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
Hey, Matt's back in the opening credits, bumping poor old Lucy back to fourth position. And Martin's not there at all. There's a drinking game here, somewhere.
The Opening Credits Timewaster is one long shot of the ER filled with bustling activity. Meanwhile, The Guitar of In Over Its Head plays dramatic ER-style music. The Piano and Soprano Saxophone rally to help their friend, but to no avail. After a particularly exciting shot of some lady counting charts, then dumping them on a desk, Matt and PC burst into the place, only ten minutes late. Some blonde lady mistakes them for patients, which you can't really blame her for, seeing as in this ER, they let the patients go anywhere they want while they're waiting to see a doctor. Like some guy with a headache, who just walks right up behind the lady and inside her desk area, where he's probably seeing confidential medical information. Ah, the realism that comes with having a real doctor write and direct! The blonde lady shoos the guy away, telling PC that he's a regular who likes "the big D." "The big D?" PC repeats. In that patient's case, it stands for Demerol, though in PC's case, it stands for "duh." And in the blonde lady's case, it stands for "don't tell random people confidential medical information, idiot." Another blonde lady walks up (although she's wearing a stethoscope and scrubs, while the other blonde is just wearing regular clothes, so the scrubs blonde must be super-important) and tells Matt and PC that she just saw a group of students heading down the hall.
Matt and PC manage to find their class by running into its teacher. As they get settled, he explains that they're looking at a patient with asthma and "increasing SOB." "SOB?" says PC, all scandalized and thinking that the doctor totally just called his patient a son of a bitch. What an idiot. Even I know that that means "shortness of breath," and I only see that term when I'm snooping around the ER patient complaints, hoping to catch something funny like "swollen penis." Dr. Teacher tells Matt to listen to the patient's lungs, to which Matt is sad to report that he doesn't have a stethoscope. Because he left it on the subway. With his black bag. Which the rest of the group makes fun of him for having. Well, sort of. One guy just says, "Wow…a black bag," with a sarcastic smirk on his face. He looks kind of stoned, too. Dr. Teacher points out that all the other medical students managed to bring their stethoscopes, then pulls Nurse Debi "How Did This Happen to Me" Mazar aside (addressing her as "Nurse Kelly," like, are nurses commonly referred to by their job title and then their first name?), and orders her to give Matt her pretty pink stethoscope, which has a little stuffed animal on it. I tend to think that a nurse is going to need her stethoscope a lot more than a second-year med student, but whatever. Dr. Teacher scolds PC and Matt for being late and unprepared, but Matt's too busy listening to the patient's chest to pay him any mind. So he yanks the stethoscope out of Matt's ear and yells into it. Dr. Teacher is now Dr. Assbeard. Because he's an ass, and he has a beard, and that beard is in and of itself pretty assy, so…Dr. Assbeard. Matt spits out some medical jargon about what he heard in the patient's lungs, to which Dr. Assbeard makes a sarcastic reply. Then Matt's cell phone rings. The patient, obviously someone who, like me, hates hearing other people's cell phones ring, begs Matt to answer his phone.