As a society, for better or worse, we're pretty accustomed to witnessing horror. We've been seeing images — both real on the news, and fictional in the created worlds of storytellers like Ryan Murphy and Jordan Peele — for long enough that it's hard to shock audiences. But the much-anticipated NBC Peacock adaptation of Wondery's hit podcast Dr. Death uses gratuitous violence that borders on emotionally abusive to its audience — and loses an opportunity to maximize the best of two mediums.
Dr. Death begins with a gruesome surgery. And then another. In the first 15 minutes of the premiere alone, the viewer is asked to watch as Dr. Duntsch (played by Joshua Jackson) cuts his patients open, and loudly clamors at bone with hammers and screws nails into soft tissue while blood squirts and pools on the floor.
