Do you know where your organs are?

Having seen the promotional materials for the original pilot for CBS's latest drama Three Rivers, I must admit that the reworked pilot does appear to be improved, but it was a pretty low bar... The pilot still felt like I was watching an hour-long PSA for organ donation, but the revised storyline was slightly less pious than expected. Still self-righteous as all hell, but what can you do... I never thought I'd say this, but maybe CBS should have gone with another crime procedural instead... (You know, when 87 simply isn't enough.)

Three Rivers focuses on a team of organ transplant coordinators and surgeons who, well, transplant organs. That's pretty much the whole concept... Alex O'Loughlin plays Dr. Andy Yablonski (yes, I'm serious) as the best damn transplant surgeon in the country who works at a 22nd century hospital (apparently--seriously, when he started scrubbing the images like in Minority Report, I had to seriously wonder where the hospital's funding was coming from). He anchors the show and is supported by the likes of the wonderful Alfre Woodard and The L Word's Katherine Moenning. By all accounts, the cast is solid, but somehow the acting falls flat. I think the unconvincing action can be largely chalked up to the format of the show. In supremely cheesy fashion, the show follows patients who will ultimately be the organ donors and recipients, focusing entirely too much on their stories rather than focusing on the doctors' stories. While I appreciate that the audience needs to care about the patients (even though in this poorly executed mess, they don't), it's the doctors who will be around week to week and who should be more of the focus of the show. The actors try desperately to convince us that they're doctors (or saints, as is driven home every ten minutes), but fail pretty spectacularly. There are some excellent actors among the cast, but even the best of them make supremely unconvincing doctors. I've watched a lot of medical shows in my day and the medicine has to be accurate and the doctors have to feel at home with the material. While I can't vouch for the veracity of the medicine involved to great extent, I can certainly judge that none of the actors felt comfortable with their materials.

When the actors don't appear at home in their environment and don't seem fully capable in the profession they've adopted, all suspension of disbelief is taken off the table. When you don't believe these people are who they're supposed to be, you can't really care about them, their patients, or any ongoing storyline. That's the rather unfortunate case with Three Rivers and is the show's primary problem. As far as I'm concerned, ER sets the bar for believable doctors and medicine, and I don't know if I've just been watching too many old re-runs or what, but Three Rivers kind of drove me nuts with its inferiority in this regard. I couldn't, even for a moment, bring myself to believe that any of these people knew any about medicine at all. I saw them as actors first, last, and always. It was really very perplexing, I must say. On an objective level, I know that most of the show's leads are excellent actors and have show their talents in spades in other projects, but here? Well, quite frankly, it was easier to believe O'Loughlin as a supernatural, former blood-sucking detective than as a doctor... Not a good sign.

In the actors' defense, they weren't exactly given gold to work with. The writing was self-righteous and schmaltzy from beginning to end and often earnest to the point of being unctuous. Like I said, it really felt like the world's longest public service announcement. After one particularly ugh-worthy scene where the daughter of a would-be organ donor explains that she foolishly thought that signing an organ donation card meant that the doctors wouldn't try as hard to save someone, I fully expected the words "The More You Know" to fly across the screen on shooting star... The writing was eye-rollingly cheesy at times and the show's own self-importance as it informs an ignorant public about the gift of organ donation was pretty painful to watch. It was kind of like how those god awful Truth ads kinda make you want to start smoking just to spite them (or is that just me?). I had the sudden urge to repeal my donor status after watching this show... Or, as it said on the application I filled out at the DMV, my "live-saving anatomical gift" status. Seriously, ER did more for promoting organ donation and that was with the occasional B-plot. It's a noble cause, don't get me wrong, but I already know that. I don't need to be hit over the head with it. (Just like I know cigarettes are unhealthy, Truth squad. Everyone knows that. Stop trying to convince us of what we already know! Man alive, I hate those ads.)

The show's other failing is that while it tries very hard to be a pulse-pounding, edge of your seat drama, it's exceedingly dull instead. The show employs the requisite anxious/excited musical queues when they're trying to decide if someone gets an organ and when the organ is in transport, but it just feels out of place and unwarranted. I should be biting my nails, but I just don't care. There was no genuine urgency or fear and the writers' attempt at a ticking clock fell completely flat. It may boil down to the fact that I didn't believe any of these people were doctors or that I seriously couldn't have cared less about the patients of the week, but I felt no real investment in what happened to anyone. After all was said and done, I didn't mourn for the guy who died, my heart wasn't warmed by the woman who lived, and the little boy who didn't factor into any of this? Dull as he was, somehow he was the most interesting one... And yet I still don't know why he was there in the first place.

All in all, Three Rivers could have been a good show with a great cast and sustainable premise, but ultimately, nothing really came together and I was left bored and annoyed. In spite of negative publicity and the inauspicious re-tooling of the pilot, I really went into this wanting to like it. It has enough decent bare bones that it should have been able to make something work, but it failed. It's a real shame so many good actors found themselves in such an unbelievably boring, unengaging, self-righteous and even condescending pilot. The rest of the world seems to have agreed with me because the ratings weren't so good... I don't anticipate this sucker will be around for long.

The good news? Maybe Alex O'Loughlin will finally move on to a show that's worthy of his talents and has enough appeal to survive.

Pilot Grade: D+