With little fanfare and even less promotion, Trauma is set to return to the schedule on NBC starting Monday, March 8. Especially now that the late-night fiasco has played itself out and five more slots traditionally meant for hard-hitting, mature-content dramas open up in the ten o’clock hour. With five hours to fill, NBC is now falling back on its reliable workhorse, the Law and Order franchise, as it carries out a game of musical chairs to fill those spots vacated by the failed Leno-in-Primetime experiment. Trauma was a natural choice to return to the schedule. It was still in the process of completing its original set of ordered episodes before NBC made the somewhat premature announcement to ‘cancel’ it. Sadly this worked against the series, which was already facing an uphill battle in that no one was interested in investing time and emotion in a series guaranteed to go away. Yet, despite the ‘cancellation’, NBC ordered more episodes bringing the tally at that time to a total of 16. Hardly chump change in terms of episodes for a ‘canceled’ series. Therefore, I wish NBC would just label the show as being ‘on hiatus’ since its last aired episode at the end of November.
Without any surprise, NBC still continues with decisions that make no sense. Instead of giving ‘Trauma’ a fighting chance at the 10pm spot and putting their powerhouse L&O at 9pm, they put this little David to do battle with the Goliaths known as ’24’ (FOX) and ‘Two and a half Men’ (CBS), not to mention whatever reality fare ABC can throw at us. Hopefully the extra kick provided by ‘Chuck’ as a lead-in can help out where the lead-in provided by the declining ‘Heroes’ had failed.
Trauma focuses on the lives and work of paramedics and other emergency personnel, while the charismatic city of San Francisco is the backdrop of all the action. Among the wide ensemble cast, the series stars Cliff Curtis, Anastasia Griffith, Aimee Garcia, Derek Luke, Taylor Kinney and Kevin Rankin.
“Trauma” airs Mondays at 9:00 pm on NBC.
http://www.nbc.com/trauma/
Photo credit to NBC/Mitchell Haaseth