8 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 25, 2002
ARTS
'Do Over' recycles
old ideas to no avail
By Daniel Yowell
For the Daily
Joel Larsen is a 34-year-old paper
salesman with thinning hair and a
generally lonely and miserable life.
His sister, Cheryl, is just out of rehab
and his father has come close to burn-
ing down their childhood home in a
near-tragic Wonder Bread toasting
accident. Already, this sounds like the
sure-fire formula for a new hit series,
but it doesn't stop there. When Joel
arrives at the scene, he finds Cheryl
playing with a defibrillator at the back
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of an ambulance parked
in the driveway. She
puts the pads on Joel's
head, joking that it
might "jump start (his)
hair" and accidentally
electrocutes him. "Whoa
... it was on?"
You might ask your-
self the same question
about your television
'*
Do(C
Thursd
8:30
w
constant arguing and strange
predilection toward talking to the
family while taking bubble baths.
Joel's best friend, Pat, is the one char-
acter who knows his secret, creating a
situation that might be described as
the opposite of the Tom Hanks movie,
"Big." Pat's wanna-be-a-punk-even-
though-I'm-a-suburban-kid-who-sup-
ports-the-Republican-party character
provides a few good laughs, even if
Josh Wise's delivery falls flat at
times. And Penn Badgley's perform-
ance as Joel should not go unmen-
tioned, as he does manage to create a
very likable lead char-
acter.
Even if they were
derivative, the episode
AVER had its share of good
moments. In one scene,
lays at Joel's mom "invents"
p.m. the coffeehouse long
before the rise of
chains like Starbucks,
echoing a number of
jokes from "The Wedding Singer." A
scene where Joel finds the courage
to give a rousing speech at his
school election assembly is reminis-
cent of many scenes out of the
"Back to the Future" trilogy. Even
more noticeable is the 34-year-old
Joel's narration throughout the
episode, which instantly calls to
mind "The Wonder Years," only with
the addition of a few decades and a
completely fantastic premise.
All in ll, "Do Over" should prove
to be a moderately entertaining show
as the season progresses, but a
groundbreaking series it most defi-
nitely is not. At the end of the first
episode, Joel narrates, "The '80s
might not be so bad this time
around." Such is the case with "Do
Over." Nevertheless, the ideas behind
the show were still better the first
time around. ,
Courtesy of ABC
What would you say you do here?
CC '' O
MDs a clever show
in the 'Scrubs' genre
By Christian Smith
Daily Arts Writer
set after watching "Do Over," a new
comedy on the WB network.
Although the show is not completely
devoid of content, it relies so heavily
on previously used jokes and prem-
ises that you might find yourself
feeling like you've seen and heard it
all before. Something must have
gone wrong somewhere, because the
nostalgia that "Do Over" is intended
to evoke is probably not nostalgia
for the movies and TV shows from
which its gags and central plot line
were lifted.
It turns out that our hero, Joel, was
transported via electrocution into
1981, and back into his body as a 14-
year-old. Given the opportunity to
relive his high school years, Joel
takes it upon himself to fix his par-
ents' failing marriage, become cool
and popular, and get the attention of
"that hot chick" who would never
used to give him the time of day. The
beginnings of these goals are already
in place by the end of the series pre-
miere as Joel first gives his dad rela-
tionship advice, then becomes vice
president of his school using his
supernatural, 34-year-old powers of
persuasion and finally gets noticed by
his crush - all in a day's work! Tak-
ing that into account, questions
around where this series will go from
here are bound to arise.
But enough about plot. The real
questions is: Is "Do Over" funny?
The answer is: at times, yes. There is
a general silliness to the show that
ensures that the ridiculous premise is
never taken too seriously, and a few
solid characters are particularly
funny, if not original. The quirky dad
gets his share of chuckles, though he
seems to have come straight out of
"Malcolm in the Middle" with his
Last year, when NBC revealed its
fall lineup, nobody thought that an
innovative and witty little medicom
buried deep within its Tuesday night
comedy block on the most competi-
tive night of television would even-
tually morph into the season's most
surprising hit. But "Scrubs" did just
that, and now ABC is trying to capi-
talize on that success
with one of its high
hopes for the new sea-
son, the medical dram-
edy "MDs."
Not a bad place to M
start, considering last Wedne
year at this time, the 101
only bright spots on its
schedule were celebri- A
ty editions of "Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire?" The
trouble is, "Scrubs" was an offshoot
of an already played game, and
"MDs" comes off kind of like a
"Chicago Hope" for the "Scrubs"
genre. What becomes is a cyclical
regurgitation of the same characters,
same topics, and same problems.
Having said that, "MDs," which
goes up against yet another medi-
cine-themed show, CBS' "Presidio
Med," enters the hospital scene with
refreshing effectiveness, attempting
to reveal the absurdity of the Ameri-
can medical structure in amusingly
ridiculous fashion. Set in a fictional
San Francisco hospital, Mission
General, the show follows the lives
of two renegade surgeons attempt-
ing to buck a merciless HMO sys-
tem. Played by William Fichtner
("Black Hawk Down") and John
Hannah ("The Mummy"), Dr.'s
Bruce Kellerman and Robert Dal-
gety will make up rules just so they
D
sd
p.
B
have some to break in order to go
face-to-face with the corporate suits
of the money-obsessed system.
Both men do fine jobs, interspers-
ing cocky disdain with gentle sensi-
tivity and cunning wit; but the real
fun lies in listening to Hannah Dal-
gety bark orders in his thick Scottish
gnarl. While it's next to impossible
to cipher through the therapeutic
gibberish he lays on, it doesn't really
matter because he could read a bus
schedule to similar
effect.
The rest of characters
* aren't quite as unique
or interesting, including
the stereotypical
[ays at uptight manager, by-
m. the-book attending
physician, and ambi-
tiously naive intern, as
they come together
quite derivatively in the pilot
episode. But Kellerman and Dalgety
save the day and manage to pump
some life into an unenthusiastically
tired plot: Young intern Maggie's
unofficial first day on the job (con-
veniently, also the new hospital
director's first day) gets off to an
intense start, as she assists the two
doctors in performing illegal surgery
on an uninsured woman under the
guise of an autopsy.
The problem with "MDs" lies in it
similarity to those other formula-
based hospital shows. "ER's" over-
dramatic tendencies have removed
the show from the critically lauded
bandwagon it once rode, and "MDs"
threatens similar territory. The rea-
son "Scrubs" works so well is
because it isn't really just about
hospitals and doctors; it's about
people. If "MDs" can follow the
path it started, maybe people will
find the same.
01
Courtesy of the WB
Daniel-san's senior picture.
Expand your reach. Challenge perceptions.
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