Netflix Series Review: The Resident

The outstanding TV series “The Resident” ran on Fox from 2018-2023 with 107 episodes and six seasons. In terms of an hour long drama/medical series it is by far the best I have ever seen.

For everybody in the world, the profession that creates the highest level of respect is the medical profession. It takes many years of hard work and dedication to even begin, at around age 38-40, to start to make real money where any doctor can start to pay down their enormous student loan debt. This debt includes years of college and then medical school followed by years of internship within a hospital where the salaries are always very low.

What is so great about The Resident is that in every episode it reminds all of us just how difficult it is to be a diagnostician, surgeon, emergency room doctor or a nurse.

The main character and lead dignostician Conrad Hawkins, impressively played by Matt Czuchry with his expertise at figuring out what is really wrong with patient after patient. Conrad's amazing diagnostic skill is by far the best part of this series. Even more impressive is the extensive medical research required for technically accurate scripts within all 107 episodes. For this entire series, where there were no weak episodes, I was continuously amazed about how much there is to know about the human body, the supporting medical machines and the thousands of drugs that have been created to keep people alive for decades.

The main relationship in this series is between Conrad Hawkins and Devon Pravesh that starts from the pilot show where Conrad is both cruel and harsh with the Devon, in order to get him ready for the hard work and stress that was ahead of him. Their working relationship over time became a powerful friendship that was based on mutual professional respect.

For fans of The Cosby Show, which premiered on NBC in 1984, who wondered what ever became of the character Theo, played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner - he is a central character and extremely impressive surgeon in this series. Warner's acting is outstanding throughout all of the episodes he appears in and his character proves, that the only profession that has room for people with huge egos is the medical profession, where true genius and skill actually save lives.

This series shows in extreme detail what it is like to look inside the human body and repair organs, stop bleeding, and make us all wonder how any human being can do work like this as their profession. It all looks completely impossible for those on the outside looking in.

Other characters include Randolph Bell, played by Bruce Greenwood, Nicolette Nevin played by Emily VanCamp and Kit Voss played by Jane Leeves. Considering the high quality of this great show that ran for six years, including both great acting and writing, I was surprised that I never heard about this series when it was on Fox. Even more impossible to understand, is that this great TV series never won or was even nominated for a major award.

This series also had several episodes that dealt with the horrific months and years of the Pandemic the stress this disaster placed on Hospitals around this country and the toll it took on so many medical hero workers during that time. There are also more than a few medical supply companies and criminals where the bottom line and profits take precidence over the lives of too many patients.

An ongoing problem throughout this entire series is the nonstop money issues and the exorbitant cost within any Hospital like the fictional one in this series called “Chastain”. There is one standout episode that followed the path of one patient who was shot and did not have insurance, treated by over 100 different hospital workers at a total cost of over 430,000 dollars in one day.

There are high stress professions, professions that require extreme knowledge and expertise, but the medical profession is the only one where there is no room for error, no matter how long the hours, or how difficult the medical emergency is. When mistakes are made, people die and then doctors and Hospitals are sued. Job burnout, heart attacks and strokes from the extreme stress are common within the medical profession, never worse than during the Pandemic that started in late February 2020.

The IMDB rating for this series is a solid 7.8 out of 10, with my rating a 9.5 and a very strong recommendation. This one cannot be missed.

Movie Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

The main problem with the new World War II movie "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" is that when you take a light and sometimes comic spin concerning stories about real soldiers and spies during the worst war in human history, at times, it can disrespect the people who risked their lives to defend their country. The TV show "Hogans Heros", comes to mind - that tried during its run, to make life as a prisoner in a German prison camp seem comical. As the entire world knows, nothing is funny about any part of the Second World War.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is directed by Guy Richie and is two hours that seems a lot like many of his other movies that have involved war, criminals, or spying. This movie has many well-known actors playing spies in the British Secret Service, including Henry Cavill as Gus March-Phillips, Alan Ritchson as Anders Lassen, Alex Pettyfer as Geoffrey Appleyard, Eiza González as Marjorie Stewart, Cary Elwes as Brigadier Gubbins 'M' and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Henry Hayes.

This story follows two groups of British spies, one group is trying to infiltrate the German high-level military and the other group blows up German military installations and kills a great many German soldiers. The over-the-top killing scenes have more to do with Hollywood violence embellishment than trying to show what really happened during these missions. The actor Alan Ritcheson has the most outlandish and violent killing scenes that seem more like excerpts from one of the 4 "John Wick" films. When it comes to making any movie about World War II, it should always be accuracy first and insane action scenes to make an exciting movie trailer second.

From the relatively low 72% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for this run of the mill war movie that we have all seen before, the opinions are mostly about "nothing new here" , rather than commenting on a great historical World War II story that most of the world has never heard of before. My rating is about 70% and a moderate pass, as this is more about John Wick type action and not about a significant story within the most important war in history.

Movie Review: Civil War

One of the craziest parts about the new movie "Civil War" is how for an entire two hours, with a story about photo journalists covering a major Civil War in the United States - between the East and the West is that there is not one single second devoted to the most important issue - why is there a Civil War going on? What caused a war like this to happen? How long has it been going on? What does each side believe? Have there been attempts at peace? Amazingly, none of these most important issues were ever addressed during the entire movie.

This entire story is about a series of scenes where 4 journalists, played by Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Wagner Moura, survive near death experiences all to take pictures of an ongoing war while traveling 900 miles to Washington DC.

There is a good deal of extreme violence in this film, in some cases too much unnecessary violence, all the while with no explanation why there was a war going on in the first place. This story also points out how ridiculous it is to have untrained people from the press within any war zone. They have no training, no guns and take huge risks with their lives only to take pictures. How many members of the press have died over the years covering wars, when their deaths were completely preventable, by a camera on the helmet of a soldier or a tank. The reporter David Bloom comes to mind from the Iraq War in 2003, who was a reporter who was killed because he was in a war zone, when he had no business being there.

As far as this movie, due to the glaring hole in the screenplay, not explaining the reasons for the Civil War, I do not agree with the 84% rating, giving this movie a 70% and a very moderate recommendation.