I've seen a couple of commercials for Hopkins, ABC News' six-part documentary series taking an intimate look at the men and women who work at Johns Hopkins, one of America's greatest hospitals. Cool idea for a show. So I should I be surprised that I didn't see one Asian face in any of the commercials? I guess not. This is "reality" TV, after all. Ridiculous.
Considering the huge presence of Asian Americans in medicine in the United States, would it have hurt to have a series that actually reflected that reality? Dude, I know there are Asian American doctors at Hopkins. I have friends/relatives who did their residencies there. I guess the one fictional Asian American doctor on Grey's Anatomy was enough for ABC.
I did take a look at the profiles on the series website and saw that Ashish S. Shah is one of the doctors profiled. And that's it. One of the bios does make mention of a surgeon named Steve Yang. Perhaps we'll see him somewhere during the course of the show? I hope the series is better than the commercials indicate... but I'm not holding my breath. The show premieres on June 26.
*
