Well, now we know where all the money is going that NBC is saving by airing The Jay Leno Show every night at 10pm—towards the massive special effects in Trauma. Too bad the show itself is little more than a framework for helicopter crashes and exploding cars.

The problem isn’t that Trauma is another medic show; the problem is that Trauma’s actors can’t make their rigid roles seem remotely realistic. There’s a Type everywhere you look, but by the end of the first episode, I realized I had no interest in seeing how any of them survive their own personal traumas.

On the first anniversary of a massive rescue tragedy that took the lives of seven people, survivor and medic Nancy (Anastasia Griffith, pictured, giving up Damages for this) is having A Day. Again. Still not entirely over the death of her co-worker and lover, she has to deal with a massive freeway accident and the return of fellow survivor Rabbit (Cliff Curtis), an unstable emergency helicopter pilot who’s convinced he can’t die.

There’s also a kindly father figure in the form of a doctor, an adulterous paramedic, and lots and lots of supporting characters. Not that the show lingers on them, when there are so many things to explode. Nowhere is the sense that these are real people; they’re there to react to and cleanup the messes that the writers and director gleefully toss in their paths in an effort to keep the audience from turning the channel. Frankly, audiences would do better to watch time slot competitor Gossip Girl. That buzzy CW show is at least cultural currency; Trauma is just a lot of special effects in need of a stronger story.

Photo by Michael Muller/NBC.