Trauma

Entertainment WeeklyTanner Stransky

The premiere is laced with dazzling special effects (a helicopter crash and a fuel-tanker explosion!) and an intriguing season-setting backstory about a past rescue gone wrong. But the show's real genius lies in its spot-on casting.

NewsdayVerne Gay

The cast is loose, jaunty and appealing. The action scenes will jolt you.

Washington PostTom Shales

Trauma" provides what might be called meaningful thrills, because skillful work gives us victims we can care about and, obviously, a rescue team worth rooting for. One can't help wanting to see them, and the show built around their exploits, succeed.

New York PostLinda Stasi

The show is full of serious explosions and horrific crashes--especially the first brilliantly filmed accident. But all of that is intermixed with genuine characters you may not love, but will like to watch. And the fX are XXXtradordinary.

Chicago Sun-TimesPaige Wiser

Trauma is determined to shock and awe, and it succeeds.

New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley

There are enough good characters here to give Trauma a shot, assuming it loses melodramatic lines like "I need a save today."

Hollywood ReporterRandee Dawn

Trauma is far from perfect--three anti-heroes are a bit much to stomach at once, and the bigger-than-life disaster scenarios surely can't be sustained every week. But there's a lot of subtle interplay sandwiched between the emergencies, and with luck, diligent viewers should be rewarded.

Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen

Trauma benefits from some fine performances--Curtis, especially, plays his role with panache--but to be redeemable or at least interesting, the characters need to reveal more complexities, stat.

TimeJames Poniewozik

Trauma does not look like just another medical show. It's true. The problem is that Trauma still mostly sounds like any old other medical show.

Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray

Written as an arrogant hothead with major scars, physical and otherwise, Rabbit, like just about everyone in Trauma, is a too-familiar type, and it's not clear from tonight's episode that he's worth the trouble he causes.

Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert

Trauma may impress with its pyrotechnics, especially if you’re watching it on HDTV, but the personal dramas may not be original and engaging enough to keep you watching for more than an episode or two.

The New York TimesMike Hale

It’s entirely possible that these people and their problems will become more interesting as the series goes along, but you can’t tell from the pilot; at this point they’re still constructs more than real characters.

VarietyBrian Lowry

The front-loaded pyrotechnics notwithstanding, Dario Scardapane's script doesn't give these characters much of a pulse.

Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara

Though it's unfair to compare any show with a classic, perhaps, once it's done setting the stage and introducing its characters, once it gets over its visions of Nancy standing alone on a debris-littered freeway staring into the middle distance instead of, you know, doing her job, Trauma will find a similar groove. But it's not there yet, not even close.

Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall

Trauma needs to get faster, and/or its characters need to get deeper.

Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan

It's a collection of cliches in search of a plot.

USA TodayRobert Bianco

The latest amped-up plan, apparently, is to move so fast you won't notice the humorously tin-eared dialogue.

Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin

There are worse shows debuting on the broadcast networks this fall, but none quite so pointless as this NBC drama about emergency paramedics.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

It's hard to imagine anyone, aside from masochists, watching both shows [Mercy & Trauma], since they are so much alike at their core.

TV GuideMatt Roush

If future episodes can’t deliver crises on this grand a scale, I pity the viewer who’s stuck with these paper-thin and woefully derivative characters.

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

It's almost--but not quite--enough to be considered a post-work popcorn-type series where you check your brain on the side table and watch stuff blow up. Except that the relationships and dialogue will at some point make you scream, with or without your brain.