“Red Band Society,” premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on Fox (Channel 13)
The pediatric ward at Ocean Park Hospital is run by Nurse Jackson (Octavia Spencer), a no-nonsense type who has to keep some of her high-spirited teen patients in line — like Leo (Charlie Rowe), a cancer patient, Dash (Astro, from “The X Factor”), who has cystic fibrosis, and newcomer, Jordi Palacios, who wants renowned surgeon Dr. Jack McAndrew (Dave Annable) to perform his surgery. And then, there is 12-year-old Charlie, also the narrator (Griffin Gluck). He’s in a coma, but can hear everything that’s going on around him — and takes a merciless ribbing from another newcomer to the hospital wing, cheerleader Kara (Zoe Levin). Sad? Maybe, but Jordi speaks for his new friends, and himself, when he observes: “Everyone thinks that when you go to a hospital, life stops. But it’s just the opposite — life starts.”
With its heart in the right place, and head somewhere else, “Red Band Society” is good-natured, well-meaning, life-affirming and … off-key. That’s a shame for a couple of reasons, foremost the autobiographical underpinnings of “Society,” which are not incidental. Creator Margaret Nagle told writers at the recent TV Critics tour that “I had a brother who was in a coma, and I grew up in pediatric hospitals, and so I found them to be the most uplifting, and the most hilarious places — the black humor, the fun, the getting to know the kids that you would never know in any other situation.” That may certainly be her experience — her brother recovered — but hardly everyone’s. But most people who have had the good fortune to have never stepped into a pediatric ward may have other impressions altogether. “Society” is a dramedy with desperately sad underpinnings — young adults in crisis, who have lost limbs or are facing mortal illnesses. The pilot acknowledges that, then promptly looks on the bright side by morphing into a teen TV series with all the recognizable trappings.
Verne Gay, Newsweek
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