Who Is The Better Marty: Marty Supreme Or Dr. Martin Best?
When I first saw on social media that Josh Charles's character on the new Fox series Best Medicine is named Dr. Martin Best, I thought it was a joke. Then I found myself wishing it were true because that's a great name for a television doctor in a show called Best Medicine. The only better name might be Dr. Martin Medicine. Finally, I had to know the actual name of this character and, to my delight it actually is Dr. Martin Best. This seems like a great time for fictional characters named Martin since there's an Oscar nominated film in theaters right now called Marty Supreme. Instantly, I thought this would be a funny pitch for a lucky outlet out there, to compare and contrast the two exceptional Martys. I never did pitch this idea because it's so stupid I couldn't imagine anyone paying me money to write it. Also I had never seen an episode of Best Medicine, so I had no idea what I was talking about anyway. (I have now, so buckle up.)
That's kind of the problem when pitching a story like this, no one really wants to pay for a meditation on why an idea is dumb. Most editors want concrete points of comparison that can be put into easily digestible categories to make it easy on the reader for their maximum potential enjoyment. These are all valid points. And this is the kind of post that ventures into the space occupied by "the headline is more interesting than the article itself." I accept this criticism.
But now that I have invested the time to watch one episode of Best Medicine, I do feel obligated to waste even more time on this idea.
Marty Supreme (played by Timothée Chalamet), whose given name is Marty Mauser, is the best ping pong player, but his ego gets in the way of his own success. Dr. Martin Best – who detests it when people call him "Doc Martin," which is funny because that's a shoe company – is most likely not the best doctor on the planet, but he's very good. But his fear of blood has become a detriment to his ability to practice medicine. He left his position as a heart surgeon in Boston to take a job as a small town doctor in Port Wenn, Maine where, I guess, he's hoping the local residents do not have blood. But they do have blood. And every time he sees a resident of Port Wenn, Maine's blood, Dr. Martin Best passes out.
Both Marty Supreme and Dr. Martin Best might be sociopaths. They both seem kind of mean, though Marty Supreme has the ability to turn on the charm when he needs it to survive. Dr. Martin Best is almost entirely off-putting at all times. (Though, when he answers his phone, he says, "Best here," which is inherently obnoxious, but also appealing. If my last name were Best, I would answer the phone like this, too.)
The plot of Marty Supreme takes us on a globe spinning adventure as Marty Supreme tries to outrun law enforcement and organized crime in an attempt to reclaim his status as the best ping ping player in the world. In the first episode of Best Medicine, a local woman has given multiple men breasts because she did not adhere to the time constraint warnings on her estrogen medication before sleeping with these men. I think we can all agree comparing the plots to these two stories amounts to a draw.
It would be false advertising if I did not pick a winner here. And since this is only my third post at The Hard Pass, I do not want to get off to a bad start. But, see, this is why I never pitched the story, because, in the end, there really isn't any good way to compare a professional ping pong player to a heart surgeon who passes out at the sight of blood. Now I finally have something in common with George R. R. Martin, we have both written ourselves into a corner with no way to finish the story in a satisfactory way. When HBO eventually adapts "Who Is The Better Marty: Marty Supreme Or Dr. Martin Best?" into a series, the showrunners will have to finish the story on their own without my input, eventually declaring that Dinah Manoff's portrayal of Marty Maraschino in Grease is the best Marty, in an ending no one saw coming and no one likes. On social media and in interviews I will continue to maintain that I am still working on the ending to The Best Marty and it will be drastically different than what you saw in the HBO series.
I'm going to pick Dr. Martin Best, at least for now, but this isn't set in stone and I reserve the right to change my mind at a later date. Both Marty Supreme and Dr. Martin Best would be unpleasant to spend time with, but there are only so many stories about ping pong I could listen to before I lost my mind. And Marty Supreme does love telling people about ping pong. Dr. Martin Best doesn't seem to enjoy talking to anyone, which is one of his few appealing traits. And if there's a medical emergency that does not involve blood, Dr. Martin Best still has the ability to save a life.
Though, when you do watch the HBO series based on this post, you can now tell all your friends, "the source material is a lot different and they made a lot of changes." I do not mean this in an obnoxious way. I love doing this because I am rarely in a position to do so because it is not that often I am familiar enough with the source material to make such claims. The first time I remember getting to do this was after the release of Sydney Pollack's 1993 adaptation of John Grisham's The Firm, starring Tom Cruise. I loved explaining the complicated third act of the book, telling people it was "unfilmable," even though I didn't know what that meant, or why that would be the case. Regardless, people would nod and at least pretend I knew what I was talking about. And now we are here again, because the ending of this post is also unfilmable because it would require recreating the entire third act of The Firm from the book, which, as I just told you, is unfilmable. Anyway, thank you for subscribing to The Hard Pass.
