Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sick as Your Secrets
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 05.17.2010
th all of them as a nurse. It almost makes you sad that she made it to Hosp Admin. I mean, I wouldn't say she got Peter Principled -- she's awesome either way -- but watching her in action is really satisfying.The EMTs, having been met by nobody out in the bay, bring in a guy with chest pains and stuff, and Jackie and Gloria do this balletic kind of choreography, almost without words, to take care of them both. Jackie promises to wait on Guy #2's EKG, if Gloria will grab her some morphine for the head injury. She leaves, muttering, "Gotta go find out where these other fuckers are..."
The fuckers are in the Pill-O-Matix room, which is once again broken. Gloria shoves her way to the front of the line, and seethes madly. "All right, everyone. Listen very carefully, because I'm only gonna say this once: This machine is a piece of shit."
"I think I'll say it again. This machine is a piece of SHIT!" Gloria punches in her override, and opens every little nook and cranny and drawer and cell and niche and locker at once. It's sort of amazing. The doors flop open, and the things pop out, and... There are all the drugs. "What do you need?" she asks, arms spread wide like she's Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Pill Cabinet.
Head injury dude just wants to get the heck out of there. Coop does some cognitive tests on him -- follow the finger, smile, clench teeth -- and Suzie's like, "That's easy for him to do. He's from Connecticut." She makes me want to clench my teeth, and my ass have never been to Connecticut. They bitch about money for awhile more, and finally Jackie takes her outside for a little talk. "Um, look, he's got a pretty serious head gash and clearly, the two of you have some issues..." Suzie's like, "Totally! I need Diet Coke." Jackie sends her off with Thor for "a tour of the vending machines," which he says she'll enjoy: "They're beautiful this time of year. The Skittles are in bloom."
Back with the guy, she gets the whole story (or so she thinks): "I told her we couldn't go away every weekend, she threw a jar of nuts at my head. And before she could throw the whole mini-bar, I shoved her back." Makes sense. Coop throws a fit about how you can't hit a woman, under any circumstances whatsoever, and the guy's like, "I don't hit women. This happened, and I responded." Coop expects Jackie to back him up, for some reason, and she won't do it, because he's bending over backwards to be an idiot about this. "Uh, no: I don't think men should hit women. But if someone bashes you in the head without provocation, you have the right to defend yourself." Coop disagrees, if the hitter is a woman. Which is stupid -- Jackie and the dude agree about that -- but just by the rhetoric you can tell we're way past rational thought and well into rote, brainless recitation, so shut it down before he...
"So you're advocating violence against women?" There it goes. Obviously not, you jackass: I am advocating against violence. Should have walked away. This quasi-feminist victim shit is so annoying, because it instantly turns actual conversations into grandstanding opportunities to demonstrate your own personal superiority. He's trying to turn Jackie into a puppet for his personal morality play, starring himself, which is just as gross as hitting her.
Pretending women can't, or shouldn't have to, take care of themselves is nasty -- not to mention incredibly harmful -- because it sets up a false perspective wherein everybody on earth has a right to safety. Which is a fun fantasy, but pretending you live there -- and abandoning your responsibility for your own safety, under the mistaken impression that getting to complain about it later is somehow tantamount to never having it happen at all -- will get you killed, or worse. What, if something does happen to you it's because you didn't believe hard enough in second-wave feminism?
As a glimpse into Coop's little world, though, it makes total sense: The second you start describing women as having any kind of sovereignty whatsoever, he grabs a boob. Women can be battered crash test dummies, or sexual objects, or mommies, but they can't be people, and this is just another boob-grabbing iteration of the same: It's not wrong to hit a woman, it's wrong to hit a person.
So I guess if you put it that way, I am strongly advocating violence against Dr. Fitch Cooper.
He runs off screaming into the full-moon night, and Jackie flashes head injury guy a high-watt professional grin: "...He'll be right back." Outside, Jackie tries at length to talk Dr. Bowen into spilling the content of Grace's sessions, but eventually backs down and just asks Bowen to make sure Grace is aware that she can share whatever's on her mind with Jackie and Kevin. "All right, that's something. Thanks." She hangs up and notes two college guys on bikes coming into Triage. Both of them are annoying and talk like your mom, like, totally thinks college kids, like, talk: Cell phones and big-butt SUVs and like tubular clamdiggers and the new Nirvana LP. Jackie sends the one with a cracked hip with Zoey in a wheelchair, in such a way that it seems she's really finally trusting Zoey without even thinking about it that much.