It's no secret I'm a longtime, loyal, committed ER fan. Yes, the series is over, but we'll always have reruns. Except ... Not. So. Fast. ER has been pulled from TV, leaving me jonesing for a solid, watchable medical drama.

The pickings are slim.

(Okay, in the beginning I loved the irreverent Scrubs with its blend of broad and edgy humor. But it lost its magic mojo pretty quickly, became just another predictable sitcom. And, well, a limp parody of a limping parody just leaves me cold).

MERCY- warm...

Mercy? Heavens, no. It's a drama, it's a comedy, it's a tragicomedy. It's unable to define its own niche. The episodes got a little better as the season progressed, as did the supporting characters, story lines and unique personal touches, "Flannigan Down!!" But it's on hiatus, I don't know if it'll return. Or if I will.

TRAUMA - hot...

Trauma? Yes, we have a winner there. I will personally play "Rabbit, Rabbit" any time, any place with New Zealand's Cliff Curtis. On the surface, Trauma gives us the scoop-and-run medical disasters we all love to rubberneck on the roads.

But there's depth and substance. It's personal. Visceral. If NBC gives it time, I predict that like St. Elsewhere and ER, it's got legs. Because on Trauma everybody's got issues. The patients, the EMTs the hospital staff. They're real issues. Most of us can relate.

Rabbit's got PTSD. Nancy's overwhelmed by her overpowering Dr Daddy, who also has issues with her good-guy boss and rambunctions colleagues. Boone's struggling to chose between advancing his career and being there for his wife and kids.

Kevin Rankin is pitch perfect as Tyler, an openly gay EMT. Well, open among his colleagues, not his family. That story line alone has so much potential, some already fulfilled. Including the recognition and wary acceptance from his straight partner Boone.

But for me, Trauma has filled the hole Third Watch left behind. Not enough hospital time, character interaction and patient-doctor drama to replace ER. Though it's on the right track for all that and more.

So that leaves Miami Medical. Or does it? I am so conflicted.

Miami Medical - coolish...



Miami Medical is alternatively dark and intense, light and fluffy with quick-switch, hand held camera angles, close-ups and wide shots keeping us just off balance. The ubiquitous state-of-the-art medical equipment serves less as props than inanimate extras, critical players in each high tech life-saving scene.

At MT1 (Miami Trauma 1) quirky characters exchange rapid-fire dialogue and alphabetical attitudes, from angry, brazen, cocky, defensive, enigmatic... all the way to scared, terrified, wacko, zonked. We get teasing glimpses of quirky, but not terribly compelling back stories.

The pace flips from fast, furious and bloody to angst-filled self-doubting  introspection and back again. Hopes, dreams, rivalries and expectations buzz around a fuzzy, competitive pecking order not clearly established, More teasing, less linear plot development adds to the confusion.

Still, somehow it packs just enough wallop to make you want to root for its success. You can feel your eyes clicking along with your brain, trying to keep up with the action, the dialogue, the lightening fast pace.

And then there's the sweeping footage of gleaming art deco buildings, sun-kissed water, sleek women and fast boats... hmm, we've seen this before. Let me think. Horatio. Are you. There?

No. But I wasn't surprised when the final credits of the first episode revealed Miami Medical is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Even so, and even with another Boomer era theme song, MT1 isn't Horatio's or Gil Grissom's CSI.

And oops, maybe my generation is showing but with the exception of Andre Braugher's series-opening cameo --in which he quits, stripping as he walks, eventually buck naked, out of the hospital-- I barely recognized one cast member on Miami Medical ... especially compared to its predecessors.

ER's Anthony Edwards, Sherry Stringfield, even George Clooney, while not yet household names, were at least faces we'd seen somewhere before.

With the exception of Jeremy Northam, who are these actors on Miami Medical? Within the show, why is such a supposedly elite, famous, cutting edge trauma center staffed by baby residents, med students, cocky orderlies and run by an alpha-male nurse and a burned out war vet?

Speaking of Northam, how does a guy dressed in jeans and a grungy tee shirt stroll in to the main trauma room with no credentials, grab medical instruments and dive into a bloody procedure with only a weak, impotent challenge from the staff? Security?!

Oh, he was a MASH trauma surgeon in the first Gulf War. Oh, he's older and wiser than all of them put together. Oh, the barely seasoned doe-eyed Cuban refugee female surgical fellow isn't going to snag Andre Braugher's job after all. Oh, please.

But wait! She saves the pregnant wife and her suddenly bleeding husband too! That the husband would crash was immediately obvious. Ditto the wife. Double ditto that they'd both survive ... plus baby makes three.

Episode 2, more of the same. Sympathepic patients, arrogant attendings, scared residents, guru-like cool new boss. I'm under-whelmed.

Especially because it can be done SO much better. And has been.

St. Elsewhere

As a real life patient, caregiver and medical show veteran -- first St. Elsewhere then ER, the gold standards-- I know a few things about medicine. In reality and on TV.

Mistakes are made all the time. People die from those mistakes. There is no modern urban trauma center in which a chief trauma surgeon makes the rules, much less runs his department with devil-may-care charm and a come-as-you-are style.  

Hospitals, we know too well these days, are all about making money. Hospital politics are real, and often more dynamic and dramatic than the medicine.

Most doctors are average --some above average-- people with soaring egos and the same issues and problems as the rest of us. But they have the training, the equipment, the ability and sometimes the brilliance to do things we can't. Like save lives.

Saving Miami Medical will take more than fancy machines, fake blood and pretty sunsets.

We've seen hospital politics and met quirky doctors on St. Elsewhere, ER, Mercy, Grey's Anatomy (phantasmagoric though it is), and certainly on House that have engaged and entertained us. All of those shows have Got Game.

Miami Medical has gotten off to a t-ball start. It needs a big shot of pizzazz. An infusion of chemistry. A bolus of energy. More focused, three-dimensional storylines. Better treatment from its writers and cast.

So far, the medical mistakes portrayed have been unbelievably Epic Fails with last-minute, impossibly Miraculous Saves. The characters are immature, whiney, wooden and worst of all, boring. They have little sex appeal and apparently no sex lives.

That's no way for a hospital to make money. Especially on TV.

If you were ever an ER fan, this will remind you of the show at its best, and possibly make you cry.  The End of an ERa - "Generosity"