Episode Report Card 17 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT All In The Family
By Wing Chun | Season 6 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.16.2000
This station ID features Carol Hathaway. Oh, so that's why this episode is so good! She's not in it!
Elizabeth sits on the floor in the hall, looking wrecked. Romano emerges from an OR and makes a Valentine's Day joke. Lucy is stable, and he congratulates Elizabeth on her good work. She asks how Carter is, and Romano tells her it took a while for the surgeons to stop the bleeding, but they ultimately salvaged his kidney, and are now working on a colostomy. Down the hall, a blonde woman we've never seen before tells Romano that the county supervisor's on the phone, having just heard what happened. Romano instructs her to the tell the supervisor he's in surgery, but she says she already told the supervisor he was out of surgery. Romano sarcastically yells, "Thank you! Appreciate that!" and she totally gives him the hand. Heh. He goes to take the call, and Kit opens the door to tell Elizabeth that Lucy's waking up.
Okay, even when Lucy was in surgery, I knew she wouldn't die, because she still hadn't made any dying declarations and the last thing we'd heard her say was a whole week ago, and it wasn't anything profound at all -- just proof that she cared about her patient, and that Carter, as always, was a really terrible teacher. So when Kit told Elizabeth that Lucy was waking up, I figured that it was in order to deliver her poignant final speech.
Elizabeth hurries in and sits down next to Lucy's bed. She asks whether Lucy knows what happened to her. When they cut to a shot of Lucy, we can see a large blood stain on her chest. Lucy makes no response, so Elizabeth tells her about her wounds, and what they did to fix them -- a bunch of different operations involving her throat and liver, and ending with the removal of Lucy's spleen. After this, Elizabeth says, "I'm sorry" as mournfully as if she'd just told Lucy she'd miscarried or something. I mean, if Lucy can live without a spleen, it can't be that big a deal, right? It's not like it's a limb or even a finger. Anyway. Lucy closes her eyes, and opens her mouth to speak (and I'm thinking, "Here it comes!"), and Elizabeth quickly tells her that because of the tracheotomy, Lucy won't be able to speak, but that if Elizabeth plugs in the trach, Lucy will be able to whisper audibly. Lucy licks her lips, pauses, and breathes, "Thank you."
For once in my life, I am happy to have been wrong.
Carter's still getting a colostomy. Once again, Benton and Anspaugh are congratulating themselves over a job well done, like they didn't learn their lesson the last time. Shirley appears at the door to tell Anspaugh that someone needs to operate on the industrial-trauma victim. Like everyone else, Benton doesn't care, and tells Shirley he's not finished with Carter yet, and asks where Elizabeth is. Shirley asks if Benton wants her to page Elizabeth, and he says he does, and that Shirley should tell Finch to stay with her patient until Elizabeth gets there. Since Finch doesn't -- and, in fact, can't -- care about anyone, this is the perfect job for her.