Tuesday, November 14, 2006

TV premiering tonight: 3 Lbs.

Or, more accurately, Dr. House, Neurosurgeon. Seriously, for all the talk earlier this season about how Shark was a ripoff of House except with lawyers, this show is an even more blatant ripoff of House, except with ... doctors. Okay, to be fair, they're neurologists and neurosurgeons, but all that means is that the kinds of cases they can encounter and patients they can treat are even more limited. Otherwise, Stanley Tucci plays a remarkably House-like character, a gruff, aloof genius who doesn't like to talk to patients, treats his subordinates with contempt and is tortured by his own ironically debilitating injury. Tucci is a good actor, but this is a one-note and tiresome character, and none of the supporting players are particularly interesting. Bland Mark Feuerstein is the audience surrogate, but he just wanders around looking lost (and actually at one point even says something like, "Is being an asshole a requirement for being a genius around here?" like, way to point out exactly what's hackneyed about the premise of your show, dude). There are some clever illustrations of the way that brain ailments affect people's faculties, but those are small highlights in an otherwise derivative and uninteresting show. CBS, Tuesdays, 10 p.m.

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