A few nights ago, I decided to start watching the new PBS original series “Mercy Street” after my parents told me that they were going to try it. My parents and I have watched many different shows on PBS throughout the years, and we’re always eager to try new ones. Before starting this show, I was slightly skeptical purely based on the knowledge that it was a Civil War drama. Even though I love historical books, films, and television shows, I felt like I had seen a good many Civil War dramas already, so I wondered if this series would be able to bring anything new.

Now, the first episode wasn’t available online, so I’ve only watched the second and third ones. Immediately upon watching, I recognized that this show did indeed have something that set it apart from the Civil War dramas I’ve seen: it focuses on a hospital, and on the men and women working inside it. It’s based on the real Mansion House Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, which was originally a hotel owned by the aristocratic Green family until it was repossessed by the Union military to serve wounded soldiers. The main characters on the show are Mary Phinney, a young widow from New England who is brought down to be head nurse at the hospital; James Green, the older Southern patriarch of the Green family; Emma, his daughter, the quintessential Southern belle and a staunch defender of the rebel cause and soldiers; Alice, her younger and very naive sister; Dr. Jed Foster, a surgeon with more experimental practices (who, fun fact, is played by Josh Radnor, a.k.a., Ted from "HIMYM"); Samuel Diggs, a free black man who works at the hospital; and Aurelia Johnson, an escaped slave who works as a laundress at the hospital and who falls under the cruel manipulations of the hospital steward. There are obviously other characters, but these are the ones that stuck out to me.

Overall, my opinions based on these episodes are mixed. The most positive aspect of the show, to me, is the head nurse, Mary. She’s spunky and headstrong and doesn’t take crap from anyone; she even slapped the mean steward in the face! She consistently tries to do the very best she can for her patients, and she weathers the judgment and criticism of other nurses and doctors with remarkable ease. One thing that bothers me is that it seems like the show is trying to set up a romantic attraction between her and Dr. Jed Foster (who, of course, is married), which just feels unnecessary and out of Mary’s character. But other than that, I really like her and her storyline.

I also appreciate that the show doesn’t just focus on the white people in the hospital but on the black workers as well, showing the complex relationships between them. Samuel and Aurelia are both technically free in Alexandria, and they get wages for their work at the hospital, but the racial hierarchy is still very much present, and with the way they’re treated by some of the whites there, they’re often basically still slaves. Also, the treatment of black workers by white workers varies with each character, so it’s not like every white person treats the black workers terribly or like everyone lives in perfect non-slavery harmony. I appreciated this more complicated portrait. Mary and Samuel, for example, frequently work together, particularly when she can’t get anyone else to believe in her or take her seriously, but there’s usually a sense of caution between them as if they know they can’t get too close.

Now, I’m afraid my negative points number more than my positive ones: first, this show includes several tired tropes and stock characters. We have a proud, Scarlett O’Hara-like Southern belle, a younger and extremely naive girl who assumes that her lover will return home from battle a shining hero. We have a respected Southern patriarchal figure experiencing moral conflict over whether or not to remain loyal to his Southern brethren or do what is right and condemn slavery. Hint: he leans toward the “do what is right” side, but his character consistently frustrated me because I felt like I was supposed to regard him as an ultimately good man, or a “better” racist, who stood up against slavery. However, he was clearly still just a racist white guy given contrived lines about how times were changing so that the show could present him as Morally Conflicted White Southern Gentleman. Then we have an evil rapist / non-gentleman-like / dumpy white man who takes advantage of young black women. Obviously, the cruel rapist white man character is completely grounded in reality, so that one doesn’t bother me as much, but I felt like the show was just tossing him in as a means of fulfilling that role. What if they had another character like that, and not just one? That would certainly be realistic.

The episodes I watched also included a few too many cheesy lines and plot devices. In one scene during the third episode, Dr. Foster’s injured brother, a rebel soldier, arrives at the hospital with their Southern, slave-owning mother. On top of the mother constantly berating Dr. Foster for betraying their family and disappointing his late father by working for the Union side (an exchange that I felt like I’d seen many times and that just kept happening in this episode, as if that was all the mother was there for), Dr. Foster and his brother have an exchange in which Dr. Foster says something like, “I went North, you went South,” and wasn’t it remarkable that they were together again and he was going to have to save his life, etc. I was just thinking, Really? I felt like the classic Civil War conflict of brothers joining opposing sides was being thrown in my face. Here were two literal brothers articulating for viewers their opposing sides conflict in the most straightforward way possible, all while the poor injured brother was pretty much dying on his stretcher! One cheesy plot line stood out to me in particular: Tom, former lover of Alice, the younger Southern belle, arrives at the hospital with intense PTSD and rebukes Alice when she tries to visit him. Then, he and the priest have a long heart-to-heart and Tom’s PTSD miraculously gets much better and he suddenly remembers that he really loves Alice and wants to eat the blueberries she’d tried to bring him after all. I mean, come on now.

I know that people who complain about actors’ accents are often very annoying and pretentious, but I can’t help it, I have to put in a tiny complaint here. Most of the Southern accents ranged from not-too-bad to mediocre, but one man’s was so terrible that I honestly wasn’t sure if he was trying to do a Boston accent or a Southern one (I had to look up his character to confirm that he was indeed supposed to be from the South). I get that the accent is difficult; it’s incredibly hard to achieve that effortless-sounding ease that comes with the dialect of that region in the South. My grandmother spoke like that, and it was always impossible for me to replicate. But I’ve always admired actors who go out of their way to really get a feel for the accent they need to work in, and I just wish that some of these actors had tried harder to do that for this show.

“Mercy Street” also seemed to go a little overboard on contrived drama, but I recognize that that’s the nature of most TV shows. If everything were completely realistic, it would be an extremely boring series! Ultimately, I think that I’ve seen what I needed to of this series, but I’m glad that PBS is trying to do something like this. I speak from a fairly biased perspective because I’ve had a great deal of exposure to the Civil War era and was already aware of most of the issues and settings presented in the show. I think that this series could potentially be a pretty good educational experience for people who are not as familiar with the period if they can get over some of the more stereotypical characters and cheesy plot lines. One thing I’ve always appreciated about PBS is that even though they don’t always get it right, they keep trying. So, go watch it for yourself and see what you think!