Episode Report Card Lauren S: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT How the West Was Won
By Lauren S | Season 5 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.15.2008
Brain surgery time! That means it's time for me to recap this scene entirely by sound, because I do not need to see a man's face being peeled off layer by layer. Fine, a mannequin's face. The special effects team did a really good job this week, and wow can you tell they were proud of it by the amount of time they spent on this guy. Mark slices across the top of Arnie's forehead, and slowly begins to pull his face back. There's silence, which I'm sure is shots of the surgery interspersed with Meaningful Looks over surgical masks.
Hahn, George, Mere and Richard are in a meeting in Richard's office -- George has just suggested he bring Duncan into the OR to see a bit of surgery so that he knows what it's going to be like when he goes under the knife. He argues that there isn't any way for him to imagine it from scratch, and that Hahn is doing a thoroscopic procedure later that only involves three incisions and no blood. Hahn doesn't understand what good it will do, but George patiently explains that Duncan will see the people, the room and the instruments, as well as a person who is perfectly fine even when anesthetized. He yells that pinning Duncan down and doping him up is traumatic, while showing him how surgery works is an easy solution to their problem.
George clearly convinced them, since next we see he's putting a cap onto Duncan, who is already in a surgical robe and booties. Duncan whispers that he doesn't want to go in, but George explains that there's no blood and it won't be scary -- it's just 3 small cuts. He stoops down to Duncan's level and admits that he was scared the first time he went in an OR, but that the people in there are the very best, and that it's the safest place he'll ever be. With that settled, he takes Duncan to the door and opens it... to a view of Arnie with his face entirely pulled down. After a beat, he breathes, "Where did that guy's face go?" Derek asks them if they are lost, and George grabs the kid and runs out.
George has him tucked under one arm as he races down the hall, Duncan screaming that he wants to see the guy with no face. George tells him that if he never tells anyone what happened, George will give him anything he wants for the rest of his life. "Okay?" "Okay." He pushes Duncan into the new OR, where a very chaste operation is going on, obscured mostly by a drape over the patient. Duncan leans in to tell George he wants to go back to the other OR, and George whispers fiercely that they aren't talking about that. "This one's boring!" Duncan whispers. "Yeah, well yours will be boring too," George answers. Hahn watches them whisper back and forth but magically somehow seems to not hear any of what they are saying.