Episode Report Card Sara M: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Matt Is Still Stupid
By Sara M | Season 8 | Episode 10 | Aired on 11.23.2003
Dr. Sterling hands assignments out to the students. One girl, named "Liu" (way to go that extra mile and take Asian names from Ally McBeal, there, writers), gets a patient with a sore throat and brags that her time as a volunteer in a free clinic means that she's done tons of strep screens before. The sarcastic student gets a sprained ankle, and the remaining student, "Sinatra" (huh?), gets a guy with constipation. Then a gunshot wound patient rolls in through the front doors. Like a good doctor, Sterling decides that the man must be a "gangbanger," but the paramedic says he's just a bystander. That's what you get for making assumptions, Sterling. Matt asks if he can watch the action, but Dr. Sterling tells him to concentrate on his own work. Sinatra bitches about how his constipation case isn't ER material, but since he's going into "G.I" (gastrointestinal), "what the hell?" Did he say "hell?" I'm telling Brenda! Matt and PC look at their cases. PC got an elderly nursing home patient with an altered mental state, and Matt got a young guy who thinks he's Napoleon and is requesting asylum. Oh, hilarious jokes made at the expense of the mentally ill. PC and Matt decide to trade cases, because Matt says that PC should be right at home with a man who's manic and has delusions of grandeur, because her dad is just like that. PC does not get a chance to describe to Matt what his father's mental problems are, as that would take the rest of the episode. She does, however, get another nag in about how Matt should tell everyone that he works in the lab part-time and that's how he knows so much about blood-drawing. Whatever, PC; you're just jealous because lab techs rule.
Matt's patient, "Mr. McNeil," has decided that Matt's a priest, and won't let anyone tell him otherwise, no matter how loudly Matt screams that he's a med student. Nurse Debi snarks to Matt that the man might be confused, but he's not deaf. Then she tells Matt to get the man's medical history by looking through all his charts. Mr. McNeil tells Debi that she makes a very attractive nun. Debi rather unsympathetically puts his oxygen mask back over his face and tells him to be quiet.
PC's patient is a weight-lifter who knows enough nineteenth century history to have convinced himself that he's Napoleon. He wants political asylum before England ships him off to Elba. And then he starts saying the typical television-crazy-people stuff about how Tony Blair put a receiver in his head or whatever. Suddenly, he rips his shirt off and yells that he needs a green card. Interestingly enough, this is almost exactly how my dad proposed to my mother. PC has apparently never seen a man's chest before, because she reacts by bugging her eyes out, taking a few steps back, calling for security, and averting her eyes. What a prude. Also, that scene was really stupid and pointless.