Gram’s Anatomy

If you’re like me, and you probably are except for having fewer untrimmed nostril hairs, you spent a collective total of five or more minutes over the last two weeks speaking into a television remote control because you mistook it for a cordless telephone.

Hello. Hello? If this is American Family Publishers calling again, I want you to know that Ed McMahon never did show up with that cheque for $1 million, $2 million or $10 million. I’ve also been checking our mailbox daily for the envelope with Ed’s picture and still nothing. Hello. Hello? Is anybody there? Oh, look hon! The idiot box just came on by itself again …

You also will have noticed that network TV is changing, and not for the better.

For decades, Big TV has given us medical dramas filled with incredibly attractive, 26-year-old surgeons who have perfect hair, intense emotional trauma and a criminally libidinous propensity for making out in hospital linen closets. Right next to the rectal suppositories.

I’m talking about series like Grey’s Anatomy, ER, St. Elsewhere and House — shows where the physicians spent 10% of their time performing complicated brain surgery and the other 90% gazing longingly into each other’s McDreamy, McSteamy and McCreamy eyes while a moody indie-pop song that was popular when the director still had hair played in the background.

Doctor, doctor, I’ll give you the news. You’ve got a bad case of loving beaucoup.

Now, you don’t have to be a doctor or have played one on television to diagnose the problem here: the only people still watching traditional network television are seniors who pine for the milder, gentler, less lascivious era of Ben Casey, Julia, Dr. Kildare and Marcus Welby, M.D.

Here’s a little trivia I bet you didn’t know: William Shatner and James Franciscus both turned down the Kildare role before it rocketed Richard Chamberlain to fame. Can you imagine Shatner ostentatiously emoting his … way … through … the romantic lyrics of “The Theme from Dr. Kildare (Three Stars Will Shine Tonight),” which gave Chamberlain a hit single as a vocalist in 1962 and turned him briefly into a teen idol?

Second bit of trivia of which you probably weren’t aware unless you read Jane Fonda’s 2005 autobiography, My Life So Far, or could actually give a hoot: Franciscus was the boy to whom she lost her virginity. (Chamberlain wouldn’t have been up for that zesty role, but that’s a whole ’nother story.)

I digress. Back to the thesis at hand, the purport of which is that young people do not watch TV any more; they are far too busy using incredibly smart phones to record and post videos of themselves doing incredibly stupid things (such as sucking on Tide Pods or being catapulted into the air via bungee cords while placed inside portable toilets filled with sewage).

If only I were joking, Dr. Gillespie. Doctor, my eyes. Tell me what is wrong. Was I unwise to leave them open, Dr. Tongue? (Sorry. Obscure House of Stewardesses reference. It’s getting late here.)

As a result of this revolution in viewing habits, network executives are desperately rebranding their hit medical shows to appeal to an older demographic. But they aren’t just changing the titles; they are also reworking some classic tropes we all know by heart failure. For example:

• The High-Stakes Defibrillator Scene: In standard TV dramas, a patient flatlines and a doctor yells, “Clear!” before blasting the nearly departed out of the bardo zone with repeated jolts of electricity. In the new senior dramas, this hackneyed sequence is to be replaced by the High-Stakes Heating Pad Scene. A doctor races into the room, rubs his hands together and yells, “We’re losing him! Setting Three!” and dramatically applies a flannel heating pad to some lonely old grubber’s stiff lower back before doing Jell-O shots and making out with Nurse Jackie in a linen closet.
  

• The Dramatic Diagnosis: Instead of a brilliantly unconventional but unspeakably rude doctor (with trouble at home and a secret meth addiction) suddenly realizing that the patient has a previously undiscovered tropical disease caused by a rare Amazonian caterpillar, the medical breakthrough always boils down to: “Her adjustable fastenings are too tight. Loosen the ankle braces and release the Velcro straps! Sweet Lord! Is that … plantar fasciitis?”
  

• The Operating Room Tension: Instead of a tense chief of surgery barking out orders for the scalpel or clamp that he can’t see right in front of him because of age-related macular degeneration, the hard-of-hearing anesthesiologist snaps, “Speak up, Melvin, you’re mumbling again,” followed by 20 minutes of the entire OR team taking turns at trying to read the tiny expiration date on a bottle of Vicks VapoRub.

