"HawthoRNe": A weak entry to the TNT strong woman tribe

The first problem with TNT's "HawthoRNe" (tonight at 9) is that it's spelled that way, with the big RN for registered nurse and someone thought that was clever.

In guess you didn't get it, the show is about nurses, and Jada Pinkett Smith (who, by the way, studied for a time at the NC School of the Arts) plays Christina Hawthorne, the chief nursing officer at a hospital in Richmond, Va. She's recently widowed, left with a daughter. Luckily the nursing staff she supervises is like family. Michael Vartan, the cutie from "Alias" plays an oncologist and chief of surgery.

TNT says that with the show Pinkett is the "latest talented actress to join TNT's line-up of strong, complex female characters, following in the footsteps of Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer and Holly Hunter of Saving Grace."

No she isn't.

At least in the first two episodes, Ms. Hawthorne is not complex. She's just the most wonderful nurse in the world. She fights for her patients and her staff always, against the arrogant, wrong-headed doctors. She works on her days off. She tolerates her daughter's smart remarks without the back slap in the mouth they deserve. Nurses around the country will be happy this glowing portrayal on TV.

Instead of feeling like The Closer or Saving Grace, it feels like another TNT show "Raising the Bar" which I stopped watching because I felt like I had seen it a thousand times before.

Pinkett Smith is fine, but that's all. She doesn't seem to be working very hard, mostly because the writing isn't giving her anything to work with.

I watched two episodes in hopes that the second show would be better than the first. Nope. Then I read somewhere that it's in the third episode that things start to jell.

So, if you're not doing anything on June 30 at 9 p.m., check back in.