Okay sure, these days we’re seeing ”gritty reboots” of everything, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to watch this brilliant re-imagining of Doogie Howser, M.D. put together by the Nerdist network and directed by Jonah Ray. For one thing, it’s only two minutes long. More importantly, it’s hilarious.
At first, things are pretty lighthearted. The idea of a teenage doctor prodigy gets put through the lens of the 2010s internet world. TMZ tweets about him partying heavily as a 5-year-old Princeton student, and on Twitter, he brags about being a “diggity doctor.”
Shortly after, though, things begin to turn considerably darker. If you watched the original show and thought that perhaps in real life a doctor that young, regardless of how intelligent he might be, would still be far too immature to handle a position like that, this video plays on that notion perfectly. We see Doogie drawing dicks on unconscious patients, and taking an Instagram photo with ”Cancer Girl.”
From there it gets worse, with Donald Trump publicly calling for Doogie to be fired (it’s Obamacare’s fault, naturally), and his mom calling him a ”monster.” We won’t spoil the ending, but suffice it to say, it’s far more depressing that anything a family friendly early ‘90s sitcom would have allowed for.