Stanley Tucci plays a moody brain surgeon who sees the world as his enemy and the co-workers he deals with as chess pieces in a game they don't know he's playing on them. While that sort of character is done with House, Tucci's take on that kind of a character is given a more relaxed approach. The problem with 3 LBS is that what looks like a laid-back performance really comes off as utter boredom.
I would think prime-time television would be tired of cop shows, lawyer shows and medical dramas by now. Sure you can liven up the cast, bring in bigger stars and give shocking cliff-hangers at the end of the season, but the setting is still the same. Why not create a drama about caregivers and how they have to put up with the personal drama of someone they deal with on a limited basis? More people are dealing with that issue as their parents become much older.
But alas, this won't happen — and so, I return to the show.
Basically the show is set up of two minds — Dr. Doug Hanson (Tucci) loves the brain, but not the human carrying it, while Dr. Jonathan Seger (Mark Feuerstein) cares about both. Okay, cool. Now what? Well, they add a bit of Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind with surrealist scenes of the brain activity of some of their patients (particularly in the debut episode where a girl develops weird seizures due to a tumor, which is somehow connected to the events of her dead sister who died at the operating table).
Once that's over, then it's time for drama with the co-workers.
Of course Hanson and Seger don't get along, completely due to their personal beliefs — that doesn't stop the latter from hitting on a possible ex-love of the former (Indira Varma). There's also a bit of tension between Griffin Dunne (who plays a rival brain surgeon) and Tucci's characters about who can perform the best surgery the best way.
Okay...what's next after that?
The problem I had with this series was the same problem I had with Smith — it's just there. Tucci is there, the plot is there, and the sexual tension is there. It's like a waitress handing you the plate with nothing else to offer besides the main course — which in 3 LBS's case doesn't seem enough to carry on past a season.
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