TVSquad

(S01E01) The first question I had after watching the new NBC medical drama Trauma was this: can the show keep this up every week?

You can tell a lot of money was spent on the pilot, because the first 20 minutes is like Irwin Allen: The Movie. Helicopters crash, cars explode, children are endangered. It's like those big episodes of ER where something massive happened, only this is going to be a regular thing with this show (if, as I said above, they can spend a lot of money on future episodes).

But what about the rest of the show? It's one thing to have big accidents and pyrotechnics (which are actually very impressive) but what about the cast, the writing, the stories?

Right off the top, the bad: the dialogue kinda stinks. Cliched, with too much exposition and "dramatic" scenes.

Beyond that, the set up is good. I didn't know the launching pad of the show's theme would be that accident at the start, with all of the major players being affected by what happened and who lived and who died. This is one of those shows that works better if you haven't seen any promos. Two big twists, one at the start and one at the end, were kinda spoiled by those promos, so if you turned this show on without knowing anything about it, you probably liked it more than some people might.

I don't think the show is as instantly engaging as ER was (it doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be one static, recognizable set like ER's, so it feels all over the place), though there are many things they have in common. I think Cliff Curtis is supposed to be the George Clooney character: brash, always going against the rules, wisecracking. I don't remember the first episode of ER having a really dumb scene like this one has, with Curtis flying around in a car, recklessly, ripping off a car door. Just didn't ring true. But he's good in this.

Derek Luke, Anastasia Griffith, Aimee Garcia, and Jamey Sheridan round out the cast. It's a good cast stuck with a stale script, so the characters are just cutouts right now. But we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

[Watch episodes and clips of Trauma and other shows at SlashControl.]