Five Ways to Heal the Ailing Mob Doctor

The Mob Doctor with the too-clever name:

Grace Devlin (Get it?)

TVGuide.com reports that "the struggling Fox drama [The Mob Doctor] saw a one-tenth uptick when it returned Monday to an albeit still-low 3.41 million viewers and 1.0 in the adults 18-to-49 demographic. It was the only series of the night to see a gain. Lead-in Bones (7.3 million, 2.0) was flat."

Let the prognosticating begin!

From Seattlepi.com:

The Mob Doctor, Fox's struggling freshman drama, has shown signs of improvement - both in its overall quality and in ratings -- since returning last week from a month-long hiatus. But it's got a long way to go before getting a clean bill of health. Here are five things we think the show could do to make its prognosis a little more positive:

1. Grace needs to dump Brett. Sorry, but Jordana Spiro, who plays Dr. Grace Devlin, has more chemistry with some of Grace's body-bagged patients than she does with her on-screen boyfriend, Brett, played by Zach Gilford. But even setting their lack of sparks aside, how long are these two supposed to have been dating? Long enough for him to meet her mother apparently, and yet the couple seemingly spends every night apart and Brett accepts at face value Grace's flakiness and constant rushing off to mysterious other obligations with no more than "I have to go" as an explanation. Wake up, Brett! Not to mention, with Grace trying to juggle her family, her career and her Mobligations, we don't think she needs to throw a relationship into the mix - especially not one that's so seemingly lukewarm. After all, this isn't Grey's Anatomy. Which brings up our second point ...



2. Focus more on the Mob and less on the Doctor [Ed. Note: Right on! We suggested this in a post about the show's pilot]. Granted, the blending of these two situations is pretty essential to the show's central premise (not to mention its name), but it goes beyond the standard suspension of disbelief required by TV dramas for viewers to buy that Grace can be an on-call surgeon and do such frequent work for the Mafia at the same time. And the recurring dilemma of Dr. Devlin getting a phone call from her mob boss Constantine (William Forsythe) just as she's about to head into a major surgery/presentation/etc. is quickly becoming tiresome. The show needs to decide whether it wants to be a hospital drama or an action series, or at least find a better way to balance the two.

3. More Moretti, please! [No! We can't stand this guy! He is annoying to even look at -- give Forsythe a worthier adversary.] Since his surprise return in the third episode after appearing to be fatally shot by Constantine in the pilot, Michael Rapaport's Moretti has proved to be The Mob Doctor's most interesting (and terrifyingly ruthless) character...

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