Universal Studios
As someone who genuinely loves clever, inventive sitcoms (and even some not so clever), I popped in the St. Denis Medical: Season One Blu-ray with cautious optimism.
After all, David Alan Grier has a long history of being hilarious and charming—from In Living Color to The Carmichael Show to the fantastic, short-lived series, The Cool Kids.
Surely, a workplace comedy about a quirky Midwestern health clinic would at least deliver a few good laughs, right?
Wrong. So very wrong.
What St. Denis delivers instead is a masterclass in how to take a perfectly good premise and run it straight into the ground.
It’s a tired, cliché-ridden trudge through every “wacky workplace” trope you can imagine, all assembled with the enthusiasm of someone filling out tax forms.
If you wonder how A.I. could potentially ruin creativity, St. Denis Medical might be an early warning of our darkest timeline.
The storylines? Imagine if Scrubs had no heart, Parks and Rec had no wit, and The Office had no sense of timing—and then imagine someone thought, “Hey, what if we combined those?”
Each episode trots out another lazy setup: a bungled diagnosis, an awkward flirtation, a “hilarious” misunderstanding about patient privacy. The so-called big arc involves Grier’s Dr. Marcus St. Denis squaring off with a rival clinic owner who feels like he was rejected from a Community parody for being too broad.
The characters are less people and more placeholders for sitcom archetypes. There’s the sassy nurse (who looks like she’s reconsidering her career choices mid-scene), the hypochondriac intern who’s clumsy yet inexplicably brilliant, and the token sidekick whose defining trait is… existing.
Grier’s Dr. St. Denis himself is written as a “lovable goof,” but lands somewhere between “generic” and “man who wandered onto set by mistake.” Any hints of emotional depth—like his vaguely referenced family problems—vanish faster than audience laughter. Chemistry among the cast? Let’s just say it’s more sterile than the clinic’s exam rooms.
Grier does what he can, but you can almost see him mentally calculating how many more episodes he has to get through before he’s free. His usual sparkle is buried under limp dialogue and tired punchlines that die on arrival. The rest of the cast gamely soldiers on, but no one escapes unscathed. Timing is off, reactions are forced, and the laugh-track moments are met with the same energy you’d give a voicemail from your dentist.
Extras are serviceable with a set tour by actor Mekki Leeper, a gag reel, and Mock medical advice from the characters.
In an era where sitcoms can be smart, bold, and surprising, St. Denis feels like something that escaped from a forgotten 1998 pilot season—and for good reason. It’s network comfort food that’s been left out on the counter a few days too long.
Save your time, save your money, and for the love of comedy, watch something else. And let’s hope Grier finds himself an actual funny series sooner than later.
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