Red Band Society’s premise makes no sense. The show follows six kids cooped up in the glass cage of a modern pediatric ward in Los Angeles. There’s a thin strand of plausibility in the idea that a group of kids in long-term care could end up staying for so long that they become friends. There’s even good basis for kids with osteosarcoma being there long-term (as two of the characters in the show are), or for patients who are in a coma but still on life support. But the Red Band Society pilot stretches that thread to the breaking point over and over again. Patients who are healthy enough to hijack a car and make an illicit beer run are probably healthy enough to receive at-home care. An anorexia patient would likely recover in an outpatient rehab program, instead of being kept in the same ward as cancer patients. And unless they were all very wealthy orphans or wards of a far more capable state, their parents and the fear of medical debt would be omnipresent.
By the end of the pilot, the show’s pediatric ward seems like a funky college dorm with maid service, and any tether to a patient’s lived reality, especially in the American healthcare system, is lost entirely. This kind of thing happens all the time, especially in shows that are aimed at a younger demographic (or are going for the all-important “family” viewership). The willing suspension of disbelief makes for great storytelling. But it’s odd and unsettling to gloss over the realities of pediatric illness in our healthcare system—especially when the show purports to be examining it without maudlin artifice. Hitting the right balance between sentiment and realism is not easy—The Fault In Our Stars became a breakout hit by managing that tension. Red Band Society tries to handle it by swinging back and forth between the two poles—playing with light high-school drama and dream sequences one minute, before snapping back to the horrible reality of a teenage boy coming to terms with a pending amputation.