I am a sucker – absolute draw me in and strap me down sucker – for medical dramas. I can claim a few episodes of Doogie Houser. I was like 9 but I remember it. MASH – I know the 4077. I don’t know why, but my early years had some mad exposure.
More recently, House, ER (thanks TNT syndication! Not kidding. When Ella was really tiny and sleeping in my lap 10 hours a day, I totally watched the whole thing – 14 seasons.) and of course newer variations on the theme like the new “Mental” and “Royal Pains.”
I don’t know what it is, perhaps my own disclusion from formal education (if I’d obtained a high school diploma would a doctorate be within my grasp?.) Or perhaps my hyper-sensitive rational of common good sense. Because you know, good sense is the #1 draw of medical drama. Be it on cable TV or the 10 o’clock news.
Good sense dictates several lessons garnered from my tv viewing, such as: vodka, the miracle antiseptic. Why do I never have that crucial first aid tool?
Oh, and the weird square shaped x-acto knife. I just have the regular kind of x-acto knife. Now I do have some mad needle skills, but the best do-it-your-selfer i’ve seen with a needle and skin is actually my dad. I once filmed him stitching up a hand, and seeing him apply local anesthetic is the only time in my rememberance where a medical procedure made me nauseous. Sometime eptitude and necessity does not equal deftness and skill.
There is a reason why the Dr. Quinn (she was a medicine woman) and the Dr. Cheney Duvall types are so enthralling, and it’s easily quantified by the good common sense doctoring that they employed. And the hot red headed female doctor stereotype, but we’ll ignore that aspect for the sake of this post.
Doctors swoop in and save the day. In real life, they treat rashes and STDs and the flu. Sometimes they treat things that aren’t even there, like women giving birth under (un-beknownst to them) normal circumstances. Or ear infections in kids – antibiotics don’t kill viruses, so stop trying. Sometimes they save the day and that is a good day for everyone. Buy it’s not every day. They aren’t saviors.
On TV the ailments they treat have to garner much more drama, like lukemia and heart attacks. (in an ER a heart attack is apparently referred to as an MI, or Miocardial Infarction. Whatevs. It’s totallay a heart attack.)
And in real life I’ve only been in an ER four times, I think. And it’s way more boring than any TV show could sustain. Doctors are more boring. Hospitals are boring. Nurses, while overworked, are more boring.
Oh TV. Police, law, doctors, crime, and the suburbs. You know If you glamourize it and film it in sketchy lighting and add an “unexpected” plot twist that I WILL WATCH YOU.
So even against my better judgement, against my knowledge and experiance, against my personal beliefs about the rules of medicine…the medical drama continues it’s hold it’s allure. The known, but unknown. The record button on my DVR. I am folding laundry, and I WILL WATCH YOU.