My choice is STAT | The Press

After three weeks of broadcast, and a lot of stationary bike sessions for criminal lawyer Léo MacDonald (Sébastien Delorme) and emergency physician Emmanuelle St-Cyr (Suzanne Clément), the diagnosis is in: I prefer STAT at Indefensible.

That’s it, it’s noted in the file. We can give leave to Chrystelle Savard (Sarah Anne Parent) who heard the intercom talking to her. We could also speed up the clumsy investigation into the murderous patient Pierre Poirier (excellent Hubert Proulx), who is starting to look like CSI: Psychiatry.

I prefer STAT for the richness and depth of its characters, which have more thickness and color than those ofIndefensible. Take lawyer Marie-Anne Desjardins, portrayed by Anne-Élisabeth Bossé in Indefensible. She is one of the headliners of the TVA daily and we know practically nothing about her, except that she is sarcastic, that she walks quickly and that she has been assaulted in court. After 12 episodes, it’s not normal that the authors were so stingy and stingy with information towards one of their heroines.

The intern ofIndefensible, the valiant Inès (Nour Belkhiria), is super junior and very naive, bordering on not very credible. And our good Leo, still parked directly in front of the Montreal courthouse, seems too perfect and smooth in this bluish gray environment. It’s hard to get attached to so many one-dimensional people.

At the opposite, STAT gives us a lot of juice about the flaws and the troubled past of the employees of St-Vincent’s Hospital. First, there is this complex relationship between the devoted Emmanuelle and her stoic brother Pascal (Normand D’Amour), oncologist, director of professional care and amateur boxer when it comes time to rescue nurse Sophia (Ludivine Reding).

As in Grey’s Anatomyromance floods the corridors of STAT.

The unfiltered surgeon Isabelle Granger (Geneviève Schmidt), whom I adore, hangs out with the cantankerous nurse and trade unionist Daniel (Bruno Marcil). The new drooling emergency physician Jacob Faubert (Lou-Pascal Tremblay) has a crush on the little runaway… Sorry, for the pretty Sophia. And there is the mysterious Emmanuelle who makes dirty things in the storage room reserved for the exclusive use of the staff. To be investigated, stat!

This Emmanuelle, the beating heart of STAT, was finely sketched by the author Marie-Andrée Labbé. It is not a saint, far from it. She is a complex, endearing, sexual, brilliant, secretive woman protected by a thick shell. On the competing channel, lawyer Leo MacDonald lacks relief in comparison with his rival with the fleshy and multi-layered character.

There are a lot of threads to unravel in a season of Emmanuelle’s life. It is assumed that her 20-year-old had to distance herself from a controlling and intense mother. We guess that Emmanuelle recreates in her dinners with friends the family bubble that burst in her hands.

We understand that the suspicious death of her lover François (Daniel Parent) has upset Emmanuelle, who herself reopens the investigation with psychiatrist Julie Faubert (Isabelle Brouillette), another doctor with shady intentions. Hypothesis: do you think that François, whose suicide remains unclear, could be Jacob’s father? We talk.

There are plenty of little mysteries, like that, which bring us back to STAT Monday to Thursday at 7 p.m. Between the long cases to be treated, the episodes loop several minor intrigues like those of the self-mutilated tennis player of the thumb, the girl reached of a glioblastoma or fat embolism which carried away the young Mathias (Thomas Boonen).

The case of the “friendly” bandit Félix Lemoine (Émile Schneider), who hides a weapon in his bag, has also been well grafted into the main plot.

The sequences flow less well in Indefensible. The TVA daily has stretched to its maximum the terrible story of little Rose, whom her dad (Benoit Drouin-Germain) forgot in the car and froze to death. These episodes, very well played, that said, were extremely hard. Maybe too much for a show placed at 7 p.m. Grieving parents screaming their heartbreaking distress, it’s not easy to follow, especially when the tension never drops in half an hour. The pedal of tears well stuck in the bottom.

STAT better intertwines the lightness of everyday life with the great in-depth dramas of soap operas.

The screenwriters ofIndefensible escaped the plot of the Poirier twins, which could have been punchier, but which sank into confusion. Diane Jules, her deceased son, the letter hidden in the bra, the D^r Charbonneau (Christian Bégin) who triggers the personalities of his patients, the D^D Lévesque (Marie-Ève ​​Perron) who takes himself for the trustee of the College of Physicians. Conciseness, cohesion and consistency, please.

Other defectIndefensible : the pallor of the peripheral characters. Leo’s father, Ryan Ti-Bill MacDonald (Jean Maheux), brings nothing interesting to the show, just like his wife Sara (Catherine Renaud) who serves almost as an accessory in the story.

In STATwhether it’s the anorexic social worker Delphine (Virginie Ranger-Beauregard) or the psychorigid director Mylène Lapierre (Isabelle Blais), we want to know them and follow them every evening.

It is for all these reasons that STAT gets a good track record and thatIndefensible still needs special care.