“How does a person stop being so angry?” – T.K.
A few days ago, I compared TNT’s Falling Skies to a certain variety of frozen pizza (in a good way). The point I was making is that really good summertime TV shows are few and far between and it’s a nice treat when you do find one that exceeds your expectations. Well, USA’s new drama Necessary Roughness isn’t like pizza at all. Unfortunately it’s more like frozen head cheese: absolutely awful. Necessary Roughness is an appropriate title for the show, as it made me decide it is absolutely necessary to be as rough as possible on it in my review.
Callie Thorne stars as Dr. Dani, a psychotherapist (a “boney-ass Dr. Phil wannabe”) who takes on a high-profile new patient while attempting to deal with a slew of personal crises of her own. From the commercials, I was pretty sure the show wouldn’t be “good” by any stretch of the imagination, but I have always kind of liked Thorne, who you’ll probably recognize as the bat-sh*t crazy Sheila from Rescue Me (plus, virtually anyone who had a recurring role in The Wire pretty much gets a lifetime pass from me). Thorne’s performance here isn’t bad, but no one could save Necessary Roughness from its horrendous writing.
Not only is the script garbage, but the entire premise of the show is completely unoriginal and derivative. We have seen the “shrink treats a troubled public figure” routine countless times. Any time I see this kind of story, it conjures up images of Tony Soprano sitting in Dr. Melfi’s office. Very few, if any, shows in the history of television have captured the essence of therapy better than the Sopranos and comparing that show to Necessary Roughness is like comparing the finest pizza to, well, head cheese. Every year we are force fed shows about people who excel at their profession, yet fail miserably in their personal lives. These stories are fine, I guess, but Necessary Roughness botches this cliched set-up. We have no real evidence that Dani is even competent, much less good at her job. Her therapy technique appears to be entirely based on hypnosis. It’s absolutely absurd, really.
In the pilot, we see Dr. Dani’s carefully constructed life as devoted wife and suburban mother of two begin to collapse around her. She discovers her husband cheating on her, kicks him out of the house and demands a divorce. She finds out that her teenage daughter, Lindsay (Hannah Marks), is flunking all of her classes and has been skipping school. Lindsay’s descent into juvenile delinquency continues when she steals Dani’s car and crashes it into a fast food drive-thru menu. To make matters worse, her husband is contesting the divorce, forcing Dani to pay a fortune in legal bills.
In order to afford her divorce lawyer, Dr. Dani accepts a job with a professional football team. Her assignment is to work with (read: hypnotize) the team’s star wide receiver, T.K. King (Mehcad Brooks), who is going through a crisis of his own, both on and off the field. The two-time all-pro is dropping passes and getting into scrapes with the law and his coach needs Dani to bring him back in line.
The idea of a show about a sports psychologist actually has some potential. The NFL is so protective over its brand and image that any glimpse behind the scenes of a professional football team is extremely interesting for fans of the league. (This is why HBO’s Hard Knocks is so fun to watch. I was also a big fan of ESPN’s short-lived Playmakers, which was allegedly pulled off the air because it depicted a fictional NFL franchise in a not-so-flattering light). But like I mentioned before, any potential Necessary Roughness might have is squandered by the awful script.
I jotted down a few examples from the pilot of the kind writing viewers of the show can look forward to:
* “My dad used to say life is like football, there are winners and there are losers.” – Dr. Dani
* “He cheated on me… more than once!” – Dani
* “But less than Tiger Woods.” – Dani’s Mom
* “You banged half a dozen women, Ray. That isn’t a mistake, that’s a way of life.” – Dani
* “I think I can help you.” – Dani
* “How? By catching my balls? You’ll need to use both hands.” – T.K.
* “Dr. D, how does a person stop being so angry?” – TK
* “Forgiveness.” – Dani
An hour of Necessary Roughness was more than enough for me. The chances of me tuning in next week are about as slim as the odds that a prima donna athlete would agree (without a court order) to see a therapist.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.