Childrens Hospital has been an unlikely success story since it launched as a shortform web series on the long-forgotten online platform of defunct network The WB. The Rob Corddry-created comedy, which began as a parody of medical dramas, made its way to Adult Swim for its second season, expanding from five-minute episodes to the network's 11-minute format, and branching out into a wide variety of genre parodies and bizarre stylistic digressions over its seven seasons. Now, nearly four years after its final episode aired in 2016, Childrens Hospital is essentially back, in the form of Netflix series Medical Police, which picks up the continuity and nearly all of the characters.
Its primary focus is on two Childrens characters, Dr. Lola Spratt (Erinn Hayes) and Dr. Owen Maestro (Rob Huebel), who become caught up in an international terrorist plot when they discover a mysterious deadly virus at the hospital where they work. The first episode opens with a mid-air struggle among three people plummeting toward the ground from a plane, and then cuts to 18 hours earlier, in a classic overused device from action and spy movies and TV series. At 18 hours earlier, it's pretty much an episode of Childrens Hospital, complete with deadpan loudspeaker announcements from never-seen administrator Sal Viscuso (voiced by Michael Cera) and a meaningless new initiative (standing desks) being implemented by hospital head Sy Mittleman (Henry Winkler).
The show's creators (Corddry, plus David Wain, Krister Johnson and Jonathan Stern) slip right back into the Childrens rhythms, and the cast does the same. Soon after diagnosing this dangerous new virus, Lola is whisked away to a secret Centers for Disease Control black-ops division run by Sloane McIntyre (Sarayu Blue), and Owen ends up accompanying her because she needs a ride. That sets them on a globe-spanning path to track down the creators of the virus and find a cure before it wipes out the entire world population. Along the way, they spend time with every original Childrens character except for Megan Mullally's Chief, along with the show's typically fantastic line-up of comedy guest stars, including Jason Schwartzman, Joel McHale and Craig Robinson.
The running times for these 10 episodes are around 22 to 25 minutes, and the entire season tells a single, serialized story, both of which are major shifts from the Childrens Hospital format. One of the great things about Childrens was the way it could become an entirely different show from episode to episode, and Medical Police is locked into its single genre parody for the entire season, with little room for completely surreal digressions. Even so, the parody of film franchises like Mission: Impossible and The Da Vinci Code and TV series like Alias, 24 and Jack Ryan is spot-on, with the creators mocking every cliched aspect, from the insane world travel (Lola and Owen end up everywhere from Latvia to Bhutan, spouting Wikipedia-style facts wherever they go) to the constant reveals of the "real" mastermind behind the threats.
As in Childrens Hospital, the jokes come nonstop even during what passes for action sequences (which are staged pretty convincingly for a comedy show with a presumably limited budget), and a lot of the humor arises from Childrens' surprisingly dense continuity, with callbacks and in-jokes that may be lost on viewers who haven't watched the previous series. There's still plenty here for newcomers, though, and while the creators love intricate wordplay and genre references, they aren't above going for the lowbrow laughs (one episode features a running fart gag, while one bad guy greets Lola and Owen by saying, "What's up, docs?"). The biggest joke, of course, is that these characters are completely out of their depth attempting to stop a worldwide pandemic, which Lola acknowledges in the second episode ("We're terrible at this"), but that never holds them back.
Hayes, who's never quite gotten the showcase she deserves as a comedy star, carries the show as Lola, committing to every ridiculous plot development (from recovered memories to a stint in a Chinese prison) and landing every joke, making Lola a perfectly realized character in all her absurdity. Huebel is good, too, but he's working in a more familiar mode, and Owen is more of a supporting character to Lola's hilarious, epic journey of personal discovery. The supporting players from Childrens all have their moments in the spotlight, with Lake Bell's Dr. Cat Black (now competing on a TV talent show) getting the biggest laughs. Among the guest stars, Schwartzman stands out as an all-purpose fixer known as The Goldfinch, who has a tricked-out van with technology to conveniently handle whatever the plot throws at him.
That plot sometimes gets repetitive, which could be part of the genre parody but also slows down the show's momentum, especially in the longer episodes. This is the kind of story that would have been handled in a single 11-minute Childrens episode, and it may not quite warrant as much time as the creators spend on it. Still, it's consistently funny, a sign that these characters and this setting have plenty of potential left in them, and when the finale sets up the possibility of another season, it's still a welcome prospect (although a change in genre would probably help). This unlikely success story continues to thrive.
Starring Erinn Hayes, Rob Huebel, Sarayu Blue, Rob Corddry, Henry Winkler, Malin Akerman, Ken Marino and Lake Bell, the 10-episode first season of Medical Police debuts today on Netflix.