Sunday Morning Show Review: Mary Kills People – A big, crass helping of assisted suicide with a side of Hollywood sensationalism.
Sunday Morning Show Review is a weekly look at movies or television that piqued my interest or raised my ire. It is 98 per cent spoiler free. Meaning I won’t ever give anything away the trailers don’t (and often much less).
I started to get this feeling.
A good one, I think. Maybe you can help me figure it out. It happened when I heard a new Canadian show was out. It wasn’t quite shame and loathing. It was different. Like, the absence of shame and loathing? But that can’t be right; we’re talking about Canadian TV.
We’re talking about the land of DeGrassi jr. High, The Red Green Show and The Littlest Hobo. The land where they take hundreds of half-baked American ideas and re-fry them with a pinch of poutine. The land of “Totally Unnecessary Productions,” to quote a guy who got it mostly right.
Now this land is our land, and I’m not saying Canadian programming entirely lacks value. Heck, I’ve watched every season of the Trailer Park Boys (and the movies)! If that doesn’t prove the power of nostalgia, I don’t know what does.
But I’ve never said to myself, “Hey, I bet this new Canadian show is going to be a massive hit.”
Enter: Mary Kills People, a show about a Doctor who moonlights as a mercy-killer.
Now that is an interesting premise. One where Canadians can provide a unique perspective, considering the recent legislation to allow assisted suicide. Surely this will be an intelligent show, full of nuance, and carefully considered moral discussion around this most sacred act.
It started airing in Canada and the US on January 25. If you’re north of the border you can catch it on Global, my southern brethren will have to hit up Show Time.
I immediately regretted getting my hopes up.
Instead of a show about the powerful moral implications of people who help others die, they are creating a Breaking Bad where the protagonist deals in sodium pentobarbital instead of meth.
The show stars Caroline Dhavernas (Hannibal, Passchendaele) as Dr. Mary Harris. Richard Short (Vinyl) plays alongside her as Des, her incorrigible murder-mate. Jay Ryan (Beauty and the Beast) as Joel and Lyriq Bent (The book of Negroes) as Frank both had ancillary roles in the first episode, but the promo material makes me think they'll be significant characters.
In the first ten minutes of the show, the pair manage to completely butcher any sort of reverence for the act of mercy-killings.
They squabble about money, and nearly botch an assisted suicide as an unexpected person arrives at the house they’re in.
This really rubs me the wrong way. I get that they're trying to be funny, but amidst that horrible ten minutes Mary actually talks her client into going through with it. It makes me feel like the producers want to say something about the kind of people who perform assisted suicides. Like they're only doing it out of self-interest, when in reality that couldn't be further from the truth.
The show is being marketed as a sort of comedy-drama, and that's fine. I'm of the "nothing is holy" camp myself. But it’s obvious the writers plan to rely on stale Hollywood strategy: building drama through happenstance, titillating with racy sex scenes and having it mostly work out in the end. And if 6 Feet Under taught us anything, it's that a show can still be funny while dealing with serious topics. They just have to do it in a smart way.
What do I mean? In the first episode the teenage lesbian daughter breaks off her marijuana-and-make-out-sesh to look for a vibrating cellphone in the floorboards. What does she discover? All of moms sodium pentobarbital. Heavens to betsy! Turn off your ringer doctor. Thankfully, they decide to put it back without a second thought as to what it is.
Now I’ll skip the many arguments about how sexualizing underage girls isn't as awesome as popular media seems to think, and I'll just say this scene felt tawdry and meant to titillate. However, what really chuffs my muffin is that no kid in their right mind, especially ones who sneak away to smoke pot, would ever just put drugs back without taking 10 seconds to google what they are.
This isn’t to say Mary is hopeless.
Dhavernas is a great actress at least, and I was impressed with the little I saw of Ryan. I should also note that first episodes don’t always indicate a shows potential.
But too much of this particular premier tells me this a program using cheap tricks to titillate. Instead of thoughtful writing on an important subject, we’re getting gimmicky sensationalism in a melodrama package.
It's also entirely bipolar. Is it a comedy that isn't funny? Or a drama that isn't dramatic?
Now, do you want a new show doing melodrama the right way?
Check out Pure. It’s a show about Canadian Mennonites in Arnprior who get roped into selling meth.
I know, I know. Talk about gimmicky sensationalism, right? But the difference between Mary and Pure is that it makes sense for Pure to be sensational. It’s a sensational premise.
Pure also gets points for being unabashedly Canadian. In Mary you don’t even know if the show is set in the US or Canada.
Bottom line
Mary is like a pop-song. It may be catchy, but it’s devoid of substance. The creators of the show didn’t write it thinking how they could bring to light the moral implications of assisted suicide. They went into it thinking it was a good way to make a ton of money, because it’s being widely talked about.