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“It doesn’t look fancy, but it’s got some of the best doctors in the country,” says executive director Joyce (Wendi McLendon-Covey) as she introduces her hospital’s emergency department in the first episode of St. Denis Medical. “I mean, in Oregon,” she corrects herself. “Carving out Portland because that’s a big city, so they probably…,” she trails off, and that’s about the extent of the consideration that real-world Oregon gets from the new NBC sitcom set in the fictional town of Merrick.
As a stand-in for Anytown, USA, Merrick is like Pennsylvania’s real Scranton on The Office, or Indiana’s fictional Pawnee on Parks and Recreation, two of the modern mockumentary genre’s most obvious influences. As with those shows, St. Denis’ employees represent average Americans doing their best to support themselves, and care for their patients, while working within a flawed system.
Co-creator Justin Spitzer covered similar ground in his NBC sitcom Superstore, which effectively balanced big-box retail employees’ everyday challenges with light, character-driven comedy. In the six episodes available for review, St. Denis Medical is fairly soft on social commentary, with only a couple of brief references to COVID and one subplot about the hospital’s financial struggles. But it’s impossible for a show set in this environment not to reflect real-world difficulties merely by honestly depicting the lives of its characters.
That ensemble is what makes a show like this work. Spitzer and co-creator Eric Ledgin have put together an appealing lineup, led by Allison Tolman as head nurse Alex, who’s recently been given a promotion and a meager raise that comes with a massive expansion of responsibilities. Alex is overextended and overcommitted, but she’s rarely oblivious, and she provides a sympathetic, relatable anchor amid the more broadly defined supporting characters.
Joyce is the closest that St. Denis Medical has to Steve Carell’s Michael Scott: a blustery, blundering boss who thinks she’s much more well liked than she really is, and who frequently makes poor decisions out of some misguided sense of workplace progress and unity. McLendon-Covey spent the past 10 years on the increasingly decrepit family sitcom The Goldbergs, but here she draws more from her time on absurdist police comedy Reno 911!, where Joyce would fit right in.
The rest of the cast is split between doctors and nurses, with David Alan Grier as jaded longtime ER doctor Ron, and Josh Lawson as vain, arrogant surgeon Bruce. Alex’s fellow nurses include the frequently sarcastic Serena (Kahyun Kim), pragmatic nurse administrator Val (Superstore’s Kaliko Kauahi), and naïve newbie Matt (Mekki Leeper), who grew up in a sheltered Montana religious community. There are hints of a Jim-and-Pam-style will-they-won’t-they romance brewing between Matt and Serena, but that’s thankfully kept in the background, and the character development is mostly focused on how these people handle the daily stresses of their jobs.
That character development arises from relatively familiar sitcom storylines, and the humor in St. Denis Medical is more comfortable than fresh. It’s not a laugh-out-loud show, but it’s easy to watch, and each episode inspires at least a few chuckles. Thus far, comedy veterans Grier and McLendon-Covey generate most of the laughs, and Lawson plays things a bit too broadly as the bro-tastic doctor who thinks he’s starring on House. Tolman—who’s been in numerous short-lived series since her breakout role on Fargo’s first season—is stuck giving a lot of exasperated looks to the camera, but she brings Alex a level of warmth and empathy that makes her appealing, even if she’s not being particularly funny.
While mockumentary series seemed played out after The Office and Parks and Rec ended their runs, they’ve been reinvigorated recently by ABC hit Abbott Elementary. Spitzer and Ledgin don’t take it for granted, with explicit references to the documentary crew and even offscreen dialogue from the filmmakers to freshen up NBC’s format. At this point, mockumentaries are as formulaic an approach as the old-fashioned three-camera setup in front of a studio audience, but St. Denis Medical, like Abbott, makes it work. Both shows offer sunny but realistic looks into embattled American essential institutions, which is exactly what would interest an actual documentary crew.
Given time, St. Denis Medical could develop more insight into our health care system, although it seems less likely that the show will develop similar insights about Oregon. There’s a prison about 40 miles from St. Denis, and Joyce touts the appeal of its state-of-the-art mammography machine to “women from as far away as Idaho,” but that’s as close as the creators come to establishing a sense of place. Both the setting and the show itself are a little bit generic, but perfectly pleasant in the moment.
SEE IT: St. Denis Medical airs at 8 pm Tuesdays on NBC and streams on Peacock.