Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
Most people wouldn’t consider a truck crashing into the restaurant they work in to be a lucky break. Of course, most people aren’t Bashir Hamed.
After fleeing a war-torn Syria with his younger sister, Amira, Bashir attempted to get a job in Canada as a doctor. Unfortunately, his credentials and experience as a medic in Syria didn’t transfer, resulting in him working in his uncle’s cafe instead.
Then, who should walk into that restaurant but Jed Bishop, head of York Memorial Hospital’s emergency department. Dr. Bishop had already turned Bashir down for a position at the hospital.
But as I said, it was Bashir’s lucky break.
A truck plummeted into the small eatery, injuring Bashir, his uncle and several patrons, including Dr. Bishop. After regaining consciousness, Bashir jumped into action, performing emergency, life-saving procedures with the equipment available to him before paramedics arrived.
And soon after, a grateful Dr. Bishop changed his mind, hiring Bashir on and giving him the opportunity to make a better life for himself and Amira.
Transplant is a bit of a transplant itself, originally airing on CTV in Canada before getting picked up by NBC in the States.
The show is much your typical medical drama. Patients with horrifying injuries are admitted into the hospital. Doctors perform bloody surgeries to save them. And sometimes, people don’t survive.
We’re also given a peek into the personal lives of York Memorial’s staff. Romantic relationships blossom. (Though the physical nature of these are usually kept off-screen, we do see a few scenes leading up to sexual encounters.) Hospital bureaucracy puts surgeons under duress. And sometimes, characters respond to stress by swearing (with curse words up to and including the s-word).
Bashir and Amira face more than most given their heritage. The siblings are Muslim, and sometimes, they face discrimination for their Middle Eastern background.
The staff of York Memorial may not be as promiscuous as that of Seattle Grace, but there’s still enough content here to warrant caution before viewing.
A woman and her husband are admitted for MERS. A female doctor struggles to recover after being assaulted. A surgeon finds herself struggling to find a balance between working in the emergency room and performing operations.
A patient who pierced his own ear with a nail gun is admitted, and we see lots of blood. Surgery is performed and we see some blood-covered innards. We see other patients with a variety of ailments and injuries, most of which are minor. A doctor admits he is wearing a wrist brace because he punched a man.
A teenager storms out of the hospital, knocking a clipboard off the wall in frustration. He then uses a pipe to smash a car window when his coach refuses to unlock the door. He climbs into the vehicle, cutting himself on the glass.
A female doctor recovering from a recent sexual assault avoids her male patient because she fears being assaulted again. When a doctor discovers cirrhosis on a man’s liver, the man admits he drinks to handle the stress of caring for his wife, who suffers from a condition that only allows her to move her eyes.
When a boy describes an impending sense of doom, his doctor suspects he might have ADHD. He later indicates that his absentee parents sent him to boarding school because they didn’t want to deal with the problem.
A doctor admits she didn’t attend her dad’s funeral because of their strained relationship. Doctors bicker about department jurisdiction.
A man seeks financial aid from his dad, who is a pastor, and his dad says he’s praying for his son.
We hear uses of “d–mit” and “a–hole.” A teenager scolds his coach for swearing.
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.
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
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