The Mob Doctor (FOX) - Series Premiere: Synopsis and Review

‘The Mob Doctor’ is a new drama series on FOX. The show premiered on September 17th and was created by Josh Berman (‘CSI’) and Rob Wright (‘Las Vegas’). Jordana Spiro (‘My Boys’) stars as Grace Devlin, a brilliant Chicago surgeon who tries to pay off a family debt to the mob. Grace works in a hospital and during her lunch breaks she takes care off injured mobsters.

Grace’s brother has a debt to the mob which he can’t pay off. Grace makes a deal with the mob to protect her family. Since she’s a surgeon taking care of injured mobsters is her way of paying her debt. When a man who was in the Witness Protection Program becomes her patient the mob instructs her to kill him. Grace never realized that the deal she made could lead to killing people for the mob.

Moretti (Michael Rapaport, ‘Prison Break’), the mob boss, calls Grace and told her how she has to kill the man during an operation without people realizing she did it on purpose. When she enters the operation room she sees a man in the hallway, looking closely at what she’s doing. Grace takes the syringe with the deadly liquid inside but she accidentally (or not?) drops the syringe and it breaks. The man in the hallway is now gone and she proceeds the operation like she normally would.

Moretti is mad at Grace because the witness is still very much alive. Moretti calls Grace from her mother’s phone and tells her he has her mother captured. Grace drives to her mother’s house and she rams Moretti’s very expensive car several times. When he gets out of the house Grace speeds off and Moretti follows her in his car, which all of a sudden is a lot less damaged than a minute ago.

Grace leads Moretti to Constantine’s house. Constantine (William Forsythe, ‘Broadwalk Empire’) is a friend of Grace, but their exact relationship is unclear. We do know however, that Constantine has spent some time in jail because he used to be a mob boss as well. Moretti tells Constantine to get back in his house so he and Grace can have a little chat. Constantine, however, kills Moretti and tells Grace she didn’t see anything and has to leave right away.

Later that day she receives a text from Constantine. She comes over and sees there are more members of Moretti’s mob. None of them seem to be sad about Moretti’s death. Constantine tells her to leave Chicago because there will be people out there to revenge his death and Constantine can’t guarantee her safety.

Grace decides not to leave Chicago, because she doesn’t want to leave everything behind. When Grace walks back to her car she sees a car she recognizes. She saw that same car driving away just after she discovered her father’s dead body when she was a little girl. She remembers she was relieved he was dead because her father always hit her mother when he was drunk.

‘The Mob Doctor’ is a show that mixes medical drama with crime drama. The concept of mixing crime drama with another type of drama isn’t innovatory. There are also numerous shows that revolve around someone living a double live working for bad people because he or she is forced to do so. It it safe to say that ‘The Mob Doctor’ isn’t a completely new and original TV show. This however, doesn’t mean the show isn’t any good.

The ending of this pilot episode could have been the ending of a season, or maybe even a series. After seeing this episode I feel no urge to watch the next episode, because the story feels complete. Maybe that is why this show reminds me of CSI and other shows that have a case-of-the-week-structure. Or maybe it’s just because both the creators worked on similar shows. In the end the show is fun to watch, but I wouldn’t stay home just to watch this show.