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Lifetime Movie Network’s ‘Sizzling Summer Nights’ is winding down, and they’ve given viewers one of the more outlandish relationship thriller of the Summer with The Doctor with Two Faces.
Masiela Lusha stars as Sheyla, a nurse who on her first day on the job meets the ridiculously named Dr. Derek Calico (Jonathan Stoddard), ‘like the cat’ her co-worker Carol tells her, and the sparks instantly fly between them. Later that night, Sheyla and Carol (who are besties already) and Grant (someone we’ve not even met yet) are enjoying drinks after work when who should appear from across the room … Dr. Calico. The doctors never come to this bar. Gasp! But he heard Carol invite Sheyla to come and decompress after work so he showed up too. Obviously there for Sheyla, Carol and Grant (Danny Rivera) make a hasty exit, claiming it’s because they have the morning shift, leaving Sheyla to play doctor with the Doctor. And that she does as he takes her home and he gives her a thorough examination. Sheyla gets herself together and does the walk of shame home, unaware that someone is watching. When Sheyla exits the scene, a dark-haired woman storms to Derek’s house and pounds on the door. Derek is not happy to see an ex when he opens the door and when she refuses to leave he gives her a helping hand. Two, really, around her throat, hastening her exit from this world probably much sooner than she expected, with Derek somehow getting her to the hospital and onto a gurney in the hallway where he and Sheyla chat over her body, with Derek claiming she arrived DOA. Sheyla spends the night with him again, and early the next morning he wakes her up with extremely and comically loud grunting as he does push-up (on his knuckles) in another room in his tighty whiteys, decompressing from committing a murder (probably the most shocking thing in the movie, the tighty whiteys that is).
One thing leads to another and six weeks later, Sheyla is Mrs. Calico and living in wedded bliss. Sort of, because she wants to go back to work but her husband tells her she doesn’t have to work. She does though because she loves her job. Compounding things, Sheyla discovers she’s pregnant but doesn’t tell Derek right away. Instead, he finds the used pregnancy test and confronts her, but she can’t tell if he’s happy or angry. Sheyla begins to feel ill every day during her pregnancy and she’s only getting worse and Carol is getting a little too aggressively protective of her friend. It also comes to Carol’s attention that drugs have gone missing and takes over the investigation into where they went, going over reports that seem to point to Dr. Calico being responsible. Before she can make any accusations, he stuffs her locker full of pills to point the finger at her, and she is quickly relieved of her duties at the hospital, further stressing out Sheyla and eroding her relationship with Derek. He chalks it up to her difficult pregnancy so he schedules an appointment with a therapist friend, Dr. Unger (Charisma Carpenter). Unfortunately, Derek isn’t just a colleague, he’s the man who supplies her with (stolen) pills for her addiction (did we mention she seems to be an addiction counselor?) so he expects her to do what he asks and report back to him with whatever Sheyla says. Unger at least has some ethics and reminds him that she cannot do that, but she will participate in his little game for more pills. Sheyla doesn’t want to see a therapist but she does, and things seem fine until she has an episode that requires her to be hospitalized briefly. Sheyla begins to grow more and more suspicious of Derek, and Grant also feels something is going on when he overhears the Doctor on the phone, speaking in very threatening tones. Grant tries to call Sheyla, but she is in such a state that she can’t answer her phone. Unfortunately, Grant was spotted spying on Derek, and he ends up with his neck snapped between the dumpsters. Derek goes home and deletes the message from Sheyla’s phone but she’s almost certain Grant tried to call her (did Derek forget to delete the missed call notifications?). She tries to call him back but gets no answer, just voice mail, and she visits Dr. Unger to express her fears about Derek which are now of concern to the therapist as well. But Derek shows up and bashes her over the head with a vase … but he doesn’t kill her. At home he confronts Sheyla — who is ready to pop at this point — and injects her with something and gets her to the hospital. He’s unaware that Sheyla managed to get a call in to Carol, who shows up in ‘disguise’ — the only medical professional in the hospital wearing a mask — and breaks Sheyla out of the hospital (she’d been shackled to the bed) and gets her back home. Sheyla had found the drugs and the records of the discrepancies that Carol had uncovered and accused Derek of taking before she was fired, but now the evidence is gone. Derek shows up and Carol tries to protect Sheyla but she gets knocked out, leaving Sheyla to briefly defend herself, trying to keep Derek at arm’s length with a knife. How will she get out of this situation? And how far will Derek go to silence his wife without harming the baby?
