Season finale of ABC's 'Boston Med' chronicles miraculous face transplant at Boston hospital
The season finale of "Boston Med" tonight on ABC hinges on a ground-breaking face transplant.
However, executive producer Terry Wrong says there is more than just a miraculous operation.
"This is the story about two families and the struggle to keep those whom they love, and two men, and their struggle to stay alive and maintain meaningful lives," Wrong says. "As you tell that story, one of them doesn't make it, and there's loss and tragedy, and the possibility of this gift and transformation. That's human drama."
It was also a stroke of luck, too, that put the stories into the hands of Wrong and his crew.
For four months, Wrong and a team of producers and shooters followed doctors, nurses and patients of three Boston hospitals: Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Children's Hospital.
Along the way, they followed the story of Joseph Helfgot, a Hollywood marketing executive who needed a heart transplant, and the separate case of James Maki, a down-on-his luck Vietnam vet who lost much of his face when he fell onto the subway tracks.
When Helfgot died, Maki got his face. At the time, Wrong's teams were following both, but had no idea of the connection.
"We could not have planned for this, anticipated it, prepared for it, or really had any idea the way it would happen," Wrong said.
Roughly 40 people worked on the "Boston Med" project in various waves, with three there from start to finish: Wrong and producers Erica Baumgart and Sarah Namias. It took more than a year to edit the thousands of hours of footage into eight episodes.
From the start, Wrong said he knew tonight's episode (ABC, 10 p.m.) would end the series because it's so different.
"It's not, in a way, representative of what the tempo and kind of emotional pace, with the highs and lows, with comedy and tragedy, that typifies the rest of the series."
For instance, there are fewer characters to follow in the final hour - just the main players.
The finale will also include a brief update on the folks viewers have seen along the way.
Since it launched, "Boston Med" has been averaging 5.25 million viewers and has generated great critical reviews. That helps within ABC News, which like every other media outlet is trying to figure out how to remain relevant.
"There's a lot that can go wrong," he says. "The fact that so much has gone right is a huge sense of relief. Imagine if you did this and people didn't like it."
"Boston Med" is a style of long-form journalism that's hard to come by at a time when most news divisions are cutting costs.
"I can say that I have been asked to do more work of this kind," Wrong said. "From a personal standpoint, I'm not sure how I feel about it being medical. ... It might be both refereshing and a different kind of challenge to tackle something new."
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