Let’s say you’re ABC, you’ve just had a hit television show LOST but it’s done now, you’re left with lots of offices and apartments, set locations all over Hawaii. You want to continue to use these locations but you don’t want to have a show that will be as hard to make as LOST. You want a show which is guaranteed to have a bunch of viewers and stay on the air for as many seasons as humanly possible. Well now you have the ABC show “Off The Map”. Off The Map is a doctor show much like a Grey’s Anatomy style show but set in a remote South American village where a bunch of US doctors go to learn about themselves and help people.
If you like Medical Drama shows then go ahead and watch this, if not please don’t. I was an avid watcher of LOST so I quickly saw many of the same set locations in the first episode. But this show has so many ludicrous moments that it’s not even bad funny. *Spoilers Ahead* For instance in the first episode they must help a man who was on a zip line and for some reason, maybe he felt he was going to fast, he decided he needed to stop himself by jamming his hand into zip line spinner wheel. The type of injury that can only occur from extreme stupidity, and is great for television because then the doctors have to perform surgery on a high wire 100 feet off the ground. Or how about finding a man who’s been crushed by a python but realize that the python is the only thing keeping him alive so they must transport him with the snake still wrapped around him. And even though he’s awake it’s only when they’re wading through water that he makes the stupid decision of reaching for something in his pocket and falling off the gurney making the snake come off him. But of course it was to reach his wedding ring which shows a sentimental moment later in the episode. All four episodes I watched were filled with the dumbest decisions anyone could make. It’s as if I thought, you know, I should go sit in the middle of the freeway because that would be the cool thing to do. Oh, now I go to the hospital.
The show is created by Jenna Bans who is a producer and writer on Grey’s Anatomy so it makes sense why it has the same exact feel. The only redeeming quality to this show and I’m sure it’s not going to last is it has actor Zach Gilford who you may know from Friday Night Lights as Matt Saracen. I may only like him because I loved him on FNL, but I don’t think his decision to be on this show is necessarily a bad one. He gets to live in Hawaii and make a lot of money.
This show is really bad. I can’t recommend it to anyone unless you’re a huge fan of medical dramas that stay on for lots of seasons.