Dr. Death Oversimplifies Paolo Macchiarini's Story in Search of Clear Heroes and Villains

There's no disputing that there's a clear villain at the center of Dr. Death Season 2. The second installment of Peacock's true-crime anthology charts the rise and fall of thoracic surgeon Dr. Paolo Macchiarini (Edgar Ramírez), who was hailed as a "miracle man" for his contributions to regenerative medicine, but questions about his lab-grown organs — which were supposedly bathed in a patient's own stem cells — emerged when his transplant recipients began dying. Multiple investigations uncovered damning evidence of wide-ranging fraud, and after a lengthy legal battle, he was convicted of gross assault against three of his patients and sentenced to 30 months in prison in Sweden.

The hero of this story is far less obvious. Is it Benita Alexander (Mandy Moore), the news producer who fell in love with Macchiarini while reporting on his work, only to realize that the wedding he'd promised her — with a lavish ceremony to officiated by Pope Francis and attended by the likes of the Obamas and Clintons — was a lie? What about Macchiarini's colleagues (played by Luke Kirby, Ashley Madekwe, and Gustaf Hammarsten) at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, who became suspicious of his patients' horrific postoperative complications and worked in the shadows to investigate his medical misconduct?

Dr. Death Season 2, written and executive produced by Ashley Michel Hoban, argues that it was a combination of the two that led to Macchiarini's downfall. To a certain extent, this is true. As Benita worked the personal angle, publishing a tell-all account of her experience in Vanity Fair in January 2016, Macchiarini's colleagues discovered proof that the "super-surgeon" misrepresented his research by failing to conduct proper animal trials before transplanting his plastic tracheas — which, in some cases, he knew were faulty — into human patients. Only after he was exposed on both a personal and professional level did he face accountability within the medical community and the justice system.

But this stranger-than-fiction tale is more complicated than the show's good-versus-evil, truth-versus-lies framing. Not only did Benita violate journalistic ethics by getting involved with a subject, but, via her 2014 special A Leap of Faith, she was directly involved in propping up Macchiarini. Over in Sweden, the same doctors who blew the whistle on Macchiarini's ethical breaches initially benefited from their close relationship to his work, as is the case with ambitious Dr. Ana Lasbrey (Madekwe), who helps Paolo establish a clinic in Russia in order to find more patients for his experimental procedure. Hoban seems to realize that there's plenty of blame to go around here, but Dr. Death rarely engages with that messy reality, instead opting for a reductive retelling that pits the conniving surgeon against these champions for truth and justice.

Many of Season 2's problems stem from the character of Paolo himself. Ramírez, who was such a magnetic presence in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, is unable to conjure up that same magic in his latest true-crime drama. With his outsized ego and zeal for cutting into human flesh — early on, he performs a debridement procedure on Benita using a pair of scissors — Paolo is so effectively coded as sinister that it negates his charm, the very thing that drew Benita to him in the first place, and that viewers need to see in order to buy into their relationship.

As the season progresses, the lies Paolo tells Benita to assuage her doubts (including that he's part of a secret network of doctors who treat world leaders) become increasingly ridiculous, and his claims about his patients' positive outcomes obviously false, distracting viewers from the gravity of his crimes. When every episode brings a fresh set of frustrations with characters who should know better, it's difficult to focus on the bigger picture: that this man disregarded scientific and moral codes of conduct in order to further his research, and seven people paid the price.

Moore is similarly underwhelming. Until the second half of the season, when Benita finally does some digging into Paolo's background, her character functions primarily as a passive player in her own story. Moore spends the bulk of her screen time staring up at Ramírez in either awe or confusion; when she does snap out of her trance, it's often to justify their relationship by way of long-winded monologues about why she deserves "a real shot at actually being f*cking happy" in her romantic life. On the rare occasion that Dr. Death acknowledges Benita's culpability, it's either mentioned in passing or played as a joke, as when Benita and her friend Kim (Judy Reyes) laugh about her violating the "golden rule" of journalism, "Don't f*ck your sources," over a glass of wine.

The medical-malpractice storyline — which unfolds along a different timeline than Benita's, creating some confusion as episodes shift back and forth from New York to Sweden — tackles the scandal with greater dexterity. Kirby and Hammarsten bring a live-wire energy to their scenes, and as their respective characters, Drs. Gamelli and Svensson, become more convinced of Paolo's criminal negligence, their righteous indignation lends the show a sense of urgency, resulting in a much improved second half of the season. Dr. Death also makes an effort to center Macchiarini's victims, particularly Yesim Cetir (Alisha Erōzer), whose harrowing experience at Karolinska is dramatized in the standout fifth episode, "191," a reference to the number of procedures Cetir underwent following her 2012 trachea transplant. (She died in 2017.)

While Paolo is unquestionably a malignant presence at each of the hospitals he steps foot in — he's characterized as a cold-hearted surgeon who convinces his patient to undergo an experimental procedure and then leaves them to wither away — this half of the show is more willing to point fingers elsewhere. Hoban is explicitly critical of Karolinska's revenue-hungry administrators, who discredit the doctors and bury their findings in an attempt to cover their own hides. In later episodes, Lasbrey and Gamelli wrestle with the role they played as members of Paolo's team, and both admit that they're guilty of forgetting their patients' humanity during the course of their treatment.

Still, Dr. Death pairs every acknowledgement that others beyond Paolo are at fault with a moment of absolution. "We all get lost in the dark, Ana," says Gamelli. "And there will be time to grieve, to figure out how to forgive ourselves, but what we're doing is going to help set things right." What matters, the show suggests, is not that these doctors aided and abetted Paolo, resulting in great bodily harm to their patients, but that they're making an effort to rectify their past mistakes, no matter the professional cost.

At multiple points in the premiere, Benita explains she's drawn to Paolo's work because it's "hopeful." That sort of wishful thinking leads Benita to disregard her journalistic instincts and overlook the many red flags in their relationship — she would rather believe in her happy ending than acknowledge the harsh truth before her. Dr. Death falls victim to a similar mindset: Season 2 is so determined to find something positive in this grim story of medical malpractice that it reduces the scandal to its simplest form, rendering its retelling bloodless.

Dr. Death Season 2 premieres Thursday, December 21 on Peacock. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.