Black Box

The procedural elements of the medical drama hum along nicely, but it's Reilly's performance outside the operating room that makes this show worth watching. [28 Apr 2014]

Black Box doesn’t have that show’s [HBO's Enlightened] subtlety, but it’s certainly demonstrated an interest in creating a portrait of a contradictory and flawed, but powerful and engaging female character.

Ms. Reilly, who is otherwise appealing, brings an all-too-steady intensity to the role of Catherine--a kind that makes it hard to tell, on occasion, whether the doctor is on her medication or off it. That aside, and despite some madly improbable adventures in the hospital's brain-surgery unit, creator Amy Holden Jones and team have delivered a Black Box whose content is both smart and seductive.

This everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to storytelling does not help Black Box to be taken seriously.

It’s a solid start for a series that holds a lot of promise if given the chance to grow.

We not only see how those stories [of her patients] play out, but how Black’s story does, too. We see how her ailment affects her relationships with her boyfriend (David Ajala) and her family, and what little control she has over her life.

This is a show that has its heart in the right place, but is, ironically, pretty mindless.

The exposition-packed pilot at times resembles Rob Corddry's medical spoof Childrens Hospital. [18/25 Apr 2014, p.102]

Reilly, who is British but who has a convincing American accent, is a sturdy lead. She nicely holds her own in her confrontational scenes with Redgrave. She projects an intelligence that is essential to her role, and in her manic scenes--dancing alone on a balcony ledge or becoming hypersexual--she manages to keep from sliding into full-on caricature. But the writing is too often lazy.

Black Box at least has moments of unintentional high comedy in Catherine Black’s loopy magic carpet rides. But the series nonetheless takes itself way too seriously to be taken seriously.

There’s no way to self-medicate against the relentless drear of this new medical drama.

Reilly is intense and watchable.... But other elements of Black Box feel unconvincing, and overfamiliar, which is disappointing, considering the potential.

First, Catherine at times feels stylized, like a character from a ’30s movie. It’s alluring and distracting. Second, none of the other characters pops out enough so we’re immediately eager to find out what will happen next.

A clumsy, pretentious, cliché-riddled mess that just happens to have a woman at the center of things.

A show so deeply flawed and absurdly derivative you will wonder if you, like the main character, are experiencing a manic episode.

Casting Vanessa Redgrave as Dr. Black's therapist is a sign of how seriously Black Box takes her condition--and itself--but even Redgrave can't raise this above the level of a not very good medical procedural.

Black's condition is no joke--except when it is. The series is severely manic-depressive itself and emotionally manipulative in both modes.

In short, it’s a well-intended mess of a show with preposterous medical emergencies and a few flickers of ingenuity.

Put it all together, and Black Box simply isn’t worth seeking out.

No, you won't and shouldn't laugh at neurological disorders, but there are enough writing disorders to keep you in stitches until someone issues a DNR order on Black Box.

There are laughs to be had in this inept series from Amy Holden Jones (Indecent Proposal), but they're all of the laughing at--not with--variety.

The unusual medical cases feel like a way of marking time until Dr. Black can once again go off her meds and turn into a sex fiend in a show that might as well be called “Fifty Shades of Grey Matter.”

[An] insufferable, mindlessly contrived and wretchedly acted medical melodrama.

Black Box’s biggest flaw is that it has zero intuition for its own (apparently unintentional) acts of camp, attempting to say something meaningful about the stigma of mental illness when everything about the show is pure crackpot.

With lame flashbacks (her mother really wanted to kill herself--just you watch her say it, repeatedly) and crazy-people re-enactments, Black Box is just beyond silly. Add in Reilly’s ill-fitting performance and a need to spin around like a ballerina--free from those restrictive pills!--and you’ve got a recipe for never wanting anyone to find this Black Box let alone watch it.