HawthoRNe in My Pride: TNT’s new “sensitive” medical drama kicked off June 16 and appeared, at least at first glance, to be heavily courting — and perhaps even banking on — the erstwhile ER audience. HawthoRNe is centered on the director of nursing at a Richmond, Virginia, hospital and features Jada Pinkett Smith as single mother/chief registered nurse Christina Hawthorne, whose calling card is putting others’ needs before her own.

Hawthorne is fiery, passionate, and strong-willed, dammit, and we find out quickly where some of that tenacity comes from, at least in part: her grief from losing her husband to cancer.

In the pilot episode, the viewer drops in on Hawthorne on the first anniversary of her husband’s death. Still coming to terms with the loss, she carries his ash-filled urn with her around the house and talks to him. In a bit of contrived tension, she has to grudgingly surrender his remains for a whole year to her caustic mother-in-law (!), who just so happens to sit on the hospital’s board (!!) and blames Hawthorne for her son’s death (!?!).

I mean, c’mon, seriously? You had me with the premise of the show. I kept waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from behind a gurney and tell us we’d all been Punk’d. (Here’s hoping this part of the story gets downplayed or phased out entirely.)

Anyway, we see Hawthorne struggle almost immediately, which in turn makes her a sympathetic protagonist almost immediately. When not butting heads with her crab-in-law (Joanna Cassidy, Six Feet Under), she builds up a fair amount of tension with chief surgeon Tom Wakefield (Michael Vartan, Alias). Same goes for her relationship with her daughter, Camille (Hannah Hodson), who seems like a chip off the ol’ renegade block.

So how does Hawthorne regain control when so much of her life seems to be careening out of control? She takes command of the hospital. Pinkett Smith plays the character with her usual intensity, and since she’s one of the show’s executive producers, I expect she’ll continue to do the right thing with HawthoRNe. And when the patient subplots start to pair nicely with the characters being developed, this show will really hit its stride and maybe even persuade a few ER fans to join in. Overall, a lot of great things are happening for HawthoRNe, but some adjustments are necessary.

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