Review – Three Rivers
Three Rivers – CBS – 9:00/8:00pm Sunday – USA / Channel 10 – 9:30pm Wednesday – AUS
With V not debuting until sometime in November that makes Three Rivers the last new fall TV series to land in our lap. Summing up perfectly what was wrong with this batch of new shows Three Rivers is tacky, predictable, boring and a waste of time. Tis the season for poorly thought out medical dramas it would seem.
Set in Pittsburgh (Seriously. Not Boston, or L.A., or New York, or Miami, or San Francisco, but Pittsburgh.) Three Rivers is about the Three Rivers Regional Medical Center which deals primarily in transplants. As we meet various doctors and patients they all repeat the same basic facts “Three Rivers is best transplant facility in America” and Dr. Andy is the best damn transplant doctor there is. One of the patients requests him personally just so he can say “You are the best transplant doctor.” I assume he’s read the script.
Dr. Andy is played by “Australia’s own” Alex O’Loughlin who has previously bored us with his handsome looks and lack of personality in Moonlight. Dr. Andy is the sort of guy whose biggest flaw is that he cares too much. Just like all handsome brilliant white doctors Dr. Andy is surrounded by an eclectic group of ethnics to marvel at his vast array at skills, banter with him, or tell it to him straight. Alfre Woodard even turns up as the head of surgery because it would seem that along with Delroy Lindo on Mercy and James Pickens Jnr on Grey’s Anatomy black doctors may never score the lead role in a TV series but at least they can always get promoted to head of surgery.
The first episode of Three Rivers opens with another ad for work safety where a construction worker falls several stories and ends up in hospital. Just as he’s being declared brain dead in Cleveland a pregnant woman is collapsing in need of a heart over in the Three Rivers Medical Center. We then get to go through the motions as the family of the dead man agree to give up his organs, but then change their mind, before learning how his heart will save a pregnant woman and change their mind again because “that’s what he would have wanted.” Meanwhile the pregnant woman’s husband is given a choice of “taking the heart transplant now, or risking that you won’t get a donor later on.” Rather than a life changing decision it’s treated more like an episode of Deal Or No Deal. “I’ll take the heart thanks Andy!”
Three Rivers is a very silly program that tries every trick in the book to pull the tears from your eyes. There’s even an extra syrupy soundtrack letting us know just how life changing and poignant every scene is supposed to be. In the first episode alone we get a heart transplant and the birth of a baby – all in the one operation! If you threw a couple of jokes into the script it could pass as a parody of itself.
You’ve seen everything Three Rivers has to offer many times before. From the cast who don’t have character traits so much as shades of skin. “Oh look there’s the Latino nurse.” To the dialogue which features more medical jargon than character development. The only semi-original element to the show is its heavy focus on transplants but even that’s ridiculous. How many things are they going to be able to transplant until they just run out? Once you’ve seen one heart transplant haven’t you seen them all? What are they going to do next time, transplant a heart into a woman having twins?
Much like the ridiculous Mental, the best way to treat Three Rivers is to laugh at it. My personal favourite ongoing joke was to pretend that the wise African man with sixth months to live is really just a figment of Dr. Andy’s imagination. You might notice that while other characters talk about him, they never appear in the same room as him. Seriously, Three Rivers is so boring you have to make your own fun.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad
