I love medical dramas, but there’s one trope I dread that keeps popping up.
Every medical drama has at least one episode per season where a doctor or group of doctors is held hostage because someone needs medical care.
This would be dramatic if it were rare, but it happens multiple times a season on some shows, making it feel like TV doctors’ careers are among the most dangerous professions.
This Trope Started In the 1980s and 1990s, If Not Before
I’m trying to remember whether St. Elsewhere had a hostage-situation episode. Probably, but I’m drawing a blank.
The first doctor-held-hostage episode I clearly remember was on Chicago Hope in the 1990s, and it was fantastic because Mandy Patinkin’s Jeffrey Geiger was unafraid to stand up to the kidnapper even with a gun pointed in his face. The other doctors had to stop him from encouraging the guy to shoot him.
There also weren’t a million medical dramas on the air then (though Chicago Hope and ER aired in the same time slot during their first seasons!), nor did every one of them think this hostage scenario was a great idea to be done over and over.
However, the tendency toward this type of episode is obviously ingrained in the medical drama formula, since even Star Trek: The Next Generation had an episode in which alien terrorists kidnapped Dr. Beverly Crusher.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, and at this point, with medical dramas airing on every channel and streaming service imaginable, it’s way overdone.
Most Doctor As Hostage Stories Have Become Tedious
Nothing makes me want to change the channel more than yet another doctor taken hostage story, especially if it happens in a hospital.
I mean, come on! Why does no 21st-century TV hospital have decent security? I expect better from serious hospital dramas than we’d get on Days of Our Lives, where security officers wander off for no reason whatsoever.
Plus, these types of stories are always the same.
The protagonists are in extreme danger because someone is desperate for health care the system has denied them.
We know they won’t die, but they’ll come close — and they’ll bond with their captor and probably feel that the violence was justified because they needed help so badly that they weren’t getting.
Yawn.
Virgin River did it slightly differently because of its rural health setting.
Yel was still held hostage twice by people who didn’t trust doctors to give them proper health care voluntarily, and the formula was pretty much the same, other than that she was held at the home of the patient rather than at a hospital or clinic.
This past season, I sat through episodes like this on Virgin River, Watson, and Chicago Med — and Med has had several such stories over the years.
Can we do something more original when the medical dramas return, please?
Desperation Can Be a Plot Hook Without Unnecessary Violence
Most of the overabundance of medical hostage storylines comes from a very real emotional place: the desperation patients feel when skyrocketing costs and inflexible health insurance systems block them from getting needed care.
There are plenty of stories to tell about that issue without resorting to kidnappings.
During its original run, Scrubs did several stories about insurance issues, even one from Dr. Kelso’s point of view about how he secretly hated having to deny patients care for financial reasons.
If Scrubs can make patient desperation work on a comedy, surely dramas can tell similar stories without anyone pulling a gun.
And I say that as someone who loves a good kidnapping story, which shows how overused this medical drama trope has become!
What do you think? Do you love or hate the medical drama kidnapping trope?
Let us know in the comments! Don’t forget to share this article with your friends so they can join the conversation.
If you enjoyed this article and are hungry for more, check out our Chicago Med reviews from this past season.
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