The Medicine Show
Pilot Synopsis
An eastern-backed medicine show troupe operating along the coast of Northern California picks through the charred remains of their burnt-out staging area the morning after some calamity has befallen their traveling enterprise. In the wake of the mysterious disaster, the show’s cook, sharp shooter, strong man and fortune teller all decide to quit and locate Dr. Levi York to see if he is interested in teaming up. They are clearly impressed by something Levi did during the previous night’s destruction. Dr. York embraces the idea of expansion but is reluctant when his new collaborators begin asking questions about how someone as sensitive and soft-spoken as he wound up becoming a traveling medicine man.
He agrees to tell his story which also involves his companion Mary. We learn through flashbacks of his childhood in New York apprenticing under his father, Samuel, an arrogant ill-informed doctor who received his training during the Civil War and whose commitment to mercury treatments and bloodletting have led to the deaths of many of his patients including his wife, Levi’s mother. We also witness scenes depicting Levi’s close relationship to his grandmother who teaches him the rudiments of herbal healing and follow his painful expulsion from medical school. It is there that he meets his nemesis, Donald Marcel, who teases him mercilessly for his interest in alternative medicine. Despite Mary’s objections Dr. York tells the story of Donald Marcel marrying Mary before the war and then having her committed to a mental institution out of spite after his families plantation is burned down.
Levi tries to leave his story unfinished, but his collaborators insist that he continue. Further flashbacks reveal Levi working on a scow schooner on the Hudson River before becoming an assistant to a pharmacist at which point he witnesses first hand the damage being done by the patent medicine craze. Levi eventually secures a job as an apprentice to a naval doctor in charge of a quarantined island in the Bronx River. While sailing downriver toward his new job in a new suit, Levi and Donald Marcel catch a brief glimpse of one another. Donald looks at his own gaudy attire and is embarrassed by the fact that he has become a fast-talking medicine man.
