We have to admit that The Pitt may have really spoiled us when it comes to medical dramas. It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen a medical show that concentrated on, you know, actual medicine and not about who slept with whom. So, it’s unfortunate that Pulse, which is more along the lines of the relationship-laden medical dramas we’ve been seeing since Grey’s Anatomy hit it big, is coming along while The Pitt is building towards its first-season conclusion. It doesn’t help that the show feels about as generic as a medical show can get. PULSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? Opening Shot: We push in on a school bus riding along a rainy Miami coastal road. The bus, carrying a high school soccer team, goes over the railing and crashes into the water as it tries to avoid an accident. The Gist: Maguire Medical Center has the only Level 1 trauma center in Miami, a program built by the emergency department chair, Dr. Natalie Cruz (Justina Machado). On a morning when a hurricane is bearing down on Miami, the day shift residents arrive at work, namely Dr. Tom Cole (Jack Bannon) and Dr. Sam Elijah (Jessie T. Usher). They arrive to the news that the chief resident, Dr. Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell), is put on leave due to a sexual harassment charge. Another resident, Dr. Danielle “Danny” Simms (Willa Fitzgerald) is woken up by her sister, Dr. Harper Simms (Jessy Yates) with the news that she’s the one who filed the harassment case against Xander. And, while it seems that Sam is poised to be named the interim chief resident, everyone is surprised when Dr. Cruz names Danny the interim chief. Cruz’s boss, trauma surgeon Dr. Ruben Soriano (Nestor Carbonell), isn’t sure Danny’s cut out for the responsibility, but to Cruz, this promotion is as much about optics as ability. Danny flashes back a couple of years to Xander’s first day as chief resident, after he transferred from another area hospital. Right away he challenged her, and as we see another flashback from a year later, we see that the two of them aren’t only working well together, but they are also romantically linked, though Danny doesn’t want anyone at work to know about it. Danny is immediately tested as the victims from the bus crash come in. The team’s coach, who was driving the bus, has internal bleeding but refuses to go to surgery until he knows everyone on his team is OK, thinking this was his fault. While he’s suffering in pain, Danny tells him the story of how her sister Harper became paralyzed, but it doesn’t seem to move him. In the meantime, Cruz’s daughter Vero (Sophia Torres) was on the bus but hasn’t come into the ER yet; Danny decides to delay telling Cruz, who is performing surgery, about it until the last possible moment. What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Pulse, created by Zoe Robyn, is The Pitt crossed with Grey’s Anatomy. Our Take: While watching the first episode of Pulse, the phrase “young pretty doctors” kept roiling around in our head, often in a sing-songy fashion. Why are we admitting to this little bit of ADHD-style distraction? Because when that phrase pops into our heads with regards to a medical series, we know that the series will be as much, if not more, about relationships than it’s going to be about the medicine. The Pitt is reminding us how compelling a medical series can be when medicine is the focus; sure, there’s some relationship drama on that show, but it’s minimal. Pulse is mostly about the “young pretty doctors” quipping their way through a day and resisting the urge to sleep with each other, with some medical stuff in between that strains credulity. Sure, with the bus crash and the impending hurricane, the doctors, nurses and staff at the Maguire ER will be challenged. But it feels more like the thrust of the story is going to be how we find out the relationship between Danny and Xander started, how it broke down, and how it led Danny to file the serious harassment charges against him. If that’s the case — and we’re pretty sure that is — there is no one in the cast that makes us want to follow them and find out how they work under this kind of pressure. Fitzgerald’s Danny projects as “generic young blonde doctor”, whose only personality traits are ambition mixed with a heavy dose of imposter syndrome. It’s a character we’ve seen dozens of times before, and it seems that Xander, “handsome doctor that can do no wrong but has a mysterious past,” was destined to be her mentor and lover. The rest of the residents are fairly generic, including overworked Dr. Sophie Chan (Chelsea Muirhead) and super-gung-ho med student Camila Perez (Daniela Nieves). In fact, the most intriguing doctors are the attendings, Cruz and Soriano. Cruz created a Level 1 trauma center from almost nothing, and it seems that her professional relationship with Soriano is a close one, as the two of them drift in and out of Spanish as they discuss ER business. If the story centered on them instead of the “young pretty doctors,” there would be a good show there. Sex and Skin: In a flashback scene, we see a naked Xander in Danny’s shower.Parting Shot: As she flashes back to her and Xander having sex, Danny realizes that she’s in a no-win situation; Cruz tells her that Xander is there to help out as weather conditions worsen. Sleeper Star: Like we mentioned above, a series centered on Machado and Carbonell would have been a whole lot more compelling to watch than what we actually get with Pulse.Most Pilot-y Line: The story Danny tells the soccer coach about how Harper became paralyzed was one of the dumber things we’ve heard on a medical series in a long time; it was made even dumber when we find out that she lied. Our Call: SKIP IT. Pulse is one of the most generic medical dramas we’ve seen in some time, with characters who aren’t compelling and medical situations that are eye-rolling to watch. Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.