Red Band Society - Series Premiere - Review: Give The Kids A Chance

Here's the deal: I loved Red Band Society. In fact, I think I might have even adored it. But I'm not sure how much of that was due to the characters and their stories, or the ways in which the show uses its premise to tug at your heartstrings. I don't think I'm condemning the series when I say that almost none of this would work if it weren't set in a hospital's pediatric ward. Sure, we still get many of the same high school drama-type situations, but they're all made unique and more resonant by being viewed through the lens of mortality. Not all of these kids are necessarily going to die, but the majority of them have life-threatening ailments, so while we're getting the same love triangles, friendships, hookups, and breakups as we would from the usual teen drama, it's all filtered through a harsher experience than just growing up. It's realizing that you might not get to grow up at all. And while that's a poignant, stunning route for a primetime drama to take in its storytelling, there were points where I felt as though I cared about the character not because of who they were, but because of the situation they were forced into. Granted, this is only the pilot, so it's likely as the series goes on, we'll learn more about these characters and where they came from, but I get the distinct feeling that the precarious mortality of these kids might end up being a crutch for audience sympathy. Of course, with kids who are facing death, there's always going to be an inherent layer of sympathy. So how does everything else underneath it stack up? Are these interesting characters?

Credit: FOX

Well, yes. Absolutely, I would say so. Based upon the Catalan drama series Polseres vermelles, Red Band Society succeeds by making each of the characters distinct almost as soon as we meet them. Some of the characters are more interesting than others, naturally, but what I loved about this pilot and its approach was in how none of these kids really have a chip on their shoulder about their condition. It might plague them, hanging over their head like a fat, dark cloud, but they don't really give in to despair. They don't toss blame around, nor do they allow their condition to define them as people. The show could have gone all the way and made the respective conditions of each of the kids the sole defining characteristic about them. But they didn't.

Credit: FOX

Jordi (Nolan Sotillo, looking like a Spanish Josh Hutcherson) has osteosarcoma, but what sticks out about him is his resiliency. Upon finding out about his condition, he tracks down famed surgeon Dr. Jack McAndrew (Dave Annable), and uses his charm and determination to convince the doctor to take on his case. Meanwhile, Dash (The X Factor USA alum and Earth to Echo star Astro) has cystic fibrosis, yet it's his carefree style, his flaunting of authority, and his sex-crazed attitude that make him memorable. There's Emma (Ciara Bravo), a teen girl with an eating disorder who has a twisted sense of humor and a biting, sarcastic wit. And then there's mean-girl cheerleader Kara, who is so detested for her bad attitude that only one person on the cheer team comes to visit her, and only then out of pity. She's afflicted with the "Death By Irony" condition of having an enlarged heart that is slowly killing her. She's at the bottom of the donor list due to the presence of drugs, nicotine, and a cocktail of other substances in her blood, which means that the girl considered "heartless" is literally without a properly-working heart. Kara's condition is a blow, yet it's her irritated, taciturn personality, touched by a hint of sadness and regret, that identify her.

Credit: FOX

Similarly to Jordi, Leo (Charlie Rowe) has lost his leg to osteosarcoma (or a cancer very similar to it, since Jordi is scheduled to undergo the same amputative surgery), yet his defining characteristic is his dry, almost dark sense of humor about his situation, as well as his tenacity. He quotes Shakespeare, rallies his friends for a farewell party for Leo's leg, and even forms the titular Red Band Society as a way of bonding them all together. But even while he believes in the mantra that life is about "surviving what you don't want," we see that he's mostly putting on a brave face. In his English class in the hospital's school, he loosely compares the story of A Farewell to Arms to his own breakup with Emma, stating that the main character broke up with the love of his life because he was going to war and might not come back. Leo is a person who can't take goodbyes any more than he can stand the memory of having had a leg that's no longer there.

Credit: FOX

And, lastly, there's comatose Charlie (Griffin Gluck), who is the show's narrator. He's the one character most likely to be defined entirely by his condition, yet it was his indefatigable optimism that mostly stuck with me, even in the corny, improbable moments the pilot tries to sell us on, such as both Kara and Leo having had encounters with Charlie in limbo while unconscious. Charlie is one of those movie/TV kids who's impossibly wise for a kid, but it doesn't feel nearly as cloying and unnecessary as it might have felt if that personality didn't fit the overall tone of the series. It's a cast that suffers from a diverse array of ailments, yet each feels like a fully-realized individual, and that's a truly impressive feat to accomplish, particularly for a pilot as busy as this one, as we also meet Nurse Jackson (Octavia Spencer), a woman worn down into a biting, caustic cynicism from years of treating children who die. Hers is probably the best performance of the lot, as she feels instantly real and relatable. Basically, this is a damn good cast, and they do much of the work of making these storylines feel compelling on their own merits, even when the writing itself feels manipulative. For example, while I don't have a problem with a narrator, we really don't need constant voiceovers from Charlie in which he bludgeons us over the head with themes and cues for how we're supposed to feel ("Now things are getting interesting," he'll say in one scene, or "Everyone thinks that when you go to a hospital, life stops. But it's just the opposite: life stars."). Subtlety would do wonders for this show, but the presence of a narrator sort of inhibits the potential for subtlety since they feel the need to have Charlie comment on virtually everything. It's something that can be worked out as the series rolls on, but it brought the pilot down a few notches, in my opinion.

Credit: FOX

Still, that isn't to say this isn't a good pilot. Hell, I liked Red Band Society more than just about any pilot I saw around this same time last fall. It's funny, it's emotionally gripping, and the cast is terrific. This has more potential than most dramas I have the privilege of coming across in my line of work, so it should be interesting to see if FOX can convince audiences to give such a darkly comic, emotional drama a chance. If so, its success could make it the network's next Glee instead of its next Undeclared.