NBC’s St. Denis Medical is a charming workplace sitcom from Superstore and American Auto creator Justin Spitzer and writer Eric Ledgin.
Told as a mockumentary, the series follows a group of nurses and doctors at an Oregon hospital. Between its format and its focus on a group of harried, underfunded employees just trying to do some good, St. Denis Medical contains shades of other shows like Abbott Elementary and Parks and Recreation. But will it also feature the classic workplace sitcom staple of an office (or in this case, hospital) romance? Who will be St. Denis Medical‘s Jim and Pam? Its Leslie and Ben? Its Janine and Gregory?
I was tired of slow-burn sitcom romances. ‘Abbott Elementary’ changed that.
As of the show’s first two episodes, nobody! Kind of. Yes, St. Denis Medical hints at the possibility of a workplace romance between nurses Matt (Mekki Leeper, Jury Duty) and Serena (Kahyun Kim, Cocaine Bear). But it also subverts that same hint in a way that feels genuine, smart, and potentially refreshing for the genre.
Our first hints at a St. Denis Medical romance come less than five minutes into the episode, when head nurse Alex (Allison Tolman) tells Serena their new floor nurse is a “young guy from Montana.”
Serena’s response? To playfully dry hump the front desk and imagine it’s the new nurse, something she straight-up tells St. Denis doctor Ron (David Alan Grier). Who needs boundaries in a hospital anyway?
However, whatever fantasies Serena may have had about the Montana nurse fly out the window when she actually meets him. Matt may be a pleasant goofball, but, to put it simply, he is not smart. He administers an EpiPen to himself instead of a patient on his first day, for crying out loud. Serena can only watch on in horror.
Credit: Ron Batzdorff / NBC
Later, though, she gives him a small pep talk about how he stepped up during a medical emergency. She even nudges his shoe with her own, a small bit of physical contact that makes Matt’s face light up.
In a confessional directly following that scene, Matt reveals that he’s starting to think he’s got what it takes to be a nurse. “Also,” he says conspiratorially, “I might have met the girl of my dreams. So, yeah, I think I’m in the right place.”
Cut to Serena, who has a very different thing to say to the documentary crew: “He’s definitely getting fired. He’s so, so bad.”
Serena’s response is a great comedic undercutting of Matt’s excitement about his “dream girl,” but it also shuts down the possibility of any romance between them kicking off right away. After all, if you introduce mutual attraction in your first episode, like Jim and Pam in The Office or Janine and Gregory in Abbott Elementary, you’ve set yourself a ticking time bomb. The audience knows immediately that these characters will get together at some point. But if that will-they-won’t-they dynamic overstays its welcome, you risk exasperation and unfortunate narrative drag. (Yes, Jim and Pam pushed me to my limits.)
That St. Denis Medical seemingly cuts the Matt-Serena romance off at the head means that the show might not even be engaging with a genre trope that’s grown a tad overplayed. Or, it could just be buying itself more time, letting the characters develop organically and separately before nudging them together down the line. At least we won’t be force-fed pining glances right from the jump.
OK, Matt may still be pining, but Serena will be too busy being competent to notice. Maybe if he learns how to properly work an EpiPen, he’ll be worthy of her, and I’ll be more ready to root for their pairing.
St. Denis Medical airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock.
