Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Good Sam’ On CBS, Where A Doctor Has To Manage Her Prickly Old Boss, Who Happens To Be Her Father

Network medical procedurals are all pretty much the same: Unusual cases, doctors who are conflicted but ultimately make the right choices, romances between people in the white lab coats. But over the years, networks have added story details that have tried to freshen the formula. In Good Sam (short for “Good Samaritan” and a play on the main character’s first name), the added story detail is that a talented surgeon becomes her father’s boss when he comes back to work after a six-month coma. That should work out well, right?

GOOD SAM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A patient running in his gown and socks through the halls of a hospital, a young doctor running after him.

The Gist: As heart surgeon Dr. Sam Griffith (Sophia Bush) chases down the patient, she reassures him that the absolute best heart surgeon in the country is going to work on him. We see Dr. Rob “Griff” Griffith (Jason Isaacs) park his Mustang in his spot; as he, Sam and their team of residents prep for the surgery, Griff points out the biggest flaws of each resident — Sam’s best friend, Dr. Lex Trulie (Skye P. Marshall), Dr. Caleb Tucker (Michael Stahl-David), Dr. Isan Shah (Omar Maskati) and Dr. Joey Costa (Davi Santos) — then criticizes Sam for her lack of leadership. She’s so fed up with Griff undermining her that she’s ready to take another job.

During an ER triage, Griff gets shot, and when Sam calls out “Dad!”, we learn that her prickly boss is also her father. Cut to six months later. Griff is in a coma. Sam, who took over from her dad as the department head on an interim basis, is promoted to a permanent post. Her mother, Vivian Katz (Wendy Crewson), who also happens to be the hospital’s chief medical officer, thinks it’s a position she well deserves. Unlike her father, Sam leads with respect, not fear, and the residents and other doctors have been performing better because of it.

On the night she accepts the position at a formal dinner, she meets Malcolm Kingsley (Edwin Hodge), the son of one of the hospital’s biggest benefactors and chairman of the board; she learns the next day that he’s just started working as the hospital’s chief of finance. But something else happens — Griff wakes up. And the first thing he thinks of is going back to work.

As Griff rehabs, Vivian asks Sam to proctor her father; he can’t perform surgery or treat patients until Sam gives her approval that he’s back up to speed. In the meantime, though, he chafes at the thought that his daughter is also now his boss. As the team diagnoses a baby who may need to go on a machine to assist his heart and a man with a newly-developed murmur and a sore on his lip that came from an affair, Griff chimes in with his views, in opposition of Sam’s course of action. She’s irritated at his smugness, but also admits when he’s right. But she also finds something out about Griff and her buddy Lex that makes her even angrier with her father.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Good Sam has the “arrogant but brilliant doctor” trope made famous by House and the soapiness of Grey’s Anatomy.

Our Take: What we’re about to write should be taken as a high compliment: Good Sam could have been a lot dumber than it ended up being. Given its stretch of a premise and the fact that it’s a CBS procedural, the potential was there for a show full of one-dimensional characters and cliched lines. But the combination of showrunner Katie Wech’s ability to write smart lines for her characters and Bush’s innate charm as an actress save this show from becoming yet another annoying medical show.

The dynamic between Sam and Griff is at the center of the show’s early going, and it does get repetitive in the first two episodes. He’s an arrogant ass, she gets tired of being undermined by him, then repeat. But what surprised us through the first two episodes is that their relationship actually gets worse instead of better, after Sam finds out that Griff has gone behind her back to get him reinstated as department head. We get light moments to help balance some of the heaviness, but it there are long stretches of time where the show has absolutely no sense of humor.

At some point, a deeper examination of Griff’s obsession with work over family (it cost him his marriage to Vivian, as she points out all the time) as well as the fracture of his relationship with Sam is in order. But for awhile, we’re into the fact that a rivalry is being set up between the two doctors, one where they will likely both learn more bout the other than they ever did before.

The residents need to get a little more depth, especially Caleb, who was dating Sam before Griff’s injury and now regrets giving her space, especially as she makes talks “dirty data” with Malcolm. He at first just looks like a weaselly guy that Sam is better off without (though the ethics of the two of them dating were questionable, anyway), but we learn some things about him in the second episode that make us appreciate him a little more. We’re hoping each of the residents get some character development like this as the season goes along.

The cases in each episode are the usual amalgam of unusual cases that medical shows thrive on. In the first episode, for instance, they somehow get a heart for the cheating husband, but it’s too small, so Sam has her father walk her through grafting the small heart onto the man’s injured one. They are very Houseian in their progression and how the docs miraculously solve the various mysteries, but they all seem to be secondary to the tug of war between the two Drs. Griffith. We’re pretty sure that, whether the cases in each episode are stupid or intriguing, it won’t matter all that much compared to the overall story arc.

Sex and Skin: None. It’s CBS.

Parting Shot: Sam decides to continue proctoring Griff, “But as your daughter; I’m calling it,” she says. “That’ll be all, doctor,” she coldly tells him.

Sleeper Star: Wendy Crewson is the first episode’s emotional rock as Vivian; she encourages her daughter Sam but seems to be the only one not moved by Griff’s charms or scared of his gruffness. She was married to him for too long and knows too much.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s some business about how Griff and Sam’s relationship changed after an auto accident led to open heart surgery for Sam when she was young, but that feels like the details are being frustratingly held back. We really don’t like it when a show’s writers do that.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Mainly because Sophia Bush and Jason Isaacs are compelling to watch — individually and together — Good Sam rises slightly above the run-of-the-mill network medical procedural. But the relationships and characters will have to evolve to keep us tuning in.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Good Sam On CBS.com

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