Robin Cook is truly my favorite author. Tooling around Hulu today, I stumbed on a “webisode” of a new Robin Cook title – ‘Foreign Body.’ According to the series website, this series is a prologue to his soon-to-be released summer blockbuster, Foreign Body.
Partnered with Robin Cook and his publisher, Penguin Group, this web series is blazing new ground, bringing two different mediums together for the first time. Look for Foreign Body, the novel, to launch August 5. Leading up to the book launch, catch Foreign Body on a computer or mobile phone near you.
There will be 50 episodes, 2 minutes each airing 5 days a week Get all the back-story you need before the book hits the shelf. Foreign Body the series launches on May 27th and ends on August 4th just one day before the book hits shelves. The novels storyline will pick up from where the web series left off.
While I truly embrace the online video model – there is one thing about this – I really don’t want to watch 50 individual episodes – each with their own open and close – plus all the damn clicking. At least to watch the full first week they provided a single video of all four videos – which is okay. Strangely, only the first episode is on Hulu and it expires 12 hours from now. Odd, considering there are already four episodes.
While it’s hard to keep the storyline fresh watching individual clips, I only know after watching the first week’s episodes that I have little idea what is going on – other than a hospital is upset at the growing amount of revenue going overseas for ‘medical vacations’ – and India is one of the hotspots. In order to combat this growing problem, anticipated to impact the fictional hospital $100MM by 2010, they decide to form a fake corporation, “Nurses International.” This company will hire a young Indian woman and send her to India to document the tragedy which occurs on a daily basis, staph infections and more – to scare way the American consumer. The final episode this week ends with a sexually-tense moment.
I’ll be anxious to see what happens next. This is definitely a bit different for Mr. Cook, who’s work I adore.
Source: Foreign Body
