Red Band Society

In 2011, Octavia Spencer won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in recognition for her powerful performance in The Help. Now, only three years later, Spencer is the lead character in the pilot of Fox’s Red Band Society, which premieres at 9 p.m.

I’m not sure if the second fact cancels out the first, but it certainly tries its best.

Spencer called the first episode of Fox’s new dramedy about a group of teenagers in a hospital “the best pilot script that I had read,” a statement that makes me question her sanity and ability to read. It’s the kind of show that makes you angry at how bad it is — that makes you wonder how many people read the script or saw the episode and approved it.

The whole pilot seems to be written by people who have neither been to a hospital nor had a conversation with anyone under the age of 40. It sounds as if they filled out a “crappy television show” Mad Libs with the top 10 Urban Dictionary word searches of 2012. “YOLO,” “cray-cray” and “awesomesauce” are all used in actual conversation. Those kids and their slang these days!

The show gives off the insulting and completely misguided belief that its creators know not only how the younger generation acts, but also what it likes. One can’t help but think that if the executives at Fox actually bothered to show this script to one living, breathing teenager, this fiasco could have been avoided.

In the extremely rare instance that something not-terrible happens, from a nice camera shot to the right song choice, it just feels like a waste. And that’s not to mention the actors involved. Besides Spencer and executive producer Steven Spielberg (yes, that Spielberg), names too big to be tarnished forever, the cast has a “dead man walking” air about them (their careers, not their characters). It doesn’t help that most of them recite lines like a kid in speech class.

More plot details are necessary. The pilot focuses on Spencer’s character, Nurse Jackson, and the young patients on her floor. There’s Leo, the kid with cancer who is totally cool and witty. There’s also his best friend Dash, who is black and wears urban clothes and tries to seduce the nurses. He tries to pull the old “I don’t want to die a virgin” line on a new one mid-sponge bath and (spoiler) it doesn’t go as well as you might think.

There’s also Kara, a mean cheerleader who ends up on the ward with a broken arm and is just a horrible person. It’s clear that the writers are trying to set her up for a “nice on the inside” storyline, but their idea of a bratty teenager is horrendous. Kara is unbelievably rude, unrealistically ignorant and straight-up racist. I have never met anyone  like her. 

Finally, there’s Jordi Palacios. He’s the new kid who lied his way into the emergency room (past tons of other sick people on the waitlist) to get the great medical attention he deserves. The doctor relents to Jordi’s illegal plan by simply saying, “I have a feeling ‘no’ isn’t in your vocabulary.” Brilliant.

The whole show is narrated by Charlie, who (plot twist) is in a coma. People call him “Coma Boy” and everything. Apparently, he is still able to see and hear everything. By way of explanation for this exceptional situation, Charlie simply says, “Yeah, this is me talking to you from a coma. Deal with it,” and delivers some more grade-A coma jokes.

This is a real scene that happens in a real show: Kara, forced to share a room with the coma boy, takes out a pack of cigarettes  and blows some smoke in his face to see if he’s really out cold. When he doesn’t flinch, she exclaims, “That is so cool!”

The scene is bizarre, confusing and painful, and it represents a huge flaw in the show as a whole. It tries to treat childhood illness, a dark topic, with a casual tone, but it comes off as completely nonsensical and ridiculous. The show is probably built around the success of The Fault in Our Stars, but the difference between the two is that TFIOS used its characters’ diseases as something to build a life around instead of a punchline.

Fox’s website calls it a dramedy, and maybe it will eventually turn into one, but the pilot has no idea where it’s going. Among the many inappropriate, dull jokes about sickness and death, there are three or four big, sappy season finale-caliber emotional moments. They are uncomfortable and strange to say the least.

Many things are wrong with Red Band Society. I don’t really expect it to be around for long, but while it’s still alive, TV executives can learn a few things from it: 

1. Don’t take a guess at what’s cool nowadays. It never, ever works. 

2. Don’t try and build a whole show around a trend. Cancer kids are not something to cash in on. A good show will always possess the same things: plotlines that don’t take huge leaps, situations that are realistic and characters that seem real. It’s not very hard.

I will finish this review by addressing the show directly and, if I may, by taking us back to 2011 to play on a beautiful line from a better time in Octavia Spencer’s career: You is embarrassing, you is insulting, you is awful.

Red Band Society premieres at 9 p.m. on Fox.