Ask for Joe. Denis , which will make its two-episode debut on Nov. If the rest of the season is as strong as the six episodes I was able to screen, St. Denis could be the best network comedy since Abbott. Her foil, Ron comedy eminence David Alan Grier , is a burned-out veteran physician whose gruff facade conceals both kindness and loneliness; think Ron Swanson meets Raymond Holt from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But Spitzer and Ledgin who serves as showrunner also use their relatively large ensemble as a chance to craft characters cleverly tailored to the hospital setting.
Assigned the straightforward task of administering an EpiPen, he accidentally sticks himself with the syringe and hulks out on epinephrine.
Colleagues became brothers. Drive an ice cream truck. Sell some weed. The woman Val shrugs off in the premiere turns out to have a blood clot in her leg. She almost dies of a pulmonary embolism. I think of comedies like St. Denis, Parks and Rec , and Abbott as systems sitcoms, in the same tradition of politicized fiction as the wave of systems novels that emerged decades ago, by authors like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon.
Of course, sitcomsโespecially the ones designed to be widely appealing enough for broadcast TVโmust also balance social commentary with not just humor, but likable characters and a constant stream of mostly lighthearted jokes.
Once in a while, Spitzer and Ledgin let the pendulum swing too far in one direction. The true test of St. At that point, the agility with which the show tackles specific aspects of the health care crisis is going to be crucial; Abbott proved its longevity by taking on charter schools in Season 2, while Superstore , in its final season, rose to the unprecedented occasion of the pandemic.
