Miami Medical's Mike Vogel Has a Trick Up His Scrubs in Handling the Medical Jargon

The jargon on medical procedurals can be a mouthful. Miami Medical star Mike Vogel, who plays Dr. Chris "C" Deleo, has a trick up his scrubs to utter the words.

"You do your best at the beginning of an episode to look up all the terms so that when you say it, you don't look like a complete idiot," Vogel tells TVGuide.com. "It sort of becomes a contest as to who can get through as many takes as possible without screwing them up."

ER vet McCrane on directing Miami Medical: I avoided the helicopters

Vogel says it's not just the series' heavy dialogue that sticks close to the real world. The show's glamorous South Beach location also takes after the Ryder Trauma Center located in Miami. Vogel says the splashy setting gives the show license for more exciting medical emergencies.

"We get to play with diving accidents and just the kind of things that can happen in a town like that where there's so much money and so much playtime," Vogel says. "The imagination kind of runs wild with how crazy the cases get."

With a group as close knit as the Alpha Team, the cases are just the beginning, since much of Miami Medical's drama stems from the surgeons rather than their patients.

Check out photos from Miami Medical

On Friday's episode, airing at 10/9c on CBS, the flirtation between Dr. C and Dr. Eva Zambrano (Lana Parrilla) raises questions about their relationship, just as the trauma team must deal with an injured wedding party.

Vogel is mum on if or when the two will move beyond friendship. "That's anybody's guess," he says with a laugh. "Certainly, there's a lot of fun to play with the push and pull of inner-work relationships and we do our best to exploit it."

Romantic tension aside, Dr. C already has personnel problems to deal with because of the new head of the Alpha Team, Dr. Matthew Proctor (Jeremy Northam). Proctor replaced longtime leader Dr. William Rayner (Andre Braugher) after Rayner abruptly walked out of the operating room in the pilot episode.

Miami Medical: "The rockstars of medicine"

"William Rayner was unflappable. He was a rock ... and the fact that this guy can go under certainly puts all of our careers into question and how much one person can stand," Vogel says. "Chris is certainly a regimented guy. He'll buck the system all day long, but the way he was taught to operate is there's an order and a way to do everything ... So when you've learned one way and then another guy comes in who just kind of marches to the beat of his own drum, it throws him for a tailspin."

Despite their differences, Vogel is optimistic about Dr. C's and Dr. Proctor's working relationship. "I think the two of them are a lot more similar than they'd like to admit," he says. "We'll learn this season; it will certainly come about and mutually respect one another for their cowboy ways."