"Red Band Society" airs Wednesday 9/8c on Fox. (Fox)

The sick-teen premise of the new Fox show “Red Band Society” instantly calls to mind this summer’s blockbuster movie “The Fault In Our Stars,” but the show itself owes much more to another Fox series, the once-popular-but-long-forgotten dramedy “Glee.”

There was a time—which is now just a distant memory—when “Glee” was a show about bullied high school kids bonding over music. “Red Band Society” follows the same basic formula, except these kids are bullied by hospital staff and bond over their diminishing health. It’s the same show, but more overtly set up to tug at the heartstrings.

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The first episode introduces us to the central cast of characters, a group of kids all confined to a hospital for an extended period of time. A few have cancer, one has a heart defect and another has an eating disorder, but they all have the same problems as any other teenager. They fall in love, they break up, they smoke weed, they steal cars. These kids won’t let a little bad health get in their way. Or so we’re reminded by the overly-chatty narrator, a 12-year-old boy in a coma who somehow knows everything that happens in the hospital and feels the need to comment on all of it.

This is the main problem with “Red Band Society.” The show’s premise—kids facing serious medical problems, and in some cases death—deserves more than the “Glee” sheen of positivity. Everything won’t get better just because they all wear the same red hospital bracelets. Having friends won’t mitigate the fact that they’re dying.

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The show tries to get around this fact by largely ignoring the fact that they’re sick. They run around pulling your typical teenage antics, and with the exception of exactly one missing leg and one dramatic collapse, none of the kids look or act like they’re sick at all.

Cancer? Shake it off:

Occasional glimpses of what “Red Band Society” could be are frustrating, but promising. The moments when the characters are forced to face their situation are when the show’s vision is clearest. Toward the end of the first episode just before newbie Jordi is about to have his leg amputated, hospital veteran Leo helps him find strength before the crippling operation. “Your body isn’t you. Your soul is you. And they can never cut into your soul,” he says. 

These moments, though, are too few and too fleeting to completely save the hour. Any time the show makes any real emotional connection, the ever-present narrator chimes in with some bit like, “Everyone thinks that when you go to a hospital life stops, but it’s just the opposite. Life starts.” A line so obviously trying to mean something, that it only highlights the fact that it’s complete nonsense.

This isn’t to say that “Red Band Society” is a lost cause. The cast is doing well with what they’re given—most notably Octavia Spencer—and the characters are interesting enough that they could be worth investing in over the course of a season. As long as they cool it on the voice-over.