The First Season Of ‘Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.’ Was A Sweet, Sunny, Surprisingly Funny Portrait of a Teen Savant

When you think about Disney teen and tween sitcoms — if you think about them at all — you probably have a very specific mental picture. Garish multicam lighting. An oppressively loud and intrusive laugh track. Corny jokes you can see coming from a mile away. And every performance not just big but gigantic. Based on all of the above impressions you may have formed from exposure to Hannah Montana, The Suite Life Of Zack & Cody, The Wizards Of Waverly Place, or countless others, you may be forgiven for not checking out Disney+’s Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. — or, even more importantly, not exposing your impressionable children to it. But Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. is not just charming, high-quality entertainment for younger viewers: it’s a show that adults and kids can enjoy together. REALLY!

Since Doogie Howser, M.D. has become a cultural touchstone even for people who never watched it in its original 1989-1993 run (it’s streaming on Hulu if you want to fill in that gap in your TV knowledge!), you can probably make a pretty good guess as to what Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. is about. Peyton Elizabeth Lee (already a Disney sitcom veteran after playing the eponymous Andi Mack) plays the titular child genius; her name is actually Lahela, but Dr. Lee (Ronny Chieng), an obnoxious surgeon colleague, calls her Doogie…because he’s also heard of the original show. There are other nods to the source material: as in the original series pilot, the young doctor abandons her driver’s test to treat the victim of a traffic accident; she has a goofy best friend with a habit of climbing into Lahela’s bedroom through the window; and she closes each episode with a diary entry (though she doesn’t type hers out; she vlogs).

But, as her name suggests, Kamealoha moves the action from Los Angeles, as in the original, to the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Series creator Kourtney Kang was born in Hawaii — several generations of her father’s family had been residents before her — so she brings the series a strong sense of local culture. For example, a major crisis plotline for Lahela’s father Benny (Jason Scott Lee) — a former finance bro who gave it up to run a florist/shave ice truck — comes when he enters a surfing competition and finds out he’s been sorted into the seniors’ group. Lahela’s younger brother Brian Patrick (Wes Tian) tries to get closer to his crush by enrolling in a hula class. A late-in-the-season episode finds a Kamealoha relative hospitalized following surgery; Benny and his family visit his hospital room to perform a traditional healing blessing (which Uncle appreciates while noting that one of the singers was “pitchy”). I can tell you as someone who lived in Hawaii for several years that the episode in which Lahela’s mother Clara (Kathleen Rose Perkins) gets annoyed accompanying Benny to the farmer’s market because he is happy to get drawn into a conversation with every vendor is…quite real: since the pace of island life is unhurried, locals have lots of time to “talk story.” And unlike the, uh, more price-conscious Disney sitcoms mentioned above, Kamealoha is a single-camera series shot on location; the landscape looks nearly as stunning on screen as it is in person.

But though Hawaii’s natural beauty should, perhaps, be second-billed in the credits, Lahela is the show’s true star. She is, of course, the kind of driven Type-A girl who would complete college and medical school by her mid-teens. Her emotional intelligence is just as highly developed, as we see in her interactions with her patients and loved ones. But Lahela is also subject to teen drama: a mid-season episode finds her clashing with her best friend Steph (Emma Meisel) when Lahela ends up getting invited into the dance team Steph has long wanted to join. Lahela also experiments with playing slightly dumb when she becomes convinced her (perfectly intelligent but non-genius) boyfriend Walter (Alex Aiono) may be intimidated by her intellect; of course, it doesn’t take, and Lahela’s brain is one of the things that attracted him to her. Young viewers may not, like Lahela, work full-time as medical residents, but the lessons she is learning from her job — teamwork, the importance of preparation, knowing how to ask for help and accept feedback — are universal.

The first season has done especially great work in developing two relationships: Lahela and Clara, and Clara and Benny. Clara is not only Lahela’s mother; she’s also her boss at the hospital. In “Mom-Mentum,” Clara is uncomfortable with the idea of Lahela applying to work with a famous surgeon (Max Greenfield), since it would require Lahela to move to Seattle. As a colleague, she knows she should support Lahela’s professional development, but as a mother, it’s hard to think about her daughter leaving the family home. (It turns out that such worries apply even to children who are extremely capable and smart!) Later in the season, Lahela expresses an interest in taking leave from work to be a medic on Walter’s Australian pro surfing tour. While Benny is reflexively opposed to the idea of Lahela sharing accommodations with her boyfriend, Clara explains how it would set Lahela back to suspend her residency. The clashes over the limits of Lahela’s freedom — even though she’s working an adult job and, presumably, making adult money — always arise organically and, while they have thus far been dealt with before an episode’s end, I appreciate that the show’s producers are seeding stories for higher-stakes fights in the future.

As for Clara and Benny: look, I know better than to say that, as a portrayal of married love, they’re on par with Coach and Tami Taylor of Friday Night Lights. But Benny and Clara are pretty adorable too! Having already worked his big job before the events of the series, Benny is content to support the hard-charging Clara as she pursues an open Chief of Staff job at the hospital. One of their biggest disputes is about which of them is more prone to check in with the other, to the point where they make a bet as to which is going to cave and call or text the other first; when an emergency arises that forces contact, they decide they both won. Though they have extremely different temperaments — Clara is from Philadelphia, and while we’ve never seen her throw a battery, we do feel at times like she could — but they beautifully model how adults compromise in long-lasting relationships.

Being under the Disney umbrella may keep Kamealoha from portraying some of the more potentially scandalous topics the original series tackled (AIDS; the titular character having sex). But Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. is a sweet, sunny, surprisingly funny portrait of a teen who’s extraordinary in some ways and very normal in others; and the family — both inside the hospital and out — who surround her with love. Steer your kids away from the screaming punchlines of the other kid-coms and say aloha to the new Doogie.

Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.