Monday, November 13, 2006

TV REVIEW: 3 Lbs: "Lost for Words"

CBS has a new medical series airing Tuesday night, called "3 Lbs" (a nod to the brain's weight...). The more cynical critical elite may note that series lead Stanley Tucci, playing Dr. Doug Hanson, is yet another version of Dr. House M.D. (a colleague on Fox...) solving medical mysteries and so forth. Or that the series is really another Grey's Anatomy, only featuring horny neuro surgeons instead of horny residents.

But - thankfully - this assessment would be entirely wrong. "Lost for Words," the revised 3 Lbs. pilot that I screened last night in advance of the series premiere tomorrow, is it's own dramatic animal; both energetic and remarkably thoughtful. It is (thankfully) lacking the pretentious, self-satisfied air and Ally McBeal-type humor that ruins Grey's Anatomy. As for Hanson being a character like House, well, TV these days is packed to the gills with anti-heroes as central protagonists (James Woods on Shark; Victor Garber on Justice, and on and on...), and besides the idea of an arrogant M.D. is hardly the bailiwick of one series alone.

But enough with drawing comparisons to other series. "Lost for Words" finds young, handsome Dr. Singer (Mark Feuerstein) moving to New York to join the Hanson Neurology Clinic, "the most competitive surgical fellowship in the country." Singer is a sensitive and touchy-feely guy. He likes to meditate (and at this point in the episode, my wife Kathryn began drooling...). Singer feels that the brain is a mystery and that he can't operate on tumor patients without first knowing whose soul he is "bumping up against." A pumped-up Tucci (who shows off his new buff physique in a locker room scene...) plays Hanson, Singer's spiritual opposite.

Hanson's philosophy is that the brain is just "wires in a box." As Indira Varma, (Kama Sutra, Rome) - playing another doctor at the clinic - informs Singer, Hanson regards brain surgery as "a purely logical" enterprise with "no gray area." To my delight, she further notes, "He's like Spock, you know," making 3 Lbs. yet another new show this season (after Heroes) that makes a point of referencing the original Star Trek in a positive way.

Speaking of Star Trek, Singer also considers the brain is "the undiscovered country." Of course, to get whoopy-frigging technical about it, both Star Trek and 3 Lbs. get this Shakespeare reference wrong. On Trek, the undiscovered country was "the future," and here it's a metaphor for a medical frontier. However, the Bard had a much simpler metaphor in mind. To him, the undiscovered country was purely and simply...death. Still, this is a nice reference, and in the deluge of cop, lawyer and doctor shows on the air today, I can't think of another mainstream endeavor that would reference Shakespeare.

Anyway, Singer becomes Hanson's "shadow" (or "sorcerer's apprentice," as another character describes the job) on a difficult case involving a young violinist, Cassie Mack, who has developed a brain tumor and has arrived in the clinic for surgery. Cassie has lost the ability to play the violin, and worse is losing her facility for language...for words themselves. This dramatic and frightening loss is played out in a weird but strangely lyrical dream sequence. We see Cassie playing her instrument in a recital when her new inability to connect with words results in something strange. Cards with words written on them (like "sister" and "grace") fall from the ceiling like snowflakes. She stands tip-toed on a chair trying to catch the words...and fails. This is a poetic, expressive and non-linear way to express the horror of aphasia. I don't think you can have a series about a concrete thinker (Hanson) and a spiritual thinker (Singer) and not be willing to go into interludes that dramatize for the viewer the wonders and mysteries of the human brain. Yet dramatic television is too often a safe medium stylistically; a catalog of familiar "safe" shots that we've seen a hundred times before. 3 Lbs bucks that trend and is willing to harness fascinating and unconventional imagery to tell its story. I like that. I like that the show doesn't stop to explain everything, like what the dream "means." Viewers are left to interpret it for themselves.

While Hanson and Singer quibble over how to treat Cassie, and a publicity-seeking co-worker, Dr. Cole, inserts himself into the case, Varma's character also gets a subplot about a man named James Will, who is surprised to find himself confused and losing his way a lot. Turns out he has an AVM (which is what Nate in Six Feet Under had...), another condition requiring surgery. This "B" plot raises many questions about the way the human mind is unique; proving itself the only one in the animal kingdom to anticipate and obsess on fear. "We think too much," Varma notes, while also suggesting that "fear is the brain's magic trick." If not overtly deep, this is more than enough philosophical material to fill the hour, and keep the show moving at a good clip.

Other issues on the show: Dr. Doug Hanson is a brain doctor with a brain abnormality himself. To wit, he keeps hallucinating the appearance of a small, mysterious girl...a strange siren from "the other side," perhaps. The series also looks poised to dive full-bore into the personal lives of the doctors, as audiences meet Hanson's teenage daughter, and watch him attempt to seduce Cole's wife. Personally, I found all this "relationship" material a lot less interesting than the philosophical, medical stuff. For instance, I particularly enjoyed a shot near the beginning of the show: we get a CGI tour of the violinist's innards, watching as impulses race up her arm into her brain; her skin transparent. It's as if we're riding a roller coaster to the central nervous system itself.

Another moment I enjoyed involves the description likening sex to gravity (!), and overall I found the structure of the show solid. Generally, I like a series in which two world views are vetted and compared, Mulder/Scully or Spock/Bones style, and 3 Lbs looks poised to do so, gazing at the inner workings of the human brain with both cold detachment and spiritual insight. Plus, let's face it, Indira Varma is a gorgeous and more-than-welcome presence here.

What didn't I like? Well, Coldplay is on the soundtrack, and though I like Coldplay, their sound is apparently de rigueur now on dramatic TV shows, and is already getting old. Do we really need any more musical montages on purportedly dramatic series? I don't think so. Also, I approve of the fact that 3 Lbs. is clinical and mostly non-sentimental, but found a last minute line about Cassie receiving a message from her dead sister to be wholly unnecessary and cheesy. In an otherwise restrained, tasteful hour, this Ghost Whisperer moment sticks out like a sore thumb.

On the other hand, however, I found myself unexpectedly affected by the moment in 3 Lbs. (during exploratory surgery...) when Hanson's' probe triggers a sense memory in Cassie. For the briefest of instants, the patient smells lilacs...and is carried away (from the surgical theatre...) to a memory of a beloved one who has passed on. There's something in Cassie's close-up - in the way she asks to experience it again - that perfectly captures the mystery of the human experience. If 3 Lbs. continues to get moments like that just right, it's going to be appointment television.

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