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The Doctor with Two Faces is another predictable thriller that at least entertains with some of its outlandish storytelling. The script wastes no time in getting Sheyla and Derek together, and helpfully tells the viewer how much time passes between their first meeting and between the time Sheyla becomes pregnant and the climactic scenes (we don’t just have to rely on the size of her belly … and it’s a shock when she doesn’t have twins because she gets big). There are also some plot holes and the fact that Derek is a conniving person from beginning to end is problematic. No one can tell from the way he constantly growls and squints that he’s up to something? Even when he’s told he’s going to get Dr. Morris’ job when he retires, his reaction is less joy and more of inevitability — proud of his achievements as he does a ridiculous dance down the hallway — as Derek obviously and ruthlessly put himself in that position (how he screwed over so many others to get to that point would make a whole other movie). The push-ups scene was a bit bonkers, but the whole final scene is baffling. Sorry, but we have to get a bit spoilery here because there are just too many questions. Proceed only if you’ve watched the movie.
So as Sheyla is holding Derek at bay with the knife, Carol wakes up and hits him in the head with a frying pan. The police arrive but Derek regains consciousness and charges at Sheyla who is still holding the knife so he takes it right in the gut, in front of the police so there is no question of self defense. The scenes then cuts to Sheyla in the hospital, waking up to Carol entering the room in her scrubs and with all of her accoutrements … although she says she hasn’t been officially given her job back. Huh? Maybe she just meant as head nurse, but it came out weird. Carol tells Sheyla that Derek lived, they found Grant’s body in his storage unit and with the pill scandal he’ll be going to prison for life. What? How long has Sheyla been in the hospital?!? But it gets crazier. Carol mentions the baby and Sheyla seems completely surprised that she had a baby and another nurse carries her in, Sheyla reacting as if this is the first time she’s seen the child. Was she unconscious when she gave birth? Did she forget she was pregnant? Did she think it was all a dream? Nothing in the final scene makes any sense. Did everyone just give up by that point?
The performances are generally fine but are informed by the writing. Lusha starts out as a strong, confident woman but she falls too quickly under the spell of a man, only following his orders. Even when she mentions she’s going to see a doctor at her former workplace, she never goes. It would have made things much more interesting and set up a more vibrant conflict between Sheyla and Derek if she had a better handle on what he was doing to her. He was obviously making her sick — putting the baby at risk as well if he was giving her drugs — so her performance could have been stronger if she was more forceful against Derek. She is also forced to turn on Carol without question, and that just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Lusha does her best but the character is written so all over the place that even she can’t really get a handle on who Sheyla is. Jonathan Stoddard is dashing but he seems to always have the same expression on his face, always with that sinister smile and always speaking in the same tone of voice. His entire demeanor screams ‘stay away from this guy’ but he manages to also make him magnetic enough to attract Sheyla. The way he uses his monotone voice to control Sheyla is also a bit scary, but that’s how guys like that operate. The character is a bit one-note, but Stoddard does manage to at least make him menacing and interesting. (And he fills out those tighty whiteys nicely.)
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Charisma Carpenter also struggles a bit with her character which is also too one-note. She’s a therapist and a drug addict, so is she playing the character constantly sedated? That’s how it feels as she barely reacts when Derek threatens to cut off her pill supply if she doesn’t continue to manipulate Sheyla, and even when she is having sessions with Sheyla she doesn’t really seem to be trying to convince her that all of her worries are in her head. It just feels like she’s not truly invested in this character or the movie, hiding behind a huge pair of glasses, and did it just for the paycheck (which may be the case since her last credited work on IMDb is a reprise of her Buffy the Vampire Slayer character Cordelia in the 2023 podcast Slayers: A Buffyverse Story, and before that was a guest spot on the Dynasty reboot in 2022). Hopefully she can show off her talents in something a bit more high-profile, or better written, in the future (maybe in Hulu’s upcoming Buffy reboot).
The Doctor with Two Faces isn’t an atrocity but it ain’t good either. It is weirdly entertaining though just because so many elements of the story are a bit over-the-top. It’s hard to recommend the movie based on the performances, since many of the actors don’t seem to know exactly what to do with their characters, but Jonathan Stoddard at least makes it watchable as he creates an unpredictable villain you love to hate and hate to love. The whole thing is a mixed bag but if you just want to turn off your brain after a busy day, you could do worse than The Doctor with Two Faces.
Eat Pray Lie has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.