Joyce Henderson (Wendi McLendon-Covey) strides down a hospital hallway in a camel blazer, trades a wave with a nurse in pink scrubs and turns to the camera with both thumbs up. The very next shot is a website called Oregon Health Stars, with a “Vote for Best Hospital Administrator in Oregon” banner and Joyce reaching toward her own headshot in the grid of nominees. A beat later she is at the nurses’ station holding up a roll of “I Voted” stickers, which says plenty about how this campaign is going to be run. NBC released the Season 3 trailer for “St. Denis Medical” on Tuesday, October 13th, and the show comes back Monday, November 2nd, at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock. “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins” follows at 8:30 with its own season two premiere.
That campaign is a running gag, but the trailer is mostly about who came back from the Season 2 finale, and in what shape. The finale put Ron (David Alan Grier) on the table for a triple bypass, performed by heart surgeon Dr. Brooke Emerson (Ariana Madix), and when he woke up he asked, “Where’s my Joyce?” The episode before it finally got nurses Matt (Mekki Leeper) and Serena (Kahyun Kim) to kiss, and by the end of the season they had agreed to date. Justin Spitzer, who created “Superstore,” made this mockumentary with Eric Ledgin, who runs it. NBC’s own logline promises that in Season 3 “romantic entanglements and personal struggles complicate relationships in the Emergency Department, pushing some St. Denis employees to the brink.” Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “St. Denis Medical” Season 2 and for everything shown in the Season 3 trailer.
That campaign is a running gag, but the trailer is mostly about who came back from the Season 2 finale, and in what shape.”
Ron’s return is the first real joke, and it is built almost entirely out of reaction shots. He walks onto the floor in a gray hoodie, plainly expecting a welcome, and Bruce (Josh Lawson) comes bounding across the room with his arms flung wide. A wide shot shows a mostly empty floor, and then Ron turns to his old spot and finds it buried under racks of green-capped specimen cups. People, which had the trailer first as an exclusive, says his desk has been turned into “the new urine station.” Matt wraps Ron in a sideways hug and holds up what looks like one more green-capped cup, and the sequence ends on Ron staring flatly into the lens, a look Grier has perfected over two seasons.
Bruce is going through “a bit of an identity crisis,” as NBC’s preview page puts it, and he gets the broadest material. A masked surgeon in a red cap who looks like Bruce flings his gloved arms around an operating room in something between a stretch and a dance, while a doctor in black scrubs, who appears to be Madix’s Emerson, talks through a wire-mesh window. Then Bruce sprints across a break room and ends up flat on the floor as a group of women, one of them holding up a phone, clap their hands over their mouths. He comes back up grinning, with blood smeared across his mouth and chin, in front of a whiteboard poll asking whether the staff would rather see dinosaurs or aliens in person. Alex (Allison Tolman), in a pink cardigan with a folder under her arm, gets cutaways in the middle of all this, and her face does the work of a punchline.
The strangest case in the trailer involves a turtle. Serena, in blue scrubs and taking notes on a tablet beside Ron, who is back in his white coat, yanks open a curtain on a patient with a large, craggy turtle clamped onto him. A nurse in maroon scrubs grabs at the shell, a doctor in a white coat reaches in with forceps, and Joyce, in a black suit this time, recoils. People lists “an unusual animal bite case” among the new season’s stories, and the turtle looks like the one. The payoff is the next cut, Ron and Serena leaning on the nurses’ station with the same blank expression, as if a turtle attack were a normal part of the week. A title card reading “November 2” comes up, and the trailer turns to Matt and Serena.
The two of them flirt at the nurses’ station, and on a break room couch he feeds her a bite off a spoon. Then Joyce, now in a dark blazer, catches up with them, and People transcribed her verdict: “This is why I don’t allow office romances. It sickens the culture!” She keeps going, describing an imagined scene of “you two embracing on a futon, bodies glistening with sweat,” while the camera holds on two nurses who would clearly like to be anywhere else. Serena answers with a long, pained grimace, and People and The TV Cave both describe her as not ready to call Matt her boyfriend, even though People says he looks all in. It is a small complication, and probably the right size for a couple that took two seasons to reach a first kiss.
Ledgin told TV Insider the premiere starts from exactly that question, “What does that relationship look like and what’s the first complication in it?” After a title card reading “The Future of Medicine,” the trailer rushes through a run of happier moments. Joyce throws her arms around Ron on a couch, Bruce walks a hallway arm in arm with the doctor in black scrubs, and Serena doubles over laughing with Ron at the desk. Bruce also rolls up a sleeve to show off a tattoo of an anatomical heart while a man with a mustache watches, unconvinced, and it is hard not to read it as a nod to Ron’s surgery. On the Joyce and Ron question, Ledgin told TV Insider, in comments People also ran, “It’s not a major part of this season, but it is something that we continue to play with.” Alex closes the run by staring straight into the camera, and a card finishes the sentence: “Is in Strong Hands.”
The last word belongs to Dr. Highland (Damon Wayans). In an olive jacket, stethoscope and rimless glasses, he meets Ron in the middle of the floor, and what starts as a handshake turns into a contest. People transcribed the exchange: “Whoa, that’s quite a grip you’ve got there,” Highland says, and Ron fires back, “That’s like my 50 percent grip right there!” Highland answers, “Me too,” and from there the handshake gets uncomfortable fast. By the end Ron is holding his hands together at his chest, and Highland strolls off with a sheet of paper and a smile.
The casting is the point. Wayans and Grier were castmates on “In Living Color” in the 1990s, and NBC describes Highland as “a charismatic yet egotistical doctor” filling in while Ron recovers. Ledgin told TV Insider that he tries “as much as possible to play to the reality of the world,” and bypass surgery is “not really the easiest recovery,” so Ron gets temporarily replaced. He added that Highland wins over everyone except Alex, who suspects “he thinks he’s on some medical show,” a sly joke for a show shot like a documentary to make about a guest star. It might be the sharpest idea here, though NBC has only announced Highland for the premiere.
NBC renewed the show for a third season in February, and Emerson is back for more than a cameo. Ledgin told TV Insider that Madix returns starting in the second episode, with a story between Brooke and Bruce that also involves Matt, and he called it “some of my favorite stuff that we’ve shot so far this season.” This trailer sells a cast that knows how to play off each other, a guest star with real history behind him, and a hospital that cannot get through a shift without something biting somebody.
What Do You Think? Is Dr. Highland a one-episode stunt, or should the show find a reason to keep Wayans around after the premiere? Does Serena’s hesitation about the word boyfriend point to real trouble for her and Matt, or just a speed bump? And with Ron waking up asking for Joyce and Joyce running for Best Hospital Administrator, which storyline do you want the season to spend the most time on?
See you on the next binge!
