TV Review - Carol's Second Act

Patricia Heaton (The Middle and Everybody Loves Raymond) stars as Carol Kenney, a middle-aged woman who decided to go to medical school late in her life and is now working as a first-year, internal medicine resident at Loyola Memorial Hospital. She's basically a 50 or 60-year-old intern. It's not that far off thematically from Nancy Meyers' The Intern (2015), which was about a 70-year-old man working at the ground-level of a fashion company. That 2015 film has low stakes than this series, but both are comedies. This one having life-or-death stakes is sillier. It's more in-line with probably the most popular medical comedy in the past 20 years, Scrubs, but without the voice-over narration.

Written by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, it's a series that's essentially about ageism, discriminating against someone based on when they were born. It targets those who discriminate specifically old or older people. The first episode though has Carol being too verbose, basically talking too much and annoying the people around her, most especially her younger boss. She's nice and personable, but she's possibly too nice and too personable, which could rub certain folks the wrong way. This personality trait has nothing to do with her age. She could be a 30-year-old and be as annoying. However, the show most ascribes her personality to being a middle-aged motherly type. Each episode has her faced with a patient or some kind of medical problem and she has to use her age and her experience to solve that problem or treat that patient. Each episode seems like it's also about a group of younger people around her having to learn from older people as well.

Jean-Luc Bilodeau (Baby Daddy and Kyle XY) co-stars as Daniel Kutcher, a Duke University graduate and fellow intern working along side Carol. He's the epitome of white male privilege. He's tall and handsome. He skates through life based on his good-looks and charm. He thinks that he should get everything or be on top simply because he exists and that's what he wants.

Sabrina Jalees plays Lexie Gilani, another future doctor who grew up in southern California. She was the first in her family to go to college. She's also an openly gay woman or lesbian. Jalees is a lesbian in real-life. She's also a comedian and writer who has talked about her Muslim family rejecting her. Hopefully, some of that will come through here and we'll even get to see her dating life.

Lucas Neff (American Princess and Raising Hope) plays Caleb Summers, a medical intern that perhaps has gotten special treatment due to nepotism. Caleb's father is friends with one of the veteran doctors that works at Loyola Memorial. He's not a total idiot, but at times he seems like the slowest of the young doctors here. He might just be too reserved and timid in his ways.

Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks and Desperate Housewives) also co-stars as Stephen Frost, the aforementioned veteran doctor. He's a wise but easy-going force that breezes through the hospital corridors and in-and-out of patient's rooms. He's clearly okay with the nepotism, but he's appropriately tough with the young doctors to make sure they're in line and learn what they're supposed to learn at this teaching hospital. He might also have a thing for Carol.

Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody) plays Jenny Kenney, the daughter to Carol who is a pharmaceutical representative or as her mother calls her a drug dealer. Because of which, she too breezes through the hospital corridors, popping up every now and then. She's light and bubbly. There's not much more to her than that yet.

Rated TV-PG-D.
Running Time: 30 mins.
Thursdays at 9:30PM on CBS.