On USA Network’s “Complications,” A Doctor’s Patient Will Either Save Or Destroy His Life.

Famed politician and writer Clare Boothe Luce once scribed, “No good deed goes unpunished,” a statement that rings true in USA Network’s tense new drama Complications. When ER doctor John Ellison saves the young victim of a drive-by shooting, his act of selfless heroism pulls him into the dangerous world of street gangs. He’s given the directive to protect the boy “or else” and embarks on a series of lies and covert decisions meant to save the child, but which add — like the name of the series implies — complications. “Every action he takes has a repercussion; it snowballs and isolates him,” says actor Jason O’Mara (Vegas, Terra Nova), who plays the show’s reluctant hero. “He has to fight his way out of this mess he’s made, and it’s only a mess by the virtue that he’s trying to do the next right thing.”

When we first meet Dr. Ellison, his life is already in a tailspin. His young daughter has died, despite his best parental and medical efforts to save her. His grief and guilt force a disconnect with his wife (Leverage’s Beth Riesgraf) and his young son. He also has a difficult and strained relationship with his own father, a Vietnam vet who struggles with PTSD — an irony that the soldier-father and doctor-son bond over. He’s in such a state of disillusion that he’s lost his faith in humanity, in medicine and in the dream of a perfect family. “All of the relationships in this are human, and flawed,” admits O’Mara.

And in that single moment of street violence, Ellison rediscovers his purpose, reaffirms his commitment to medicine, and revitalizes his soul. If it’s possible, a gunshot delivered a shot of adrenaline. Assisting the good doctor as he spins his web of protection and deception is Gretchen (Jessica Szohr, Gossip Girl), a rogue nurse whose headstrong and tough exterior belies a tender heart and her own troubled past. They’re an unlikely pair, but O’Mara says, “They have more in common than each one of them realizes. It just takes them a while to really appreciate that.”

In the pilot, O’Mara’s character muses, “We act like people die at the hospital … some do, of course. But for most of them, there was a time — there was a last moment where they could have been saved. That moment is long gone by the time they get here.” His character is trying to preserve the life of a single child, and by doing so, save his own humanity.

Complications > USA Network > Thursdays at 9pm ET/PT beginning June 18