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Zachary Quinto once played a super-powered serial killer with a keen interest in his victims’ brains (Sylar on NBC’s Heroes). Is it perhaps Hollywood’s natural progression that he now plays a fictionalized version of a neurologist? He’s still interested in brains, but in a slightly, er, healthier way.
Yes, Quinto has returned to the world of network television for “Brilliant Minds” (NBC, Mondays, 10 EDT/PDT, ★½ out of four), a new medical drama very loosely based on the life of Dr. Oliver Sacks, the pioneering neurologist. In this made-for-TV version of the story, Quinto is an unconventional doctor who achieves astonishing results in patients with obscure disorders and ailments. That may sound fun on paper. But the result is dull and boring.
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Dr. Oliver Wolf (Quinto) is the anti-system neurologist that a Bronx hospital needs and tolerates, even when he does things like drive a patient to a bar before surgery to reunite him with his estranged daughter instead of into the OR. But when Oliver breaks protocol and crosses boundaries and ethical lines, it is because he takes care more about patients than other doctors. He treats the whole personyou see, not just the symptoms.
To that end, the cash-strapped hospital where his mother (Donna Murphy) is chief medical officer (you just have to accept it) has apparently given him a team of four dedicated interns (Alex MacNicoll, Aury Krebs, Spence Moore II, Ashleigh LaThrop) and seemingly unlimited resources to diagnose and treat rare neurological disorders. He suffers from prosopagnosia, also known as “face blindness,” and can’t tell people apart. But that doesn’t stop people like his best friend Dr. Carol Pierce (Tamberla Perry) from adoring him and tolerating his antics.
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It’s not hard to get swept up in the cheesy sentimentality of “Minds.” Everyone wants their doctor to be as caring as Quinto’s Oliver. Creator Michael Grassi is a former “Riverdale” actor who lived and breathed melodrama and escapism. But it’s also frustrating and ridiculous to imagine a celebrated neurologist chasing teenagers through high school hallways or escorting dementia patients to weddings. I imagine it reflects Sacks’ real life as accurately as “Law & Order” portrays the justice system (which is to say: not at all). A prolific and enigmatic doctor and author who influenced millions is diminished to fit a convenient “neurology patient(s) of the week” format.
Crime shows are inherently formulaic and repetitive, but the good ones avoid those repetitions becoming boring by telling interesting and varied episodic stories: every murder on a cop show, every increasingly hair-raising injury and illness on Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a worrying sign that Minds resorted to “mass hysterical teen pregnancy” as a plotline as early as episode 6. How much more ridiculous can it get from there to fill a 22-episode season, let alone a second? Eventually, someone’s brain will just explode.
Quinto has always been a compelling actor whether playing a hero or a serial killer, but unfortunately he gets on his nerves as Oliver, who sees his own cluelessness about society as a character trait when in fact it’s a bothersome bug. The supporting characters (many of whom have their own once-in-a-million neurological disorders, go figure) are far more interesting than Oliver, despite attempts to make Oliver sympathetic through numerous and tedious flashbacks to his childhood. A maudlin backstory doesn’t make the present-day man on screen any less wooden.
To stand out, Brilliant had to be more than just a half-hearted mishmash of Grey’s, The Good Doctor, and House. It had to be truly brilliant, not just pretend to be.
You don’t have to be a neurologist to figure that out.
