ABC's 'Hopkins': A Routine, Not Incisive, Operation

In the most sustained story of the series, "Hopkins" follows the travails of Brian Bethea, who is in his ninth year of training to become a cardiothoracic surgeon. He is married, with three small children, and separates from his wife early in the series.

Bethea is caught in a vise of too many expectations. He ruefully admits: "In order to do a really good job, you have to put the patient first. Which then makes everything else -- your family, yourself, everything else -- by definition second."

In a scene of poignant symbolism, he pays a visit to his children at his old house. Before he leaves, he retrieves a bottle of wine but drops it by accident on the way to the car. As he squats and picks up the shards with his oldest daughter, he says of the separation: "This is a modern situation, you know what I mean? It has nothing to do with you guys."

It's unclear whether Bethea's wife, Amber, works. (She was trained as a physician assistant.) But it's pretty clear why surgery remains a niche market for 1950s-style marriage -- stay-at-home mothers raising children and patiently waiting for endlessly absent husbands.

There are dozens of other stories -- heart transplants, stab wounds, failed resuscitations. There is also a wide, if shallowly portrayed, cast of characters -- the gruff ER attending, the pretty ER resident, the Sikh medical student who is aware he represents all turbaned people. On the patient side, there are the too-cautious father of a boy with a brain tumor, the too-hopeful mother of a comatose drowning victim and a charming run of old people who all bond with their renegade vascular surgeon.

But it's hard not to feel that despite the immense effort that went into "Hopkins," we've somehow seen it all before, from the first race to the airplane with the cooler holding the heart to the last home visit to the flourishing onetime patient.

There is also something oddly anachronistic about the documentary.

"Hopkins 24/7" had a notorious moment when the chairman of surgery remarked that women didn't have "the stamina" for his profession. For the past seven years, the man's successor has been a woman. She doesn't appear in "Hopkins" (or at least not in the first five hours; the sixth wasn't available to reviewers).

The older documentary also had a scene from a mortality-and-morbidity ("M&M") conference, where mistakes are discussed. The new one not only forgoes that, but it also mentions nothing about the national campaign against medical errors, or Hopkins's own efforts to prevent adverse events through checklists, computer prompts and ubiquitous hand-sanitizing stations.

And then there's all the medicine the filmmakers missed.

There is no visit to the ICU and its world of drug- and machine-aided physiology; no listening in while oncologist and patient gauge the risks and benefits of cancer chemotherapy; no sharing of the frustration and joy of treating developmental disabilities; no foray into the vast world of common chronic illness, such as asthma and diabetes.

Medicine is a lot more ambivalent and undramatic -- and also richer and more interesting -- than "Hopkins" shows the viewer or wants to admit.

David Brown is co-teaching a course in medical writing next year at Johns Hopkins University.

Part 1 of Hopkins debuts tonight at 10 on Channel 7.