DVD Reviews

Trauma: Season One – DVD Review

By Dana Rae Aug 4, 2010, 15:25 GMT

Like an adrenaline shot to the heart, Trauma is the first medical drama series set exclusively where the real action takes place – in the field. Cliff Curtis (Push) and Derek Luke (Notorious) star as ambitious heroes dedicated to one of the most dangerous professions in the world: first responder paramedics. When emergencies occur, the trauma team from San Francisco City Hospital is first on the scene, traveling by land, ...more

Trauma Season One will likely turn into Trauma the Complete Series, and that is sad news for fans of the show. It was canceled not once but twice by NBC.

If you didn’t chance to see it when the episodes aired, this would be a great opportunity to pick up the 18-episode set.

Be warned that no matter how much you enjoy the show and fall in love with the characters: this is all you are going to get.

The show is smart and sexy, and leading man Cliff Curtis aka ‘Rabbit’ (character’s name is Rueben Palchuk) is the main reason, in my opinion to watch. The pilot episode sees Rabbit surviving trauma of his own (a horrific helicopter crash in which co-workers are killed) and this sets up the entire season.

He has to deal with the whys of surviving when his friends and coworkers did not. Add the fact that the actor himself (Curtis) is so good at playing cocky and self-absorbed, and you have a winner.

The premise of the show is that three sets of partners, two an ambulance/trauma teams, and one an air rescue/helicopter team, go out on emergency 911 calls. How they deal with the trauma of the job is a big part of the suspense of the show.

Throw in Rabbit’s own demons, and the tension between him and another co-worker, Nancy Carnahan (played by Anastasia Griffith) escalate romantically, and there is something for everyone in terms of entertaining TV. 

Nancy is the leading lady of the show, and most of the focus is on her and Rabbit’s experiences as they try to help people. Both characters are a bit rogue. Nancy has been to medical school but never completed her residency and so she has medical training as a doctor. This comes to haunt her in many episodes as she struggles with the trained MD within her.

Her knowledge is put to use by taking risks to save lives, and this gets her into big time trouble mid-season. 

Rabbit also goes a bit rogue at times. He reads and researches and takes risks to saves lives (there is an episode where he freezes the spine to reduce the risk of more trauma). He has a devil-may-care attitude, and an I-can-and-I-will persona. The audience buys into this because we know what he has been through. And it helps that actor Cliff Curtis is so charismatic!     

Rabbit’s helicopter pilot is Marisa Benez (Aimee Garcia) and they have good back and forth banter. She seems to be Rabbit’s conscience and constantly asks him why he is a) doing this procedure this why b) why he is doing this to himself c) why he is not reacting the way he should d) all of the above. There is a hint of romance between the two at the first, but it quickly becomes a brother/sister relationship.

Nancy’s partner is the newbie Glenn (played by Taylor Kinney), who is very handsome but slightly inept and constantly hitting on Nancy. She puts him in his place more than once, and he ends up having a romantic intrude with another newbie, the intern Diana (played by Scottie Thompson).

However, by the last and final episode, the romantic twists and turns become surreal and might be a bit over-the-top. The series never brings closure to these characters’ lives as it seems dependant on a season two to continue the story.

The other ambulance team that goes out on calls is Cameron Boone (played by Derek Luke) and Tyler Briggs (played by Kevin Rankin). In one of the first episodes, they answer a call to a Halloween masquerade party and the audience finds out that Briggs is gay and Boone is slightly homophobic. This sets up a side-story for the two that gives a little tension to their relationship. 

Other characters in the season are Nancy’s boss, Dr. Joseph Saviano (played by Jamey Sheridan) and her father, Dr. Lyndon Carnahan (played by John Terry). Her father tries to save his daughter’s career when she comes under investigation and ends up throwing his old friend, the good doctor Saviano, under the bus. And he runs over him several times quite figuratively. 

There is some tension in the father-daughter relationship because he doesn’t understand why she has chosen to be EMS instead of doing her medical residency. Saviano is also a father figure to Nancy and defends her rogue tendencies until her father blames him, gets him fired, and takes his job.  Her father takes over the ER and is a pain to work for - which creates humor and clashes in the medical work place. 

The show is very well acted, or I should say well cast. The characters stay with you and it is sad to say that the series didn’t make it, because I wanted to know where they were headed. It does become a bit formulaic toward the end of the season - we see a scene, and the tension builds in its normalcy of who is going to get hurt? Often the one you pick is not the one that ends up needing the services of Nancy or Rabbit or Briggs or Boone.

Often the scene is one where you want to hide you eyes - a man falling off of a wall onto a cement spike, a window washer on a sky scraper going through a window. Helicopter and ambulance are dispatched, and the teams have dialogue and banter back and forth until they get to the scene where Rabbit or Nancy use unorthodox measures to save a life. 

In-between the saving of lives, romance blooms, and personal relationships spin out of control and back into control and out of control again. There are some flashbacks that further the sympathy for the complexity of Rabbit. We see our trusted trauma paramedics become victims themselves to trauma, emotionally and physically. 

It is a good show, and worth the time to view.

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