TVSquad

There's so much cool stuff on SlashControl, it's hard to choose what to feature. But since I get to do this every day, that'll make it easier. Today, I'm featuring a clip from one of my favorite new shows, Mercy. It's not like we don't have enough hospital/doctor/nurse shows on right now, but there's something about Mercy that's different.

Maybe it's the actors, which include Taylor Schilling, James Tupper, and Michelle Trachtenberg. Maybe it's the fact that the main character, Veronica, has just come home from Iraq and is still wounded from that experience. And yet she keeps moving forward, despite issues like smashing a windshield with a cinder block when she's angry.

Whoa! I did NOT see that coming. One of the cases on last night's episode of Mercy was a woman suspected of having rabies after feeding a raccoon. So they brought the raccoon in to have it checked out. It was supposed to be dead, thanks to a poison apple and some peanut butter, but when the lid came off the styrofoam cooler, the coon jumped out and started running around the hospital floor.

Just the idea of a raccoon with rabies is creepy enough, but add in letting it loose in a hospital and the creep factor goes way up.

Hey, have you seen any promos for Mercy on NBC lately? It's like they forgot the show was premiering in just a couple weeks. Usually the marketing machine is running into overdrive right about now.

For those who may be planning a volley of comments about how stupid I am, please note that the preceding paragraph is dripping with sarcasm. If you can't see it, perhaps you don't have the right fonts loaded. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you have seen the promos, I'll bet you haven't seen Captain Janeway prowling around the hospital halls, have you?

That's because Kate Mulgrew just joined the cast of Mercy. She'll be playing the mother of main character Veronica, played by Taylor Schilling. Mercy's already been getting some good buzz, and you just know NBC is looking for their next ER. Could Mercy be it? Or better yet, their Grey's Anatomy? It already appears to have a more personal slant, if Mulgrew's addition means anything.

Previewing NBC's fall offerings has been a long process. First I gave you Community and Trauma, then Parenthood. Now, I have NBC's second medical drama that's premiering this year: Mercy. While Trauma follows first responders in San Francisco, Mercy follows nurses in a hospital in New York.

While it's true that I've seen the pilot and should be able to give you some insight into what to expect when it premieres (Wednesday September 23, at 8 PM ), the fact is, every single thing you need to know about Mercy is summed up in its synopsis:

"Nurse Veronica Callahan (Taylor Schilling) has just returned to Mercy Hospital from a tour in Iraq and knows more about medicine than all of the residents combined. Together with fellow nurses Sonia Jimenez (Jaime Lee Kirchner) who turns the heads of everyone at Mercy hospital and Chloe Payne (Michelle Trachtenberg) a naïve newcomer who learns to deal with the difficulties of working in a challenging and sometimes unsettling profession, they navigate the daily traumas and social landmines of life and love both inside the hospital and out."