SPOILER ALERT! This story contains plot points from the season one finale of Doc on Fox.
The Fox drama that’s based on an Italian format wrapped its first season Tuesday with a pair of cliffhangers involving Amy (Molly Parker) and Richard (Scott Wolf).
Amy confronts Richard over the mystery surrounding the death of his patient Bill Dixon. (In a flashback, viewers learn that Richard was distracted on the day of Bill’s death because his son was in trouble with police). Richard is finally held accountable for his actions and is fired at the end of the finale.
Meanwhile, Jake (Jon-Michael Ecker) sees Amy and her ex-husband Michael (Omar Metwally) in an embrace and is left wondering about the future of their romance.
Here, Executive Producers Hank Steinberg and Barbie Kligman talk about whether we’ve seen the last of Wolf and what to expect from the series going forward now that Fox has given the series an early, 22-episode Season 2 renewal.
DEADLINE Medical shows are enjoying a resurgence right now. Are you pinching yourself over the timing?
BARBIE KLIGMAN There’s quite a few of them for sure, but I feel like the medical drama has always been tried and true. There’s something so great about them, obviously with the built-in stakes. In our particular case, I think we were very lucky to get ahold of a format with a premise that felt like something that hadn’t been done already. The biggest challenge is always, if you want to do a medical drama, what version hasn’t been done yet? How can we make it feel different? That’s what we have. I think ours stands out as different.
HANK STEINBERG I think we have something that’s fresh, but we’re also going into something that is appealing to audiences — something that is old-fashioned in the best way. You’re going to lean into these characters, you’re going to care about them. They’re flawed, but you’re going to root for them. The writers are going to treat them with compassion and get you to care about them, and you’re going to care and you’re going to cry in that best bittersweet way at the end of every episode, feeling moved about something. I think it’s connecting because we’re living in a very cynical, divisive, angry time where people feel disconnected. And I think people are connecting to these characters. They’re aspirational, they’re trying to be their best selves. They’re not racing to the bottom of trying to figure out who to be angry at and why they’re a victim.
DEADLINE Is there a constant discussion about the balance of medical and personal stories?
STEINBERG Typically we do an A and B medical story, and those stories have their own engines, but we craft them to service the journeys of our main characters. We recognize that in the pantheon of the great medical shows over the last 15 years, there are a handful of cases that people remember, but they remember the characters more. So we’re rooting for the patients, but we’re seeing it through the eyes of the doctors.
KLIGMAN I do think we get in more character than even we knew we would at the start. You want to make sure everyone knows it’s still a medical procedural. So you bandy about numbers like 70-30, but I think we’re probably in the 60-40 range most times because even the time you spend on the medicine is actually about the character.
DEADLINE Since this is an adaptation of the Italian series Doc — Nelle tue mani, are you still relying on those storylines?
STEINBERG We graduated from them pretty early on in season one. The DNA of the concept is always there, but we made big changes from the beginning. They do have some really interesting cases that we still use and some things that are in the DNA, but now our characters really have a life of their own and we’re just kind of following them.
KLUGMAN I think it’s important to note they had twice as many main characters in the Italian version as we have no. So Hank had to go through and say, ‘okay, we love this about this person and about that person’ and form characters from there.
DEADLINE So let’s jump into the finale. Obviously Jake knows something’s afoot between Amy and Michael. Are you going to play out that love triangle for a while?
KLUGMAN There’s a lot more to mine from that triangle. You can live in a world where you love two people at the same time, and I think people recognize that, especially under these circumstances. So I think we plan to play out the triangle for as long as there’s something interesting to play.
STEINBERG We thought we were going to prolong it. We felt that in the first season she’s dealing with so much grief and so much dark and difficult stuff. We’re asking the audience to suffer with her. It felt like we could give her some relief by diving into that relationship with Jake and to do it in a way that feels organic. She’s kind of rebounding and it’s a quick emotional thing and we don’t know if it’s going to stick because it’s so quick, but it also feels emotionally honest and real. And so it felt fun to go, wow, what if we accelerate this? And then it really paid off. The more we talked about where the stories would go, it felt real and fun and exploratory and also really unexpected.
DEADLINE Jake always wears a chai necklace. What is the story behind that?
STEINBERG Barbie and I really wanted to create a positive depiction of a Jewish character at a time when things have been pretty rough for Jewish people in America. Barbie’s got her chai on as we speak.
KLUGMAN The chai was specifically Hank’s idea, which is also great because I wear one from my dad, who was a doctor. This was his chai that he wore every day before he passed. Chai means life. So there’s a beautiful thing to Jake wearing that necklace.
DEADLINE So what about Scott Wolf’s Dr. Richard Miller? Is he going to remain your villain or does the slate get wiped clean now that the jig is up for him?
KLUGMAN Here’s what I’ll say. We love Scott and we love the way he’s played Richard. So I don’t think this is the last we’ll be seeing of him. But I’m not giving you more.
DEADLINE With Robert Kennedy Jr. now serving as the new U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, his controversial views toward America’s health has become front and center. Can you see yourself doing, say, a season opener about a measles outbreak?
STEINBERG We try not to get overtly political and sledgehammer people with anything. But yeah, I think we’ll see how it develops. It’s a real thing that’s happening in our world. I don’t think we’ll talk about Mr. Kennedy on the show, but maybe we’ll do an episode that glances at the vaccine issue or something like that. Historically, I try to say something meaningful about what’s happening in the world at the time, but without making people feel preached at.
KLUGMAN But what I also think is important is that people are fighting over things and not even realizing all the things they agree with. I’m pretty sure it was Dick Wolf who said like 30 years ago that if you have three people with three different opinions, they can all be right. And when we’re able to do a story with an ethical debate that lays out the different sides and there’s validity to all of them, those are the most interesting stories.
DEADLINE What’s it been like working with Molly Parker?
STEINBERG She’s just breathtaking on screen. One of the things I always talk about is there’s old Amy and there’s new Amy. She doesn’t make it Jekyll and Hyde. She coheres that character so that in the old Amy you still see the flashes of compassion and empathy that you can see in the new Amy. And in the new Amy, you see some tendencies to get defensive and sharp with people that cause her problems. She makes Amy a fully fleshed out human being no matter what era she’s playing.
