One Of The Best Medical Dramas On Network TV Looks To Be Canceled For Good
The Resident has yet to be renewed for Season 7, and a set liquidation sale hints at the series' possible ending.
It’s never a good feeling when your favorite show looks like it’s coming to an end, and this appears to be the case with the best medical drama that Fox has to offer, The Resident. According to a recent TVLine article, the rumor about the show’s cancellation surfaced when fans of the series noticed that a lot of recognizable props from The Resident were for sale by Peachtree Battle, a company specializing in estate sales and liquidations. The popular drama, starring Matthew Czuchry (Gilmore Girls) and Marvel star Emily VanCamp has had a successful six-season run, but whether or not they get renewed for a seventh season is seemingly still up in the air.
Weighing in on the prospect of cancellation, series co-creator Amy Holden Jones states that she’s hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst, stating, “the Season 6 finale was intentionally written as a suitable series finale, in the event the show was not renewed.” But she’s not throwing up her hands yet and confirming any rumors, saying that The Resident stops at a logical place that’s satisfying for audiences, but if they get renewed for another season, they’re ready to keep raising the bar. One of the realities that need to be addressed, however, is the sixth season’s ratings.
While The Resident has the fourth largest audience out of over a dozen scripted shows currently airing on the Fox network, overall ratings are down 29 percent from its Season 5 numbers. But this is normal for potentially long-running shows; the numbers can only climb so high before they start to plateau, dip, and normalize. While Holden states that the fate of the series is up in the air, somebody working close to the show weighed in by simply stating, “it’s essentially done.”
The Resident is a dark medical drama that follows the staff at the Chastain Park Memorial Hospital. The show often tackles the painful and frustrating aspects of the hospital’s bureaucratic policies and practices. While shows like NBC’s Chicago Med tackle healthcare politics in similar ways, The Resident‘s bread-and-butter is calling out the bureaucratic red tape involved behind the scenes at a hospital rather than being a straight-up procedural drama. One of the reasons that fans relate so much to The Resident is because the drama highlights the frustration that doctors and patients alike deal with on a daily basis.
The Resident follows Dr. Conrad Hawkins (Matthew Czuchry), who is a senior resident who’s as brilliant as he is arrogant. As Hawkins mentors a wide-eyed and bushy-tailed Dr. Devon Pravesh, he reveals the inner workings and the dark side of healthcare, including the practices at Chastain Park Memorial Hospital. Hawkins may be a little rough around the edges, but his heart is in the right place when he says, “I help sick people. And while I’m at it, I fight corruption and train doctors to do the same. I don’t capitalize off of people’s misfortune.”
We can only hope that Season 6 isn’t the last we see of The Resident, but we take great comfort in the fact that it ended on a high note. Time will tell us whether Peachtree Battle is liquidating props to make room for a new set or the series is done for good. For now, we wait, but if the series has to end, at least some of its loose ends were tied off neatly.
