Most critics come down in favour, with five of seven reviews positive. The praise gathers around the two surgeons: the leads are called engaging and their friendship is named again and again as the show’s emotional centre, drawn with more care than the surrounding sex and gore would suggest. Several reviews credit the series with turning its shocks to a purpose, as satire of Miami’s beauty trade and as a template for the glossy, genre-mixing television Ryan Murphy went on to make.
The reservations are about the same excess. Variety finds the pilot crams too many plotlines and explicit scenes into ninety minutes and fills them with unlikeable people. Den of Geek, writing decades on, thinks the mix of satire and sensationalism has aged poorly and leans on tropes now hard to defend. The Ringer adds that later seasons slide into predictability. The scores run from 50 to 80, with the doubters at either end of the timeline.