As the editor of this publication, I get to sit back and let everyone else write the opinions and reviews and news. Good ole’ Jason Woods gets to take heat for suggesting that “Supernatural” has casting problems. (It does, by the way.)
But since I’m the editor, I can also butt in whenever I want and say something.
My new show is “Off the Map.”
I love it. One episode in, and I’m hooked.
Mr. Woods called it the “Grey’s Anatomy” of South America, but I don’t agree with that. “Off the Map” is the “ER” of South America. Rather, it’s “ER” meets “House” with the influence of “MacGyver” set in a jungle.
“Grey’s,” if you’ll pardon the term, is a chick show. My mom watches it. All my female friends watch it. I don’t. I don’t know a guy who does.
Everyone watched “ER.”
“Off the Map” opens with action — people dying, someone’s trapped on a zipline hundreds of feet above the air, a family is dying of tuberculous, but the father is too proud to accept help. In walk three young American doctors, brash, looking to surf and drink, and all of a sudden they have their smug smiles slapped off their faces.
And then halfway through the episode, a freakin doctor gives a guy a transfusion from a green coconut to save his life.
That’s good television. That’s the kind of television that should have been on the air in the fall — it was not.
You know what else I like about the show? I have no idea who any of the actors are.
Know who Caroline Dhavernas is? She’s one of the stars. She played Sarah Mann in “Passchendaele.” Zach Gilford, who plays another young doctor, was in “Friday Night Lights” for a bit. And the dashing hunk head doctor is played by Martin Henderson. Do you recognize any of his credits?
Who was Noah Wyle before “ER”? What did the show do for the career of Julianna Margulies? Here’s one: George Clooney.
“Off the Map” has potential, and despite its unfortunate start competing with the Tucson tragedy, it can be the new “ER” filling a hole where about a dozen shows have tried and failed.
Leave a Reply