Drama
Chicago Med
‘Chicago Med’ may not be quite as salacious as ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ or ‘Private Practice,’ but this ER can still be a pretty messy place.
Sonny Cooke loves his mom, Ellen. No matter what has happened in Sonny’s life, Ellen has always been there for him. She’s his best friend.
So when the high school junior gets into a car crash—one that leaves him recovering, unconscious, in a hospital for a week—he’s understandably upset when his mom isn’t there to greet him when he wakes up.
Oh sure, someone who calls herself Ellen Cooke is standing right there. She’s been hounding the doctors and nurses for results. Sonny’s best friend, Vogel, and girlfriend, Chloe, insist Ellen has been by Sonny’s side from the start.
But Sonny isn’t convinced.
Sonny knows his mom’s face: He knows the shape of her eyes and the size of her nose. He knows his mom’s quirks—like how she’ll squeeze his arm three times to silently let Sonny know that she loves him.
Sonny is convinced: This is not his mom.
But if this isn’t Ellen—if this woman standing before him is some sort of phony—then who is she? And more importantly, where’s the real Ellen?
Phony and Baloney
Hulu’s Phony has plenty of mystery and intrigue. As Sonny investigates this motherly imposter, he discovers all the photographs and videos of his mom have been replaced by photographs and videos of this other mom.
I think where the show fails is in the idea that nobody else has noticed a difference. I mean, the fake mom (played by Connie Britton) sure looks similar to the real mom (also played by Connie Britton). But even if everyone chalked up the differences in her face to plastic surgery, the kids at Sonny’s school—where his mom is the principal, oh by the way—would definitely be whispering about the work she had done. The moms of those kids would be gossiping about the principal who got a nose job while her son was fighting for his life in the hospital.
I’m sure the show’s mystery will unpack and explain everything, but for me, it’s a bunch of phony baloney.
And then, of course, you have the content concerns, which are much less subtle. Language up to and including the f-word abounds, including a few interjections with Jesus’ name. The night Sonny gets into a car crash, he’s actually on his way to his girlfriend’s house to have sex for the first time ever—a fact that his mom is decidedly not happy about. And before the end of the first episode, we see someone dragging around what sure looks like a body wrapped in a plastic tarp.
Between all of that and the convoluted plot, this doesn’t bode well for Phony.
(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.)
Following a serious car crash, high school junior Sonny doubts that the woman calling herself his mother actually is.
We see bits and pieces of the car crash. Earlier in the evening, a beaver downs a tree that falls into the road. When Sonny later drives on that road in the rain, he swerves to avoid the log and drives right into a lake. He wakes up in the hospital a week later with several cuts on his face and his arm in a sling. A woman puts ointment on his cuts with a cotton swab. We see a kid nursing a bloody nose at school.
In a flashback, Ellen calls up a bully who pantsed Sonny, threatening to pull down the kid’s pants and underwear the next day. She’s a high school principal, which makes her threat feel very inappropriate, but she insists she’s in the right. Sonny shoves a kid with a broken foot to the floor in a moment of frustration and panic. We see somebody dragging what appears to be a body wrapped in a plastic tarp.
Sonny and his girlfriend, Chloe, make plans to have sex. Sonny purchases a sex toy, which his mom winds up finding. She confronts Sonny about his plans, worried that Sonny and Chloe don’t know each other well enough to become intimate. We see Sonny and Chloe kiss at school. Sonny’s best friend, Vogel, mocks him about the sex-toy purchase, and Sonny makes a quip about Vogel’s own lack of sexual activity. We hear that the school’s music teacher is separated from his “partner.”
A teen boy urinates behind a tree, and someone notes that he is within view of an elementary school. One boy punches another boy in the privates as a joke. Someone has graffitied a sign that makes a presumed reference to oral sex. Someone writes something sexually inappropriate on the face of a plastic baby doll.
Ellen calls someone’s parents “Jesus freaks” because they don’t allow their kids to celebrate their birthdays. We see a church in the background of one scene.
A teenager appears to be vaping at school.
Around 10 uses of the f-word and six of the s-word. Jesus’ name is misused three times (once interjected with the f-word), and God’s name is misused around a dozen times. We also hear uses of “b–ch,” “h—” and “p-ss.”
Generally speaking, Ellen looks out for her son and her students. Sonny admires this and tries to do the same, offering comfort and advice to his fellow students. For instance, Sonny encourages a pregnant high schooler who is struggling to care for the fake practice baby the school has given her. He tells her that her motherly instincts will kick in when her own baby is born.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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