Review: Fox's amnesia drama 'Doc' is a maudlin mess

Not long into watching Fox's new amnesia drama "Doc," I had a desperate desire to turn the TV off.

There are certainly worse TV series than "Doc" (Tuesdays, 9 EST/PST, ★½ out of four), which follows Dr. Amy Larsen (Molly Parker), a callous medical professional who loses eight years of her memory after a traumatic brain injury. There are series with lazy writing, shallow characters, boring plots and even offensive elements. But the sin of this particular series is one that's hard to get over: deep unpleasantness.

"Doc" is, as the kids might say, "cringe." It's awkward, unenjoyable and irritating. At times it's actively depressing, and not what I would classify as "entertainment." In spite of the efforts of creator Barbie Kingman ("Magnum, PI"), Parker and the rest of the cast, "Doc" never coalesces into a coherent and functional TV show. It flatlines from its first few moments.

Amy is every stereotype TV has ever developed about an unfeeling doctor who is brilliant but lacks bedside manner. Her patients hate hanging out with her, but she gets results, gosh darn it. She's chief of internal medicine at a Minneapolis hospital where she annoys her ex-husband and hospital administrator Michael (Omar Metwally), stands in the way of ambitious hack Dr. Richard Miller (Scott Wolf) and makes time for discreet rendezvous with young hunk Dr. Jake Eller (Jon-Michael Ecker).

But all of that is thrown into chaos when Amy is in a car accident that leaves her with a traumatic brain injury. When she wakes up from surgery she thinks that it's 2016 and that she's married to Michael. She also thinks her daughter is 9 and her son is alive, and she is hit with major grief to learn her daughter is 17 and her son died seven years ago. Oh, and she's a much nicer person without those eight years, too.

The concept, based on Italian series "Nelle tue Mani" ("In Your Hands"), has potential. But "Doc" never does anything interesting with the plot. It's all reduced down to simplistic binaries. Amnesia Amy is good, present-day Amy is bad. Amy is a medical genius and the rest of the doctors are pale imitations. Amy loves her ex-husband, who has moved on. Amy's new fling can't tell her they were together because of office politics. It's all rather tedious.

And ultimately it's uncomfortable, and not in the good way. Amy's every interaction is loaded with dramatic irony, but the audience isn't in a good spot knowing that her teenage daughter actually hates her or that the new chief of internal medicine is a quack who killed a patient. We're just kind of stressed out by it.

It's a shame, because Parker is a first-rate actress with great credits like "Deadwood" and "House of Cards." She is almost enough of a talent to build this creaky show around, but not quite. The series can't decide if it cares more about Amy's amnesia and personal relationships or the case-of-the-week medical drama. Each episode is heavily unbalanced and poorly paced.

Watching TV shouldn't feel like this much work. I'd rather forget all about it.

This story has been updated to correct the origins of the show.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Doc' review: Fox amnesia drama is a mess to forget