Episode Report Card Chuck: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dog Doo
By Chuck | Season 5 | Episode 4 | Aired on 01.26.2002
In the infirmary, Dr. Nathan asks a clean but glum Brass how he's doing. Fine, he lies. She tells him he can go, but that he needs to come back in a week for blood work, as they need to check for all the bad stuff like hepatitis, HIV, pinworms. Then, while worrying about overstepping her bounds, she advises him to tell any sexual partners about the incident. Brass, realizing that tales of a shit shower are not likely to act as an aphrodisiac, snaps that Nathan is indeed sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Actually, dickhead, it's exactly what she should be saying as a doctor.
Now it's time for her to deal with the other side of this little incident -- she enters Martinez's cell to examine him. He's all bloody and looks like he got beaten up pretty badly. I don't speak Spanish, so I have no idea what they're saying. Martinez reaches up and touches her face, and she reverts to English to tell him to stop. Then she tells the guard that Martinez should be in the hospital, but the guard won't budge without permission from Leo, so she sends him off to get it. Back to Martinez, who reaches for her face again as Nathan begins having rape flashbacks. She tells him to stop once more, but he reaches for her breast, and she flies off the handle and starts pummeling him. And pummeling him. And shouting that she told him to stop.
In Sister Pete's office, Nathan talks about beating Martinez and losing control. Pete thinks that she was actually in control -- finally asserting herself in the situation and taking back the control that she lost when she was raped. Nathan asks if Pete thinks she's antagonizing prisoners on purpose; Pete says no, but that she wants Nathan to answer a question she asked when she first returned to Oz after the rape. Why? Why, after being beaten and violated, did she choose to return to a place full of vicious men? Nathan doesn't know. Of course not. Could we gather all the clueless staffers in a room and have a quick debriefing session so they can stop wondering what's staring them in the face? Pollyanna Pete believes that if they work on this issue and find out what's going on, Nathan can begin to heal.
A statue of a human wearing a massive doughnut on its head can mean only one thing: Viking interlude. Hill recounts the Viking myth of human origin; in addition to souls and whatnot, the great god Odin gave them a place to live called Midgard, which was created from a giant's eyebrows. "Sounds almost true, don't it," muses Hill, "all of us living on the edge of an eyebrow." Nope, not remotely, but thanks for trying.