• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, September 23, 2024

A neurologist who struggles to recognize people’s faces, rides a cool motorcycle and swims in the East River is the brilliant mind of “Brilliant Minds,” NBC’s new fall drama premiering tonight.

Positioned in the show as God’s gift to the medical profession, the doc -- Oliver Wolf -- is evidently a brilliant guy. But he is also a moody, windy, self-centered pain in the ass. 

He is not at all pleasant for any of his co-workers to be around, and the same might be said for those who sample the show’s epic first episode Monday at 10 p.m. Eastern.

The speechifying, the lecturing, the running down hospital corridors, and the speeding on a motorcycle in the rain to save a woman’s life … oh, the intensity of it all!

This show is more head-pounding than heart-pounding, but I have to admit that the premiere episode’s opening sequence packed a punch in a way no subsequent scene did in Episode 1.

This scene had to do with a catatonic man with Alzheimer’s who lives in a facility where none of the caregivers care enough to peer deep into his soul -- none but Dr. Wolf, that is!

In the space of just a few minutes, Dr. Wolf has violated every rule of the institution as he loads the man on the back of his motorcycle and spirits him away to the wedding reception of the man’s granddaughter.

While there, Dr. Wolf somehow gets the man to sit at a piano. Before long, the man is playing it, and singing a version of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” that took my breath away and brought everyone at the reception to tears.

The man is played by singer/actor/dancer Andre De Shields, 78, a legend of entertainment. Casting De Shields may have been a benefit of filming “Brilliant Minds” in New York.

As far as I can tell, the locations were all authentic. For example, the wedding reception was being held at the Warwick Hotel on 56th Street (one-time home of William Randolph Hearst).

In addition, Dr. Wolf lives in a Victorian house on City Island (possibly the real place) where he bench-presses barbells and listens to Erik Satie.

Played by Zachary Quinto, Dr. Oliver Wolf is based on the real-life Dr. Oliver Wolf Sacks (1933-15), the famed neurologist who was once played by Robin Williams in a movie (“Awakenings,” 1990).

Whatever Dr. Sacks was like in real life, in “Brilliant Minds,” Dr. Wolf is breakin’ the rules and not suffering fools.

Notice, of course, that “Minds” is plural in the TV show’s title “Brilliant Minds.” Thus, Dr. Wolf’s mind is evidently not the only “brilliant” mind in the show.

The others might be the diverse team of stereotypical, “brilliant,” young interns who are on hand to learn from the leader of the pack, who is Wolf. 

The title might also imply that the patients themselves, such as the piano-playing man in the show’s first scene, are brilliant too.

But their brilliance can only be unlocked by Dr. Wolf, the only medical professional in the tri-state area with the right key, apparently.

As for swimming in the East River, the last TV character to do that was Kramer on “Seinfeld.”

Was Kramer as brilliant as Dr. Wolf? Maybe so, because everybody knows brilliant minds think alike.

“Brilliant Minds” premieres Monday, September 23, at 10 p.m. Eastern on NBC.