SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Best Medicine Season 1, Episode 3.

Three episodes in, Best Medicine has done a lot of worldbuilding. The FOX series has found some sweet spots that really work for it. Yet “Take Me Out of the Ballgame” has also found some areas where it needs to stretch its legs. Luckily, there’s still plenty of time in the season to do that.

The biggest positive is that this episode does a wonderful job of building up characters other than Martin. The script has significant subplots for both Elaine and Aunt Sarah, helping to flesh them out beyond their general personalities. Elaine learns an important fact about her family history, which means the audience learns it as well, and they get a sense of who she is outside of Martin’s office. There’s also Sarah’s not quite a rivalry with Eddie from the rival town of Bar Harbor, so she has a dynamic with someone other than Martin. Both plots are mostly played for comedy, but they’re big steps toward doing more with these characters.

Josh Charles also has a strong episode as Martin’s stoic personality cracks a little bit further—whether it’s exploding in a moment of anger or his genuine frustration at not being able to help his patient, even if that patient is the son of his nemesis Glendon Ross. Charles has always had a talent for finding the truth of a moment, regardless of if it’s a big scene or a little one, and he helps shape an emotional arc for Martin amongst all the chaos. In that sense, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is even better than its predecessor.

There’s also some more excellent physical comedy for Charles on two occasions—although Best Medicine misses an opportunity when Martin falls down the basement stairs. That’s an entirely audio gag. But the next shot is Martin looking at the file in his office; it would have been even funnier if he’d been reading it in the basement, and the camera could have casually shown everything he’d knocked over behind him. Likewise, the fourth-act slow-mo sequence in which Martin races to save Glendon Jr. on the baseball diamond would have been greater had the episode leaned into the sports motif and replaced the traditional underscore with something that sounded like the epic rallying music from any sports movie.

Yet these are tweaks to scenes that already work. Best Medicine is quickly finding its strengths, and they’re strengths that other network TV shows don’t have, which is fantastic. The series is carving out a unique niche for itself.

However, the writers need to be very careful about not getting too comfortable. This is the second episode that consists of Martin becoming a town pariah because he’s spoiled a major Port Wenn event. Obviously, the clash of personalities between Martin and the townsfolk is a significant part of the series, as it was in the original Doc Martin. But the show has to find different ways to bring that out. It can’t always be Martin raining on everyone else’s parade.

In addition, some other characters have moments in “Take Me Out of the Ballgame” where they come off as self-centered, which works against the whole small-town community vibe that Best Medicine is trying to build. Some parts of this are due to the plot, such as the heckling that Martin experiences and Elaine being so focused on her own issues that she doesn’t tell Martin where the paper files are until much later. But there’s also Louisa thinking that in the middle of treating Glendon Jr. is a good time to snark about her potentially losing her job. And It would have been fine to have Glendon deliver a sincere apology to Martin and leave that moment at that; that would have hit the emotional beat much stronger, and they could still be antagonists later on. Having him add the “for now” to the end of it makes the entire thing insincere.

Now that fans are invested into the show, the writers can scale back some of the comedic exaggeration and the series will still be great, especially since viewers are not strictly expecting a comedy. Best Medicine can do these more grounded beats just fine—as evidenced by Martin’s reveal in Episode 2—and there’s room for more of them.

“Take Me Out of the Ballgame” hits many of the right notes. Glendon Jr. standing up to his father and thus vindicating Martin is as cheer-worthy as it’s intended to be. Charles is once again great, and co-stars Cree and Annie Potts seize on their characters’ expanded stories. It simply needs to smooth out its rough edges.

Best Medicine airs Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on FOX. Photo Credit: Courtesy of FOX.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.