Zachary Quinto on NBC Medical Procedural

The start of the new television season also marks the return of my favorite television archetype: the antisocial genius who solves crimes/medical mysteries/legal dilemmas by alternately blinking and staring into the distance.

We know the best shows in this genre when we see them – let’s see how often I can reference it House in this review – and the worst ones tend to be so quickly interchangeable that even those who have dutifully watched six or twelve episodes may not be able to tell them apart from the others.

NBC’s new hospital series Brilliant minds is far from that lowest level. But the broadcaster is already doing everything it can to let the series sink into miasma, instead of seeing clarity for what it is, and what it is that is not noticeable.

It all starts with the title, which is not the same as the Oscar-winning A beautiful spiritHBO’s current extraordinary My brilliant friendthe newly launched (and somewhat more distinctive) series from ABC High potential or the completely forgotten CBS flop Pure genius. It is a boring name that takes the place of the otherwise silly Dr. Wolfnot to be confused with Peacocks Wolf Life Mewhich certainly promised to be a medical drama in which the main character is a doctor during the day and a werewolf at night.

Nothing in Brilliant minds is anywhere near as silly or funny or genre-bending. Based to a nebulous extent on the work of neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, Brilliant minds focuses on Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto), who, regardless of the phase of the moon, is not actually a wolf. However, he is absolutely your typical TV genius. Sometimes he squints hard and makes impossible diagnoses. Sometimes he does the same thing by staring into space, ideally into a flashback.

Brilliant mindscreated by Michael Grassi, has a thoroughly robust and repeatable engine, powered by one or two weekly cases and one or two ongoing pieces of mythology, and over the course of the six episodes sent to critics, it quickly establishes a decent ensemble. At times, this is exactly the kind of mildly clever, rarely intelligent hospital drama that could easily find an audience — though at least some of that repeatable structure is bewilderingly unsatisfying, and though Brilliant minds almost always stumbles when it deviates from its most comfortable rhythm and tone.

The series begins with Oliver being fired from his job. Everyone agrees that he is exceptionally intelligent but can’t play by the rules. His college classmate Carol (Tamberla Perry) offers him a job as head of neurology at Bronx General. It’s his last chance, but he hesitates for reasons that are presented as a surprise in the series but won’t shock anyone once they come to light.

Oliver has a number of quirks – he loves ferns, hates technology, and swims in the Hudson (in the pilot and then never again) – and a number of childhood problems related to his strict mother (Donna Murphy) and mentally unstable father (Gray Powell). To add to the fun, Oliver suffers from face blindness, which is only selectively portrayed in the series, as well as in the neurological weaknesses of the individual episodes. The condition is simply accepted as Oliver’s superpower: Because he has difficulty perceiving faces, he has to listen especially carefully to everything else.

Prosopagnosia hinders Oliver’s ability to form new relationships, such as with the four interns under his supervision. There’s Ericka (Ashleigh LaThrop), a friendly nerd who knows Oliver’s reputation and idolizes him; Jacob (Spence Moore II), a former college football star who clings to the athletic life he left behind; Dana (Aury Krebs), who suffers from anxiety and over-relies on pop culture references; and Van (Alex MacNicoll), who seems boring at first until his “thing” comes to light several chapters in. Oliver’s new job is further complicated by surgeon Josh (Teddy Sears), who disapproves of Oliver’s methods but has something important in common with him – they’re both gay!

The series’ serialized elements are certainly its weakest. The slow unfolding of Oliver’s childhood flashbacks didn’t yield anything to justify this kind of extension, while the drawn-out mysteries surrounding Van, Dana, and Jacob ranged from far too obvious to far too convenient. Speaking of “far too obvious,” Oliver’s treatment of a John Doe patient lasts two or three hours before reaching a diagnosis that, I guarantee you, anyone who has watched a medical drama in the last 15 years will have determined long before our brilliant minds on the scene.

The pacing of each episode is also awkward. Every episode I’ve seen reached its narrative climax about two-thirds of the way through, leaving over 10 minutes of drawn-out resolution left. It works when the emotional investment is immediate, but that’s not always the case.

The high point of the show so far is when the story starts in the head but quickly moves to the heart. It’s basically a tearjerker, starting in the very first scene of the pilot, where Oliver kidnaps an Alzheimer’s patient, played by musical legend André De Shields, and takes him to his granddaughter’s wedding, where he sings and the tears flow like cheap champagne.

My favorite chapters of the sequels fit in a similarly effectively manipulative vein, starting with an hour in which Steve Howey as a biker faces an impossible surgical decision, and another with Samantha Hanratty as a bride whose drug experiments on her wedding night go awry. They are not content to stay in that genre, however, Brilliant minds keeps playing. One part is a political thriller with a heavy-handed message about veterans’ mental health. Good message, bad episode. Another supposedly disturbing/scary/funny storyline involves mean high school girls and an almost supernatural detour. Funny idea, bad episode.

Quinto’s performance is dominated by a perpetually furrowed brow, but he finds humorous outbursts in Oliver’s craziness that I enjoyed. He and Perry, who is otherwise bogged down with too much expository language about their prickly pal, banter well together. Plus, Quinto and Sears have great chemistry in the kind of “will they or won’t they” pairing that remains extremely unusual in same-sex roles on the small screen. The various interns, whose dynamics as colleagues and with Oliver closely mirror the interplay between Dr. House and the so-called Cottages, are all good, with Krebs and LaThrop being the standouts.

It should be enough for this series to solve a confusing mystery and have these well-defined characters interact, but it wants to be eclectic. This fits with Grassi’s background, which is Degrassi To Wynonna Earp to several pretty Little Liars Spin-offs. The ambition is good, but so far these efforts have not been successful. The key to whether Brilliant minds is more memorable than its title and its fundamental characteristic is not to give up completely on one’s ambitions, but to find more stability in the future.