- Network: ABC
- Series Premiere Date: Jan 12, 2011
Watch Now
Where To Watch
| Buy on |
|
| Stream On |
|
Critic Reviews
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
[Rhimes] may still be up to her old tricks, but here they seem fresh and energetic. Best of all, she has a solid young cast that pulls them off well.
-
This enjoyable series from the Grey's Anatomy team is sort of Doctors Without Borders--who are also without too many clothes. [24 Jan 2011, p.41]
-
In true "Grey's" fashion, each newbie is challenged with a case that dredges up the personal issues that brought them to this isolated spot, where, according to Ben, it's like practicing medicine in 1952 in a Third World country
-
"Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes brings us another soapy doctor drama, set in a lush jungle instead of a hospital.
-
After you watch Wednesday night's premiere of ABC's doctor drama Off the Map, you might think the title means the show hasn't quite found its path yet. You'd be right. But it's got a shot to get there, with an engaging ensemble cast and a novel premise that could prove useful.
-
Melodrama, rippling musculature, straight-from-a-Valentine's-Day-card dialogue: There's no reason Off the Map can't become a hit. It just has to avoid sincerity like the plague. Or gangrene.
-
OTM doesn't immediately grab us the way "Grey's" or "Private Practice" did--though the latter did suffer an admittedly rocky start. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that there seems to be a bit of an identity crisis happening here.
-
So what we have here is another show in which pretty, mildly tortured people perform deeds of medical derring-do while trying to figure out how they, and various parts of their individual anatomies, might fit together.
-
The real challenge for the writers is to use the show's formula without becoming so enslaved to it that they fail to allow the characters to move beyond being cliches.
-
Off the Map takes few chances with plot or characters.
-
There aren't any particularly wince-inducing moments, but nor are the various grabs for the heartstrings as successful as they are when "Grey's" is at its best. No lows, but no highs, either.
-
The trouble is, they don't surprise you. Their routes to redemption are laid out early and often.
-
In practice, Off the Map plays like a rote example of "It's _____, but set in _______!" school of programming, in which the background is much more interesting than the foreground.
-
The conditions at the clinic and surrounding villages are unnervingly primitive, which adds to the drama and the stakes of many of these emergency triage cases. But it's the painfully earnest dialogue that could really make you ill.
-
Alas, it all plays just as sappy as it sounds, even with the gorgeous and ridiculous distractions of make-do medicine.
-
No matter how many times the show piles on another complication for the patients of the week, everything about the characters and the cases has a been-there, done-that feeling, and that rote quality is not mitigated by the occasional acknowledgement of the show's jungle setting.
-
Everything is all up in your grill. The touching moments aren't just touching; they're mauling. The life lessons aren't just suggested; they're shouted at you.
-
The series opens with the doctors taking a cliff plunge into the inviting ocean, but this is a show where nothing qualifies as a creative leap, much less the sort of dive to merit keeping Off the Map on viewers' radar.
-
Sadly, it takes even less time to realize that Map is a near-criminal waste of talent.
-
ABC's feverishly dumb new drama Off the Map takes fans of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice" on an arduous trip to a tiny village in the tropics, "somewhere in South America." It's echh in the time of cholera.
-
It's a shame that the writing makes Off the Map so unwatchable.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 33 out of 43
-
Mixed: 4 out of 43
-
Negative: 6 out of 43
-
Jan 19, 2011This show is a lot like Greyâ
-
Jan 13, 2011
-
Jan 13, 2011