{"id":5974,"date":"2015-10-01T15:12:09","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T19:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=5974"},"modified":"2015-10-01T15:12:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T19:12:09","slug":"review-code-black-premieres-on-cbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/10\/01\/review-code-black-premieres-on-cbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: &#8216;Code Black&#8217; Premieres on CBS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CBS&#8217;s new medical drama <em>Code Black<\/em> is a standard medical procedure, with the twist that it takes place in one of the busiest emergency rooms in the country. Unfortunately, this sense of urgency doesn&#8217;t add to the drama the way the creators seem to want it to. Yes, there&#8217;s a lot going on, but none of it is character-driven enough to feel dramatic. The characters rush around from one big emergency to the next and things always seem dire, but there aren&#8217;t little personal or emotional moments that allow is to get sucked in.<\/p>\n<p><em>Code Black<\/em> also packs in a lot of cliches. They immediately go for big, over-the-top moments like when we see a young girl meet the person who received one of her father&#8217;s organs after his death. These attempts at big moments fall flat because we&#8217;ve seen them before and the show doesn&#8217;t do enough to establish what makes the experiences at the hospital meaningful for these particular characters.<\/p>\n<p>The pilot feels very reliant on the excellent cast&#8211; which includes Marcia Gay Harden and Luis Guzman&#8211; to make these characters pop. But, the actors don&#8217;t have enough material to make these characters distinctive.<\/p>\n<p>While <em>Grey&#8217;s Anatomy<\/em> lacked the serious tone that <em>Code Black<\/em> is clearly going for, it at least let us learn about the crop of interns outside of their jobs, allowing us to get invested. <em>Code Black<\/em> has a couple of expository moments of backstory, but fails to really show off the personalities of the team of residents it introduces. Not a single character managed to make an impression in the first episode.<\/p>\n<p><em>Code Black<\/em> is based on a documentary and that&#8217;s the impression you get here. Yes, it effectively shows how difficult things are at this hospital and how much goes on there, but it doesn&#8217;t seem very interested in a genuine, character-driven narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CBS&#8217;s new medical drama Code Black is a standard medical procedure, with the twist that it takes place in one of the busiest emergency rooms in the country. Unfortunately, this sense of urgency doesn&#8217;t add to the drama the way the creators seem to want it to. Yes, there&#8217;s a lot going on, but none<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/10\/01\/review-code-black-premieres-on-cbs\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":5975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,176],"tags":[2492],"class_list":{"0":"post-5974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-television","8":"category-television-reviews","9":"tag-code-black"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}