Manny Camacho reviews the fourth episode of Red Band Society…
If you hadn’t yet discovered this enthralling and emotionally wrenching series, consider this your notice. Red Band Society is a roller-coaster that is using your heart strings as its guide rails. The series has been following the oft small and awkward misadventures of a group of teenagers who all live in a hospital suffering from their own distinctive health issues. Charlie, a 12 year old boy in a coma narrates from the relative serenity of his motionless body as life continues around him.
The series opens with a newcomer to the group, Jordi Palacios, a teenager who crossed the border from Mexico, in an effort to reach Los Angeles’ Ocean Park Hospital–a renowned facility for its world class care. Jordi has Cancer in his leg and pleads with Dr. Jack McAndrew to help him as his only option to survive. Jordi doesn’t have much of a family, his grandmother doesn’t believe in western medicine and has tried a variety of witch doctors and shamanistic remedies. Jordi also states he’s never met his father and that his mother is dead.
Dr. McAndrew takes Jordi in as a special case and moves him into a special hospital ward run by Oscar award winning Octavia Spencer as Nurse Jackson. He becomes the roommate of Leo Roth, an up and coming division 1 high school soccer player who lost his leg to Cancer and is struggling with the next steps of his new life. Leo’s past girlfriend Emma is also present in the hospital with her bouts with anorexia and is an exceptionally bright young lady. Leo and Jordi’s first meeting and realization they would be together in the same room was a tenuous one at best. Eventually accepting their fated rooming accommodations, Leo introduces Jordi to his hospital buddy, Dash, and the hospitals billionaire benefactor, and extreme hypochondriac, Ruben Garcia. Who is more like a teenager himself also living in the hospital despite being in solid health.
As Jordi is introduced to this environment two other players come into the fray with Kara, a horrifically behaved and overtly entitled wealthy teenage popularity queen suffering from various cardiac issues and addictions. She’s forced into the mix along with the extremely charismatic Nurse Dobler who is learning to adjust to Nurse Jackson’s seemingly tyrannical rule over this hospital ward.
Watching Red Band Society you get a very specific sense that it is an old screenplay written by John Hughes or at the very least inspired by The Breakfast Club. The very specific intermingling of these extremely varied personalities desperately scratching away at their lives to find a place for themselves. While struggling with the overwhelming truths of reality that they fight a life and death struggle everyday while showcasing their own facades–all poignantly weaved together. All of these kids are generally misfit and under normal circumstances may never actually have come together in the real world. Here they’re forced together in an extremely varied environment that isn’t completely adversarial but isn’t short on tough love; especially from Nurse Jackson, who consistently doles out her care in veiled harshness masking over her sincere concern for these kids.
Nurse Jackson is an amazingly brash, zero tolerance (for bullshit) woman who at first glance appears to be hated or intensely feared. But the various glimpses of her humanity showcase her love for these children and the reality that her life is second even if these young people dismiss her as old and irrelevant within their limited world views. Add to the situation the benefit of having a constantly sweet and almost invariably awkward and happy Nurse Dobler to the mix…you get moments of Nurse Jackson feeling like she’s babysitting and training a new child nurse she didn’t want in the first place. However, you can slowly see how they both chip away at each other. Leaving only the best parts of themselves vulnerable and open, for everyone to see.
William Cruz also plays an exceptionally grounding role as Nurse Kenji Gomez-Rejon who has a very polarizing affect on Jackson and Dobler. Rounding out the adults these teenagers are witnessing. Together they provide some of the basic mentoring, counseling, adversarial guidance and order to dysfunction that these teenagers are lacking in their own lives.
In episode 4 we’ve already gained a variety of perspective on these kids and understand the complexities of their relationships toward one another. Jordi is trying to survive but omitted the fact that his mother was alive. Because his mother left him with his grandmother to live her own life when he was very young. Dr. McAndrew in a random chance meeting ended up in a one night stand with Jordi’s mother before either of them knew how the other was involved with the young teen. Kara at this point seems extremely damaged and pushes everyone around her away for her own selfish and entitled needs but there are immaculate glimpses of the lost little girl inside. Emma’s struggle with anorexia becomes more and more prevalent while her past relationship with Leo continues to bubble to the surface as her growing connection with Jordi strengthens. A relationship that is a dichotomy of inspiration for Leo as much as it is a source of extreme strife for his renewed interest in Emma. His growing friendship and connection with Jordi, who was originally going to lose his leg and now ended up keeping it, even if his diagnosis grew to be far more dire. What was once to be a comrade became a point of contention for Leo. “Why does he get to keep his leg and not me!?”
Throughout the first couple of episodes Jordi wishes to emancipate himself as a minor to attain control and permission for his procedures, under the guise that his mother was dead. Along with the story that his grandmother (in Mexico) refuses to aid him with getting proper treatment, believing he has a demon in his leg, not Cancer. With the return of Jordi’s mother (Eva) the situation becomes more and more complicated because of her general inability to cope with his sickness to his lack of trust in her ability to be a mother at this point in his life. Only to slowly allow his guard down for Eva to leave and disappoint him again.
This episode focused on a few of the social aspects of these teenagers lives. A few of the situations we tend to disregard as adults that are essentially all that matter to teenagers at their ages. Their social status. Something that was grasped by Leo when he aided Kara on stage during a homecoming event they were allowed to attend by Nurse Jackson. Nurse Dobler attended as a chaperon for Kara with Emma in tow. Emma who already had a variety of social awkwardness was only made more uncomfortable by Kara’s excessively rude and cruel behavior. Emma was happy to see that Leo turned up to the event (Neither of which belonged to this school) using his new titanium leg even though his chemo treatments stand out with his lack of hair along with the use of his crutch. While the scenes created many opportunities for their relationship to reconcile. It also created a new wedge when Leo aided Kara from her personal frustrations and embarrassments. By going on stage when she was crowned homecoming queen, including being taken to the stage by wheelchair and paraded around in a show or pity. Leo decided to put the fake pretense of said pity-party on its ear by taking over the microphone and stating comically how much of a horrible person Kara truly was. An act that both left Emma alone and heralded Kara’s uplifting, culminating in an on-stage kiss much to Leo’s surprise.
Before the episode was over, Jordi and Dash were allowed by Eva to go to see a film on their own, following Jordi’s first round of chemotherapy. An outing that was unknown to Dr. McAndrews. Jordi unavoidably collapsed in the theater and was rushed back to the hospital which led to his mothers near immediate departure.
The relationships in Red Band Society highlight a convergence of personalities, sensibilities, loyalties and personal definitions of family, love, hate and prejudice. It overwhelmingly confronts you with these things without a forced social commentary or intended political agenda’s. The characters flow and their stories pour out like bright paint flowing and filling your screens. Thick and glossy…reflective. Not easily removed, staining your thoughts and preconceptions. Somewhere in a land defined by your own sensibilities of the afterlife sits John Hughes with John Lennon having a pint and are applauding this series on its effort from their celestial television screens. If you believe in that sort of thing. Red Band Society is as comedic as it is gripping & heartwarming–oft times thought provoking. This episode gains top marks. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Manny Camacho is a Miami, Florida based award winning writer and independent film producer whose current novel, I Think? No, I’m Sure…God Hates Me, is currently sold out of its first printing but will be available again on Amazon soon.
