Good Sam

You can go two ways with a medical show: a serious baseline with comedic touches like House, or a comedic baseline with dramatic touches like Scrubs. Both works. Good Sam is just a tonal mess that turns into soap.

The main character is privileged rich prettygirl, bland as they come. Plays piano and eats dinner in the lab because she's so perfect. She keeps whining abut her "best friend" like she's 14 and not a hospital fellow.

The ensemble diagnostics scenes and walk-and-talks are getting so old now.

Dr. Sam Griffith (Sophia Bush) takes over as chief surgeon after her father Dr. Rob 'Griff' Griffith (Jason Isaacs) gets shot in the hospital. It's six months later. Griff wakes up from his coma and wants his job back but Sam is not about to let it go.

There is nobody to root for at the beginning. That is the central issue with this show. Sam is an annoying try-hard. Her dad is a psychopath. Her mom is full of secrets. Non of the other doctors are nice. It's a lot of unlikeable characters. I do grow to accept Sam over time but it's too little and too late. It gets cancelled after 13 episodes.

Seems like with all CBS shows, the background music is too loud and not necessary. Sounds like the same stuff as on Ghost. Storyline is unbelievable and nearing soap opera quality. Just like on Chicago PD, I had to turn on CC to understand Sophia. Definitely not on my DVR list.

The premise is not only preposterous, it's an HR nightmare: surgeon Dad supervising resident Daughter, then same-said Daughter supervising Dad when he returns to work after spending 6 months in a coma. Meanwhile, Mom is supervising both of them, and they're both romantically (sexually) involved with other residents under their supervision. I'm sure I saw this on General Hospital... The first episode strongly smacked of House - trying to diagnose a mysterious illness, which they manage to catch in time, and perform a bleeding edge procedure to save the patient's life. And the residents vote on how to treat the patient! That's just not how medicine works in the real world.

If you like daytime soap operas you'll love this, but if you're looking for engaging drama, change the channel.

Wanted to enjoy this - Sophia Bush was a great character in Chicago PD. Here she has neither the gravitas nor the conviction to pull this role off. Some voice coaching could help her to greatly extend her acting range.

The set-up is intriguing - father/daughter conflict around the philosophy of and the actual running of a hospital. The delivery is weak with a series of exaggerated relationship drama befitting a teen show. Sooo many triangles. Father/daughter/mother, son/father/mother, father/daughter/best-friend, protagonist love triangle ... A complete mess of strands overloading the viewer each episode with no safe haven from which to tie it all together.