SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Best Medicine Season 1, Episode 6.

Episode 6 of Best Medicine gets to two important places the FOX dramedy needs to go if it wants to continue past Season 1. But at the same time, “Eyewitness Blues” maintains the formula that has started to make the show predictable. The best moments are the ones that have little to do with anything, because they’re away from all of what the audience has come to expect.

“Eyewitness Blues” does two things that really matter: it’s the first episode where Dr. Martin Best actually seems like he wants to be in Port Wenn, and it moves the relationship between Martin and Louisa Gavin forward. (Anyone who watched Doc Martin knows why the latter is so significant.)

Viewers are finally getting to see the tremendous warmth that Josh Charles can bring to his characters, when the situation calls for it. That’s why he’s such a great choice to play Martin. Of course he can play the sarcasm and the deadpan humor and the arrogance, but what gets overlooked in many of his performances is how warm and sincere he can be. This episode allows that part of his talent to shine, particularly in a fourth-act scene between Martin and his Aunt Sarah after she has a health scare. It’s a fantastic piece of acting between Charles and Annie Potts that truly makes their characters feel like family, and makes the audience feel like part of that family.

There’s also the first clearly romantic moment between Martin and Louisa, when she spontaneously kisses him after winning the annual Blueberry Festival pie contest. Best Medicine hasn’t been subtle about the future Martin and Louisa pairing, nor does it need to be, but Martin being the first person to cheer Louisa’s victory is significant. However, that moment gets undercut by a few things. It’s a bit weird to put that in as Sarah is literally being taken out to an ambulance, as it suddenly shifts the audience’s focus from that big emotional moment to Martin’s potential romantic life. These two things need to stand more separately from each other to completely resonate.

Beyond that, Martin definitely means it when he tells Louisa that she earned the victory—but viewers might have a different opinion, since she only wins because the three people ahead of her are all disqualified for cheating in one way or another. Yes, she deserves it in the sense that she didn’t cheat, but that feels less like earning it and more like benefiting from everyone else’s mistakes. That quote and Louisa’s big celebration would be more effective if she’d clearly outmanuevered the competition, rather than simply being the last one standing.

Yet that plot twist highlights Best Medicine‘s fundamental issue that has grown over the last few episodes. The plot and the characters tend to stay the same. The core story is about some important small-town cultural event that Martin doesn’t care about and gets in the way of, as the townspeople mostly come off as naive or self-centered. In “Eyewitness Blues,” Elaine Denton blackmails Martin into acting as her cameraman for a day. The big reveal is that everyone else cheated trying to win the contest. And Mark Mylow’s good-natured idiocy hits a new level of weird when it turns out he gave chlamydia to all the women he’s been sleeping with. The writers are clearly trying to create these quirky small-town characters, but sometimes they turn out to feel more like exaggerations and archetypes.

There can be success if the series takes a step back, and dials down the funny to focus more on who these people actually are. If it lets them breathe, they work a lot better. The scene between Martin and Sarah is so great because there’s no jokes; it’s just an honest conversation as she admits that she wants to make up for lost time. It’s similar to how Martin opened up to Elaine about his past. Six episodes in, it’s okay if the characters drop their defining quirks and are fleshed out further. Being more grounded won’t make them any less entertaining. Best Medicine has plenty of acting talent and it’s created a charming backdrop, yet it’s time to slow down and dig deeper.

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.