By Judy Garrison

If you happened to read my fangirl review of the This is Us TV series on Netflix some issues back and perhaps wondered how someone like me would fill those empty evening hours when finished with the 106 episodes, I have the answer: Start a new high quality soap opera-ish series! And that’s just what I did.

The 6-season medical drama series of The Resident, launched in 2018 on Fox TV, landed on Netflix this Spring. Having fully enjoyed hospital dramas like Greys Anatomy and House, it was a no-brainer for me to give it a try. I now deem it the best one ever! Possibly because most of the hospital staff care deeply for their patients, valuing the quality of health care over the bottom line. And that set of values is infused into each episode and the staff interactions with patients. Of course, there are those such as Dr. Lane Hunter, a seeming champion of experimental clinical drug trials, and Dr. Randolph Bell who in the earlier episodes is only about the bottom line and his own surgical record, whom we love to hate. Then there is surgeon Barrett Cain whose skills and confidence place him initially out of the range of all judgment before he is lain low with serious injury. Dr. AJ Austin, another master-of-the-universe level surgeon, whose trumpeted self-regard is also sky high, becomes totally humanized and lovable over time. His friendship then love relationship with the at-first aloof and unapproachable master surgeon Dr. Mina Okafor, who must return to Nigeria or be deported, and his deep caring for his adoptive mother during her stage 4 lung cancer ordeal thoroughly warm our hearts to him.

Our focus is always on the totally likeable Dr. Devon Pravesh, whom we follow though the trials of residency, under senior resident and brilliant and unconventional diagnostician Dr. Conrad Hawkins. It is also on the maverick and charming Dr. Hawkins and his relationship with beloved nurse practitioner Nicolette Nevin and later other charismatic love interests, Cade Sullivan and Billie Sutton. We learn, and see played out, the back stories of all these characters, as they deal with issues such as irresponsible, addicted, absent or narcissistic family members. We watch them confront work-life balance issues, weigh difficult ethical choices, negotiate conflicting loyalties and betrayals that feel like real life on steroids. And throughout it all we are witness to the adrenaline rush of the ER, various hospital catastrophes. And, of course, the close-up and realistic surgeries where human life is often hanging by a thread.

I reveled in the late-in-life pairing of Dr. Randolph Bell and surgeon Kit Voss, he in later seasons a caring doctor trying to cope with his own serious diagnosis, she having become the CEO he once was. The dramas of how they maneuver the status of their Chastain Memorial Hospital in Atlanta from private to public, deal with company investments in a surgical device that may bring the hospital financial salvation or lawsuits and defamation, how they deflect the outside political forces that wish them and their hospital ill….all these layered and complex issues feel instructive of real life battles. And, boy, do they keep us on the edge of our seats!

Now push these potential spoilers out of your mind and consider making this series your very own not-so-guilty pleasure! ~