Drama
The Rainmaker
This adaptation may lack the depth of its source material, but it isn’t a bad option if you’re itching for a new legal drama.
Dead men tell no tales? Pshaw. They’re veritable chatterboxes to Dr. Megan Hunt.
Hunt was once a gifted neurosurgeon. That was before a devastating auto accident destroyed the fine motor skills her profession required. Now she practices a different kind of medical magic … on corpses. She finds killers and causes of death instead of healing diseases and disorders—with the help of her co-workers and in spite of, very often, her by-the-book boss.
The neurosurgery world’s loss is a big gain for forensics science. And, frankly, the change has been good for Megan, too. Her previous high-stress gig demanded so much of her time and attention that she neglected her most important relationships, particularly with her husband (now, tellingly, an ex-husband) and her now-estranged daughter. While she’s no longer healing anyone in the operating room, she is trying to patch up her personal life.
Does this broad-brush encapsulation sound a little familiar, perhaps even clichéd? It should. Because neither Megan’s line of work nor her relational clashes are exactly fresh ground when it comes to television drama. She’s just the latest in a long line of crime-solving forensic scientists struggling to balance work and life and pesky ethical conundrums. After all, what brilliant doctor/detective/lawyer these days doesn’t tangle with her superiors over matters of protocol? In short, there’s nothing particularly new or imaginative here; this trope is as familiar to us as the back of our television remote.
The show offers at least one strong point: Early on, it’s going easy on the harsh language. But it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Body of Proof also drags in a body of problems. Megan and her cohorts (boss Dr. Kate Murphy, deputy medical examiner Dr. Curtis Brumfield and forensic pathology fellow Dr. Ethan Gross among them) spend their days poking through the innards of battered, bloodied corpses, treating them much as a chef would a nice slice of tenderloin. Camera shots reflect the docs’ cool clinical reserve—never lingering, but rarely blinking either.
This is now PG fare on TV? Yep. And since it’s almost too obvious to say that Body of Proof is not entertainment for the squeamish, it may be more revealing to speculatue about how few viewers these days are still squeamish given how hardened we’ve all become to such frequent fare.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
A motorist runs over a police detective. Case closed, right? No such luck. The detective, it turns out, was poisoned and dead before he was hit. Might the killer be the same person the detective had been chasing for more than a year? And why did he stop making origami cranes with his daughter?
The episode unfolds these and other questions, forcing Megan and her crew to poke and prod two corpses: one the gory remains of said detective (we also see X-rays of his brutally broken legs), the other a long-dead female lacrosse player. We see autopsy photos of the latter as well, revealing abrasions and a gash on her shoulder. When Megan exhumes her for a second look, we glimpse the ravages of decomposition. Elsewhere, the camera shows us slabs of flesh that were once people’s innards.
In time, Megan discovers that the college player was having an affair with a professor. And characters say “d‑‑n,” “h‑‑‑,” “B.S.” and misuse God’s name. Megan’s father, we’re told, committed suicide when she was a girl. She disobeys a direct order from her boss.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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