OK then. With these new conventions in place, here is the official medical lineup for the season debuting early in 2027:

• Gram’s Anatomy: This is a direct reboot of the original hit, except that instead of attractive young residents competing for a prestigious fellowship, a group of highly competitive grandmothers who formerly worked at Croll’s Department Store in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, compete for a cache of vintage buttons nested in pastel-coloured glassware from the Great Depression. The season premiere features a high-stakes, multi-episode story arc in which head nurse Adriatica von Mylendock tries to remember where she parked her 1998 Buick LeSabre. (Devotees of a more risqué brand of cinematic fare might remember von Mylendock from her scene-stealing cameo in Fifty Shades of Gram, still streaming on Knitflix.) Adhering to a tried and true formula, the season finale will culminate in a dramatic event, such as a character’s death or the discovery of a forgotten fruit cup nearing its best-before date at the back of the bar fridge in the nurses’ smoking lounge. (These are tough old birds. They’ll smoke if they bloody well feel like it.)
  

• Chicago M.E.D. (Medical Equipment Delivery): A high-octane action drama about the brave men and women who race against the clock to deliver motorized scooters and specialized seat-cushions to care homes and assisted-living facilities. The climax of every episode involves a tense, sweat-inducing sequence in which someone over 60 tries to figure out how to fold up a walker so it fits into the trunk of a 2014 Honda Civic without breaking a single Pyrex bowl dubiously packed into an iffy cardboard box in the back seat.

• Scrubs (Compression Socks Edition): A gritty, behind-the-scenes look at the daily struggle of putting on tight elastic hosiery. In the exclusive peek afforded this correspondent, it takes three hospitalists, two residents and a hydraulic winch just to get one sock over a patient’s ankle. Prepare for a gruelling, emotional hour of television, which itself will be just the warmup act for some industrial-strength senior toenail clipping if a second season is green-lit (much like the toes themselves). Gentlemen, start your chainsaws! (Not recommended for anyone taking a daily dose exceeding 5 mgs of Amlodipine or Rosuvastatin to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.)

Which reminds us that it’s time for a word from our sponsor:

(Soft acoustic guitar music plays. A blissful couple in their mid-seventies is shown successfully assembling a jigsaw puzzle of a lighthouse. They smile at each other as if they have just conquered Mount Everest.)

ANNOUNCER (In a voice so gentle it could cause Kash Patel’s eyes to blink): Do you suffer from Occasional Intermittent Evening Sump-Grumble? That sudden, mysterious, plugged-toilet flush your stomach makes that causes you to look at your spouse and say, Did you hear that, dear? I guess I shouldn’t have had that extra dollop of congealed gelatin mold. If so, ask your doctor if Zorblax-A is right for you.

(The video transitions to the couple happily tossing a Frisbee to a golden retriever that clearly isn’t interested. A tiny, ultra-fast block of text appears at the bottom of the screen.)

ANNOUNCER (Accelerating to roughly 400 words per minute): Zorblax-A is a once-daily chewable tablet designed to harmonize your evening digestive vibrations. Do not take Zorblax-A if you are allergic to Zorblax-A, or if you have ever looked at a cloud and thought it looked vaguely like a 1968 Mercury Cougar. Common side effects of Zorblax-A include mild euphoria, unexpected fluency in Mandarin, a sudden urge to clean the garage at 3 a.m. and the temporary development of a third eye: Om Namah Shivaya. In rare cases, Zorblax-A may cause your feet to become slightly magnetic, leading to the accidental collection of loose paperclips and lost kitchen utensils. If Vladimir Putin strikes you as a humanitarian or you begin to perceive time moving backward, stop taking Zorblax-A and call your doctor immediately. Zorblax-A: Because you’ve earned the right to enjoy dried, salted beef in a thick white milk gravy served over slices of white bread — the early-bird special, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the White Spot restaurant nearest you. (Pro tip: Noticeably fresher on Tuesdays.)

We return you now to our regular programming:

Perhaps the most widely anticipated of the upcoming shows is a no-nonsense spin-off: Doogie Howser, M.D. (Retired). In this series, Doogie is now 64 years old, still lives with his doddering parents and wraps up each episode by typing a grumpy online journal entry about how today’s music is just a bunch of loud, rhythmic thumping. Tragedy strikes when the wonky prosthetic leg of Doogie’s best friend, Vinnie Delpino, detaches one morning as he is exiting the good doctor’s bedroom window and winds up braining Doogie’s ex-girlfriend Wanda Plenn, who is finally home from college and had been hoping to take Doogie up on that long-ago offer of an ice cream soda at Pop Tate’s.

Hindsight is 20-20, of course, as the colorectal surgeons like to joke at their annual Procto-Con gathering in Medicine Hat. But after sitting through decades of medical dramas, with all their operatic twists and duodenal turns, here’s one television critic’s bottom line: Maybe we aren’t suffering from a shortage of doctors and nurses so much as we are from a surfeit of hospital linen closets. (How else to explain all those suspicious dents in the rectal suppositories?)

Now, if you will excuse me, my telephone is ringing again, but I can’t seem to crank up the volume with this stupid plastic stick thingy.

Go ahead, caller number 9, you’re on the air!