TNT’s new medical drama, Hawthorne [Tuesdays, 9/8C], features a strong central character in Christina Hawthorne [Jada Pinkett-Smith] – the latest empowered woman to come from Turner, and probably meant to complement its other female-centric series, Saving Grace and The Closer. Unfortunately, it can’t hold a candle, let alone a cotton swab to either of them.
Hawthorne is a widow [cliché] with a headstrong daughter, Camille [Hannah Hodson] [cliché] who blames her for her father’s death [cliché]. She’s also the Chief Nursing Officer at Richmond Trinity Hospital and has on her staff, among others, a blonde beauty named Candy [Christina Moore] who gives “special attention” to returned soldiers [cliché] and a male nurse, Ray Stein [David Julian Hirsch], whom almost everyone suspects is gay [cliché]. She and her mother-in-law, Amanda [Joanna Cassidy], have agreed to keep her late husband’s ashes each alternating year [kinda creepy]. Amanda is also on the hospital’s board [cliché]. The two of them… wait for it… don’t care much for each other! [Cliché!] In the opening ep, we also meet Christina’s best friend, Bobbie [Suleka Mathew – one of two reasons to check out the show] and Dr. Tom Wakefield [Michael Vartan – the other reason to check out the show], Chief of Surgery, apparently, the only the only doctor in the entire building who actually wants to be there [one doctor, played with withering sarcasm by Anne Ramsey, plays golf instead of doing her rounds and blows up at Ray when he follows her prescribed meds and the patient almost dies – and then blames him, to boot]. Then there’s the Japanese doctor who speaks a pidgeon English that only Bobbie can decipher [yikes!]… Christina winds up fighting for her patients, her nurses and herself on an hourly basis – but gets to turn on the tough love when Camille [her daughter, remember?] pulls a protest by handcuffing herself to a junk food dispenser the school is having removed – and she doesn’t even eat junk food! It’s the principle of the thing [cliché]! Sadly, for all the technical expertise that is poured into producing a very good-looking series, no one appears to have given much thought to the writing. [Fortunately, TNT still has Brenda Johnson and Grace Hanadarko…] Final Grade: C-