Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A | 709 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT My Left Foot…
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 6 | Aired on 2009.09.20
In the dark, Joan's asleep with a record still spinning uselessly on the turntable, so apparently Greg didn't make it home for the celebratory meal. Which, I'm guessing, is just as well. He bumps into something, waking her up, and she asks where he was. He slurs that he called her at work to tell her he was going out for drinks, but she replies that he's lying. However, being far kinder than he deserves now or ever, she has him come sit next to her, telling him she knows he's soused and it's okay, and asking what happened. He tells her he didn't get the Chief Residency, which I'm guessing she had just possibly figured out already, but that's not the really bad news -- he ran into Ettinger shortly before he got the official notification, and he could tell something was wrong by the way he wouldn't look him in the eye. "He sat me down in his office, and he poured a drink and he said...he said I had no brains in my fingers." I'd be laughing pretty hard if not for what this is going to mean for Joan. Joan's confused for a moment, as Ettinger wrote Greg a lot of nice evaluations, but Greg forlornly informs her that doctors don't write bad things about each other. She tries to put a brave face on, saying he can go to another hospital, but Greg tells her being a surgeon, at least in New York, is no longer an option for him. Joan tries to wrap her head around the implications, asking if this all means he's fired, but Greg doesn't want to talk about it any more. "I have another year of residency. You're not going to be able to leave your job." Joan tries to steer the situation out of nightmare territory, saying that ship has already sailed, but he simply tells her to get another one. He starts to exit the room, but she calls him back and tells him he's a doctor, and she married him for his heart, not his hands. That sounds like an even worse deal to me. He tells her he couldn't fake it and go out to celebrate with the others: "I've been sitting in the Dublin House since two." This is enough to get Joan a little misty, and she sends him in to lie down, saying she'll be in to undress him in a moment. Poor Joan. Not only does she have to go back and mother everyone at SC, she has to mother her own fool husband as well.