Disney+'s Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. offers a strong template for how to update a well-liked franchise

The Hollywood Reporter

The Doogie Howser, M.D. reboot created by Kourtney Kang and starring Peyton Elizabeth Lee as the 16-year-old doctor in the title role solidly improves on Disney+'s "perfectly fine take on Mighty Ducks and many leagues better than Turner & Hooch," says Daniel Fienberg. Doogie Kameāloha, M.D., he says, "executes a fine balancing act between playing to an older audience’s nostalgic appetites and simply telling a good, admirably personal stand-alone story. Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. starts with the wise choice to exist in a world in which Doogie Howser, M.D. exists, as a TV show. Lahela Kameāloha (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a 16-year-old medical prodigy living and working in Hawaii. Because she’s so young and causes so much confusion every time she enters a room, older doctors refer to her as 'Doogie,' a reference she barely gets because she’s been too busy becoming a doctor to watch Doogie Howser, M.D. repeats on Hulu. The Jake Kasdan-directed pilot is packed with homages, including a lovely ukulele spin on Mike Post’s original theme music and Lahela’s nightly vlog entries instead of Doogie’s journal musings. Such details as the way Lahela’s best friend, Steph (Emma Meisel, effectively steering into her character’s comic creepiness), visits Lahela only through her second-story window will trigger smiles of recognition from more venerable viewers without distracting the target audience. The question with so many reboots and remakes is 'If you took away the nostalgia, would there be anything worth watching at all?' And the answer with Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. is 'Absolutely.'"

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• Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. gets weird as both an homage and re-creation of the Doogie Howser, M.D. pilot: The series premiere "directly acknowledges the existence of the original series," says Danette Chavez. "In fact, the (Steven) Bochco-(David E.) Kelley joint is the origin for Lahela’s nickname, as Dr. Lee (Ronny Chieng) tells a patient in his colleague’s care (of course, this Doogie is too young and ambitious to have watched her namesake). Kang could have just let that homage stand, along with the reworked credits; instead, she and co-executive producers Dayna Bochco and Jesse Bochco recreate moments from the Doogie Howser pilot, including the driver’s test and car accident in the opening, the exchange with a disgruntled patient, and the loss of a patient. This raises all kinds of questions: Is Lahela part of some Truman Show-like production? Do either of her parents—her mom is the right age and personality to have watched O.G. Doogie—recognize the ways their daughter’s life is imitating that of a Neil Patrick Harris character? Does NPH know about this Doogie? Is this all just another nod to the original, which could be very heightened at times? Possibly. Are we overthinking this? Almost certainly. But even if Doogie Kameāloha M.D. isn’t really trying to give David Lynch a run for his money, it’s still an appealing new entry in the Disney+ lineup, one that fits in with the aspirational, inclusive storytelling of Diary Of A Future President and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Lee is a prepossessing performer, nailing the broader comedic beats along with the (rarer) moments of pathos."
• If TV reboots are inevitable, the prescription for doing them well involves respecting the source material while bringing something new to it: "That delicate procedure is successfully executed with Doogie Kameāloha, M.D., a refreshed take on Doogie Howser made eminently watchable by the winning presence of Andi Mack's Peyton Elizabeth Lee," says Brian Lowry. "Despite the gender and venue change to Hawaii (which certainly improves the scenery), the producers have nicely preserved the dynamics of the Steven Bochco-David E. Kelley creation that premiered in 1989, about a child prodigy who juggles a career in medicine with all the usual confusion and complications associated with being a teenager."
• Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. feels like a single-camera version of a Disney Channel sitcom, as bright, earnest, and heartfelt as its lead
• Peyton Elizabeth Lee didn't have trouble playing the title role again after starring in Disney Channel's Andi Mack: "What’s so hard about it and what’s so great about it is that you never get your first big project again. For me, that was Andi Mack," she says. "It was my first everything. And so, obviously Doogie was different for me because it wasn’t the first time anymore. I had much more experience, walking into it, but there is something so fun about being a little bit older and having a little bit more responsibility and having more experience coming into it. Also, obviously there’s a part of me that, even though it’s not my first time experiencing these things, it’s still just as exciting as it was when it was the first time." As for playing a teenage doctor, Lee says: "It was a big challenge for me. With most of my acting, as much as I can, because authenticity is so huge for me, I try to pull as much from my real life as I possibly can. When bringing a character to life, I use as much of my real life experience as possible to create a performance. With the hospital scenes and all of her doctor stuff, I had no personal experience to pull from. I couldn’t connect to what it is to be taking care of a patient or have someone else’s life in my hands. Those were not experiences that I was familiar with, in any way. Working towards creating an authentic performance was much more difficult because I couldn’t ground it in my experience in real life."
• Creator Kourtney Kang explains why Doogie Kameāloha avoids the pandemic: “We pitched the show at the end of 2019 and everybody was excited, and then by 2020 things changed dramatically and there was a question of whether we’d address (the pandemic)came up. Ultimately, it didn’t seem to make sense in this world that we were building,” Kang says. “In the second episode she has a patient who’s paralyzed and she doesn’t know why, but she’s also trying to figure out what’s going on with the boy who kissed her because she thought he liked her. Balancing all of that was tricky, and I think the COVID of it all would have pulled so much focus. I wanted it to be escapist, and the thing I want to escape most is COVID.”
• Kang says the Octopus Washing Machine scene was based on her real life