The official site of Aaron Barnhart

Kim Parks, Marvin Pollet

You’ve already read in this space about the remarkable series “Boston Med” (10 pm ET Thursday, ABC), culled from nearly two years of round-the-clock filming at three prestigious Massachusetts hospitals. This week’s is a particularly noteworthy episode, and not just because it features Kimberly Parks, a cardiologist who is a 2001 graduate of Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.

It’s her patient, Marvin Pollet, who’s the real draw here. Pollet needs a new heart, and when we first see him at Mass General, it’s clear his old ticker is failing.

“My job is to make sure Marvin stays alive,” Parks tells the ever-present cameras. She’s just emerged from a meeting with her peers, where she’s convinced them to move Pollet to the head of the waiting list for heart transplant.

“Now it’s time,” she adds, “to start putting pressure on the surgeons.”

And so it goes: Parks in terrier mode, knowing her patient has weeks to live, Pollet and his wife trying to keep calm while nothing happens, and as for those surgeons, one of them turns to Parks, with the bemused look only a person who deals with life and death every day can muster, and says, “What do you want me to do, shoot someone?”

It’s a roller coaster of emotions in that turbulent middle ground where real-life drama takes place, good followed by bad followed by good. Parks is affected in ways she admits she’s never been affected before — and you may be saying the same thing afterward.

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"Mythbusters'" Adam Savage hid in this "Futurama" outfit and roamed the floor in 2008.

Comic-Con International begins with a sneak preview tonight. For the ten of you who don’t know, it’s the annual gathering in San Diego of movie producers, video-game makers, TV stars, software companies, vampire genre fans, 3-D geeks … am I leaving anyone out? Oh, right: the comic-book industry.

From its swap-n-shop beginnings four decades ago, Comic-Con has morphed into the country’s largest popular culture festival. Attendees wander the vast corridors of the Convention Center dressed as their favorite anime characters or in steampunk garb, while inside the even vaster ballrooms, the casts of such shows as “True Blood,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Mythbusters” produce screaming throngs.

You’ve perhaps read about all the fantasy-genre films coming to San Diego to bask in the glow of Comic-Con’s uniquely intense spotlight, like “Tron: Legacy,” “The Green Hornet” and “The Goon,” as well as the possible appearance of Hollywood’s first couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. However, it’s worth noting that the bookend events this year are television shows.

Wednesday’s “preview night” will unveil the new CW series “Nikita,” a teenage version of the popular ’90s show. And Comic-Con 2010 will close out Sunday evening with a special authorized screening of “Once More with Feeling,” also known as the musical episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which was on its way to becoming the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” of its time until the lawyers at Fox started sending theater owners cease-and-desist letters.

In between, more than 70 current TV series will be featured. They include “The Walking Dead,” the Image comic book series by Robert Kirkman that is being turned into a TV series by AMC; “Bob’s Burgers,” the animated comedy debuting in January on Fox; “Teen Wolf,” an MTV series based on the Michael J. Fox movie; and NBC’s “The Cape,” based on the comic about a cop who takes a superhero identity to protect his family.

Other TV shows have clearly come in the hopes of raking in all that free publicity and young-consumer love, like Fox’s “Glee,” and NBC’s “Community.” The gang from the MTV series “Jackass” are holding a party at a local beer garden to promote their upcoming 3D movie. Also here are shows like TNT’s “Leverage,” USA’s “White Collar” and the CBS remake of “Hawaii Five-O,” none of which has much to do with fantasy or science fiction. However, their publicists are well aware of the huge Comic-Con welcome that another USA show, “Burn Notice,” got last year.

My daily blogs from San Diego begin Thursday.

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