The Mob Doctor Season 1 Episode 1 - Pilot Recap

The Mob Doctor is a new drama aired by Fox Television starring Jordana Spiro as Dr. Grace Devlin. Dr. Devlin is an empathetic doctor who tries to balance work and home life while paying back her brothers debt to the mob. The pilot features the typical things that you would expect to see in a made for TV drama. The main character is a single, attractive, and educated woman who comes off hardheaded and defiant to authority. She likes to do things her way, and when it isn't she somehow manages to spin it that way anyhow.

In the opener, our lead character has a few run-ins with her immediate supervisor Dr. Flanigan. He is the stereotypical know it all who is constantly making bad judgment calls. This leads to the unnecessary death of a small boy when Dr. Flanigan overrides the medical orders given by Dr. Devlin. She calls him out to the head of surgery and hospital administrator, and Dr. Flanigan is told to take the weekend off.

The work conflict does not end here though; she also has a difference of opinion with her boyfriend and fellow Dr. Brett Robinson. He is presented with a patient who Dr. Devlin used to baby-sit. The girl turns up pregnant through a fluke incident of science, and Dr. Devlin does not want him to tell the father because it would ruin the girl’s life and scholarship opportunities. As fate would have it, the pregnancy is entopic and requires surgery. When the time presented itself to explain to the father what was going on, she quickly stated that his daughter has an ovarian cyst that has to be removed. This puts Dr. Robinson in an ethical dilemma and he is not pleased.

On the home front, brother Nate has racked up thousands of dollars in debt to the mafia and would have been killed had his sister not stepped in. Mother Devlin in the meantime is busy interfering with Grace's love life asking Dr. Robinson if he is the marrying type. The family connection keeps Grace on her toes as she struggles through ethical and moral dilemmas of her own.

Her arrangement with the mobster Paul Moretti is that she will assist his cohorts as they need medical attention but do not need it noticed. She starts the episode off by removing a lodged screwdriver from a thug’s skull. He was not dead, just sore and in pain. She is frequently getting messages about people she needs to take care of. Eventually, informant Ralph Sereveno, who is believed to be dead, shows up as a patient in the hospital. Dr. Devlin is given an order to kill the informant who is wanted to turn state's evidence.

This order for a hit places Dr. Devlin in an ethical quandary that brings on bad dreams. She receives a call from the mob boss, and is told that she is going to select the injection that is in red. It is going to cause the informant to pass away unknowingly to hospital staff. When the moment comes, Dr. Devlin drops the marked needle on the floor and it breaks. After the successful surgery, the Chief Surgeon approaches Dr. Devlin to see what is bothering her, because she has never been nervous before. She tells him that she is just worried about having a life in her hands.

Shortly after, she receives a call from her mothers phone. She tells her companion that she has to take the call, and the caller id shows her mother calling. When answering the phone, Dr. Devlin discovers Paul Moretti on the other end. He tells her that he went to get her brother, but he was not there. Dr. Devlin leaves the hospital to go to her mom's house. When she arrives, she does not get out of her car. Instead, she pulls ahead of Moretti's car and backs into to draw the mobster out.

He does exit the house without her mother, and a high speed chase ensues. Dr. Devlin drives her car to former Kingpin Constantine Alexander’s house. She uses the intercom to get him to open the locked drive gates. As she pulls up and gets out of the car, Moretti speeds up behind her and gets out of his car. Alexander asks him what is going on, and he is told to stay out of it. He continues to question his presence on his property. Moretti tells Alexander that no one is afraid of him any longer. The kingpin then shoots the mob boss so he can once again take his rightful place as the head of the mob.

The story does not end here though. Since Alexander is now the mob boss, he lets Dr. Devlin know that she needs to get out of Chicago because she knows too much. She does not want to leave though, and asks what he would do if she stayed. He makes it clear that if she were to stay in Chicago, she would now owe him the debt that she assumed from her brother Nate. Grace does not want to leave her family and career, so decides to stay.

Though the story line is not completely original, there is enough entertainment value for this show to be one of the successes of the new television season. Time will tell how it performs and if the show makes the producers cut for continued seasons.