The Beethoven of private pathologists, by his own admission.
...forensic pathology is not just about how a victim died...It's also about how they lived.
- Dr. Beaumont Darius Rosewood Jr.
Set in Miami, Florida, Rosewood is a combination Forensic Drama and Police Procedural which pairs Dr. Beaumont Rosewood, Jr. (Morris Chestnut), affectionately known as "Rosie," a high-spirited pathologist in private practice, with cynical, recently widowed Detective Annalise Villa (Jaina Lee Ortiz) of the East Miami Police Department. Working with Rosie at his "Magic City Lab" are his mother, Donna (Lorraine Toussaint), sister Pippy (Gabrielle Dennis), Pippy's fiancee "TMI" (Anna Konkle), and socially inept technician Mitchie Mendelson (Sam Hutchinson). Villa's superior in Season 1 is Captain Ira Hornstock (Domenick Lombardozzi); at the start of season 2, Hornstock is demoted to detective and Ryan Slade (Eddie Cibrian) is the new captain.
The show was cancelled after two seasons in May of 2017.
This show features examples of:
- Body of the Week: As a crime series focused on a private pathologist, episodes will usually be centered around the body of a murder victim.
- Character Development:
- Villa gradually becomes less of a cynic, opening up and getting closer to the people around her.
- Over the course of Season 2, Slade and Hornstock come to respect each other.
- Color Wash: The show has a very bright, warm-toned color palette, as seen in the page illustration—except in flashbacks, which tend to be cool-toned and Deliberately Monochrome
- Con Artist: Tawnya, Rosie's love interest for much of Season 2, and her "14-year old daughter" Kayla.
- After they clean out Rosie's bank accounts, he spends a couple of episodes on a drinking binge.
- Cool Car: Rosie's bright yellow GTO convertible.
- Cop and Scientist: Villa and Rosie, though Rosie's eagerness for doing field work with Villa instead of staying at his lab causes her no end of headaches.
- Crossover: With Bones in Episode 9 of Season 2. Daisy Wick was TMI's college roommate and assisted on the case of the week.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Rosie's life has been a continuous battle with his health issues.
- Villa's father abandoned her and her mother when she was quite young. Later in life, her husband died suddenly of a freak pulmonary embolism and later turned out to have been murdered.
- Hornstock has had multiple failed marriages and is estranged from his siblings.
- Slade grew up in an orphanage, and went through some rough experiences as an undercover agent investigating human trafficking.
- TMI spent much of her early life as a closeted lesbian. When she came out, her parents more or less cut her out of their life.
- Even Pippy had some of this, having spent some time as a runaway when she was coming to terms with her sexuality due to her mother not being supportive of it at first (unlike her father and Rosie).
- Mitchie lost his parents in a car accident at a young age, which engendered in him a great interest in human anatomy.
- Deadpan Snarker: Rosie, Villa, Pippy, TMI, Mitchie... well, pretty much every one of the main characters. East Miami is practically a World of Snark.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Lots, especially between Rosie and Villa.
- Fair Cop: Villa is a cop, but the series likes to show off how attractive she is too sometimes.
- Female Flatfoot and Snarky Guy: inverted, in that Villa is the snarkier of the two
- Hiding the Handicap: Rosie has had at least two open heart surgeries, and as of the middle of season 2 is in need of a kidney transplant, but you'd never know it by the way he acts or how vigorously he works out.The human heart... best built machine not built by man. It's a beautiful thing, even when it's sick, flawed, like mine. I love this life, every single moment. But my challenge is to stay on this earth for as long as I can and soak it up. I test this machine of mine every chance I get, push it to its absolute limits. That's why I run.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Naomi, the Not Quite Dead and very Genre Savvy documentary filmmaker in "Puffer Fish & Personal History."
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode except for the pilot has an Alliterative Title in The Noun and the Noun format. The first noun usually references some element of forensic evidence that is significant to the Body of the Week. Examples: "Mummies and Meltdowns" "Keratin & Kissyface", "Negative Autopsies and New Partners".
- Incoming Ham: Rosie and Villa often do this when surprising a suspect they're about to take down.
- Insufferable Genius: not insufferable, really, but Rosie does have an awfully high opinion of himself.Rosie: I'm Dr. Beaumont Rosewood. Some call me the Beethoven of private pathologists.Villa: No one calls you that.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Rosie comes looking for TMI. . . at Pippy's apartment. . . unannounced . . . during late evening hours . . . to discuss lab business.TMI: I'm feeling [chuckles] very awkward and vulnerable right now.
- Large Ham: Rosie: "Who's the man? Rhetorical question—we all know it's me."
- Captain Slade as well: "Teamwork makes the dream work!"
- Lipstick Lesbian: Pippy and TMI are both gay women and usually dress very femininely with dresses and nice makeup.
- Mama Bear/Team Mom: Donna
- The Nicknamer: When Villa and Rosie enlist the help of some medical students to reinvestigate a cold case, they give them all nicknames on first sight. We never do learn their real names.
- No Communities Were Harmed: there is no "East Miami." The only thing east of Miami is the Atlantic Ocean.
- The Pollyanna: Rosie, who Villa often accuses of "seeing the world through Rosie-colored glasses."
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: Season 2's "Tree Toxins & Three Stories" seems to have been meant as a backdoor pilot for a spinoff series about an eclectic group of pathology students (a disgraced former influencer, a plastic surgery student taking it as an elective, an intelligent but socially inept guy, etc.) who assist with the case of the girls Gerald is suspected of murdering and would probably have done something similar if it went to series. Rosie mentions knowing their professor, who is absent in the episode and presumably hadn't been cast. No additional series came of this episode.
- The Power of Friendship: A recurring theme in the interactions between the main characters.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Rosie is this in the lab, Captain Ryan Slade at the precinct.
- The Rival:
- Slade is this with respect to Hornstock when he becomes precinct captain after Hornstock's demotion.
- Rosie's rival is his health.
- Rule of Cool: Invoked In-Universe when Villa confiscates a gym bag full of money from a suspect and slashes it open, causing the cash to fall out.Rosie: Could have used the zipper.Villa: The knife was way cooler.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Rosie, whose sartorial splendor contrasts with Villa's Unkempt Beauty.
- Sherlock Scan: Both Rosie and Villa are pretty good at picking up on small details
- Show Within a Show: "White Matter and The Ways Back." is centered around a former child star who played the protagonist in a beloved 1990s Sitcom. Mitchie even sings a snippet of the Theme Tune:When you're feeling lost and all alone/Hold on to your friends, and you'll be home/The ones who have been there know it's a fact/The only way forward is to find.....The Ways Back.
- The Summation: Once an Episode, usually delivered by Rosie.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: present between Rosie and Villa from the start, even though both had other romantic involvements over the course of the series. In the final episode of Season 2, Villa announced that she was leaving Miami and asked Rosie (whose feelings for Villa were coming to the surface) to give her a reason to stay, though it's ultimately never shown how their relationship pans out due the show's cancellation.
- Warm Place, Warm Lighting: The series takes place in Miami, a city with a very warm climate. The second season was shot through a warm yellow filter.
