Review of Medical Police

9/10
awesome
13 January 2020
I get why not everyone connects with this show. You almost have to be a fan of Childrens Hospital to get the humor in Medical Police because of the heavy use of fan service jokes and deep cut references to the original show. If you aren't familiar with the original show, or didn't care for its absurdist approach to humor, you could find yourself lost almost immediately.

Like Childrens, a satire of medical dramas like Grey's Anatomy, Medical Police is loosely structured as a send up of action dramas like Jack Ryan ,with a threat introduced early in the season that the main characters fly around the world trying to resolve in their vaguely defined roles as "medical police". You really have to use quotes around the word because, as with Childrens much of the characters reality is literally just whatever they say it is in a particular scene, with everyone around them usually just instantly accepting whatever insane thing they just said. So in this case, they mean "police" in the sense that they grabbed some guns and declared that they were going to stop this global conspiracy, and everyone kind of shrugs and goes along with it.

The humor can be difficult to follow. I gave my best friend a boxed set of the first five seasons of Childrens as a gift one year, and his reaction was pretty much 'what the hell?' It's that kind of humor; you either love it or hate it, but there's very little space in between those two extremes. But if you loved Childrens, then I think there's a solid chance you'll love Medical Police. The differences between the two are fairly minor: instead of following a larger cast each episode, the story largely follows Lola and Owen most of the time, and instead of each episode being a self-contained plot there is an overriding story arch that develops over the season.

Honestly, it took some cahonas to make the show the way they did, as almost a single really long episode of the original show, because the non-initiated are probably going to think it's the weirdest thing they've ever seen. I'm a pretty big fan of Childrens and even I found myself occasionally struggling to connect the dots on obscure references to one-off episodes from Childrens run. But despite a somewhat slow start to the season, I ended up really enjoying it; as soon as I finished the season I started it over again just to see what I could catch that I missed the first time.

So I guess my recommendation is, if you were a fan of Childrens Hospital and loved it, definitely watch this show. If Childrens wasn't for you, then this probably won't be either. And if you haven't seen either, get a hold of the first season of Childrens and see if you enjoy it. If you do, you'll have a lot of fun binging ahead of you.
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