Show No Mercy

There were a lot of titles I could have chosen from for a show called Mercy and eventually just had to pick one. It's overall crappiness led to such contenders as "Lord Have Mercy" and "Like, Gag Me With a Scalpel," but "Show No Mercy" most aptly described the approach I'll be taking to this review.

While NBC's latest drama Mercy may not be the worst pilot I've ever scene, it's easily one of the ones I've hated the most. I was annoyed and even kind of appalled by this self-righteous mess from minute one. So in spite of a decent production value and cast, I found Mercy to be about the most off-putting pilot of the season so far. It's real shame it filled Parenthood's fall slot because I'm certain it's of inferior quality... (Parenthood was supposed to premiere instead, but Maura Tierney had to drop out of the show to pursue treatment for breast cancer. It's a shame on many, many levels.)


Mercy tries desperately to be Grey's Anatomy, but with nurses, but generally falls apart. The primary issue with the show is that is can't decide what it wants to be. One minute it wants to be a sudsy soap opera, the next it wants to be a hard hitting drama. It succeeds at neither and leaves the viewer with an uneven mess. The show centers around Veronica, a nurse who has recently returned from Iraq and who is having difficulty adjusting to her civilian life again. Now, first and foremost, storylines about veterans aren't generally my cup of tea. I'm not saying they can't work (much like religion isn't real high on my list, if handled in the right way, it can be awesome--see Nurse Jackie for an example), but more often than not, the writers just don't really know what to do with that kind of a situation, so they slap together every cliche you can think of and hope it makes the character deep and conflicted. Rather than being a subtle, searing portrayal of a woman dealing with post-traumatic stress, for Veronica, it seems to be nothing more than a gimmick or affectation--an unwaveringly self-serving, holier-than-thou, annoying affectation at that.

I have to give the writers a little credit for trying something a bit different, but where they earn points for stepping ever so slightly out of the box, they lose them all upon execution. Veronica is instantly unlikable in the most arrogant, dismissive, and snide of possible ways. After a shift at the hospital where doe-eyed new girl Chloe (played by Michelle Trachtenberg (aka Dawn, Georgina)--who would do herself a favor by sticking with Gossip Girl) laments the fact the fact that she watched and old man finally succumb to cancer on her first day. Upon saying how sad it was to watch him die alone, Veronica hijacks the conversation and actually says, "That's not sad. That's a trip to Club Med compared to Iraq." Or something like that, in which case the people at Club Med really might want to revise their brochure... She then rattles off a few horror stories from the front lines and I'm not saying those stories are any less sad, because they're aren't, but Veronica seems to think that a slow, agonizing death from cancer is a walk in the park compared to war. That might be the case in her opinion, but who the hell is she to belittle and devalue the importance of someone else's experience?! Just because it's a different experience than your own does not make it irrelevant and certainly doesn't make it a trip to "club med." I know the writers were trying to make her seem all badass or whatever, but it just made her seem like a complete and total bitch. Not only does it dismiss the agony of that man's experience, but it slaps Chloe in the face and disregards her own emotional response. I would understand if the writers were trying to make her out to be a cold-hearted bitch because of her tough experiences, but I don't think that's the angle they were aiming for at all.

It's fine for a character to have a chip on her shoulder and to have flaws, but Veronica just seems all over the place and has no where near enough redemptive qualities to make up for any of it. In the hands of a better actress, Veronica's unbalanced state could be compelling, but in the hands of its current owner, it just seems unintentionally flighty and uneven. One minute she's screaming bloody murder at a doc who didn't heparinize a patient, the next she's a simpering idiot drooling over the hot guy at the bar. She has issues with authority, but can't stop talking about her time in the military. She's guarded about her life, but talks about her experiences in the war constantly. The show is trying to make her too many things all at once and it's making even her best of qualities fall flat.

With Veronica at the helm, I'm not sure there's much of anything that can save this show. Her colleagues are unexceptional, though nearly as uneven in their portrayals. Riding the wave of Nurses good! Doctors, baaad! that has cropped up in the latest slate of nurse-based medical dramas, Mercy holds fast to this notion and paints the doctors to be incompetent and mean, whether that's an accurate portrayal or not. Save for the requisite ruggedly handsome love interest doctor, the rest of the docs are basically useless.

Speaking of Dr. McDreamy (seriously, for all intents and purposes, we may as well use the same moniker), he and Veronica apparently hooked up during the war (even though she's married) and is now working at the same hospital with her. Wacky, right? Sadly, for as formulaic as he is and for serving such a painfully obvious role on the show, he was easily the best part. The writers didn't try very hard when putting this character into action, plain and simple. Veronica has recently reconciled with her husband, so there's supposed to be some sort of love triangle going on, but they made the husband so unerringly unappealing that the triangle just seems like a lazy contrivance to drag out the will-they-or-won't-they between Veronica and McDreamy (played by James Tupper, of Men in Trees... um... fame?). He easily made for the most likable character on the show, but he just seems like a crackerjack toy at the bottom of a bad box of cereal.

The second half of the pilot was admittedly better than the first, but by that point, I already disliked everyone so much that I had a hell of a time sitting through it. This show could have been a gripping look at a woman with PTSD trying to put her life back together, but instead it just seems like a mishmash of other medical shows, borrowing whatever gimmicks it can. The show has no subtlety whatsoever and even the aspects that could have worked wonderfully are wasted. Veronica could have been a wonderfully flawed, multi-faceted character, but the portrayal is so erratic and unlikely that I didn't buy any of it. I look at characters like Dr. House and Nurse Jackie, the most flawed and implausibly likable of characters and it makes it clear that the writers of Mercy dropped the ball. In their rush to make her a badass, a minx, a wife, a friend, an enemy, a vulnerable wreck, an emotional mess, a strong-willed ball-buster, a know-it-all, the experienced cool kid, a compassionate care-giver, etc, etc, etc, they lost all sight of who this character really is. Veronica very well could have been all those things, doled out slowly and deftly over time, but they were all crammed into 42 minutes of an unsteady, unlikeable pilot instead. Even when Veronica's friends and family point out how insane and bitchy she's being, it hardly undoes the damage and in no way redeems her. It would be one thing if the audience were supposed to dislike her, but that's clearly not the writers intent, even if that's what it became.

All told, the show could have been Grey's Anatomy for nurses, like it was clearly aiming for, but ultimately, it just couldn't decide where it wanted to go or who any of the characters were. Had the writers really figured out what they wanted out of the show and who they wanted Veronica and her colleagues to be, it could have worked, but as is? It's an unfocused, condescending, self-righteous mess. I do think I'm going to give it one more week, however, just to see if the writers somehow find their footing. It's doubtful, but it's an impending train wreck I might just need to see.

Pilot Grade: D-