads rather well graded.
I’ll up my assessment when one of the docs comes down with malaria or yellow fever in week 2. Doesn’t anyone use mosquito netting there?
Thought it was pretty good myself. Do agree with the accent comments and the algae in the pond. Disagree with the hiring of non-Spanish speaking doctors as this is most often the case with doctors volunteering in foreign countries. There are definitely some rather obvious inconsistencies and more attention needed to details.However, have to give them credit for the coconut water transfusion because that is pretty accurate. Coconut water is almost identical to blood plasma and is actually used for transfusions. I had heard of this before while living in SE Asia, so good for them to use something so off the map!!
Are you kidding me I love this show!!!! Stop thinking so hard and just watch the show!!
Sarah, Martin Henderson is a New Zealand, not Australian.