Transplanted-doc tale needs more than heart
BY LORI RACKL TV Critic/lrackl@suntimes.com September 22, 2011 5:46PM
Whiz-kid doctor Rachel Bilson stars in the fish-out-of-water concept on CW.
‘HART OF DIXIE’ ★
8 to 9 p.m. Mondays on WGN-Channel 9
Updated: May 9, 2012 11:55AM
Zoe Hart is a whiz-kid doctor who wants to be a cardiothoracic surgeon just like Dad.
She has mad skills with a scalpel but gets passed over for a surgical fellowship because — get this — she lacks bedside manner.
“If you want to be a heart surgeon, then you’ve got to work on your own [heart],” Zoe’s boss says, after chastising her for not reading to a patient.
“Hart of Dixie’s” writers clearly have never been to a hospital.
A heartbroken Zoe (Rachel Bilson, “The O.C.”) leaves Manhattan to accept an elderly physician’s offer to take over his medical practice so she can work on that rusty bedside manner in the backwater town of Bluebell, Ala.
What follows is a silly, youth-oriented CW drama packaged as a fish-out-of-water yarn: Brash city slicker finds herself surrounded by swamp critters, fried food and a cadre of mean Southern belles wearing hoop skirts.
Zoe initially wants to hightail it out of Redneckville but decides to stick around. Can’t imagine many viewers will do the same.
